My dear Brentley,
Won’t you and your visitor join us Thursday next at Alderfield Lodge, for dinner and cards? Several other good families from the neighborhood have promised to attend. We shall be quite the merry group.
Yours, etc.
Lady Alderfield
“MR. WRIGHT.”
Harry drew to a halt, turning abruptly toward a shadowy row of hedges. Hedges that seemed to be calling his name. He couldn’t be that drunk.
A moonlit face emerged above the boxy wall of green. “Mr. Wright. I must speak to you. Alone.”
“Miss Eliza Cade.” He bowed. “This is an unexpected pleasure.”
In that moment, he regretted ever teasing her, because he meant every one of those five simple words. Sincerely. To see her was a true pleasure, and the degree to which he felt that pleasure was most unexpected. A bit alarming, if he were honest with himself.
With a darting glance toward the house and a frantic wave of her arm, she beckoned him toward her side of the hedges. “This way.”
Well, well. The unexpected pleasures continued.
“I can’t be out here long. I’m supposed to be upstairs, visiting with Lady Alderfield’s niece Fiona.”
“But you’re not. You’re here with me.”
“I’m leaving Norfolk Monday next,” she said. “Philippa will remain here a few more weeks, then travel to Brighton with Miss Farnsworth.”
“You’re not going with them?”
She shook her head. “I’m not allowed.”
“Why not?”
He scanned her face. She must be nearing twenty by now, easily. Certainly old enough for a holiday in boring Brighton. Not for the first time, he wondered at this strange policy of her father’s—refusing to let their youngest daughter come out until all the others were settled? He hadn’t spent much time puzzling over it in the past, because it hadn’t affected him in the least.
He was puzzling over it now. And puzzling over his puzzling.
“It doesn’t matter. My point is this—after tonight, we may not meet again for months. Even years.”
Harry winced at the sharp twinge in his chest. Under the guise of scratching, he rubbed the spot, just to the left of his sternum. Deuced odd, that. Her news should not have hit him so forcefully, and not in that particular place.
He ought to be glad that she was leaving. He was growing much too fond of provoking her. Much too fond of her, in general.
“Did you come out here to kiss me good-bye?” he teased.
“Of course not, you wicked man. I—”
She turned and stared at the ground. She was silent for several moments, and Harry began to grow concerned.
“What is it, sweeting? Are you ill?”
“No. I’m endeavoring to keep my temper. Someone advised that it helps to pause, draw a deep breath, and count to three.”
“Ah,” he said. “And how is this strategy working?”
“It’s not working at all.” She lifted her head, and her blue eyes burned with reflected torchlight. “I’m up to twenty-seven now and still infuriated.”
He smiled. “Well, consider who you’re dealing with. I expect you’d need to count into the thousands for me. You might as well let me have your anger. Don’t worry, I can take it.”
She paced the small clearing, all shimmering silk and gleaming skin. The ribbon ties at the back of her gown swished and floated in her wake. Adding in the brandy’s blurring effect on his brain and the torchlight’s gifts to her delicate features…she could have been a sprite or a nymph. A creature of ether and quicksilver, swimming through the murk of night.
Whatever this creature before him might be, one thing was certain. She wasn’t a girl anymore. She was grown, and come into her full, bewitching power.
He watched her, a man bespelled.
“You don’t know.” Her voice boiled with emotion as she walked and talked. “You pretend to know everything about me, but you don’t. You have no idea. You tell me I’m selfish and cunning and only concerned for my own prospects.”
She burst out with a wild, almost drunken laugh. “My prospects,” she repeated, as if the word itself were a hilarious joke. “I have no prospects. None. I was ruined at the age of fourteen.”
Fourteen?
“Now wait. Come here.” He caught her by the shoulders and brought her close. Into the torchlight, where he could scan her expression with fresh concern.
Misused at fourteen? Surely not. The curiosity in her manner, the innocence in her responses to him… He would know if some bastard had tampered with Eliza Cade. She was like champagne—tart, sweet, intoxicating, and ready to explode with joy and passion for life. If some villain had taken her sparkle, Harry would be able to tell. A swelling of murderous rage in his breast would be his first clue.