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She would much rather be clinging to the side of the building again. Or sneaking through a dark, dusty passageway.

A drawing room blooming with aristocratic ladies whispering to each other and aristocratic men looking down their noses, all so glittering and beautiful?

Hell. “Beg your pardon?” Bram asked quietly when she came up short in the doorway. He wore black, his cravat in a simple knot, not an ounce of flash to him, and still outshone every man here. Most of them knew it, too, if their narrow-eyed glances were anything to go by.

“This is another circle of hell,” she muttered. “Dante had no idea.”

Bram chuckled softly. She felt it caress the back of her neck, felt it steal her breath.

This was getting ridiculous. A chuckle should not affect her, no matter how soft.

Bram only leaned back against the wall as if ladies fluttered every time he spoke, which they probably did. It wasn’t even the bored, languid affectation of a lord with too much time and not enough occupation. It was the patience of the captain of a ship, waiting on the wind to turn. Prepared. Confident.

If she were another woman altogether, she’d lick her lips. Look up at him through her lashes.

Tear off his cravat with her teeth.

But alas, Lady Clara was in attendance, not the Nightingale.

Indeed, one of her heroines would have purred at him, her bosom a great deal more bosomy than Clara’s would ever be. She would have said something witty, charming. Definitely wicked. Clara only blurted, more panicked than seductive, when the drawing room loomed before her, “Aren’t you coming with me?”

“I’m here for you, not them. So I’m better served where I can see everything.”

The man was starting to make her feel as though she had found herself in one of her own stories.

And she did not have time for it. No matter how she longed for even the pretense of it. He wasn’t flirting with her—she knew it was her own fancy.

“Is that Lady Clara?” someone whispered. Loudly. Why bother whispering at all if you were going to turn it into a shout?

“Surely not, at this event?”

“And in that dress? She did not even bother to dampen it.”

As if Clara was daft enough to wet down her dress in March. Catching a chill was not attractive.

Or was it? As always, places like this and guests such as these made her doubt herself.

“Dampen her dress?” One of the gentlemen snickered. “The only thing Lady Clara ever dampens is the mood. I can’t think why she’s here.”

Clara stiffened but said nothing. There was no point. They weren’t, strictly speaking, wrong.

Bram frowned.

It wasn’t the comment that mortified her—it was that he was right there to hear it. To see her dishwater-pale hair and her boring dress and be forced to agree with them. She was no siren to lure men from their duties. Her nickname by the end of her first Season was Miss Vinegar for a reason.

Nightingale, she reminded herself, keeping her expression bland as milk pudding. You are the Nightingale now.

“Perhaps the marquis was in need of a naughty governess,” Lord Howell suggested.

“Her?” Lord Faltingham laughed so hard that he spilled his champagne down his front.

Bram straightened away from the wall. Lord Faltingham glanced his way and then suddenly found himself fascinated with the spill on his coat.

Clara walked by as if she had not heard them. She didn’t float gracefully or mince her steps. She wouldn’t know how to. Her goal was to reach the settee by the window. They would stop paying attention to her by the time she sat down, and she was situated well enough to overhear a good portion of the conversations frothing through the drawing room. She did not expect to hear anything particularly useful about the marquis, but she had to start somewhere.

For one, he had just received a note from a footman. He plucked it from the gold tray, read it with a slight frown, and then took his leave. Abruptly. He made the usual apologies and kissed the hand of the lady on his left who wore red lip stain that made her look positively decadent.

And then he was gone.