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“I don’t recall volunteering to play your matchmaker,” he growled, irritated. “Now let’s carry on with the game, shall we? I’m about to trounce you. Your turn.”

Mal sighed. “I notice you haven’t offered up the hostess as sacrificial lamb.”

Because she is mine.

No, he couldn’t very well say that either. He would be admitting far too much.

“Because I do not know her,” he corrected his friend.

The lie came easily enough. He couldn’t say why protecting what he had with Ophelia felt more important than air. It simply was. He had promised her secrecy, and she would have it. Even if it meant lying to his closest, oldest friend.

“Fortunately, I don’t need you to offer her up,” Mal said, bending over the billiards table with his cue stick once more. “I can find her well enough on my own. Perhaps even after I finish thoroughly defeating you at this game. She’s likely still entertaining the ladies in the drawing room.”

Like a damned dog with a bone, Mal was.

“If it suits you,” he bit out, the words like razor blades on his tongue.

He hated saying them. But for Ophelia’s sake, Apollo would maintain the pretense that they were strangers.

His friend struck the cue ball and earned himself more points.

Apollo turned a determined eye back to the game, telling himself he would simply have to find his way to Phee first. He would spirit her away to his bedroom before Mal so much as blinked an eye.

There was no way he was going to sleep tonight without her in his bed where she belonged.

“You certainly disappeared for quite some time this afternoon,” Theodora said with a bright smile that belied the accusatory tone of her voice.

“I didn’t,” Ophelia protested, pinning a false smile of her own to her lips. “I was merely arranging more entertainments for the remainder of the house party.”

Theodora fanned herself, eyes narrowing ever so slightly. “Do tell.”

“If I tell you now, it shan’t be a surprise,” Ophelia said primly, straightening her skirts.

She well understood what Apollo had meant when he had characterized Theodora as a lioness. If she scented blood, she was on the prowl, ready to pounce.

How did he know the other woman so well? A sharp surge of jealousy knifed through Ophelia, bitter and unwanted, much as it had been when Mrs. Gilpin had arisen in conversation. Why should it bother her? Apollo was a known rake. She should expect he had a past. After all, she had one too. It was just that everything with him was so sharp, so exquisitely raw and new.

“I thought I saw you in the rose gardens earlier,” Theodora said then, capturing Ophelia’s attention once again.

“I wasn’t in the gardens,” she lied hastily.

“Are you certain? I swore I saw a lady in a pink afternoon gown and a man chasing after her. Then they dashed off into the orangery, holding hands.”

Ice prickled down her spine. Had Theodora been watching her? And if so, for what purpose?

“I’m afraid you must have mistaken me for someone else,” she said lightly. “I was conferring with the housekeeper and the Cook this afternoon.”

Theodora lightly tapped her chin, her expression turning pensive. “But the woman I saw possessed very uncommon hair, a copper mixed with gold. I’m reasonably sure it was you. I’ve never seen anyone else with quite the same shade as you have, my dear. Are you certain you weren’t in the gardens? Perhaps it has slipped from your mind.”

Ophelia stared at her, grateful anew that she had her mask firmly in place. She was most assuredly not the only woman in England with hair this shade. And having the mask obscure a good portion of her face would hopefully preclude Theodora from ever claiming Ophelia had been in attendance at this house party if their paths were to cross in London. Beyond that reassurance, the members of the club all issued a vow of secrecy upon becoming members. No one was to cause problems for anyone else in their private lives.

The club was to be a bastion of secrets and pleasure, a mythical world where the inhabitants were free to roam without fear of repercussion.

“I do believe I would recall if I were in the orangery,” she said slowly, painstakingly.

With her expression, she hoped to heavens she was telling Theodora that she had no intention of discussing the other woman’s suspicions further. Ophelia was entitled to her privacy, no less than any of the other members in attendance. She didn’t need to tell anyone anything.

“Now that I think upon it further, Prestwick was missing as well,” Theodora said. “I saw him slip from the room, and I suspected he was meeting someone for an assignation. Come, you must admit it was you. I shan’t tell anyone else. It will be our little secret.”