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Nobody else in the room heard anything in it. The clergyman smiled benignly at the mention of a family resemblance, and the worthy neighbors nodded over their sherry, but Augusta heard it. Rosalind, watching her aunt as she had learned to watch everything, saw the cup in Augusta’s hand go still, not with a tremor but with a stillness deeper than the stillness before it. Augusta set the cup down into its saucer with small and perfect care, and the whole room seemed to grow a degree colder.
“One does wonder where things come from,” Augusta said, her voice cooled and slowed, each word laid down clean. “I find it is generally idleness that wonders, and rarely to any good purpose.” She gave that a moment to settle. “Cecily was the best of us, Lady Marbury, and her daughter is very like her, and I count that the highest thing I am able to say of anyone.” Her brow lifted a fraction and held. “You will forgive me. I am fond of my sister’s memory, and I do not enjoy hearing it turned over for sport at the dinner-hour.”
Selina’s smile did not move, but something behind it did. For the briefest moment it was fixed, a degree too even, with the warmth drained out from beneath it, and then she laughed her light laugh and let it go.
“My dear Lady Holt, I meant only that she is handsome. Shall we go in? Cook will never forgive us if the soup is kept waiting.”
They went in, and Rosalind took her place beside Augusta.
As the soup was served, she leaned a little closer to her aunt.
“What did Lady Marbury mean?”
Augusta picked up her spoon. “Nothing that need spoil your dinner.”
“Aunt.”
“Eat your soup, Rosalind.”
Rosalind looked at her, but Augusta had already turned to the gentleman on her other side.
Chapter Four
Dover gave up his greatcoat to a footman in a hall already grown too warm with the breath of a hundred guests. He had come only to confirm a curiosity, as he had reminded himself in the carriage and again upon the stair. He would be home before the second half of the evening.
Then he stepped into the second room, and there she was, standing near the instrument in a gown the color of dark wine. It was not a gray gown. He disliked very much that he had noted it at all.
“You found her, then?” Westcott came up at his shoulder from the direction of the card-room. “Since when are you fond of music?”
“I am not fond of music. I am avoiding the cards, where a man cannot leave a table without it being remarked upon.”
That much might have been said of any of Lady Ashcombe’s evenings, for they were all the same. There were always too many guests for the rooms, a soprano with more ambition than gift, and card tables in the back parlor for the men who would rather lose money than be sung at.
“You are avoiding nothing at all,” Westcott replied, lifting two glasses from a passing footman’s tray. He pressed one into Dover’s hand. “You walked into this room, you found the one face you came to find, and you have been staring at it ever since.”
“Have I.”
“There. Something to do with your hands, while you pretend to me that you are doing nothing whatsoever.”
Dover took the glass and did not answer further. Westcott appeared to find that answer enough.
Across the room, Lady Rosalind stood a little apart from a knot of older ladies, her hands folded, her attention going over the company in that careful, watchful manner he had marked once before. She was not looking for admiration, he thought. She was looking for whatever the room might need. The wine-colored gown became her far better than the gray had done, though why the color of a lady’s gown should matter to him, he could not have said.
He had not come about the gown. A sennight had passed since Lady Marchwood’s dinner, and the question she had left him with ought to have faded, as such questions always did. It had not faded in the least.
“There is Miss Carteret,” Westcott observed, “looking your way with great determination. You might at least bow.”
“I might at least not.” Dover did not turn. The young lady’s gaze had landed upon him some minutes since, the look of a girl who had been told he was a viscount. “She is performing for a room that has already decided I am not to be caught.”
“You dislike being performed at.” Westcott sipped his wine. “One of these days you will meet a lady who does not want you in the least, and then what will you do?” He nodded toward the front of the room. “There is your soprano, by the by. You may compose your face for suffering.”
But Dover was not looking at the soprano, nor at Miss Carteret.
“Do you see the little one by the pillar?” Westcott murmured. “She has torn her flounce, poor child. She will bolt in a moment, and the whole room will see her go.”
A girl of seventeen or so, pink and stricken, a torn flounce trailing loose from her hem where some careless heel had caught it. She had gone white to the lips, and her eyes had already begun to dart toward the door.
She did not bolt. Lady Rosalind turned without any appearance of hurry and stepped half in front of the girl, so that her own skirts hid the ruined hem, and said something low, a word and no more. The girl’s dash for the door died before it had begun.
