“Remarkable you should have noticed,” she said, “considering you were preoccupied with Lady Cecily. What was my mother thinking, partnering the poor lamb with you?”

She had hit a mark, inadvertently, for his expression shuttered.

“You have not heard her cat poem,” he finally said, sounding ominous. “You would reconsider who the poor lamb was in our partnering.”

“A cat poem? Very well—I do like cats. Was it a good poem?”

“Atrocious. But very naughty. Although that was an accident, I believe.”

She laughed despite herself, and his eyes lit on her with intrigue. Round and round they went. She tried not to lie to herself. And the truth was, she felt drawn to Tristan in all his wicked glory. It was why her skin prickled as if she were floating in champagne when he put his hand on her waist, it was why sometimes she felt hot when thinking of all the ways she disliked him. It was a sick desire outside the bounds of reason, which was perhaps why it appealed. A good woman was not even supposed to have words for the parts of her body that ached when he looked at her like this, his gaze reaching deep as though he wanted her secrets. But she had long been deemed a shameless woman. She could safely enjoy herself for the duration of a dance with no reputation to lose.

* * *

From the shelter of a ballroom pillar, two pairs of eyes were watching the unlikely couple dance more closely than the others.

“You are admirably calm, considering this should have been your dance,” Arthur said.

Cecily did not look at him. Her eyes were on the dance floor, where Tristan whirled with a woman in a crimson dress to a waltz that, by an unspoken understanding, should have been hers indeed, and she was not nearly as calm as she appeared. The stinging sensation in her nose said her tears of dismay had risen precariously close to the surface.

“It is clear that she accosted him,” she said softly. “She was probably worried no one would ask her for a turn. He was too much of a gentleman to reject a lady of his acquaintance. Not even a lady like her.”

Arthur nodded, for this was the regular reaction to Ballentine’s callous behavior: making excuses for him. He’d heard it all before. He had done it himself. But then, he had probably been in love with the man for as long as his cousin. It had been the summer when he had turned eleven, when his parents had sent him to spend his first summer at Wycliffe Hall with distant relations rather than take him along on a tour to India over the holidays. He had sulked for days, for Tommy had found him dull from the lofty height of his fifteen years, and Cecily, his own age, had struck Arthur as dull. And then, he had arrived. He remembered it clearly, the carriage halting, the door swinging back, and the beautiful youth jumping out onto the gravel, his hat under his arm. His hair had glowed like a flame in the summer sun. His movements had been graceful as a dancer’s. He remembered how his mouth had turned dry and how his stomach had felt hollow. Much, much later, he had understood that it had been his first taste of infatuation. Tristan had strolled past the line of greeters and had carelessly ruffled Arthur’s hair, saying, Who have we here? Ten years later, their paths had crossed again in a den of iniquity, and Tristan had not remembered him, not at all—it was as though he had never been at Wycliffe Hall, never been running after him for a month with boyish ardor or dreaming of him for much longer.

Now Ballentine was twirling the scandalous Lady Lucie as though he were above everyone’s judgment, and while Arthur was quite drunk already, he was not nearly intoxicated enough to watch it without chagrin; in fact, he was just drunk enough to feel uninhibited frustration. He had nothing against his cousin Lucie, personally; their paths had barely crossed during his stay at her home. She had been older than Tristan and had preferred to seclude herself in the park or her room. But right now, seeing her in Tristan’s arms, he did not like her much.

He turned to Cecily, and contempt and pity colored his voice when he said: “He won’t marry you, Cecily.”

She turned her head toward him, blinking slowly. “Why would you say such a thing?”

“He is not the marrying kind.”

“But . . . he must. The contracts are all but drawn up.”

When Arthur was quiet, she said: “The only reason it hasn’t been made official is because my uncle demanded Lord Ballentine right his reputation first, so it wouldn’t tarnish our family in any way. Which is unfair—he’s been terribly misunderstood.”

Arthur scoffed. “Look at him. Look at him, my dear.”

She turned back to the dance floor. She was looking. She hadn’t taken her eyes off him in two days. There wasn’t a more attractive man in England, which meant there wasn’t a more attractive man in the world. His amber eyes, smoldering, his beautiful mouth, smiling, making her feel . . . feverish. Her skin warmed the moment he looked at her. Every woman in the room wanted him.

She had known he was hers the first time she had clapped eyes on him as a girl. Well, perhaps not the very first time, but even when he had not yet been spectacular to behold, he had always paid attention to her. He would marry her. Arthur was just being morose, a regrettable streak in his disposition.

“I see a man gracious enough to dance with my unfortunate cousin,” she said, a little too gracious of him, in her personal opinion. “And the Prince of Wales likes him.”

Arthur’s lips twisted with impatience. “This man cares nought for contracts. Or honor. He has nothing but contempt for people who admire him, and I wager he even laughs at the Victoria Cross. Marriage is the last thing on his mind, mark my words. There are only two things Lord Ballentine cares about and those are himself and his pleasure.”

Cecily frowned. “You say ghastly things with great certainty.”

“Because I know him.”

“I know him, too.”

“I know him in ways that you don’t.”

Cecily felt moved to stomp her delicate foot. She knew gentlemen tended to have bonds that eluded the women in their lives. She didn’t like it.

“Be that as it may, I shall marry no one but him,” she said tightly.

Arthur gave her a long look, blinking as though she were out of focus. “Cripes,” he then said, slurring faintly. “You really do want him.”

She dropped her gaze, her cheeks unnaturally hot.

“And what about the woman who seems to have inspired him to write a whole book of romantic poetry?” Arthur said, for it was clearly a woman at the center of Ballentine’s poems.

“It is perfectly natural for artistic men to depend upon a muse,” Cecily said. “Or perhaps she is a figment of his imagination entirely.” And she, Cecily, was much preferable over an imaginary woman. Over many existing ones, too, if she was being honest.

Just then, Tristan tipped back his head and laughed, his white teeth flashing. When he looked back down at Lucie, he pulled her indecently close in the next turn of the waltz. And there was something in his gaze . . .

A stabbing sensation pierced Cecily’s chest. Her gloved hands reflexively balled into fists.

Of course, this meant nothing. It was only Lucie, after all. No one liked her.

But to witness him look like this at another woman? What if he danced with an eligible woman next? She swallowed. Could it be true? Her engagement was not as certain as they said it was?

Black dots began dancing before her eyes. Her hand scrabbled for the support of the column.

Arthur’s gaze filled with pity. “Ceci—”

She raised her other hand. “I do not enjoy this conversation. And I do not enjoy that he is dancing with Lucinda.”

He paused. Studied her flushed cheeks and glittering eyes. “All right,” he soothed. “All right. If someone must have him, I would want it to be you.”

The tears still threatened to spill. “But if he refuses? You seem so certain that he will.”

“You know.” His fingers wrapped around her small hand. “I could tell you something that might help you if he refuses to do right by you. You would have to be courageous, however.”

She blinked, a flicker of hope in the watery depths of her blue eyes. “I can be courageous.”

He felt a little ill. He was much more sozzled than he had thought. “He does not deserve you, this you must know.”

Cecily gave a shaky sigh. “You have always been a favorite cousin of mine, Arthur.”

He returned the feeble press of her fingers. He wished he could say that playing the knight in shining armor for his pretty cousin was what had just compelled him to make his offer. Alas, it was much less noble than that. It was, admittedly, a petty desire to see Ballentine needing to bend or down on his knees, his arrogance and appetites at least in part curtailed by wedlock. Perhaps that would give the man a taste of how it felt to never quite get what one wanted.

Chapter 20

The disaster happened the next morning, on an empty stomach.

Lucie was running late for breakfast, because she had indulged in a lie-in, lingering on last night’s waltz in the twilight hour between dreams and conscious thought. Then she had asked the lady’s maid for another complicated coiffure and had taken frivolously long to select the best silk flower as a crowning glory.

The moment she entered the breakfast room, three hundred or more heads turned toward her, each movement subtle, but together, it created a veritable disturbance in the air.