Damn Dromio.He was amused that Marek was going out for the evening and badgered him as to where. In order to escape him and his insidious questioning, Marek finally intimated, if only vaguely, that it had to do with a woman. “Damn me if I didn’t guess it,” Dromio had said with a slap to his knee. He didn’t ask Marek more—men never questioned the idea of a woman, no matter who or where they were. But Dromio wanted to laugh about it. “You’ve dressed very well for a lightskirt,” he said jovially, noting Marek’s formal coat and embroidered waistcoat. In Wesloria, the more embroidered the waistcoat, the more formal the occasion. He’d brushed his hair, too, forcing it behind his ears. He didn’t want to look unkempt. “You could do with a shave, lad. Ladies don’t care for the stubble.”
There was nothing Marek could do for his face—no matter how well he scraped a blade across his cheek, he could never get a shave as close as a barber.
“I won’t keep you from your paramour,” Dromio said, when he’d finished with his teasing. He was in front of a mirror himself, fixated with a curl near his temple. “We are dining with the king this evening, Van and I.”
Not Osiander? Marek noted. “I thought the king was under the weather.”
Dromio waved that off. “It’s an excuse, Brendan. He’s not one for public gatherings, you know. He’d rather spend every evening before his hearth with his wife. Unfortunately for the queen. She would prefer to dance, I think.”
A week ago he’d been too ill to attend the negotiations. And now it was an act to keep from going into society?
“I mean to review some papers with him,” Dromio added.
The explanation was entirely unnecessary and therefore, strange. It was a Saturday evening in London. They would not reconvene the peace negotiations again until Tuesday. If the king preferred a quiet evening, why not allow him to have it? And what could Dromio have to review with the king? “My lord?”
“You don’t trust me, Brendan,” he said, still studying himself in the mirror. “But you should congratulate yourself, as I’ve learned quite a lot from you. I mean to speak to the king about the coal mines once more. The deal is not done yet, is it?”
He was referring to the last sticking point in the peace negotiations. Both Alucia and Wesloria wanted the rights to mine the coal in the Astasian region. Marek had proposed an equitable sharing, but as the week had gone along, Dromio and Van had agreed to a little more chipping away until there seemed hardly anything left for Wesloria.
Dromio clapped Marek on the shoulder. “Mind you don’t do anything to embarrass the delegation,” he said, and sauntered away.
Embarrassthe delegation? Marek shook his head and bit back the remark he would very much like to have made, which included the observation that he wasn’t the ass in the room.
When he was certain Dromio had gone, he’d walked to Upper Brook Street. It was a greater distance than he’d thought, and he had a slight panic when he arrived—he’d forgotten his invitation. The panic, springing from nowhere, surprised him. He had come this evening to learn anything he could about the four soldiers. But the feeling of nerves he was experiencing had nothing to do with soldiers and everything to do with the idea of missing an opportunity to speak to Hollis Honeycutt again.
That’s how he thought of her now—Hollis Honeycutt. The name of a mythical creature, as if she was too much woman for just one name and required both to convey the full measure of her.
When he presented himself at the door, the butler didn’t ask for an invitation and merely pointed him in the direction of the earl.
Marek went the other way. He’d never met Lord Iddesleigh and would require a proper introduction. He looked around the room for Hollis Honeycutt, his gaze moving over so many female faces that they all began to look alike to him. Pale-skinned and with ringlets framing their faces. None of them had the dark hair and piercing blue eyes he was searching for.
There was another impediment to his search, and that was the sheer size of the tree in the drawing room. It was enormous. Half the candles had already burned out—not that anyone seemed to notice or care. The room was crowded and hot, and he could hear what he thought was caroling coming from another part of the house, the watery undertones forming a familiar song in his head.
He spotted the Duke and Duchess of Tannymeade. They were smiling in a way Marek had never seen them smile, and it gave him a small jolt—that was joy, simply put. He envied the way they looked at each other and found their smiles for everyone else endearing and even a bit contagious.
The Alucians were here in force, he noticed, and very few Weslorians, with the notable exception of the two royal princesses. He was taken slightly aback at the sight of them—he’d never been this close to his half sisters. Justine was engaged in conversation with a British man. She was lively and pretty, and the man was clearly amused by her. The younger one, Amelia, seemed terribly ill at ease. She kept her gaze on the floor and fidgeted with the bracelet on her wrist. She only looked up when Lady Tannymeade stooped down to speak to her.
A footman suddenly blocked his view of his sisters and held up a tray with several crystal punch glasses. Marek took one from the tray and brought it to his nose.Ah, absinthe punch.Or, as they said in Wesloria,Diablia en verte botillia—the devil in the green bottle. He knew of no other drink that could make a man see things, but this drink certainly could.
No wonder the people packed into this house were having such a grand time.
He waited until the footman was gone, then put aside the drink and pressed on through the crowd, past boughs of holly, underneath sprigs of mistletoe, around embracing couples attempting to dance to the caroling in another room.
He couldn’t see Hollis anywhere. He felt a bit conspicuous, as he didn’t know a soul and sought a corner where he could stand a moment to get used to the throbbing in his head. He closed his eyes, took a few deep breaths, and tried not to let the deep, watery sound bother him. He didn’t know how long he’d been standing there when he heard, in the constant, low-grade din that lived in his head, her voice.
He snapped himself straight and looked around him, but still couldn’t see her. What he did see were the two sets of shoulders belonging to a pair of men on the other side of a thick cluster of garland portieres beside him.
He heard her voice again. Marek stepped toward the garlands. He could see her dark head over the shoulder of one of the men. His heart quickened like a besotted fool. He parted the portieres and stepped through so he could see her.
Good God, she was beautiful, a true vision in a glittering, cream-colored gown. Her hair looked even darker tonight, and the rubies at her throat drew his attention to the pale skin of her bosom. He could feel parts of him twitching like a cat’s whiskers, waking up and taking notice.
She appeared to be making a point to the gentlemen. He guessed, knowing her—and he did know her a little, didn’t he?—that the point she was making was either extremely important or extremely fantastical, given the way she used her arms to assist her. He cleared the last of the garlands and stepped through.
“This is precisely the sort of thing that’s needed in the country,” she said to one of the gentlemen. “But we are often overlooked because of antiquated thinking.”
“Mrs. Honeycutt. You miss the point entirely,” said the smaller of the two men. He was older, stately looking. “We don’t discuss words, we discusslanguage. That you fail to understand the difference only solidifies my opinion that you are not equipped to be a member.”
Hollis’s lush mouth, painted scarlet red, formed a perfectOof surprise.
