“Garden parties, my lord?”
He nodded, a curt affair.
“I rather like them. Fresh air is always preferable to the suffocating miasma of a ballroom.”
He raised an eyebrow at her. “Miasma?”
She lifted a shoulder and let it drop. “A good word if ever I heard one. Rolls off the tongue in a delicious way. Miasma.” She smiled.
He did not. “At least at a ball, one knows what to do. Dance. Play cards.”
Cards. The last Lillian had seen Lord Devon he’d been storming from a card room. Had he lost everything? Only that could explain his thunderous mood. He was such a strange fellow, vacillating between light and dark, turning from one to the other with the change of the wind or even a breath.
“Do you play cards?” she inquired.
“No. I’ve better things to do.”
“Your estates. And Parliament.”
“Exactly.”
“Are there any interesting issues at hand now? In either arena?”
Now he did smile, a condescending thing. “Nothing to trouble you with, Miss Clarke.”
She let that conversation die, too. And may have pretended to stab it a little as she did so.Et tu, Lillian? The conversation said. And she stabbed it again, with glee.
Would all her days be like this if she married Lord Littleton? Waiting for him to say something and, when he did, immediately feeling… stabby.
Not a word, of course, but certainly an authentic description of her internal state.
When she’d scanned the entirety of the garden and Lord Littleton still had not introduced a new topic of conversation, she decided to try her luck once more. “Do you know Lady Abigail, my lord?”
“No. The name is not familiar.”
“She made her debut this season.” Lillian tilted her head toward the girl who still clung to her book and her shrub. “She’s over there. With the book.”
Lady Abigail’s gaze darted their way. She was close enough to hear them talk, and the sound of her name had clearly gained her attention.
Lord Littleton glanced. He glared. “I don’t see anyone.”
Lillian had never actually had her mouth drop open uncontrollably. It did now. “The girl. With the book. Next to the shrubbery.” She resisted stabbing, yes stabbing, her finger in the girls’ direction. “Right. There. My lord.”
“I see no one.”
Impossible. Either Littleton needed glasses, or he looked in the wrong direction. Or Lady Abigail was a ghost only Lillian could see. No, no. Others saw her, too. The queen had seen her and acknowledged her with a soft smile when she’d been presented. And Lady Abigail’s friends also saw her. Tabitha and Jane had seen her the other night, too.
The error lay in Lord Littleton.
Yet, Lady Abigail thought the it lay in herself. Her shoulders drooped, her face glowed a mottled red and white, and if she clutched the book any harder, it would disappear into her chest. If she pressed against the bush any harder, she’d disappear into it. Oh dear. Lady Abigail had heard Lord Littleton.
Lillian knew what it was like to feel invisible. Her heart reached out for the girl, and against everything she knew was proper, she reached out for Lord Littleton. She turned his body, pushed it forward several paces, then forcefully tilted his head until he perfectly faced Lady Abigail.
“There,” she said through gritted teeth. “Just there. She’s lovely.”
He swiped her hands away from his person and shot her an icy glare, then looked where she’d insisted he must. “Ah. I see now. A curiously formed chit.”
Lillian’s mouth dropped openagain. She swung Lord Littleton around, so he no longer faced Lady Abigail and hissed, “Curiously formed? I have no understanding of your meaning, my lord.”
