“Oh, yes.” Lillian closed her eyes and searched for a face. Wide eyes, a wide mouth, dull blond hair. “He likes history, does he not?”
“Yes. Greeks and Romans and such. I had just read Plato, you see.”
Lillian nodded. She had not read Plato. Her reading habits tended toward the fanciful or the mechanical.
“I had heard Lord Kent speaking last week about Plato, and so when he strolled by, I dared myself to look up. I caught his gaze. He smiled, and I smiled back, and then he asked me to dance. And I did!”
Lillian knew well the joyous energy radiating from the girl. It was the excitement of finding oneself finally visible.
Lillian took Lady Abigail’s fluttering hands in her own. “I'm so happy for you.”
“You told me it would work, and you were right.”
“Keep it up. Don’t you dare stop now to have a good glance at your slippers. They’ll not wink out of existence if you let them out of your sight.”
Lady Abigail nodded and laughed.
Lillian patted her hand and pulled away. “Now, stay and join me for a biscuit or two.”
The color drained from the girl’s face. She tangled her wriggling fingers together in her lap and threw eye daggers at the biscuits on the silver tray. Her whole body seemed to pull away from the silver serving platter. Her nose wrinkled and sorrow pooled in her eyes.
“Oh no,” Lady Abigail said, “I can't. I'm reducing.”
“Nonsense!” Lillian exclaimed just as the door burst open.
Lillian and Abigail swung to look at the new arrival.
Blast. Lord Devon stood in the doorway, his hands on his lean hips, no jacket as the workshop required, his shirt sleeves rolled, mind-numbingly, to the elbow. Why were his forearms the most fascinating thing Lillian had ever seen? Such an annoying man. Always where he shouldn’t be with his too-appealing body parts.
“I knew you’d be in here,” he said, pinning Lillian with a knowing gaze. “If you’re not at some event, this is where you are.” His focus rolled toward Abigail. “Who is this goddess?”
Lillian refrained from rolling her eyes. Devon called every breathing female a goddess, but this particular breathing female—she glanced at Lady Abigail—was in desperate need of flirtation.
“Lord Devon,” Lillian said, “meet Lady Abigail, the Earl of Needleham’s daughter.”
Lord Devon transformed from blunt and rakish inventor’s apprentice to charming prince in the blink of an eye. He swept into the room with a regal bow, as if Lady Abigail where the Queen herself. He extended his hand toward her. “Dare I request to kiss the back of the hand of one of the loveliest ladies of my acquaintance?”
Lillian did roll her eyes. He laid it on thick. As usual.
As usual, it worked. Lady Abigail blushed. She giggled and extended her hand.
Lord Devon took her hand with the sort of gentle reverence reserved for holy relics and brushed his lips across the girl’s knuckles in the softest of gestures. He did not linger overmuch, or it would have been improper, but he dropped her hand and stood straight, a charming gleam in his eye and a smile perched on the corner of his lips. This devastating man was the one she’d fallen in love with last year, and if she was not careful, Lady Abigail would fall in love, too.
“Lord Devon,” Lady Abigail said, “I do not think we have met before.”
Lord Devon clutched his heart. “If we had, I would surely remember you. Who could not?”
Lillian hated, she really did, that the man was a complete gem, sometimes.
“Tell me,” he said, “how many hundred suitors do you have this season? If you are friends with Miss Clark, you are rarefied company indeed. I should back out of the room groveling and bowing. A humble man like me does not deserve to be in the presence of such beauty.”
Lillian chuckled. “You’re laying it on a bit thick, Lord Devon.” But she smiled and hoped her expression told him how much she appreciated him laying it on thick.
He returned her smile briefly, but it was a warm, real thing, and she almost lost her breath. Then the smile disappeared, and his hands returned to his hips in a business-like stance. “That lavatory fellow and the dumplings man?”
“Lavatory and dumplings?” Lillian repeated. “You've lost me completely.”
He waved his hand in the air. “The two books you recommended. The French fellow and the other one. I can't find them.”
