“Is that why you came to the house yesterday and asked to borrow the gown?”
“No.” She quickly told Guinevere about rushing over to Nash’s after Frederica’s announcement in the SLARS meeting the day before that she’d seen Nash in Town. “I was coming to cry on your shoulder, but then, well, it was all so embarrassing to realize I’d pined for him for seven years and he does not care for me at all. I thought he had not come back to the Cotswolds because he was hurting over what had happened to Owen and blamed himself, and it turned out he had come back and seen Owen, just not me. He didn’t care enough to see me. And I have a horrid suspicion he might have been avoiding me because he suspected I had developed a tendre for him.”
“So the gown is to make him see other men desiring you, which will make him regret what he did?”
Lilias bit her lip. “Yes. It’s foolish and vain, I know. It’s rather smarting to have all your pride stripped from you. I’d like a shred back. I daresay he seemed to be pitying me yesterday. I cannot leave it like that. I cannot allow him to think he has the power to devastate me.” Though he did.
Determination and ire set on her friend’s face, and then a mischievous grin turned up the corners of Guinevere’s mouth. “I know just the man to aid you in showing Greybourne he is already utterly forgotten by you.”
“Who?” Lilias asked. “I don’t want to use any man, so it must be one that—”
“Do not vex yourself,” Guinevere interrupted, waving her hand. “Kilgore has just entered the ballroom, and I know of no other lord better suited to playing the besotted suitor with a devilishly wicked flair than Kilgore. I vow to you, Greybourne will not leave this ball tonight with any reason to pity you.”
The words were exactly what Lilias wanted but did not offer the comfort she was hoping for. She would, she realized, trade pride for love if given the chance, but Nash had not given her such a chance, nor even the smallest reason to hope he would. So tonight would be about pride, endings, and moving on. It was not as she wanted it, but it was how it was.
Nash spent the first hour of the ball trying to keep his sights on his sister. It wasn’t until Adaline was finally dancing with a man who looked to be as harmless as a flea that Nash leaned against a column to relax. And of course, in that moment when his guard was down, he saw Lilias.
It was like being struck in the heart by a thousand arrows. The ground beneath him shifted, the air charged with a strange current, and his chest tightened as if a band had been placed around it. He could not look away. He was trapped by years of repressed longing. He was a fly in the web that was sweet, wonderful, untouchable Lilias.
She was a vision of sin with her blond hair flowing uncontrolled, evoking the desire to lay her on his bed and spread her flaxen tresses around her bare shoulders. Couple that with her ruby-red gown, which stirred the throbbing yearning to put his hands on the dips of her waist, and he could not stop his physical reaction to her. He went hard as a stone, and a feral instinct to stride through the crowd and rip her out of the arms of the man who was currently holding her too damn close pulsed to life within him.
Where the devil was Owen?
Nash jerked his focus away from Lilias to scan the annoyingly crowded ballroom. He roamed his gaze quickly over the guests, dismissing them as fast as he took them in.Fop. Lecher. Drunkard. Mother on a hunt for a husband for her daughter. Bored husband with an even more bored wife. Widow searching for a lover.
And Carrington, his longtime friend.
Nash pushed away from the column, and with his attention divided between his sister and Lilias, who luckily were dancing near each other, he strode across the ballroom toward Carrington. Carrington would be able to tell him who was dancing with Lilias and possibly where Owen was. He had not seen him all night, and that had been fine with Nash—until now. He’d assumed Owen was somewhere in the ballroom cherishing Lilias, protecting her as he damn well should be, and that was not something Nash had any wish to watch. He would rather gouge out his eyes than stand by observing the two of them together. He needed time. A couple hundred years ought to suffice.
As he threaded through the crowd, bursts of conversation and muted laughter came to him, but he pushed it all away, considering what to say to Carrington.
Carrington was the one person Nash trusted completely to be discreet, and Nash needed discretion now. Four years of friendship had begun with Carrington observing a man pickpocketing Nash’s coachman in a boisterous inn in Scotland and the same night had ended with Nash taking a bullet in the arm meant for Carrington. He’d been shot by a member of a pickpocketing gang the two of them had fought, and the evening had led to Carrington telling Nash that he owed him a life debt. Nash had never called in the marker, but tonight might be the night.
He could feel interested gazes upon him as he continued through the heated press of bodies. He didn’t care to stop and be cordial. He knew he should, but it was taking all the strength he possessed to stay away from Lilias, so whomever he offended could go to the devil. As he drew closer to Carrington, his friend’s wife appeared by his side and whispered something in his ear.
Damn. Nash could not ask about Lilias without drawing her curiosity. Carrington may wonder why Nash was inquiring about Lilias’s dancing partner, but he would not ask Nash about it. It was an unspoken code among men, but Lilias’s friend would undoubtedly poke about if he inquired about her.
“Greybourne,” Carrington said as Nash approached. His friend’s tone seemed rather cool, but perhaps it was Nash’s imagination. What he did not imagine was catching Carrington’s wife discreetly elbowing her husband. What was that about?
Carrington cleared his throat as he caught his wife by the elbow and angled his body to cover the gesture, but it was too late. Nash had seen it. “I’m glad ye changed yer mind and came to the ball,” Carrington said. “Ye remember my wife…”
She offered him a polite, albeit seemingly forced, smile. “I told you, darling. I’ve known Greybourne since we were much younger. I’m surprised you are not dancing, Greybourne.”
“Are you?” Nash glanced away for a breath and located his sister dancing very near him. He should have turned back then, but he found himself searching out Lilias once more to ensure she was not being mauled by the man she was dancing with. When he looked back to the duchess, he had the distinct feeling she’d been watching him. “I beg your pardon,” he said. “I was ensuring my sister is still safely on the dance floor.”
“Hmm,” the duchess said, the sound dripping with disbelief. “You appeared to be scanning the ballroom for someone other than your sister, given I noted you looking at her as she is right there.” The duchess tilted her head toward Adaline. He could see why Lilias was friends with Carrington’s wife. She was bold like Lilias.
“I was actually looking for Blackwood,” Nash said smoothly, using Owen’s title instead of his familiar name.
“Oh,” the duchess replied, her mouth parting in a surprisedO.
Beside her, Carrington tried to cover a chuckle with a cough without much success.
His wife elbowed him good, and she did not bother to disguise it. “I believe I saw him near the terrace doors caught by Lady Tindall and her daughter, Lady Camille. The woman is in search of a husband for Lady Camille, and I think Blackwood is her prime candidate.”
“Surely the woman must know she’s wasting her time,” Nash muttered, looking toward the terrace doors and finding Owen leading a frail girl away from it and toward the dance floor with an unhappy look on his face. Nash noticed that Owen was walking without his cane, but the uneven gait was there and guilt pricked him.
“Why would she be wasting her time?” the duchess inquired, frowning at him.
