Lydia arched a brow. “I told you. Men like that sort of thing.”
“Lyddie, it just got worse after you left. I cannot countenance it.”
“Go have a look at Georgiana in the ballroom, and see if you can countenance it.”
She’d seen Georgiana, surrounded as always by suitors, swathed in virginal white and blinking around like she couldn’t imagine what all the fuss was about. Selina understood the appeal—Belvoir’s and four years on the Marriage Mart had taught her enough to know that men preferred Marianne Dashwood to Elizabeth Bennet, as unaccountable as it seemed.
But she’d seen Peter struggling against laughter at Georgiana’s non sequiturs. Curse him, the man had had the temerity to turn those liquid chocolate eyes on her and plead for help. Half-amused, he’d looked, and half-agonized. And she’d thought,Yes, I will help you. Anything.
For the children, of course. Because she cared about the children. Because she wanted them to be a family.
Only when Peter had looked at her as though she were his partner in some great adventure, she’d felt something bright blossom in her chest. She’d felt like his friend. She’d felt like she mattered. For once in her life she didn’t feel like too much—she felt exactlyright, there in the warm embrace of his eyes.
And then, for some reason, he’d changed his mind. He’d smiled at Georgiana. He’d offered to call on her. And he didn’t need Selina after all.
Selina smoothed the seam of her gloves between her fingers and tried to shake off the maudlin thoughts.
“Come along,” she said, and she linked her arm through Lydia’s. “If he’s going to marry someone, he couldn’t possibly find a better partner than you.”
In the ballroom, they found Georgiana and Peter just finishing a set. Selina could hear Peter rattling on—something about his sister, Selina thought, and her fencing—while Georgiana looked at him with an expression of puzzlement.
She led Lydia over to intercept them as they left the dance floor. “Good evening, Your Grace. Lady Georgiana.”
Peter stopped talking. His eyes caught on hers and held there. Her fingers itched to sweep the dark curls off his forehead, and she wondered if he’d been lying when he said his valet didn’t form those bloody ringlets with hot tongs.
He must have been lying. Her own hair took Emmie an hour to arrange.
He seemed to come to himself with a start, and he bent to kiss her hand and then Lydia’s. Lydia was rather pale but not yet that familiarly ominous pale green. Selina squeezed her upper arm encouragingly.
“Your Grace,” Lydia muttered. “Have you heard that Brougham is running this year in Winchelsea?”
Selina hadn’t the faintest idea who Brougham was, or why his campaign would be relevant to Peter, but Peter’s eyes sparked with interest.
“I had, yes. I’ve been meaning to meet with him—I have a great deal to learn about abolition work in this country.”
“You should,” said Lydia. She was staring grimly down at her slippers, but she was still talking. Selina wanted to clap her on the back in delight but restrained herself. “He was instrumental in passing the Slave Trade Felony Act. If you want to work on legislation, he can help you do it.”
Peter grinned at Lydia, and Selina felt a hot sensation in her chest and her fingers.
“You should dance,” she said abruptly. “The next set.”
Peter’s gaze shot to hers. “Lady Selina. It would be my pleasure to escort you onto the dance floor.”
“Oh,” she said, and now the burning feeling rushed up to her cheeks. “No. I—I meant with Lydia.” Devil take it, had she implied that she wanted to dance with him? Surely she had not. “You must ask Lydia.”
He took her stuttered protest with equanimity. “To be sure. Miss Hope-Wallace, would you care to join me for the next set?”
Lydia managed to nod, and when the music shifted into a quadrille, Peter and Lydia made their way into the crush of men and women in the center of the ballroom.
Lady Georgiana was scooped up promptly by a small knot of suitors. Tresidder—poor foolish man—seemed to come out the winner, and he led Georgiana into the fray. Samuel Bowbridge, among the rejected, nervously angled his gaze toward Selina. She gave him a withering look.
“Beg pardon,” he mumbled. “Good evening, Lady Selina.”
And then she was mercifully alone to watch Peter dance with Lydia and to think.
They would have made a brilliant couple if Lydia didn’t look miserable. She was an excellent dancer—not that she had the chance to demonstrate it often—but her face was set, and she kept refusing to look Peter in the eye. He was talking easily to her, though, and he didn’t seem offended by her silence.
He was good at this—dancing, talking. Selina had not thought he would be quite so good at it.
