What a wanker.
She murmured a polite reply. There was some shuffling, a quiet curse—probably the man trying to squeeze himself through the door—and then a different voice announced the next suitor, a weasel of a man named Sir Henry Withel.
A smile curled my lips. I knew exactly how to get some time alone with Aveen.
* * *
A servant led me into a cavernous foyer with gleaming marble floors. Old fashioned floral drapes hung in the bay windows, but they appeared in good nick. “May I take your coat, master—?”
“SirEdward DeWarn, His Majesty’s Ambassador from Vellana,” I said in a strong Vellanian accent that had the man snapping to attention. “And no,” I added, looking down my glamoured nose at him. Those clammy hands wouldn’t be coming anywhere near a coat that cost more than his yearly wages.
A slender, dark-haired woman appeared at the top of the stairs in a lacy lavender dress. Must be the sister. Definitely younger than Aveen. Starker. She may have smiled, but I spared her no more than a passing glance on my way to the parlor.
“Sir Edward DeWarn. His Majesty’s Ambassador from Vellana,” the servant announced from the door. There were flowers everywhere.
Dammit. I should’ve brought flowers.
Ah, well. No sense dwelling on it now. It wasn’t as if I could shift the things with the servant watching. Besides, I wasn’t actually courting the woman. I was only here to keep my soulmate from ending up with someone else before she could save me. I wasn’t sure how she was meant to save me yet, but she couldn’t very well do it if she had some eejit of a husband plowing her morning, noon, and night, now, could she?
Aveen twisted on the settee, her curls glistening in the evening sun, eyes and smile warm and welcoming as she considered me.
The buttons at the top of my shirt felt too tight. I couldn’t feckin’ breathe.
She’s not looking at you, I reminded myself. She was admiring a glamoured man with dark, curly hair, no scar across his straight nose, and no emptiness hidden inside his chest.
If she’d seen me, she would’ve run straight out the glass doors.
I had to swallow twice to rid myself of the lump in my throat. “Good evening, Lady Aveen,” I said in “Sir Edward’s” voice. “I hate calling this late, but I was anxious to meet the woman who has become the talk of the town.”
Her welcoming smile turned brittle as she gestured for me to join her on the settee. “And what is the town saying about me?”
“Only that the most beautiful woman on the East Coast is in want of a husband.”
For some reason, the compliment wiped the smile from her face completely. “And are you in the market for a wife, Ambassador?”
“No. I’m not.”Could you imagine? Me marrying a feckin’ human. My mother would have her skewered by dinnertime.
One eyebrow arched. “So you’ve come to see me as if I’m some sort of exhibit at the zoo?”
The animals she’d been entertaining belonged at a zoo. The last one had looked exactly like a ferret. Still, there was no sense in letting her know how invested I was in her marital pursuits. At least not yet. “Something like that.”
Oh,cakes. I plucked one from the tiered tray and took a bite. Nothing like Eava’s, but tasty enough. At least Tadhg wasn’t here to steal them from me.
“Now that you’ve seen me, you can be on your way,” she said.
As if I’d leave now that I’d gone through the trouble of creating an entirely new persona for myself. Edward was a bit of a prick, so he ignored her statement entirely. “Why is your father so anxious to marry you off?” Was she a drain on his finances? A shrieking shrew? An annoying whinge? For some reason, I couldn’t see it. None of the normal human attributes seemed to apply to Aveen.
Her chin lifted. “I am nearly twenty-one. It is time for me to marry.”
I’d bet my cufflinks she had no desire to wed. For some reason, that knowledge left me smiling. Not that she could do much to deny a match if her father pressed. Even the high-born women in this country were little more than chattel to be sold to the highest bidder.
Aveen took my feckin’ cake with a smirk playing on her lips. “My apologies, these are for suitors only.”
I stole it back, eating half of it in one go so she wouldn’t take it from me again. “I’m intrigued. What sort of trouble would your husband be acquiring?”
“No trouble at all. I would be the perfect wife. Placid and complacent and completely happy.”
Lie after lie after lie. I barely knew Aveen and already it was obvious thatplacidandcomplacentdidn’t begin to describe the woman sitting next to me. You know what did describe her? “Contrary.”