Or caress one with your fingertips
I shall see myself forever bless’d
If you’d hold a petal to your breast
And if you should choose to love me best
Peter, Lord Eshling
Hugh found he could not look up from the foolscap. All of his limbs felt odd and stiff, as if he was suddenly coated in frost. A sort of cold, caustic hilarity had taken up simmering in his gut. He could very nearly taste it in his throat. Finally he levered his head slowly and stared, with coldly amused irony, at Lillias.
Two hot pink circles of color sat high on her cheeks. She returned his gaze stonily.
“What rot,” she said, irritably.
The funny part—well, there were two funny parts—was that he resented that the poem was competent. He didn’t think he’d be able to come up with lines that rhymed like that in a million years.
The other funny part was that he felt like a fool.
But why on earth should he? He had no real stake in this.
Or in her. He was a man who’d survived things which by rights ought to have killed him, including war, a bear attack, and Delacorte’s gastric emissions. And yet he’d been lying awake in what he’d believed to be unique sensual torment, while it was now becoming clear that, in all likelihood, a wholetonfull of bloods were lashed to proverbial masts when it came to Lady Lillias Vaughn.
And who but a fool does that?
He at once vividly recalled that little snippet of gossip Delacorte had read to him from a greasy newspaper. A dispatch from another world entirely. He ought to have taken it as a warning.
I’m not completely naive, she’d said last night.
He still couldn’t feel his limbs.
Or get a proper breath.
“Well, I thought it wasn’t half bad. One could almost set that to music,” Delacorte said. “It has a bit of a nice ring to it.”
“Oh, everyone wants to marry Lillias,” St. John said on a yawn. “Don’t you get about one proposal a week?” He aimed this question at his sister.
“They’re not real proposals. It’s meant to beamusing. For the men, that is.” Lillias had gone white. She looked for some reason nearly furious.
“There’s a club at White’s. With its own betting book. You can’t join it unless you’ve sent roses to Lillias,” St. John expounded.
“That’sridiculous.”Lillias was aghast, for whom this was clearly news.
“That’s precisely what I told them,” St. John said, with the sincerity of a sibling.
“It’s like a forest in the foyer most days with all the bouquets for Lillias,” her mother added happily. “It smells heavenly, most days.”
“It’s not,” Lillias retorted tautly. “And it doesn’t.”
“Don’t be modest, dear. You’ve been the belle of thetonand it’s a memory that will last a lifetime. You’ll tell your grandchildren about it,” her father said comfortably.
“I won’t.” Lillias’s voice had gained an octave. She sounded increasingly panicked.
“Lillias is going to marry a duke or some such,” Claire said proudly. “I thought she would marry Gilly, he’s so nice and he’s going to be an earl and all, but he’s probably going to marry—”
“CLAIRE,” Lillias said sharply. With something so akin to anguish Hugh’s heart jolted.
Claire clapped her mouth closed, good and startled.