What. The bloody. Hell.
He was stunned. It was an absolutely primal reflex. He hadn’t known he was capable of that sort of jealousy.
He breathed through it as he would through any new shock.
And the young heir was just about the best match he could imagine for Keating.
“Lord Vaughn is interested in meeting you?” He managed to sound neutrally interested.
“I was told that he inquired about the ‘pretty blue-eyed girl in green.’” She cast a glance up at him, just a flicker of flirtation in it. “He told this as such to a friend of a friend of a friend of Miss Seaver, who told him she didn’t know where my chaperone was. And... I know that she did know.”
“Is Miss Seaver an eligible young lady this season, by any chance? Is she the one who also, er, carries a torch for Mr. Hargrove?” No one was more mordantly amused than he was that he knew these minutiae about the ton.
“She is.” She paused. “Do you suppose it was a crocodile maneuver?”
She sounded so hopeful that it wasn’t.
“I’m afraid so, Keating.”
An inspiration was forming. Every now and then a bold and unexpected move in a chess game could throw off an opponent and snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. He reasoned that her season could hardly be going much worse. Without a decent chaperone to facilitate things, it wasn’t likely to get any better. She deserved better.
But he could not sort his strategic motives from the unwise ones. They resisted parsing, and this was because the battle now was between his common sense and his senses. He was unaccustomed to searching his mind and confronting a sort of mocking wall behind which all the answers lay.
There was almost nothing he hated more than feeling like a fool. But his need to ascertain a particular something was running roughshod over his acquired wisdom and ironclad cynicism.
He felt as though he ought to be certain of his reasons before he opened his mouth and said the words, for her sake and for his own.
So he didn’t say them yet. He would give himself until the moment the music began. And then decide.
“Are you acquainted with Lord Vaughn?” she asked.
“Yes. Lord Vaughn,” he began carefully, evenly, as if the terrain was volatile, liable to shoot hot geysers at him if he put a foot wrong, “has very good manners. Respects his elders. He’s uncontroversial, possesses the normal amount and type of vices, all within reason. He seems a decent, intelligent young man, if not particularly driven. His father is an earl, a good sort, and I don’t say that lightly about anyone. You could do much, much worse than Lord Vaughn. I should say he’s nearly perfect. And he clearly is a man of discernment, if he sought an introduction to you.”
She regarded him somberly, fixedly, at him and a rosy flush moved into her cheeks.
How odd it was that his breath should go peculiarly short every time his eyes collided with hers.
“I’ve seen him. He’s very handsome,” she said offhandedly.
She was studying his face like a map.
“Yes,” Lord Kirke agreed, darkly amused. “When you meet him, you should tell him that, in case it hasn’t occurred to him.”
She smiled.
He could not quite force his mouth to commit to a smile.
“He ought to be easy to fall in love with,” he added, casually. “If indeed that’s the sort of thing you want to do. I expect stranger things have happened in a ballroom during the season.”
She stared at him. Catherine was fascinated by how the introduction of Lord Vaughn’s name hadchanged the conversational weather. She wasn’t entirely certain why, given that Lord Kirke had given the man his approval, something he no doubt never gave lightly.
One, however, would be forgiven for thinking the opposite was true, based on how rigid his posture had suddenly gone.
She was afraid, suddenly, of what this could possibly mean. Or was she actually excited? The two emotions braided, and momentarily she was breathless at the implications.
“Have you ever before been in love?” she asked him.
“Yes.”