‘I do not believe we have met,’ she said to the stranger, smiling – she was willing to look kindly on any gentleman, right now.
‘We have not, though I have long wished to be acquainted, Miss Talbot. I am Selbourne,’ he said in a slow drawl. ‘I must say, I do admire your work.’
‘My work?’ she repeated, frowning.
‘Come now,’ he said chidingly. ‘There is no harm in speaking openly. I am a friend of Mr de Lacy’s, you know, and he has told me all about you. Though he doesn’t realise, of course, how the story sounds to one such as I.’
‘I am sure I do not know what you mean, my lord,’ she said slowly.
‘I quite recognise you for a kindred spirit, you know,’ he said smoothly – too smoothly. ‘Both of us, on the outskirts of all this’ – he gestured to the room – ‘both doing our best to win, despite it all.’
‘Is that so?’ she asked politely, though her hackles were beginning to rise. ‘I’ll have to take your word for it, my lord, though I for one fail to see the similarity.’
He smiled, approvingly. ‘A fine hitter, too. Miss Talbot, I feel I have known you for all my life.’
She did not answer, not in the least wanting to encourage such a troubling conversation, but Selbourne persevered.
‘I should like to speak to you properly, you know. I believe we could be … most helpful to one another.’
‘Would that I could say the same,’ Kitty said coolly, ‘but I think you have me confused for someone else.’
He smiled, still unperturbed. ‘I see you are determined not to speak to me.’ He bowed with a little flourish as the music drew the dancers on the floor to a close. ‘But do think on it, Miss Talbot. There is more than one way to make a fortune in this town – and you need not do it alone.’
Kitty extracted herself from his company as soon as she could and was relieved to lay eyes on Aunt Dorothy at last.
‘Where were you?’ she demanded.
‘Shall we go, darling?’ Aunt Dorothy said, appearing too preoccupied by a loose thread on her cuff to answer. Kitty agreed, gathering Cecily up too – it would not do to test the waters too thoroughly. As they waited to be handed their cloaks, Radcliffe appeared again at her shoulder.
‘Have you thought about what you are going to do once I have returned to Devonshire, and you cannot extract from me dances whenever it suits you?’ he asked in a low voice.
‘I suppose I shall have to find some other means,’ she said wryly. ‘Or learn to curb my tongue a little better.’
‘Ah, your slight of the reprehensible Arden?’ he guessed. He looked at her sidelong. ‘Was it a very good set down?’
Her lips twitched. ‘My finest so far,’ she admitted. ‘But it caused such a fuss – I feared for a moment we might be quite undone.’
He shrugged – an informal gesture that did not suit the ballroom, and not one she had ever seen him do before. She had a sudden vision of what he might look like, striding around his Devonshire lands. He would be more at ease, there, surely, than he was here – though no less striking.
‘They are a capricious and unprincipled lot, where titles and wealth are concerned,’ he said, with casual condemnation, before adding, ‘I should not like to dance with him.’
He said this as though it was enough of a reason, all on its own. The simplicity of the words helped to calm some of the anxiety within her.
‘Yes, exactly,’ she agreed, a little surprised to find them so aligned.
He left her with a smile and Kitty climbed into the carriage behind her sister. As they made for home, she tried to explain the whole ordeal to Aunt Dorothy, but Kitty was aggrieved to find that her aunt did not understand in the least.
‘Hasn’t every lady had to dance with someone she would not like to, at least once?’ she was asking, a little nonplussed by all the fuss.
‘That doesn’t make it right,’ Kitty muttered obstinately.
‘Perhaps I should have just danced with him,’ Cecily whispered from the corner. ‘It mightn’t have been so bad.’
Kitty reached out in the dark and took her sister’s hand.
‘No,’ she said simply, squeezing the small palm.
22
Lord Radcliffe arrived at Grosvenor Square as dusk was falling. It was Archie’s birthday, and the family had gathered for supper to celebrate the occasion. As Radcliffe entered, he could already hear the echo of voices travelling up from the dining room and smiled at the raucous noise. The de Lacys had always made an occasion of birthdays – Lady Radcliffe feeling it was especially important to mark such moments properly – but Radcliffe had not been in London for Archie’s these past two years. And so it still seemed peculiar to Radcliffe that he would not find his father in the dining room, too.