The Paid Companion | Herophine

Chapter Twenty

Josephine

Twenty minutes later Josephine made her way back in the lantern-lit ballroom. The crowd of cloaked and masked dancers was thicker than ever. She found an empty palm-shrouded alcove and sat down on the small, gilded bench that had been provided.

Absently she watched the throng of dancers, trying to spot Anne and Felix while she pondered her conversation with Sydney.

Her musings slammed to a halt when she saw the man in the black mask and domino coming toward her. Not again, she thought with a shudder. She would not allow him to touch her a second time. She could not abide the feel of his hand on her waist or the smell of his unwholesome excitement.

But a few seconds later she knew, with a sweeping sense of relief, that this was most certainly not the same man. True, he sliced through the crowd with the same gliding, surefooted movements of a predator, but this man’s stride exuded power and control, not unnatural energy. The cowl of the domino was pushed back. Although his eyes were concealed behind a black silk mask, there was no disguising that proud nose or the manner in which his heavy, dark hair was combed straight back from his high forehead.

A fizzy anticipation that she could not suppress sparkled through her veins. She lowered her mask and smiled.

“Good evening, sir,” she said. “You are early, are you not?”

Hero halted in front of her and bowed. “So much for my clever disguise. I arrived a few minutes ago. Found Anne and Felix straight away, but they said they had lost track of you in the crowd.”

“I went into the conservatory to get some fresh air.”

“Are you ready to leave?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact, I am.” She rose from the bench. “But I’m not sure that Anne will want to go home this early. I believe that she is enjoying herself with Mr. Kent.”

“That much is obvious.” He took her arm and steered her toward the door. “She just informed me that she and Felix were off to drop in on the Morgan soirée. Felix will escort her home later.”

She smiled. “I think they are falling in love.”

“I did not bring Anne to London to have a romantic fling,” Hero grumbled. “Her role was to act as your guide and to provide an acceptable female presence in my household so that your reputation would not suffer in the course of your employment.”

She silently debated whether or not to tell him the gossip that Sydney had reported was circulating among the ton. In the end, she concluded that it would only complicate the situation if Hero learned that the Polite World assumed that they were involved in an intimate relationship. Such information might cause him to worry excessively about his responsibilities toward her. That was the last thing she wanted.

“Come now, sir. lt is a wonderful thing that Anne seems to have found a very nice gentleman who makes her happy. Admit it.”

“Huh.”

“And the most charming aspect of the situation is that you deserve all the credit for allowing the romance to bloom,” she could not resist adding. “After all, had you not invited Anne to London, she would never have met Felix.”

“It was not part of my strategy,” he muttered darkly. “I do not like it when things fail to go according to plan.”

He did not sound truly annoyed, she concluded.

She laughed. “Sometimes it is good to have our most carefully laid plans overset.”

“When in blazes have you ever known such an outcome to prove anything but disastrous?”