Dunham

Chapter 41

41

Elliott had taken Covarrubias at his word, and so was shocked when the man stalked out of the ballroom not a moment after he had told Elliott to bugger off. Since there were five more minutes until the intermission was over, he took the opportunity to claim the chair beside Celia. He felt her body tense only a fraction. "Oh," she said, then relaxed again. "Hello, my lord."

"Elliott."

"Yes, my lord."

Lady Hylton released a very unladylike snort. So. She didn't like him any more than she liked Covarrubias. He didn't know why he cared, but he did.

"Your guard dog is gone, I see," Elliott said low. "I thought he was with you all evening?"

Miss Simpleton looked at him blankly. "I do not have a dog, my lord."

Elliott sighed. He really should have left when Covarrubias had. Before he had heard Fury sing, he would have thought this soprano's voice lovely, but now he knew it for the screech it was. And he had a megrim. But something about the way Miss Simpleton sat, flinched, and heaved great sighs at all the appropriately horrible points of the performance intrigued him.

He brazenly leaned over Miss Simpleton's lap toward Lady Hylton and extended his hand, palm up. She cast a glance down at it and sniffed, so he pulled his empty hand away.

"I apologize if I have offended you, my lady," he said as graciously—and as foppishly—as he could manage, but he had been in costume for two hours now and, Camille's assistance notwithstanding, the charade was wearing upon him.

"Your very presence offends me, my lord," she said low.

"La, you have broken my heart, Lady Hylton!" he exclaimed grandly to attract as much attention as he could. Marchioness Rathbone even interrupted her flirtation to look over her shoulder, her eyebrow raised. "How utterly cruel! Seeeleea, darling," he cooed, picking up Miss Simpleton's hand and pressing a kiss to the back, "will you be at Lady Enfield's ball tomorrow night?"

"I believe so, my lord," she said dully.

"Will you, Lady Hylton?"

"No," she said flatly.

"Good." He was gratified when Lady Hylton and Lady Rathbone gasped. "I am no gentleman, my ladies," he said low, flicking his glance upward to include the marchioness. "Bad behavior will be met with bad behavior—and I doubt you can best me in that, though you are certainly welcome to try." He smirked suggestively at Lady Rathbone when she cocked an eyebrow, and her expression changed to one of speculation.

Celia's body twitched a bit, reminding him that he was nigh lying upon her, but when he cast a glance to ascertain how she had taken this bit of aggression, there was yet no expression on her face.

"I am protecting my daughter, Lord Tavendish," Lady Hylton said tightly, but with the most gracious of smiles. "I tolerate your presence only because she has not objected to it. She is not usually so accepting of perfect strangers and, moreover, strangers who press themselves against her with such familiarity."

He cast a somber look between the two women when he realized Lady Hylton was not, in fact, speaking to him, but questioning her daughter as to her behavior, which was as lively as a marble statue.

To his surprise, she turned slowly to her mother and said, as dully as he had ever heard her, "Lord Tavendish has been kind to me, Mother."

Kind? He hadn't been kind. He had wanted to needle Covarrubias for his own amusement but had, in the process, become more curious about this girl and her mother, their circumstance, and why it seemed so ... off.