A Study In Seduction(118)

The woman didn’t appear to see him, her path set unswervingly on her destination. A basket dangled over her left arm.

Sebastian cleared his throat. The guttural noise echoed in the vast room like the growl of a bear.

“Miss.” His voice sounded coarse, rusted with disuse.

The woman startled, jerking back and losing her grip on the head, which fell to the floor with a thump and then rolled. A cry of surprise sounded, though in his befuddled state, Sebastian couldn’t tell from whom it had emerged. He looked down as the head rolled to a stop near his feet like the victim of an executioner’s ax.

A perfect waxen face stared up at him, wide, unblinking blue eyes, pink mouth, her hair beginning to escape a smooth chignon.

After a moment of processing this turn of events, Sebastian bent to retrieve the head. The woman reached it before he did, scooping it back into her arms and stepping away from him.

“Sir! If you would please—Oh.”

Sebastian looked up into a pair of rather extraordinary eyes—a combination of blue and violet flecked with gold. Something flickered in his memory, though he couldn’t grasp its source.

Where had he—

“Mr. Hall.” She tucked a stray lock of brown hair behind her ear, hugging the head closer to her chest. “I didn’t know you would be here.”

She frowned, glancing at his wrinkled clothes, his unshaven jaw and scuffed boots. For an uncomfortable moment, he wanted to squirm under that sharp assessment. He pulled a hand through his hair in a futile effort at tidiness, then experienced a sting of annoyance over his self-consciousness.

“Are you…” He shook his head to try to clear it. “I’m afraid this room is closed in preparation for Lady Rossmore’s ball.”

She tilted her head. “You don’t remember me.”

Oh, hell.

Out of sheer habit, Sebastian attempted to muster a charming smile, though it had been so long since one had come naturally to him that his face felt like pulled clay.

“Well, far be it from me to forget a woman as enchanting as yourself. Your name has slipped my mind, though of course I remember… that is, I must be out of my wits to—”

“For pity’s sake.” She seemed to be trying hard not to roll her eyes. “My name is—was—Clara Whitmore. My brother and I both took piano lessons from you years ago when we stayed in Dorset.”

Sebastian struggled to make his brain work as he looked at her round, pretty face, her curly brown hair pulled into an untidy knot. A streak of grease or oil smudged her cheek. She looked like a thousand other ordinary women—a shopkeeper’s daughter, a clerk, a schoolteacher, a milliner’s apprentice.

Except for her eyes. And a tiny black birthmark punctuating the corner of her smooth left eyebrow, like the dot of a question mark.

“Does your father reside in Dorset still?” Sebastian asked.

“No, I’m afraid that property has been long abandoned.” Her eyes flickered downward, shading her expression. She shifted the head to her other arm. “So, Mr. Hall, I’ve continued to hear great things about you over the years. You were at Weimar last summer, were you not?”

The admiring, bright pink note in her voice clawed at him. His fingers flexed, a movement that caused tension to creep up his arm and into the rest of his body.

“Yes.” His voice sounded thin, stretched.

Clara blinked, a slight frown tipping her mouth again. Her eyes were really the strangest shade—a trick of the light, surely. No one had eyes that color. He certainly didn’t recall having noticed them when she was his student. He didn’t even recall having noticed her.

Discomfort pinched Sebastian’s chest. He wouldn’t have noticed her back then. Not when women had flocked to him with bright smiles and hot whispers. Among such birds of paradise, Clara Whitmore—even with her unusual eyes—would have been a plain brown sparrow.

She still is, he told himself.

He straightened his shoulders, glancing at the waxen head with an unspoken question.

“My uncle is debuting an automaton tomorrow evening at Lady Rossmore’s ball,” Clara explained. “Well, I’m debuting it on his behalf, as he was called out of town rather suddenly.”

A surge of comprehension rolled through Sebastian as the pieces began locking together in his blurred mind.

“Then you are Mr. Granville Blake’s niece,” he said. “I’d expected… that is, Lady Rossmore said he might be here.”