Unlocked (Turner #1.5)(2)

“I remember.” His voice was quiet. “I remember very well what I said, thank you.”

He only tried not to.

She’d never stopped laughing, no matter how he teased her. But when she had looked in his direction, her eyes had begun to slide over him altogether, as if he were nothing but an irrelevant objet d’art, and one that was of no further interest. Over the course of a Season’s worth of mockery, he had watched her draw in on herself until the vital stuff he’d lusted after had simply faded away.

“Don’t worry about her,” Diana was saying. “She’s nothing. There isn’t a man out there who would consider marrying a woman who laughs like the unholy marriage between a horse and a pig.”

“I said that.” His hands clenched.

“Evan, everyone said that.”

He’d run from England, ashamed of what he’d done. But whatever maturity he’d found in his travels abroad, he could feel it slipping now. It would be so easy to be the selfish swine who thought nothing of ruining a girl’s prospects simply because it would make him popular and make others laugh.

Diana watched him expectantly. One smile, one comment about Elaine’s whinny, and he would seal his cousin’s approval—and his fate.

He’d been right. There were rocky shoals below, and gravity was doing its level best to dash everything good he’d made of himself against the waiting crags.

Gently, he removed his cousin’s hand from his arm.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“What do you suppose?” He bit off the words. “I’m going to dance with Lady Elaine.”

But she misunderstood the martial set to his jaw, because instead of looking worried, a sly, pleased smile spread across her lips. “Oh, Evan,” she said, touching his cuff lightly. “You really are too awful, baiting her like that. This is going to be just like old times.”

Lady Elaine Warren scanned the walls of the ballroom. Choosing the place where she would spend the evening was always an exercise in delicacy and balance. It had grown easier over the years, as the leaders of fashion had found new, more interesting pastimes than making fun of her. She had a few friends, now—real ones. She might go entire evenings at a time without having to school her face to a pleasant, stupid blankness. All she had to do was choose her company wisely.

This house party was mostly safe—she’d interrogated her mother closely as to the guest list. None of her closest friends had come, but her remaining tormenters were absent. Her mother had wanted to attend to pass the time while her father was off overseeing his estates.

“It’s a beautiful room,” she said to her mother. “Why, just look at the carving on the paneling. The details are utterly exquisite.”

Her mother, Lady Stockhurst, looked puzzled and then peered at the wall. Like Elaine, Lady Stockhurst was tall and blond. Like Elaine, her mother was well-endowed, corsets barely containing her ample curves. Like Elaine, her mother was not respected at all.

If they pretended they were more interested in the walls than the dancing, there could be no disappointment.

“Why, Mrs. Arleston,” she heard behind her, “what a lovely gathering.”

Elaine stilled, not turning. She didn’t need to turn; she wasn’t being addressed. But she knew that voice. It was Lady Cosgrove—one of the women who still took delight in needling Elaine.

She leaned in to her mother. “You didn’t say Lady Cosgrove would be here.”

“Didn’t I, then?” her mother responded. “How remiss of me. I must have forgotten. Or maybe I never knew?”

Unlike Elaine, her mother somehow failed to notice how little she was liked.

“Let me introduce you to an old acquaintance,” Lady Cosgrove was saying.

The murmured introduction was too indistinct to reach Elaine’s ears. Instead, she smiled and nodded. “Never mind, Mother. It’s nothing.” And maybe it was nothing. So few of Lady Cosgrove’s compatriots were here. She wouldn’t continue to pursue her game without an appreciative audience, would she?

“Yes,” Lady Cosgrove was saying, “but do look—here’s another old friend. Why, Lady Elaine. How do you do?”

Elaine could not ignore so direct a query. She fixed her smile in place so firmly that her cheeks ached.

“Lady Cosgrove,” she started pleasantly. And then her gaze shifted behind the woman. Her hands grew cold. She stopped, mid-greeting, feeling as if she had just been struck. For just one second, her amiable expression slipped, and Lady Cosgrove’s grin widened to sharklike proportions.

But Elaine couldn’t force herself to beam in placid unconcern. Not through this.

She had fallen into a nightmare: the kind where she entered a ballroom wearing nothing but her drawers. She’d had that dream before. Soon, everyone would start laughing at her. And when they turned to her en masse, the people who pointed and mocked all wore the same face: a thousand incarnations of Evan Carlton—now the Earl of Westfeld.

She always awoke from those dreams in a cold sweat. She would succeed in coaxing herself back to sleep only by repeating to herself that he was gone, he was gone, he was gone, and she wouldn’t ever see him again.

But this horrid dream was real. He was back.

He was older. He was bigger, too, shoulders wider, his jacket unable to hide the ripple of muscles fit for a laborer. Back when he’d tormented her, he’d been almost scrawny. Faint lines gathered at the corner of his eyes, and he was dressed in sober browns. His hair was no longer tamed in the fashionable, sleek look that she remembered. Instead, he’d let the dark gold of his hair fall into tousled curls.