In the Arms of a Marquess(19)

“Not when you continually plague me with impertinent questions. No, apparently.”

Her gaze darted to him. He faced forward, but the dent had reappeared in his cheek. Tavy’s heart sped.

“I merely wondered.”

“I cannot fathom why you ask when you clearly know all the answers already,” he said with a brief glance at her and a lift of one black brow. He released her and they parted.

He had spoken to her as though they knew one another. As though it had not been seven long years and one horrid drawing room conversation since their last meeting. She watched him through the other dancers, allowing herself to stare now. She didn’t know why she should not. Every other woman must, when confronted with such masculine perfection.

“I came to you the other day because I haven’t any answers,” she said when the dance brought them together again. “Or, at least, very few.”

He grasped her hand and drew her to a halt, the other dancers continuing around them. Tavy’s blood seemed to wash through her veins like monsoon rain.

“Oftentimes, Miss Pierce, that is for the best.” Double lines appeared between his brows.

“What are you saying?” Her fingers shook in his. She could do nothing for it. His black gaze held hers but she had no desire to look away. She should. She must. This was a mistake, this familiarity, this strange intimacy that was not intimacy at all, the memories scratching to be set free from imprisonment.

“Here now, Doreé,” a gentleman said at her shoulder. “You are disturbing the pattern with this flirtation.”

The marquess released her into the other gentleman’s hold. Breathless, Tavy looked up into bright blue eyes, amusement writ across a finely handsome face capped with yellow-gold hair. He guided her into the steps.

“I give my friend credit for excellent taste,” he said, scanning her face.

Tavy ducked her head. Her cheeks burned. She willed herself to calm. No man ever flustered her. Not even him, then. Especially not him. She would not begin now. If this was what renewed acquaintance with him meant, she did not welcome it.

When the dance brought her back to her partner, she met his gaze firmly and curtsied.

“My lord.”

“Madam.” He bowed, his look benign. The moment had passed, just as seven years earlier. She would not let it happen again.

She moved away, her steps measured, only the base of her spine warm, and the palm of her hand where his fingertips had rested briefly and perhaps—she tried to ignore the sensation—not entirely steadily either.

Tavy could not rest. She paced her bedchamber like a panther in a cage at the Calcutta menagerie. Finally despairing of sleep, she threw on a wrapper and climbed the stairs to the nursery. Her sister stood at the door, garbed in a night rail, a thick chestnut braid trailing down her back. Tavy smiled at the bundle of linen in the crib then the bundle of new-mother nerves leaning as far into the darkened chamber as possible without crossing the threshold. She stole up beside Alethea and curled an arm around her sister’s soft waist.

“You cannot tear yourself away, can you?” she whispered.

Alethea leaned her cheek on Tavy’s shoulder.

“It is like I felt about St. John at the beginning. But now he and I are so well known to one another, I feel him with me even when he is absent.”

Tavy’s throat tightened. “Jacob is so new. Your love is only just beginning.”

“New and enormous and unsteady, and yet so certain. It is like falling in love all over again, but different.”

Tavy could not speak. Emotion pressed at her chest, thick and hard.

Her sister lifted her head. “Octavia, are you unwell?”

“I am fine. Truly.”

Alethea’s brow creased. “How was your outing to the museum with Lord Crispin today?”

“Quite pleasant.” She barely recalled it. A single dance had erased all else. “He is a charming companion.”

“I daresay.” Her sister’s tone led, but Tavy would not follow. After a moment Alethea turned her regard back into the nursery. “St. John has received a rather singular invitation.”

“Singular?”

“The Marquess of Doreé is hosting a shooting party at Fellsbourne in several days and has invited St. John.”

Tavy’s heart turned about.

“I suppose it is about time,” she said with impressive steadiness, “after the way Lady Doreé ignored you for so many years when she lived right next door. Perhaps the marquess is trying to make up for their rudeness.”

Alethea frowned. “You know it was nothing of the sort.”

Tavy knew now, although she hadn’t always. High-caste native women never socialized with the English in Madras, no matter whom they had once been married to and what name they bore. The community of proprietors of the Company and their wives was an intimate one, but it did not embrace Indian women, even ladies.

“Then what is so singular about the invitation?”

“Lord Doreé never entertains, and he is only peripherally involved in the Company, really. But this must be a Company gathering. He and St. John are well enough acquainted, of course, the number of proprietors of secure means and title as small as it is. Still, we have never socialized with him.”

“Never?”

“Some years ago, before we joined you in India, we did invite him to a dinner party or two, but he declined our invitations.”