The Wedding Game(5)

It was not that she was a striking beauty. Pretty enough, he supposed. A fine figure, though she was none too tall. In an attempt to add height, her brown hair was piled in an overly fussy style with too many braids and curls. The plumes that completed her coiffure bobbed as she nodded her head along with his apology. Judging by the giggles, he assumed her head was likely full of feathers as well.

Or perhaps not.

Her laugh was so false and inane that it might have been cultivated to put a man off. But if she meant to be repellent, her eyes spoiled the effect. They drew him in and held him captive. They were large and bright, and the warm brown of a fine sherry. Or almost totally so. The left one had a single fleck of gold in the iris that glittered like a secret joke.

The difference between the two should have been unattractive for was not beauty dependent on symmetry? Instead, it was fascinating. He was lost in that little gold speck, enthralled by it. He wanted to gaze into her eyes forever, until they revealed their mysteries. Worse yet, as she looked into his eyes he was overcome with a desire to unburden himself and share even the most carefully concealed secrets of his past.

Then the feeling dissipated. On second look, what he had taken for mystique was a glimmer of calculation. He did not have to reveal his true self to her. Somehow, she had found him out and meant to punish him for his impudence. She was merely playing the simpering wallflower to disguise a dangerous, almost masculine intelligence.

‘Thank you, sir, for your concern. My dress is undamaged. But your poor suit...’ She dabbed at the liquid staining his lapels with a force guaranteed to drive the stuff deeper into the fabric.

He seized her gloved hand as gently as possible to stop the damage it was doing. ‘That will not be necessary,’ he said, firmly. ‘But thank you for the attempt.’

‘Oh, but, sir, I am so sorry.’ She looked up at him with the melting gaze of a spaniel. The look appeared so suddenly that she must practise innocence in a mirror to produce it on cue. It left him all the more sure that she was not the least bit sorry. In fact, she enjoyed seeing him discommoded.

He gave her an equally practised smile. ‘It is nothing. We will not speak of it again.’ Because, God willing, he would never see her again. There was something far too disquieting about her. From now on, he would be on his guard and maintain a safe distance should they meet.

‘Thank you.’ She dropped a hurried curtsy and disappeared as suddenly as she had arrived.

Beside him, his friend laughed. ‘Well done, sir.’

‘Well done? I did nothing.’ He wiped at the stains on his coat and then gave up, throwing the handkerchief aside.

‘Apparently, you made an impression on Miss Summoner.’

Ben scanned the room for the pathway to his future. She was on the far side now, in conversation with the featherheaded chit who had doused him. Were they friends? No. There was something in the slant of their heads that spoke of a family likeness. ‘Dear God, do not tell me...’

‘Sisters,’ Templeton said with another laugh. ‘The little one is the elder. A spinster, from what people say.’

‘I wonder why,’ Ben said, not bothering to disguise his sarcasm.

‘She claims she does not wish to marry and that she cannot be parted from her sister.’

‘All women with an ounce of pride say something similar when they cannot get a husband,’ Ben replied. ‘It is far more likely that she behaved to others as she behaved to me and that society has taken a distaste of her.’

‘It hardly matters,’ Templeton said, quite reasonably. ‘After several years, she is properly on the shelf. But if you want the younger, you had best get used to her. The elder Miss Summoner will likely be a member of your household after you are married.’

‘She most certainly will not,’ Ben said with a shudder of dread. Looking into those eyes at breakfast each morning would be no different from coming to the table naked. She would strip each defence from him, giggling all the while.

‘Where else will she go?’ Templeton said in the voice of reason. ‘Lord Summoner will not live for ever. Then it will be up to her sister’s husband to take her on.’

‘Unless some unsuspecting gentlemen can be trapped into a union with her,’ Ben suggested.

‘What are the odds of that, after all this time on the market?’

‘All this time?’ Ben shot a quick look across the dance floor at her, then looked away before she could notice. ‘She cannot be much more than three and twenty. That does not make her a crone, no matter what society might think. If one plucked her feathers and unbraided that hair, and perhaps chose a different dressmaker for her—’ and taught her to hang on to her drinks and not to giggle so ‘—she would be quite pretty.’

‘But the eye.’ Templeton shuddered.

‘Those eyes,’ Ben corrected. ‘She has two. And they are not unattractive. Just rather...startling.’

‘What man wishes to be startled by a woman?’ Templeton shuddered again. ‘Perhaps you are greener than you pretend when it comes to the fair sex, Lovell. It is never good to be surprised by them.’

‘Perhaps compelling is the word I am searching for. Or captivating.’ Intoxicating. Fascinating. He could spend a lifetime trying to describe those eyes.

Templeton shook his head. ‘Neither of those are as good as they sound, either. If you wish to be a puppet or a slave to a woman, then get yourself a mistress. Your days will be full of all the passion and melodrama you long for with no legal bonds to hold you when it grows tiresome.’