Courting Magic (Kat, Incorrigible #4)(13)
“Mister Packenham.” With an effort, I restrained myself from yanking my hand free. “Shouldn’t we discuss our mission?”
“Must we?” Mr. Packenham sighed. “Deuced boring things, missions. If we’d only been born into different families, you know, we could relax and enjoy ourselves on a night like this. Dancing and gaming without a care in the world…”
I looked at him in disbelief. “You’d really rather dance than fight magical battles?”
“Who wouldn’t?” Then his gaze drifted past me, and he snorted. “Well, I daresay that ramshackle fellow you shared the last set with probably doesn’t care for dancing, does he? He certainly wasn’t born to it, no matter how much money the Order laid out to trick him out in a gentleman’s clothes for our mission. I’m surprised you managed to last through a whole set with him. By rights, he ought to be passing around the drinks at a ball like this one, or working in the kitchens. If any of my sisters had to rub shoulders with a fellow like that…”
Stepmama would have a fit if I stepped on my dance partner’s foot so hard he yelped, or if I stalked off the dance floor in the middle of a dance. Worse yet, Elissa might swoon from the shame of it…and Angeline would be proven right.
So instead of doing any of the things I really wanted to do, I said, through gritted teeth, “It’s lucky for all of us that your sisters aren’t Guardians, then, isn’t it?”
“Ha! My sisters? No, hardly. Typical females, anyway, three out of the four of them—all gowns and gossip and not a brain to spare between them.”
“Typical,” I repeated grimly, and began to fantasize about magical punishments.
Mr. Packenham nattered on for the rest of the dance, but I managed to turn it into a distant buzzing noise as I comforted myself with images of blasting him through the air with my Guardian magic or casting a spell from Mama’s diary of witchcraft to turn his red hair bright green. The vision I’d built up by the end of the dance was almost delicious enough to make my final curtsy sincere as he handed me off to the Marquess of Lanham.
“Now don’t forget!” said Mr. Packenham, leaning close. “I still have one more set with you after supper—and I’ll have you running outside with me for fresh air after that one, you mark my words!”
Over my dead body, I thought, and smiled sweetly at him as I silently added: Or better yet, yours.
The Marquess looked down at me with his blond eyebrows raised forbiddingly as he led me back onto the dance floor. “I shouldn’t advise leaving the ballroom for any fresh air tonight, Miss Stephenson, unless you have your sisters for companionship.” He cleared his throat censoriously as we took our places in the set. “Young ladies’ reputations are terribly fragile, you know. You wouldn’t wish people to consider you fast.”
“Or stupid,” I added, “which is what I’d have to be to let myself be led outside by Mr. Packenham at any time, don’t you think?”
The Marquess blinked rapidly and didn’t reply.
Perhaps he’d been expecting a bit more simpering gratitude for his advice. Unfortunately, I didn’t have it in me. Not tonight.
It was a stately minuet, appropriately enough, since I couldn’t imagine the Marquess hopping his way through a country dance. There was plenty of time, as we processed gravely down the floor, for the silence between us to turn stifling. Alexander was nowhere in view, I still felt itchy from my dance with Mr. Packenham, and if we didn’t start talking soon, I was afraid I might kick up my heels and start skipping just to break up the overblown grandiosity of it all.
I sighed and prepared to follow my sisters’ instructions after all. “So,” I began, as I turned back to the Marquess at the end of a turn, “what do you think about the weather to—oh!” I stopped as I took in his expression.
Good heavens.
The Marquess’s look of elegant boredom had disappeared. His jaw was clenched and his eyes positively flashed as he glared across the room.
I twisted around. Had someone started dancing in their undergarments? Or was a band of thieves blatantly stealing the plates?
Lucy grinned at me across the room and gave me a cheerful wave of her fan from her position surrounded by three older gentlemen. The gentlemen looked deeply interested in her bosom, which, unlike mine, had always been impressive. Lucy looked far more interested in the drink that she was holding and the dancing taking place before her.
The Marquess let out a snorting noise that sounded like an angry bull. “Unbelievable,” he muttered.
I raised my eyebrows. “Are you talking about Lucy?”
He swung around so sharply, he lost his place in the dance. “You know Miss Win—that is, Miss MacTavish?”
“Well, of course I do.” I shook my head at him as he righted himself. “How could I not? She’s my cousin. But how in the world could you possibly know her? She’s been living in the middle of nowhere for the last six years.”
The Marquess’s face tightened. I could almost see his inner fight not to let his eyes slide back to her. “In the middle of the Scottish Highlands, actually,” he said. “Her aunts live next to my Scottish estate.”
“And you’re…friends with them?” I asked, remembering Lucy’s aunt’s bright yellow-and-purple gown. Somehow, I couldn’t see the Marquess of Lanham voluntarily socializing with eccentrics.