But the frustration—yes. And hurt too. She’d hurt him. He was punishing her mouth for it now, as if he knew that his kisses were likely to make her deranged, a fit punishment…for what?

“I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings,” she said into his lips. It was as if the words formed in his mouth rather than hers. Somehow her hands had found their way to his chest, and she could feel his heart beating under her palm.

Of course she couldn’t read anything in his face. “There is no question of that,” he said.

But Tess had discovered something very important about kisses—about kissing Lucius Felton, anyway. Kisses were like horse’s faces: they didn’t lie. She knew it with the same instinct that told her that the weakness in the back of her knees, and the ragged way her breath felt in her chest signaled trouble. “I apologize for dismissing your reasons for remaining a bachelor,” she said, backing away.

He bowed but said nothing. The gleam of frustrated longing was gone from his eyes. There was nothing to be read in his face but a kind of well-bred indifference.

The door opened, and Lady Griselda rushed into the room in a babble of words. “Tess, darling!” she cried. “You will be wretched at my news, but my brother has hied off to London on an errand. He will do his very best to return in time for dancing this evening.”

“Dancing?” Tess asked, feeling not in the least wretched at the news of her betrothed’s departure.

“Merely an informal affair amongst ourselves,” Lady Griselda said, “ourselves and the Maitlands, of course. I asked Brinkley to find us a trio or some such, and the estimable man has done just that.” Sure enough, footmen had followed her and were beginning to clear a dancing floor toward the end of the long sitting room.

Tess suddenly remembered Griselda’s plan to arrange waltzing, and thereby encourage a proposal from Mr. Felton. The relief she felt on remembering Annabel’s decision not to woo Mr. Felton was quite out of proportion.

He had moved away from them and was staring out the window at the dark courtyard. She could see his face reflected in the dark glass: a lucid, austere face. The face of a man who valued restraint and breeding.

That was no angel, as she’d thought on first seeing him.

Chapter 17

A moment later, the room was crowded. Lady Clarice and Miss Pythian-Adams entered, cooing over Miss Pythian-Adams’s reticule; Imogen followed with her hand on Rafe’s arm. She appeared to be regarding him with a doting expression, perhaps in an effort to force Lord Maitland into jealousy as Annabel had suggested. Rafe looked rather desperate. He probably needed a drink. Imogen could be overwhelming, as Tess knew well.

“I have arranged for a lovely surprise!” Lady Griselda was telling Lady Clarice with great enthusiasm. “A small orchestra. After all, dancing is the food of the gods, as Shakespeare said.” She stopped for a moment. “Or is music the food of the gods? I always forget.”Lady Clarice put an arm on Miss Pythian-Adams’s arm. “My dear, if you would be so kind?”

“If music be the food of love, play on,” Miss Pythian-Adams said obediently. “Twelfth Night.”

“What an accomplished young woman you are,” Lady Griselda said, as Lady Clarice beamed like a proud mother.

Miss Pythian-Adams simpered at her, and said, “Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting, the appetite may sicken, and so die. Still Twelfth Night.” In diametrical opposite to her behavior of a few days ago, she was clinging to her betrothed’s arm. “You, sir, would make a wonderful Duke Orsino,” she told Maitland. “When we are married, it will be my first action to stage the entire play with yourself in the leading role!”

“Memorizing isn’t my forte,” Maitland stated. Tess had no doubt but that he was absolutely correct.

“Ah, but memorization is so easy!” Miss Pythian-Adams cried. “Why, I know all of Duke Orsino’s speeches.” She let go of his arm and struck a declamatory pose. “That strain again! It had a dying fall. Ooooooo, it came o’er my ear like the sweet sound, that breathes upon a bank of violets, stealing and giving odor.”

Tess watched for another moment before she realized what was happening. Miss Pythian-Adams had obviously decided to use heavy artillery on her betrothed, a fine effort to make him cry off owing to an excess of poetry.

“I shall recite your speeches to you each afternoon, nay, evening as well. Within a month or so, you’ll come to breathe Shakespeare like the very air!” she promised him.

To Tess’s mind there was a very palpable air of dislike about the way Maitland looked down at his future wife, but at that moment there was a twang of tuning instruments from the far end of the room.

“We couldn’t possibly dance before supper,” Lady Clarice stated, waving a fan before her face.

“Of course we can!” Lady Griselda said gaily. “You mustn’t start feeling old, Lady Clarice darling. Before you know it, you’d be old!”

Lady Clarice bared her teeth in what might have passed for a smile amongst a family of jackals.

Rafe came over to Tess clutching a glass of brandy. “Why is your sister Imogen acting in this fashion?” he hissed at her.

“Why, what do you refer to?” Tess asked, widening her eyes.

“You know precisely what I’m talking about,” he said. On the side of the room Imogen began waving her hand, and saying, “Rafe! Oooooh, Rafe!”

“I see nothing amiss with my sister’s deportment,” Tess observed, resisting a strong impulse to laugh.

Rafe cast a haunted look over his shoulder. “Call her off, Tess.”

“I can’t,” Tess said, casting prudence to the winds. He was their guardian, after all. He must do his part in protecting Imogen from Maitland.

“Why not?” Rafe snapped, draining his glass.

“I wish her to avoid Maitland,” Tess said in a low voice.

“Does that mean she has to haunt me? I feel as if I’m a nice stuffed duck, and she’s about to take out a fork.”

“Think of it as part of your guardian duties,” Tess advised. And, when Rafe opened his mouth to argue, she said, “She must save face in front of Maitland, Rafe!”

He stopped, mouth open. “Ah.”

“Lady Clarice is not happy with my sister’s feelings toward her son,” Tess said, in a voice so low even she could hardly hear it.

“Ah.”

Rafe was not the slowest gentleman whom she had ever met, but he was definitely vying for a place amongst the imperceptive. He made a kind of snorting sound and took himself off, she hoped in Imogen’s direction.

There weren’t enough gentlemen for all to engage in dancing, so Tess found herself watching first a Rufty Tufty for two couples, and then a waltz. Annabel’s bosom was about to fall from the fragile constraint of Tess’s dress. And for all Annabel had announced a disinclination to marry Mr. Felton, she was smiling up at him in a way that suggested she might change her mind.

“We shall dance again after supper,” Lady Griselda called to Tess, “and you shall join us, darling. By then, my brother may have returned from London!” She gave her such a meaningful smile that Tess suddenly understood why Mayne was absent.

He had gone to London to fetch a ring. Probably a ring from his family. A symbol of their future marriage, of his possession, of their—affection for each other.