“Who will be your chaperone for the evening?” He could not imagine Lady Wisterberg tolerating one of their soirees, either.
“It’s in the early evening, and only for a few hours. Surely I can call upon them without one? For a few hours and come straight back to The Grand Palace on the Thames?”
He was a little angry now. And incredulous. “Come now. That doesn’t sound like something you would do. Surely you know that isn’t wise?”
“What harm could come to me?” She sounded a bit defiant.
That sounded like a dare, too.
He didn’t honor that with a reply. She knew full well the harm. “And they will make you feel even lonelier, Keating,” he wanted to say. “The Hackworths will.”
“From what I understand, Lord Vaughn will be in attendance,” she added idly.
He tensed. She’d somehow known that name in particular would jar him. He resented that he could be so easily riled. And so uncharacteristically clearly seen.
“I’ve told you what I think,” he said tersely. “By all means, Keating, go, don’t go. It’s all the same to me.”
Her face tightened against some flare of emotion.
Likely hurt. She looked away briefly.
His heart felt scored by the line of her profile. The fine straight line of her nose, the soft, full swell of her lower lip. The slightly short chin.
She turned back to him. “Forgive me,” she said stiffly. “I’m sorry to bother you about it. I think I see my mistake now. I didn’t know.”
“What didn’t you know this time?” It was a stunningly unkind thing for him to say. If he worked hard enough, perhaps he would get her to dislike him, which seemed safer for both of them.
“That a man can care very much aboutthepeople while not actually caring very much about people.”
It took a moment for her words to fully penetrate, but they somehow slid like a shiv beneath all of his clever armor and pierced him clean through.
He stared at her, stunned.
He was filled both with fury and breathless admiration for the accuracy of the strike.
What had she said that night he’d found her on the verandah?She can’t hurt me if she doesn’t know me.
He doubted she believed her own words. She’d said it because she knew it would hurt him.
He felt shamefully close to rank fear at being so seen.
“What rot,” he said with idle contempt.
He arranged his features into an expression of boredom.
When she flinched, he felt it as surely as if someone had hurled a dart right into his chest.
But she wasn’t a fool or a coward. She knew she’d hit her mark. This he admired so fiercely it was an ache. How he loved a fighter.
“No doubt it is. I suppose you would know, as you know so many things,” she said politely.
They stared at each other from a distance that felt somehow unnatural. Since she’d touched him and he’d touched her, any moment during which they were not touching felt unnatural.
“I hope you enjoy your evening, Keating,” he said politely, and stepped into the hack that came to take him away.
Chapter Fourteen
“Miss Keating’s father is a physician. Isn’t that charming?” Lady Hackworth had taken Catherine gently by the elbow and steered her, like a tray of proffered sweetmeats, to a pair of beautiful people, a man and a woman with titles. She thought they might be a viscount and his wife. Lord and Lady Glossop?