“Two years, My Lady. I have been suffering for two years.”
“Have you?”
“Patiently.”
“You hid it well, Your Grace.”
“I fell first.” He said it lightly, as if it were a joke.
The table laughed. Joanna laughed the loudest. Alice made a sound that resembled a laugh and did not, she hoped, sound like the inside of her chest which felt very strange.
“That is convenient,” she muttered into her wine.
“I beg your pardon, Lady Alice.” The Viscount cupped a hand to his good ear and leaned over the table. “I did not quite catch that.”
He had heard her. She was certain he had heard her. He was watching her intently.
Alice opened her mouth to repeat what she had said and decided that it would sound just as foolish. “Nothing of consequence, My Lord.”
“Ah.”
He sat back. He did not smile, but his good eye glinted briefly in a manner that Alice was beginning to suspect she would have to learn to read.
“And what, Lady Alice…” He had not quite let her off. “…is your favorite thing about His Grace?”
She picked up her wine. “His…” She paused. “His, erm…”
She looked at Cassian. He looked back. He had set his fork down and folded his hands, and he was now waiting. She suspected he was enjoying it.
“Yes?” the Viscount prompted.
Alice tore her gaze from Cassian. “His scowl?”
The dining room exploded.
Joanna laughed so loudly that she had to press her napkin against her mouth. The Duke of Ronvale slapped the table. Lord Everlong gave a polite chuckle that did not reach his eyes. The Viscount did not laugh, but his good eye crinkled with what looked like approval. As for her mother, she made a distressed sound from the far end of the table that was instantly drowned out.
Alice did not look at Cassian immediately. She could not bring herself to. When she did finally look at him, the corner of his mouth had quirked up. Just one corner. Just a fraction.
She had never, in two years of knowing him, seen a smile on his face. She did not know whether what she was looking at was a smile. It seemed to be the closest he had.
She looked away again, fast. Her face was hot.
The dinner went on.
At the door, when they were leaving, Cassian kissed the back of her hand.
It was a perfectly correct gesture.
He bowed. He took her gloved fingers in his own. He brushed his mouth against the silk for the precise count required by manners, straightened, and then he let her go.
She rode home with her gloved hand pressed flat against her thigh, willing the place where his mouth had been to stop burning.
It did not.
CHAPTER 8
On the morning the letter arrived, Cassian was on his second cup of coffee and his third attempt at the same column of figures and not making progress with either.