the boy whined, causing Simone to wince. “I’ve not had a sweet in so long—none shall notice me, I swear!”
Simone gave an unladylike snort. “Oh, verily, no one at all would notice tiny morsels of food rising from the buffet and then falling upon the floor.” As soon as the words left her lips, Simone regretted her sarcasm. She softened her tone. “You’ve told me before that you can no longer taste, Didier—what would be the purpose?”
“I can imagine it,” the boy said, casting hurt eyes to the marble floor beneath his feet. “If I try very hard, I can almost recall the taste of honey.”
His words wrenched Simone’s heart, and she smiled sadly at him through her veil. “Mayhap when we return to our rooms, I will have a tray sent up and then you can play a bit.”
Didier sighed. His head popped up once more, and a devilish smile lit his gamine face. “Who’s this coming to visit, I wonder. I’ve not seen him before.”
Simone glanced out of the corner of her eye to see whom Didier was referring to, and nearly gasped aloud.
A large man, easily a half-head taller than Simone’s father, was weaving his way through the crowd toward her. She noticed with an odd sensation in her middle the way the ladies he passed followed him with their eyes in a most familiar manner.
And it was no wonder that he held the female guests’ attention—he certainly had Simone enthralled. From the dark hair curling to his shoulders, the penetrating gaze of his blue eyes that captured Simone’s and held them, the hard line of jaw that chiseled the planes of his face into a sculpture, the man was a god.
His full lips cocked at one corner into a sleepy smile, and the warmth it created in Simone was as delicious as it was unsettling. His fine tunic and cloak indicated that he was a man of wealth and status—or had been, at any rate. The embroidered cloth was stained and wrinkled, and Simone thought she might have glimpsed the straggling threads of a poorly repaired hem. But his gait was confident—even a bit arrogant—as he drew nearer and nearer Simone and her brother.
“Didier,” she hissed in warning. “Not a word.” Simone calmly turned her face from her veil to look at the magnificent man who had stopped before her and was now bowing deeply. He nearly tipped sideways.
“My lady,” he said, the rich timbre of his voice sending warm ripples over Simone’s skin. “I hope you do not perceive me as bold in approaching you without introduction, but I fear I could not restrain myself. Your beauty drew me to you like the lowly moth to a brilliant flame, and I felt I must seize the opportunity to speak to you lest you vanish like the vision you appear to be.”
“Oh, la-la!” Didier laughed directly into Simone’s ear. “Methinks the man wishes your gown to vanish, the way he ogles you!”
Simone’s smile faltered at Didier’s bawdy comment, but she quickly recovered and placed her fingertips in the man’s offered palm.
He bent once more to brush warm, dry lips across her knuckles, his eyes never leaving her face. Simone’s skin tingled even after his touch, and when he spoke again, her stomach felt as though a litter of piglets had been set loose within.
“I am Nicholas FitzTodd, Baron of Crane,” he offered, flashing a glimpse of white, even teeth.
“Oooh,” Didier said in a singsong voice. “A baron!”
Simone stopped gritting her teeth to open her mouth and give the man her name, but he raised a silencing hand.
“Again, forgive me, Lady du Roche,” he offered with a boyish grin. “I must admit that I asked after you upon my arrival.” He gestured discreetly across the breadth of the hall toward a handsome couple. “My brother and his wife are my informants.”
Simone eyed the large blond man and striking redhead warily and was quite disarmed when the woman raised a hand near her face and wiggled her fingers at Simone. Simone inclined her head in acknowledgment before turning her attention once more to the baron.
“Then I must be sure to extend my thanks to them before departing London,” Simone said, her voice husky with the enchantment the man’s very presence seemed to cast over her.
On the floor near her stool, Didier howled. The boy clutched at his ribs and hiccoughed with laughter.
“Do you thirst?” the baron asked. “Might I fetch you some wine?”
“Merci,” Simone replied. The man nodded with a heart-stopping grin and disappeared through the throng once more, and Simone whipped her head about to glare at her brother.
“Didier! Get up from the floor this instant!”
Fat, silvery tears of mirth rolled down the boy’s cheeks. “M-m-merci, lover!” he cried, reaching a spindly arm after the departing man.
“Stop it, I said!” Simone felt the heat of her flush to her hairline.
Her brother finally pulled himself together enough to stand, wiping at his cheeks with the backs of both hands. “Ah, Sister—that was wonderful! You forgot yourself so that you spoke English!”
Simone cringed. That the guests assumed she spoke only French was her single defense among the enemies. Should their hosts find out her deception, her chances for a profitable match would dwindle against their bruised pride.
“If you would cease goading me so, mayhap I would not forget myself,” she snipped. A groan of dread escaped her as Armand limped toward her. “Now, do be good—here comes Papa and that Halbrook man.”
“Simone.” Her father towered over her, but Simone could not help but notice how much more of her view of the hall had been blocked by the Baron of Crane’s muscular form. “You are enjoying yourself?”
“Oui, Papa.”
Lord Halbrook hovered on the perimeter of Armand’s presence, casting grandfatherly smiles in Simone’s direction, and she gave an inward shudder.
“Bon. Lord Halbrook and I would find a more private area to discuss…ah, a business matter.” Armand’s emphasis on his last words caused Simone’s heart to skip a beat and her eyes to fly involuntarily to the round noble at her father’s side.
Armand’s nod was nearly imperceptible, and his mouth twisted into an awkward smile. “Are you able to entertain yourself if we leave you for a time?”
“Of course.” Simone dropped her gaze as her father moved away in his hitching gait, Halbrook waddling along after him. She barely acknowledged the man’s stumbling “Mademoiselle” in parting.
“Simone’s getting married, Simone’s getting married,” Didier sang, skipping circles around her stool.
“’Twould seem so,” Simone sighed. And while the thought of becoming the wife of an aged, pot-bellied dwarf of a man did not please her in the least, she knew she would comply.
“Oh, Didier,” she said quietly, not bothering to shield her mouth. “If only Maman were still alive. We would be at home in France and I would, by now, be Charles’s wife.”
“Charles never cared for me,” Didier said, his tone more subdued now as he sat at Simone’s feet and
