Then, surprisingly, dimples formed on her cheeks. She did not smile, but her eyes sparkled. And she placed her gloved hand, palm out, in front of her.
He dropped the wood into her hand. “There,” Ned said. “Now it’s your misbegotten lump of citrus.”
She looked up. Her eyes were gray, and Ned had the sudden impression that she saw right into his heart. That organ thumped heavily under her observation. Ned swallowed, and the world slowed.
Then she dropped a curtsy. “Thank you,” she said prettily. She turned. Ned watched her leave. She strode as confidently as a queen. Ned felt humiliated and exposed. It was only when she turned the corner that he realized that they’d still not been introduced. Of course not. He’d just painted himself as the biggest fool in London. Who would want to make an acquaintance of him?
Not that it mattered. It was Blakely who was fated to have her. He could have her; he’d match her, his intimidating glares bouncing off her cold elegance. No doubt Blakely would fall in love with her.
He turned to his cousin. “Someday,” Ned said bitterly, “you are going to thank me for what I just did for you.”
Blakely gestured sardonically. “I wouldn’t wager on that, were I you. For now, I’ll thank you to head back to the ball.”
CHAPTER FIVE
BEFORE JENNY SET FOOT back in the ballroom, bringing up the rear of their party, they were accosted. Lord Blakely swung the door open into the bright hall, and a voice called out.
“Blakely,” said the woman, “why are you hiding in the servants’ quarters? And why didn’t you tell me you were attending tonight?”
Lord Blakely stopped so abruptly that Jenny nearly ran into him from behind. As she stumbled forward into the open hall, the lights dazzled her eyes. It took a moment to adjust from the dim illumination of the corridor, and when she was finally able to see who had confronted them—or, rather, who had confronted the marquess, she coughed.
It was Feathers. The woman in blue, the one she’d pointed to before Ned’s choking reaction and Lord Blakely’s own smooth acceptance convinced her to change her mind.
Feathers was not pretty. Despite her fresh-faced youth, her features were too angular to qualify for that label. But she gleamed with a sleek, polished air that would have made even the plainest lady pleasant to look at. She looked almost as imposing as Lord Blakely, dressed as she was in a fine light blue gown embroidered at the edges with flowers, and littered with silk rosettes. Luminescent pearls shone about her neck. Sandy brown hair was bound up in a tight mess of curls, from which her namesake—three waving peacock feathers—bobbed.
She was definitely not pretty, but she was striking in a way that struck Jenny as oddly familiar.
And yet Feathers showed not one iota of the confidence her dress and ramrod-straight posture should have imparted. Even younger than Ned, she ducked her shoulders and smiled, a universal signal that she was eager to please.
Here was a puzzle. For all her fine demeanor, Lord Blakely’s earlier behavior suggested the lady was somehow unsuitable for marriage. But the lady had called him by the familiar “Blakely.” And he hadn’t corrected the importunity with typical frosty disdain.
Light dawned. No wonder she seemed so familiar. And no wonder the marquess had wanted Jenny to pick this woman.
“Lord Blakely,” Jenny said. “You never told me you had a sister.”
“See?” Ned flung his hands in the air. “How can you disbelieve her? I never said a word of it!”
Feathers eyed Jenny with open curiosity. “The rumor that swept the ballroom is that this lady is a distant cousin. I didn’t know we had any Barnards in our family.”
Lord Blakely grimaced. “Restrain yourself, Ned. Do recall we are at a very crowded ball. And, Laura, she is not your cousin.”
The lady sighed. “Carhart side? Still, a cousin of yours is a cousin of mine.” She looked at Jenny and smiled almost shyly. “Isn’t that just like my brother, to ignore me when I’m so obviously angling for an introduction? What is Ned jabbering on about?”
Ned put his hands on his hips. “Well, don’t ask the great Marquess of Blakely for explanations. Or introductions. He can’t even be bothered to deliver his own elephants. He doesn’t believe anything unless it’s right in front of his nose.”
The blue feathers in the lady’s coiffure bobbed earnestly. “Oh, don’t I know.” She glanced at Jenny again, and then imparted in confidi ng tones. “He doesn’t even trust my fiancé to handle my funds in the future. He doesn’t trust anything he can’t see and smell and taste.”
Lord Blakely didn’t act either to scold or to assuage his sister’s obvious worries as to how her teasing would be received.
“Actually,” Jenny interjected earnestly, “he’s even more discriminating than that.”
Lord Blakely’s shoulders stiffened. His lips pressed together and a furious warning lit his eyes. Jenny met his angry gaze and dropped one lid in a lazy half-wink.
“Believe me,” she said. “He really doesn’t believe everything he tastes.”
Lord Blakely’s mouth dropped open a fraction. His eyes dropped to her lips; he was undoubtedly remembering the hot openmouthed kiss they’d shared. He froze, almost as if he’d experienced a great stabbing pain. And then a miracle occurred.
He smiled.
The expression changed his whole face from serious and frozen to warm and tinged with the pink of embarrassment. The effect was immediate and electric. He looked almost ten years younger. Jenny’s toes curled in her uncomfortable heeled slippers and she caught her breath.
No wonder the man never grinned. He would have posed a serious danger to womankind if he did so more than once a decade.
He blinked, horrified, as he suddenly realized what he was doing. The corners of his lips turned down sharply. He blew out his breath and turned abruptly to his sister.
“If I failed to greet you earlier, Laura, it was precisely to avoid this moment. I have no intention of introducing you to this woman.”
Jenny felt as if she’d been smacked with an icicle. It was almost as if she’d been back at school. As if the girls were talking about that Jenny Keeble again, pretending Jenny was not standing right in front of them.
The feathers drooped as Laura bowed her head. “Surely, in the family—”
Lord Blakely interposed his body between Jenny and his sister. He dropped his voice, but pitched his words loud enough for Jenny to hear. She had no doubt he intended her to absorb every last hateful sentence. “She’s not a Carhart cousin, either. She’s not any sort of relation. She’s a fraudulent fortune-teller who has sunk her claws into Ned, and she’s not fit for you to know.”
Not fit. Every word he said was undoubtedly true. It still hurt, scraping a wound that was raw even after a dozen years. Jenny had run away from school to escape the snide remarks about her family and her likely fate. Even after all these years, it stung to hear them repeated.
“Oh,
