Page 16 of Where the Heart Leads
Difficult female…with lush, ripe lips.
Distracting lips.
Thrusting his hands into his pockets, he continued down the steps. The one problem with speaking with Penelope Ashford that night was that to do so he would have to meet her somewhere in the ton.
Evening had come, and with it Penelope had been forced to don what she considered a disguise. She had to convert from being herself to being Miss Penelope Ashford, youngest sister of Viscount Calverton, youngest daughter of Minerva, the Dowager Lady Calverton, and the only unmarried female in the clan.
That last designation grated, not because she had any desire to change her marital status but because it somehow set her apart. Set her on a pedestal that she cynically viewed as akin to an auction block. And while she never had the slightest difficulty dismissing the mistaken assumptions too many young gentlemen inevitably made, the need to do so irked. It was irritating to have to suspend her thoughts and find patience and polite words to send importuning gentlemen to the rightabout.
Especially as, while she might be standing by the side of a ballroom, she was usually mentally elsewhere. Thermopylae, for example. To her the ancient Greeks held a far greater allure than any of the youthful swains who tried to catch her eye.
Tonight’s venue was Lady Hemmingford’s drawing room. Fashionably gowned in green satin of such a dark hue it was almost black—having been forbidden by her family from wearing black, her color of choice—Penelope stood by the wall, a political soiree in full voice before her.
Regardless of her boredom with—indeed, antipathy to—such social events, she couldn’t cry off. Her unfailing attendance with her mother at whatever evening functions the Dowager chose to grace was part of the bargain she had struck with Luc and her mother in return for Lady Calverton remaining in town when the rest of the family had departed for the country, thus allowing her to continue her work at the Foundling House.
Luc and her mother had flatly refused to countenance her remaining in London on her own, or even with Helen, a widowed cousin, as chaperone. Unfortunately, no one could see Helen, sweet tempered and mild, as being able to check her in any way, not even Penelope. Despite her brother’s unhelpful stance, she could see his point.
She also knew that an unvoiced part of their bargain was that she would consent to being paraded before those members of the ton still in the capital, thereby keeping alive her chances of making a suitable match.
Within the family, she did her best to openly quash such thoughts; she saw no benefit in marriage at all—not in her case. When out in society, she, if not openly, then subtly and unrelentingly, discouraged gentlemen from imagining she might change her mind.
She was always taken aback when some young sprig proved too dense to read her message.I’m wearing spectacles, you dolt!was always her first thought. What young lady wishful of contracting a suitable match came to a ton event with gold-rimmed spectacles perched on her nose?
In reality, she could see enough to get by without her spectacles, but things were fuzzy. She could manage within a restricted area like a room, even a ballroom, but she couldn’t make out the expressions on people’s faces. In her teens, she’d decided knowing what was going on around her—every little detail—was far more important than projecting the right appearance. Other young ladies might blink myopically and bumble about in an attempt to deny their shortcoming, but not her.
She was as she was, and the ton could simply make do with that.
Chin elevated, gaze fixed on the cornice across the room, she continued to stand by the side of the Hemmingfords’ drawing room, debating whether among the more recently arrived guests there were any with whom she—or the Foundling House—might benefit from conversation.
She was distantly aware of music issuing from the adjoining salon, but resolutely ignored the tug on her senses. Dancing with gentlemen invariably encouraged them to imagine she was interested in further acquaintance. A sad circumstance given she loved dancing, but she’d learned not to let the music tempt her.
Suddenly, with no warning whatsoever, her senses…ruffled. She blinked. That most curious sensation slid over her, as if the nerve endings beneath her skin had been stroked. Warmly. She was about to look around to identify the cause when a disturbingly deep voice murmured, “Good evening, Miss Ashford.”
Blond curls; blue, blue eyes. Resplendent in evening black-and-white, Barnaby Adair appeared by her side.
Turning to face him, she smiled delightedly and, without thinking, gave him her hand.
Barnaby grasped her delicate fingers and bowed over them, seizing the moment to reassemble his customary suave composure, something she’d shattered with that fabulous smile.
What was it about her and her smiles? Perhaps it was because she didn’t smile as freely as other young ladies; although her lips curved readily and she bestowed polite accolades as required, those gestures were dim cousins of her true smile—the one she’d just gifted him with. That was so much more—brighter, more intense, more openhearted. Unguarded and genuine, it evoked in him an impluse to warn her not to flash those smiles at others—evoked an underlying covetous desire to ensure she kept those smiles just for him.
Ridiculous. What was she doing to him?
He straightened, and found her still beaming, although her smile itself had faded.
“I’m so glad to see you. I take it you have news?”
He blinked again. There was something in her face, in her expression, that touched him. Shook him in a most peculiar way. “If you recall,” he said, with a valiant attempt at a dry, arrogant drawl, “you insisted I inform you of Stokes’s thoughts as soon as practicable.”
Her cheeriness didn’t abate. “Well, yes, but I had no hope you would brave this”—she flicked a hand at the fashionable gathering—“to do so.”
She had, however, had the foresight to once again instruct her butler to tell him her direction. Barnaby hesitated, then glanced briefly at the groups conversing nearby. “I take it you would rather talk of our investigation than of the latest play at the Theatre Royal.”
This time her smile was both smug and confiding. “Indubitably.” She looked around. “But if we’re to talk of kidnappers and crime, I suspect we should move to a quieter spot.” With her fan, she indicated the corner by the archway into the salon. “That area tends to remain clear.” She glanced at him. “Shall we?”
He offered his arm and she took it; only because he was watching her closely did he see the momentary girding of her senses. He affected them. He’d known that from the first moment he’d laid eyes on her—in that instant she’d walked into his parlor, and seen him—not in a crowd of others but alone.
Steering her across the drawing room, necessarily stopping here and there to exchange greetings with others, gave him time to consider his unusual reaction to her. It was understandable enough; his reaction was a direct consequence of her reaction to him. When she smiled so unguardedly, it wasn’t because she was responding to him as a handsome gentleman—the glamour most young ladies never saw beyond—but because she saw and was responding to the man behind the façade, the investigator with whom, at least in her mind, she was interacting.
