His lips brushed hers. Tender and warm. She cried out in anguish. How could the man she hated most in the world entrance her heart? Colette turned and ran away, tears streaming from her eyes. She refused to see his box even as he called to her. “Open it. Please.”
Unable to shake her giddiness, Lilith arrived in the hall outside the dining room, all blushing and nervous. Luckily, she fit right in with all the other nervous and blushing young ladies. George and Penelope were concealed behind a cluster of people. The matrons circled Lady Marylewick, her bell-like laugh ringing above the chatter as she basked in the toad-eating.
Beatrice hung about the corner. The bodice of her pale pink gown gaped on her thin frame. She clutched her little notebook, appearing quite distraught. Lilith debated going to her, afraid she would get a cold shoulder. But then Fenmore managed to catch Lilith’s eye for a small moment, which he took as an invitation, and started swaggering toward her. She quickly zipped across the room to Beatrice.
“My dear, you seem upset,” Lilith said, taking her arm.
Her sister was so distraught that she forgot she held a grudge against Lilith. “The ice cream isn’t thickening. I told Cook to add more salt to the ice to lower the freezing point. She only huffed and told me to see to the dining room.”
Lilith jumped at the chance to worm her way into her sister’s affections. “But look at all you’ve done. It’s wonderful. You should feel proud.” She gestured to the dining room table set with china and gleaming silver. The servants were placing the last of the platters in a precise pattern around the candles and flower arrangements. “Don’t allow yourself to be upset by one small detail.”
“Good God, are we all waiting to go in by precedence?” Lord Charles appeared at Lilith’s side with several other gentlemen in tow. “I hope Marylewick, old boy, has consulted his handbook. I can never remember if I’m to enter before or after the Bishop of London.”
“You have precedence over the Bishop of London,” said Beatrice, taking him seriously. “But he is not here, of course.”
Lilith stepped in to shield Beatrice from one of Charles’s satirical remarks. “My sister has a brilliant mind. I’m quite envious. While I would wrack my poor brain trying to determine the precedence of a cousin of the queen’s lady-in-waiting, who happens to be the widow of a Scottish lord, Beatrice remembers all. Her mind is like a camera.”
Several of the gentlemen in the group turned their attention to Lilith’s young sister. “How fascinating,” they uttered, or “What a jolly fine talent.” Beatrice’s blush warmed Lilith’s heart.
Across the room, the sea of men surrounding George parted. Lilith’s breath left her body in a low rush. The rest of the room washed away, like rain on a chalk drawing. Everything was him standing there in his elegant evening clothes. The low chandelier cast shadows on the slight hollows beneath his chiseled cheekbones and along the lines running on either side of his generous mouth. And those lips, so soft against the hard contours of his face. So soft against her skin. Without thinking, she touched the spot he had kissed. He lifted his brow, his gaze finding hers. She thought her knees might stop working, along with her lungs. Meanwhile her heart thundered away.
I’m truly falling in love.
And with the sultan.
This can’t be happening. Make it stop. He’s the villain.
There must be a way to shut it off. A valve somewhere.
George offered his arm to a fashionable, elderly lady and led her into the dining room, followed by his mother and Lord Charles’s father.
“And we are off,” Lord Charles declared as if they were at the races. “Do you think a lowly third son of a duke and a Dahlgren will be seated near each other? Will that cluster too much dazzling conversation in one spot?”
“I believe Dahlgrens are seated in the scullery,” she replied, her mind hardly in the conversation.
He laughed. “If I fall in love with you, it’s your own fault.”
The word “love” jarred her. “I think we’ve touched on the issue of impertinent behavior, Lord Charles.”
“Good heavens, I seem to have forgotten,” he replied. “Will you remind me at dinner while I ignore everyone else and gaze at you like a spoony moonling?”
Lilith ended up seated near George’s end of the table. Lady Marylewick presided over the other end where Penelope sat beside her husband.
Penelope glanced down at Lilith, a desperate look in her eye akin to a person drowning. Lilith made a discreet nod to her dinner partner, the gentleman formerly in the blue plaid waistcoat, whom Lilith had decided was the most handsome naked one. Penelope stifled a giggle.
Charles, sitting across from Lilith, did not miss the exchange. Amusement gleamed in his eyes.
“Mr. Fitzgerald, may I introduce Miss Dahlgren,” he said. “Mr. Fitzgerald is a Tory MP and fond of cricket. Do you remember our games at Oxford, old boy?”
It soon became apparent that the winner of the naked contest was so fond of cricket that the subject formed the whole of his conversation. Lilith smiled and played along while Lord Charles, delighting in her misery, further goaded the man. “Tell me, Mr. Fitzgerald, do you believe yourself a stronger bowler or batsman?”
At the head of the table, the conversation wasn’t faring much better. George asked how the weather was for everyone’s journey.
Lady Cornelia, who, Lilith noted, was ravishing in blue silk, answered, “It was sunny in Harlow when we left, but when we reached London it started to rain a little.” She blushed as if she had revealed some deep personal secret.
Lord Harrowsby bellowed, “It was damp and miserable in Melworte as always. I say, does this soup have a cream base? I’ll be up all night with indigestion.”
“Ah, it was all drizzle, drizzle, endless drizzle in London,” waxed Lord Charles, displaying his feelings on the trite conversation. “The spirit-dulling type of precipitation that neither lets you bask in the glory of the sun nor wallow in the delight of a miserable drenching.”
Lady Cornelia tilted her head, “I didn’t mind the drizzle. In fact, I hardly noticed it. I bought the new McAllister’s Magazine in the station.”
Lilith’s fingers tightened around her fork that was deep in a pile of peas.
“Ah, I missed it by a day.” George shook his head. “And it is too late to send a footman down to the village.”
George read McAllister’s Magazine! Lilith’s heart thudded like a carriage wheel hitting a pothole.
Dear Lord! Just look down at the peas. Think about peas. So green and—what if he read the story!
“I can lend you my copy,” Lady Cornelia continued. “I have read what I wanted from it.”
“And what was that?” George leaned closer to her.
Lilith wanted to leap up and cry Let’s stop this conversation right now. Back to the weather. It was rather cloudy here today. Isn’t that fascinating?
Lady Cornelia blushed even more prettily. “Colette and the Sultan.”
A slow smile curled George’s handsome mouth. “My favorite as well.”
God of all that’s good on this earth! A huge, invisible foot swung down and slammed Lilith in the chest. Keep smiling. Appear as if nothing is amiss.
Lady Cornelia gushed as though she had found her soulmate. She said something, all breathy and flustered, but Lilith couldn’t hear it for the roar in her ears. It was something about “Colette sees into my heart and says the words I would say, thinks what I would think.”
“I agree,” replied George. “Most female characters lapse into boring, moralistic prose. They are far too good to exist. But Colette,” he paused to think, “you feel her. Her emotions are palpable as she struggles for…I suppose humanity, compassion in a merciless, meaningless world?”
Lilith took a large, impolite gulp of her wine. The villain of her existence, the sultan himself, had cut open her heart with a few brief words.
“What is your opinion, Miss Dahlgren?” asked Charles. “Surely you have read the outstanding work. Is Colette seeking humanity in a merciless, meaningless world?”
How not to look guilty?
“I’ve read a few pages,” she said in a breezy manner, setting down her glass. “I found it sensational claptrap. Hardly literature.” She gave a false laugh that sounded very much like George’s mother’s. “So, Mr. Fitzgerald, when did you first start playing crick—”
“Sensational claptrap?” cried Charles. “Hardly literature? Sorry if I must rudely reference my university degree in the classics to differ with Miss Dahlgren.”
“How odd that you feel that way, Miss Dahlgren,” commented George. “I thought you would have enjoyed it. Especially the villain.”
“The villain!” Lilith almost choked on her wine. “Why?”
“He is such a fascinating character. Obsessed and driven like Macbeth. She is all that he fears, all that he isn’t, but he can only destroy her. As long as she exists, she gives voice to his own demons. A fine study of evil.”
Lilith had no words to say to the man looking right at her, unguarded and happy, no idea that he was the fine study of evil. All she knew was how much she despised herself.