“I believe I understand,” Miss Gray put in after Roberts had repeated himself three or four times in the forlorn hope his thesis would sound better in different words. “You think that the myth of Penelope is much older than scholars believe.”
She was nearly as smart as her friend, and equally pretty.
What in the devil had happened to English ladies in the years he’d been traveling?
Helena Biddle was as lustful and foolish as he remembered, but Miss Gray and Miss Ffynche seemed as akin to her as … as an ancient Egyptian to an ancient Greek.
When Willa Ffynche was intrigued by something, her blue eyes darkened to indigo.
Roberts had at last figured out that the two women were as intelligent as he, if not more so. He leaned forward in order to reply to Lavinia, causing his sleeve to brush Willa’s bare arm.
Primitive instincts had kept Alaric alive on more than one occasion. The instinct to run was a powerful one. Very useful.
The emotion he was feeling right now?
Just as powerful, but not as useful.
He stared at Roberts until the man uneasily glanced at him … and sprang back into his seat, removing his person from the vicinity of Willa’s arm, as if Alaric had put a torch under his nose.
Perhaps not a useful emotion, but an effective one.
Alaric was accustomed to evaluating new situations and extricating himself without undue haste if danger presented itself. There were occasions—the Empress Catherine’s invitation came readily to mind—when prudence had forced him to refuse what might have proved a memorable experience.
In another example, no matter what Wilde in Love depicted, while traveling in Africa he had deliberately avoided incursions into cannibal territory; they didn’t sound like fellows who would welcome him in their village.
He had, however, made the acquaintance of friendly chaps whose heads barely came to his waist. In the last half decade, he’d seen an enormous white whale, the Great Wall of China, and the aurora borealis.
And now he’d seen Miss Willa Ffynche.
She had a tip-tilted nose, absurdly big eyes, and mounds of hair. Tonight she wasn’t wearing a wig, but he still wasn’t certain of its natural color, because it was concealed under a blanket of snowy-white powder.
Her eyebrows provided a clue. Presumably dark hair would swirl around her shoulders when she was unclothed.
He even liked her dress, although it was green. He’d never liked green, but on her … he liked green.
Right now, she was taking apart Roberts in the sweetest, most reasonable voice in the world. A sympathetic voice. Asking him whether there was any chance that the hieroglyph of a duck might stand for a D sound.
Roberts began babbling about the Arabic, Coptic, and Greek alphabets while Willa kept those unnerving eyes fixed on his face as if she had forgotten that Alaric was sitting opposite her.
Alaric did not consider himself vain, but he was well aware that if he wanted to, he could bed any number of women at this house party, married and unmarried.
Willa Ffynche wasn’t one of them, since she was obviously a proper young lady. A virgin.
The word lit a slow burn in his groin. She was a virgin, untouched by another man. Unkissed, most likely. She had that look.
Naturally, he wouldn’t sleep with her, because he wasn’t interested in marriage, and she had marriage written all over her.
But he saw no reason why he shouldn’t be the first to kiss her.
Just now she was leaning toward the Oxford man as they discussed whether hieroglyphs might actually be magic spells or attempts at magic spells. Willa did not believe in magic, which didn’t surprise Alaric at all.
If she was trying to spark his jealousy, she was succeeding. Even more so, because she was still pretending to forget he was there, though he was staring at her with all the boldness of a beggar—
No, not a beggar. He was no beggar, and never would be.
Surely Roberts’s lecture had gone on long enough.
Abruptly, footmen swirled around them like water around a rock, whisking away everything from their table, including the plate adorned with a lopsided Egyptian duck.
Willa, Lavinia, and Roberts didn’t stop talking for a moment. The two ladies weren’t bluestockings, per se. They showed no burning desire to learn Greek or deliver a lecture on the Stoic philosophers.
To Alaric’s mind, they were more appealing. They were people who went through life driven by curiosity and intelligence. The realization made him feel as if he were walking close to quicksand, so he remained silent, broodingly watching the conversation.
Any man would concur that Willa Ffynche was exquisite, from her slender eyebrows to the curve of her cheek. But it was the self-contained part of her nature that made him feel like a schoolboy.
It made him want to poke her, tug her braid, offer her an apple. A wash of disgust broke over him, and he wrenched his eyes away—and met those of Helena Biddle.
She must have come into the room at his heels, because she’d positioned herself at the very next table. Her smile had nothing contained about it at all. Across the table from her, another woman offered a glowing smile.
Perhaps he should just sleep with Helena. Hell, it was better than being ignored by a young lady with a sardonic smile.
He stood and broke into the conversation. “Miss Ffynche, Miss Gray, Mr. Roberts, I must ask you to excuse me. I have no stomach for sweets tonight.”
Willa looked up, confused. Then she gave him a charming smile, inclined her head in a nod, and turned directly back to Roberts.
She really had forgotten his presence altogether.
In fact, she didn’t give a damn whether he stayed at the table or not. Considering the speed with which she returned to the skirmish with Roberts, she would have shown considerably more dismay if the scholar had tried to escape the conversation.
His brother came up behind him just as Alaric took a step away from the table, toward Helena Biddle. He needed …
He needed to exorcise this aggravating sense that he should pick up Willa Ffynche, walk out of the room, and give her that first kiss.
Sleeping with Helena would force the irritating virgin out of his head before he made a fool of himself by … by courting her or some such nonsense.
North slung an arm around his shoulder. “Come along with me.”
Helena saw that he’d been intercepted, launched herself out of her chair, and anchored herself to Alaric’s arm. “I am longing for some fresh air,” she said, in the husky, practiced tones of a woman confident of her ability to satisfy any man.
But North shook his head. “You must forgive me, Lady Biddle. Our younger brother Leonidas has just arrived and will want to see Alaric directly.”
She seemed mollified by this intimate murmur. “I look forward to tomorrow,” she said to Alaric, her eyes fairly eating him up. “I’ll be staying in the castle for over a month; I do hope you are not fleeing to foreign parts immediately?”
Once they’d left the hall, Alaric said to North, “Where is Leonidas?”
“Billiards room,” his brother said. “I imagine that’s why he was sent down from Oxford again. Last year it was for winning twenty-five pounds off some young fool.”
“Billiards? We played billiards all afternoon! Aren’t you tired of them yet?”
“I never tire of billiards,” North said. “Besides, you fool, I saved you before you did something you’d regret later.”
“I rarely indulge in regrets,” Alaric said.
North laughed. “I’ve been watching you from the long table. You would have regretted a tryst with Helena Biddle, probably for the rest of your life.”
Chapter Nine
Late the following afternoon
Damn it, I apologize.” Alaric put down his glass of brandy and followed his brother to the door. “Don’t be an ass, North!”
“It runs in the family,” his brother retorted. But he stopped before walking out of the billiards room, his back rigid.
“I’m the ass. I’m sure Miss Belgrave is deliriously in love with you. Whispering to her friends about your eyebrows at this moment. Likely she was just uncomfortable in my presence.”
“What makes you think that?” his brother asked dryly, turning around. “Because the notorious Lord Wilde intimidates ladies? Did she look intimidated at luncheon?”
No, she hadn’t.
In fact, Diana Belgrave appeared as unimpressed by him as Willa Ffynche had when she told her friends that she had no interest in him.
“I am happy to say that your fiancée seems not to be an admirer,” Alaric said, grimacing. “That would have been awkward.”
His brother snorted. “Do you realize that if the king and queen knew that Lord Wilde was attending this house party, they might well have joined us? Wilde in Love played at the castle in the last Christmas season.”
“I can’t stand people fawning on me,” Alaric said tightly. “Royal or no.”
North smiled. “Diana won’t fawn on you, any more than she fawned on me, though I’m heir to a dukedom.”
Alaric already knew that. Whenever he spoke to his future sister-in-law, she looked vaguely as if someone had put an insect in her tea. She had dropped his hand after the slightest touch.
More problematically, she seemed to do the same for North.
“She is skeptical of your claims about Africa,” his brother said now.
“She’s not the first to think I’m a habitual liar,” Alaric said. “Englishmen prefer to believe that everyone longs to walk around in a wig, even given much evidence to the contrary.”