How tall and solid he was.
How warm and strong were his hands upon her.
She was sweating again, but in a very agreeable way, and Livia felt her entire body heat up. Her stupid, willful, treacherous body . . . As if beyond her own volition, she looked into Gabriel’s eyes and tilted her chin just slightly upwards.
Oh, mercy, she was tilting her chin in invitation.
She was not a proper young lady at all.
How could she be, when her body was clamoring so? It simply wouldn’t be denied.
“Gabriel,” she said, her voice soft and husky, but just then a big white head thrust itself between them, and was snuffling round Gabriel’s pockets for sugar, and a large pointed ear very nearly poked her in the eye.
She leapt away, and the moment—whatever it was, whatever it might have been—passed. Livia stumbled back, came against an old tree stump, sat down hard upon it, and in short order realized it was damp. She would have an embarrassing dark patch on the back of her beautiful habit the moment she stood up again.
Oh, how perfect.
What a perfectly bad day it was turning out to be.
Livia had been placed between her hostess, Lady Gibbs-Smythe, and Mr. Adolphus Olivet. Gabriel was sitting several seats away, on the opposite side, and Mrs. Penhallow even further, both of them actually seeming to recede into the distance. Livia had never seen a dining-table so long, and every inch of it crowded with tall gilded candelabra, ornate arrangements of hothouse flowers in fragile porcelain vases, an elaborate variety of crystal glasses and gold-rimmed plates and what might have been, quite recently, an intimidating array of forks, knives, and spoons.
She drew a deep breath of quiet excitement.
Of triumph.
If Cecily Orr could only see her now.
Not so very long ago, she had been merely poor little Livia, in her dowdy cast-off clothes.
And here she was at an elegant dinner-party among the haut ton, accepted among them without a blink. And she was ready: although she had been adjured once again by Mrs. Penhallow to stick to topics appropriate for a young unmarried lady, she’d still been poring diligently over the newspapers and making her way through a tall stack of books. She wanted to be prepared, when the opportunity arose, for lively, well-informed conversation.
For example, only a few months past, in June, the Prince Regent had held an extravagant fête at his fabulous London residence, Carlton House, celebrating his assumption of political power. His poor father, the King, showed absolutely no signs of returning to sanity, and was said to shout the most awful things at all hours of the day and night. One felt so dreadfully for him, and for the poor Queen, too. Meanwhile, the Duke of Wellington had won an impressive battle at Fuentes de Oñoro (oh dear, where was that? Was it in Spain, or in Portugal?). The celebrated writer Richard Cumberland had recently died. She and Miss Cott had been making their way through Walter Scott’s wildly popular The Lady of the Lake. Also—
A shallow plate of soup à la Reine, redolent of chicken broth and mace, was set before Livia by a solemn bewigged footman, and casually, with secret pride, she reached for the correct spoon.
“I say, Miss Stuart,” Mr. Olivet remarked, “dashed fine weather we’ve having, don’t you think?”
He was a gentleman in his late twenties, adorned, Livia gathered, in the height of fashion. He wore the correct dark knee-smalls and swallow-tailed coat, as did Gabriel, but there the sartorial resemblance ended. Mr. Olivet’s fantastically starched shirt-points were so high and so stiff as to necessitate swiveling in Livia’s direction in order to address her. His neckcloth had been tied with a stunning whorl of knots and falls, and his hair gallantly swept into a Caesar, with choppy bits of pomaded locks brushed forward and now immovable. A gold-framed quizzing glass hung suspended from his neck and no less than four ornamental fobs dangled from a gold chain at his waist.
“Yes,” Livia agreed, “very fine weather, Mr. Olivet. I thought—”
“I understand you’re new to Bath?”
“Yes, I—”
“How were the roads on your journey here?”
“They were quite dry, and—”
“Not too dusty?”
“Perhaps a little, but—”
“Still, better than muddy roads, don’t you think?”
“Oh, yes, although—”
“Mighty fine place, Bath.”
“Yes indeed. In fact—”
“Been round to all the shops?”
“Not yet. But I—”
“I highly recommend the South Parade.”
“Indeed. What—”
“Done the baths?”
“No, but—”
“Everyone does. Dashed healthy town, Bath.”