This evening?
“I do believe,” Lady Trentham said, “that Miss Debbins was pleased to be asked, Sophia. What a delightful lady she is. And her sister too.”
Miss Debbins? She was the music teacher, was she not? And her sister was . . .
“I am probably as far from being a connoisseur of music as it is possible to be,” Lady Darleigh said. “But I do believe that talent in any artistic field is unmistakable when one encounters it. And I believe Miss Debbins is talented. You will all be able to judge for yourselves this evening.”
“Miss Debbins is to play here?” Flavian asked.
“I did not tell you?” the viscountess asked him. “I am so sorry.”
“He was not listening,” Hugo said.
“Perhaps he was not present when I announced it.” Lady Darleigh beamed at Flavian. “Miss Debbins is going to play for us this evening, as well as anyone else of our number who can be persuaded to entertain the rest of us. She will be coming for dinner too. For once we will have an even number of ladies and gentlemen at the table.”
Even numbers. Flavian did the calculations in his head, but they did not add up. Unless . . .
“Her sister will be coming too,” Vincent said. “Mrs. Keeping. We are fond of her, are we not, Sophie, not least because she is the one who made it possible for us to become world-famous authors.”
He chuckled, as did everyone else—Flavian included.
The devil, he was thinking. He had just resisted the temptation to stride off in the direction of the meadow and the daffodils. Yet he was to meet her again after all today. Here. She was coming to dinner.
Well, at least tonight she would not be surrounded by little trumpets of sunshine fallen from the sky.
And if he was not very careful, he was going to find himself penning sonnets after all. Shudderingly awful ones.
Little trumpets of sunshine, for the love of God.
But his headache suddenly seemed to have eased.
5
Agnes did not go back to the park, despite the facts that it was a lovely day and the daffodils would not bloom forever or even for much longer. She stayed home instead to wash her hair and dream up excuses for not going out to dinner. She could not do more than dream, however, for Dora looked as though she would snatch at the flimsiest excuse to stay at home with her.
Agnes wondered if he had gone back this morning and, if so, how he had felt to discover she was not there. He would probably have shrugged and forgotten her within moments. It must not be difficult for a man like him to find women to kiss whenever he pleased.
A man like him.
She knew nothing about him, apart from the fact that he had once been a military officer and must have been wounded severely enough to have to spend a few years in Cornwall at the home of the Duke of Stanbrook, recuperating. The only sign of any wound now was his slight stammer, and that might have nothing to do with the wars. Perhaps he had always had a speech impediment.
But—a man like him. He was extraordinarily handsome. More than that, though, he radiated a magnetic, almost overpowering masculinity. His hooded eyes and mobile eyebrow suggested that he was a rake. And his looks, his physique, his air of assured command would all make him a very successful one and probably a ruthless one.
Not that she could be sure of anything. She did not know him.
She donned her pale green silk when it was time to get ready, and remembered that it was what she had worn to the harvest ball. It could not be helped. It was her best evening gown, and nothing less would do for tonight. No one would remember anyway. He would not. And apart from Sophia and Dora, no one else among tonight’s guests had seen her that night. She dressed her hair a little more severely than she would have liked. She ought not to have washed it today. It was always at its silkiest and least manageable on the first day.
Who would care what she looked like?
Dora looked positively pasty, and her dark hair was even more severe than her sister’s.
“Sit down and let me do your hair again,” Agnes said. Dealing with her sister’s appearance and soothing her jitters helped calm her own discomfort and embarrassment until the carriage arrived from Middlebury, and it was time to go.
There were only ten people gathered in the drawing room when she and Dora were announced, and two of them were Sophia and Viscount Darleigh, with whom they were long familiar. Three of the others had come with them to the cottage yesterday. It really ought not to be an ordeal, then, to meet the others. Yet there seemed to be far more than just ten persons in the room, and it was hard to convince oneself that they were just people like anyone, despite the grandeur of their titles.
Really, of course, Agnes was forced to admit to herself, there was only one of the company she dreaded meeting, and he was no stranger.
The Duke of Stanbrook was a tall, elegant, austere-looking older gentleman with dark hair graying attractively at the temples. Sir Benedict Harper was lean and handsome—and seated in a wheeled chair. His wife, Lady Harper, was tall and shapely, very dark, and stunningly beautiful in a faintly foreign sort of way. The Earl of Berwick was a dark-haired young man who somehow remained good-looking despite the nasty scar that slashed across his face and slightly distorted one eye and one side of his mouth.
Agnes concentrated upon each introduction as well as smiling and nodding to Lady Barclay and Lord and Lady Trentham. It was almost as if she believed that, by doing so, she could avoid looking at the tenth person.
“And you have met Viscount Ponsonby, I believe,” Sophia said as she finished the introductions. “Indeed I know that you have, Agnes. You danced with him at the harvest ball. Miss Debbins, were you introduced too at that time?”