Someone slapped a guinea in front of one of the paintings. There was an answering laugh, several shouts. “Place your bets!”
“What the devil?” Dougal muttered.
“The Cinderella Ball,” someone replied as though that explained everything. “It’s no secret Pendleton wants his goddaughters settled and taken care of.”
“Like this?”
“Hardly,” the man replied. “But what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him. Or us.”
“It’s just a spot of fun, anyway,” added another gentleman, this one possibly inbred given the perfect straightness of his aristocratic nose. Dougal was having a hard time keeping them straight, they all wore the same cravats and gold buttons and tousled hair tamed with pomade. He’d never smelled so much sandalwood and bay in his life. He never thought he’d miss the stink of market day or the dust of the mill in his nostrils. At least it was an honest, straightforward smell. It hid nothing.
“Miss Swift,” another man added, throwing down a handful of coins. He was blond, but Dougal could not see his face through the crowd. “Pretty enough for a tumble, but not pretty enough to marry without a dowry,” he laughed. “Eh, lads?”
Dougal had the abrupt and visceral urge to plow his fist into his face.
“But Tamsin Bell will be married, place your wagers.”
“You sound sure of yourself, Eaton.”
Dougal turned his head sharply. The blond curls belonged to Eaton?
“Well, my grandfather was a duke and she’s a twenty-eight-year-old spinster,” he laughed. “Not to mention that her stepmother adores me.”
“Almost as much as you adore yourself,” someone retorted.
“Write your wagers in the book, lads,” Eaton said. “I’ve got the pouch.” He slipped the red velvet pouch filled with coins into his waistcoat and walked away, a bottle of wine in his hand. Dougal couldn’t see his face, but he hated the set of his indolent shoulders immediately. There were too many people between them and too much cheroot smoke. Damn it. Dougal shoved his way to the door, stalking into the corridor.
The empty corridor.
Damn the man, he was already gone.
Something prowled in Dougal’s chest. Something feral. Something that made him feel more like himself than he had in months.
Something he placed entirely at Meg’s feet.
Meg, Priya andTamsin returned to the ballroom crowned in leaves and unruly laughter, ballgowns speckled with rain. It was most shocking.
Or would have been, if they were anyone else.
As it was, the others barely blinked. Except for Clara. She definitely blinked. And then sucked air through her nose in that way that always promised a lecture. Tamsin took a sharp left to avoid her. “It’s been at least an hour since Meg had tea,” she teased. “Let’s remedy that before she faints again.”
It was rare that Meg could be distracted from a good strong cup of tea.
The sight of Dougal stalking into the ballroom was enough to do it. She had eyes in her head, didn’t she? With his bright eyes and muscular shoulders, it was difficult to look anywhere else. The way he walked made her feel warm and squirmy.
Which was ridiculous.
A walk was a walk.
Except, apparently not. He took up space without being flamboyant or intimidating. And he also seemed to be taking up what was left of the air in the stuffy ballroom because she was oddly out of breath for a moment. Just a moment. He was the early winter storm battering at the windows to everyone’s placid summer rain. And Meg would choose a storm every time. Sometimes literally, she thought, picking another leaf out of her decolletage.
“Lord Eaton?” she heard the Majordomo say, when Dougal stopped to ask him a question. “Certainty, Your Grace. Right over there.”
Dougal turned his head and she saw the clench of his shoulder, the calm, quiet narrowing of his eyes. Some kind of new awareness prickled through her. She felt suddenly like those paintings of the Oracle at Delphi, plucking knowledge out of nowhere. She hardly knew him, certainly not well enough to know with bone-deep certainty that he was about to do something dramatic.
Something stupid.
Her feet propelled her between the guests before she could decide what to do with her sudden and vague premonition. It put her at the perfect vantage point to see Dougal’s fist collide squarely with Eaton’s perfect jaw. She might have cheered if everything hadn’t happened so quickly. She would definitely paint it later. On the largest canvas she could make. With the best quality oils. Never mind the canvas. She would paint it right across the front of the Parliament building.