With a grin, Mary stepped back, whirled, and fled.
Plunging into the crowd, she tacked this way and that like a fox dodging hounds, then doubled back and took refuge near the archway leading to the withdrawing room.
She scanned the heads but saw no evidence of Ryder’s golden mane. She exhaled in relief. “Good. Now to find Randolph.”
Keeping a wary eye out for prowling lions, she edged around the ballroom. Predictably, Randolph’s circle was more or less where it had been before. She was about to step clear of the surrounding crowd and approach Randolph and his cronies once more when she saw Ryder lounging against the wall nearby, free of encumbering ladies and apparently idly chatting with another gentleman, but in reality watching and waiting.
She drew back, but the movement caught Ryder’s eye.
What followed was a sophisticated game of cat and mouse. Somewhat to her surprise, Ryder wasn’t merely intent on keeping her from Randolph; he pursued her as she twisted and turned, trying to lose him in the crowd. . . .
He was tall enough to easily keep track of her.
All too soon he was closing in, and a peculiar frisson of panic—delicious and expectant—flashed through her.
She gave herself no time to dwell on the strangeness of the feeling. There was only one way she could see of escaping. She hurried back to the archway into the corridor; pausing beneath the arch, she glanced back—and saw Ryder only yards away. Three people away.
His gaze locked with hers.
What she saw in his eyes made her lungs seize.
One part of her mind thought that was ridiculous, but the rest was wholly focused on one thing: Escaping.
Exactly what she was escaping, much less why, she didn’t know. She just had to do it.
On a breathless gasp, she swung away and plunged down the corridor, but instead of going into the withdrawing room, she rushed past and on. The long corridor ran the length of the ballroom and at the end turned a corner; whisking around it, she came to the door she’d known from previous visits was there. Dragging in a breath, calming her thudding heart, she raised her head; straightening, drawing her usual mantle of self-control firmly about her, she opened the door and stepped onto the terrace.
It was, she judged, the last place Ryder would think of looking for her. There was really no reason she would return there, especially alone.
Silently closing the door, she paused in the spill of shadow provided by the walls and surveyed the five couples strolling the expanse; being alone—strolling alone—would attract attention.
In her present position, she wasn’t visible to the ballroom’s occupants, but if she walked forward, she would be seen. And a single figure was odd enough to attract notice, even from those absorbed in conversation in the ballroom.
Let alone the couples strolling the terrace; at least three knew her, and would undoubtedly seek to gather her in and escort her back into the ballroom . . . where Ryder would be waiting.
She glanced to her left. A set of steep stone steps, helpfully shrouded in shadow, led down to a paved garden path. Holding still in the gloom, she waited, then seized a moment when the strolling couples were otherwise occupied and unlikely to spot her, and slipped silently down the steps, onto the path, and whisked around the corner of the house.
Ahead of her lay the rectangle of garden that faced the private rooms of the big house, and tucked into the opposite corner beyond an expanse of lawn stood a small pillared folly; constructed of white marble, it glimmered faintly in the moonlight. When the weather was fine, Lady Castlemaine often used the lawn for her afternoon teas, but there was no direct access from the ballroom, and at night the area was unlighted.
No one would be in the folly at present; she could sit in the quiet darkness for a while, long enough to calm her stupidly thudding heart and get her mind working again. She had no idea why Ryder’s pursuit—his suddenly intent focus on her—had affected her to this degree, but she needed to settle her nerves, reclaim her senses, regain complete control of her mind, and then devise a workable plan to get the time she needed with Randolph to . . . properly assess if he was, indeed, her hero.
That she now doubted her earlier certainty irked. She’d been so sure . . . and on one hand, she still was. Logically, and by every measurable criterion, Lord Randolph Cavanaugh was the perfect husband for her—he should be her hero.
Walking slowly past the lawn, she turned onto the narrower path that led to the folly; it wended through the wide flower beds, small bushes and flowering plants nodding on either side, their colors washed out by the moonlight, but their scents still discernible on the night breeze. Gradually, her odd panic subsided; slowly pacing, her gaze on the path ahead, she felt her temper stir as the reality of what had just transpired coalesced in her mind.
She’d been forced out of the ballroom—her field of action—by Ryder. By an interfering, high-handed, wholly arrogant despot; no matter how much amiability he used to cloak his true nature, that was what Ryder assuredly was.
And tonight he’d trumped her.
Her—she who was always in charge. More, he’d done it in an arena she considered hers. Hers to organize and arrange to her liking.
Eyes narrowing, she raised her skirts and marched up the three steps into the deeper shadows of the folly, her temper escalating to a steady boil.
Even though there was no one to see, she set her lips in a mutinous line.
Halting at the top of the steps, she let her skirts fall.
Her senses flared.