An Unconventional Duenna. Paula Marshall

was Miss Filmer now, was she? And Lord Kinloch had just saved her from the humiliation of wearing her dreadful cap. She had barely time to take in these two momentous concessions when she registered that Mr Cameron was looking at her with the oddest expression on his face. If Nick was experienced in the art of reading other people’s expressions well, Athene, who was a novice just acquiring this necessary skill, was already acute enough to grasp that, for some reason, Mr Nicholas Cameron did not approve of her.

      Well, pooh, to that, he was not the man in whom she was interested, although judging by the manner in which the cousins spoke to one another it would be as well not to antagonise him.

      She had scarcely had time to think this before she was astonished to find Nick bowing to her, and saying in his deep, gravel voice, quite unlike Lord Kinloch’s charming, light tenor, “I trust that you will do me the honour of standing up with me in the next dance, Miss Filmer.”

      Here was another splendid opportunity to cement her new-found friendship with Lord Kinloch and all his hangers-on.

      “I should be delighted, sir,” she replied, casting her eyes innocently down.

      If she was not fooling herself in her pursuit of Adrian, neither was she fooling Nick. He could scarcely suppress a grin when he put out his hand to take her on to the floor.

      “Athene,” he said to her charming profile. “Grey-eyed Pallas. May one ask if you own an owl as well?”

      He wondered if she were educated enough to catch the allusion. Athene turned towards him, and if grey eyes could ever glitter, hers glittered. Conversation with Mr Cameron was obviously going to be of quite a different order from that with his cousin. She wondered what Mr Tenison had been saying to him.

      She decided to be honest and not pretend charming innocence. “I only possess the name of the Greek goddess of wisdom, Mr Cameron, not her attributes. Owls are in short supply in our part of Northampton.”

      “But not wisdom, I suppose. Tell me, does your young charge frequently suffer from these fits?”

      There was something slightly cutting in his tone. They had reached their set, so she turned to face him before the dance began.

      “They are not fits, Mr Cameron,” she told him coolly, “and I am sure that when you and Mr Tenison conversed he spoke to you of them. I am merely her companion, not her physician, but they are, I am sure, nervous only and when she becomes more confident will pass in time.”

      “And do you intend to help her to be more confident, Miss Filmer? I would have thought that the presence of another young woman as much in command of herself as you seem to be might have the effect of distressing, rather than helping, her.”

      “Then you thought wrongly again,” she told him, sure now by his tone of voice and his expression that he was her enemy, although why she could not imagine. “I happen to be able to comfort Miss Tenison. I have done so since we were at school together. It is others who have the opposite effect on her.”

      She did not say, most of all her dominant mother, for that would have been neither proper nor polite. She was surprised that Mr Nicholas Cameron, who seemed a perceptive young man, had not noticed how much Emma’s mama extinguished her.

      “We are,” she went on, “likely to make a spectacle of ourselves if we do not end our conversation immediately and ready ourselves for the dance as everyone else in our set has done.”

      Oh, bravo, Miss Filmer, was Nick’s internal reaction to this. You are all and more what I thought you were: a resourceful adventuress on the make. One thing is also certain: cousin Adrian will be no match for such a determined creature as you are proving to be.

      Later he was to ask himself why he felt such hostility to the mere idea that Athene Filmer would trap his cousin into marriage, but at the time he was not yet able to consider her, or her apparent wiles, dispassionately.

      The dance passed without further conversation, leaving Nick to discover that Miss Filmer’s body, beneath her disfiguring grey gown, was as he had already supposed, as classically lovely as her face. He could not be surprised when, on the way home, his cousin Adrian spent the whole journey talking enthusiastically of Miss Filmer’s beauty and charm.

      “A stunner,” he kept exclaiming. “A very stunner—don’t you agree, Nick?”

      Yes, Nick did agree, but although he also distrusted Athene’s motives in pursuing his cousin, he didn’t think that it was yet politic to be critical of her. Like many not over-bright young men, Adrian could be extraordinarily obstinate, and Nick knew from experience that to oppose him at this point would make him even more determined to admire this new beauty to grace the London scene.

      All he said was, mildly, “I wonder who her people are? Listening to Mrs Tenison I gained the impression that she would not have approved of a total nobody being her daughter’s friend and companion.”

      Adrian snorted. “She’s a poor little creep-mouse, the daughter, isn’t she? Not a bit like my Athene.”

      My Athene! Goodness, thought Nick, amused, one dance and an hour of her company and he’s really taken the bait to the degree that he thinks of her as his.

      “I can’t remember you having been so besotted with a female before on such a short acquaintance,” he ventured. “We really know nothing of her.”

      “Only that she’s in good society, is beautiful and says jolly things,” riposted Adrian. “I noticed that you were chattering away with her before the dance started. What in the world did you find to talk about if you weren’t impressed by her looks and address?”

      “Owls,” said Nick gravely. “Owls. Apparently they are rather scarce in the wilds of Northampton.”

      “Owls!” exclaimed Adrian. “That’s not what pretty girls like to talk about. If that’s all you could think of to interest her, it’s no wonder she didn’t impress, or charm you.”

      Nick refrained from telling him that he didn’t think that Miss Athene Filmer was trying very hard to charm him, and that he, far from charming Miss Filmer himself, had been rather short with her.

      Yes, the less said the better. Perhaps Adrian would grow bored with having to keep up mentally with the clever creature which he judged Miss Filmer to be. He would be far better off with the creep-mouse who would make no intellectual demands on him and who had spent the rest of the evening staring adoringly at him, but was unhappily aware that Lord Kinloch only had eyes and ears for her beautiful companion.

      In the meantime he would keep careful watch over them both, for he felt certain that the besotted Adrian would be chasing as hard as he could the beauty who he hoped would rescue him from his mother’s reproaches by consenting to marry him and thus give Kinloch lands an heir.