was an outlandish thought that made no sense. Why would he be wanting to escape his own party? A party he’d planned for the express purpose of finding a wife? If it was not escape he sought, perhaps it was a particular woman he was looking for? His gaze quartered the room again and Elidh felt a little rill of awareness tremble down her spine, accompanied by the sensation that he was looking for her. It took all her bravado not to sink down in her chair, to keep her eyes and attentions fixed on the men at her table, all of whom might be candidates for her father’s play.
She’d felt his eyes on her in the drawing room, his gaze coming back to the window where she’d stood. She’d been careful not to turn around or to cultivate his attention just as she was careful now to be immersed here at her own table. Should he look in her direction, he would see a woman who was enjoying a good meal in a beautiful setting, and enjoying her popularity at her table, giving no thought to her wife-hunting host. But in both cases, it seemed her attempts to keep herself separate from the cluster of girls around him had created the opposite effect. Even now, she could feel his gaze stop on her table. She must put herself beyond his reach. Surely he would forget all about her soon enough if she wasn’t there to be remembered, especially with so many other girls clamouring for his attentions.
Elidh rose from the table. The delicious supper was coming to a close and she felt a keen need to escape their host’s gaze, keen enough to risk violating tradition. A lady didn’t dare leave the table before the hostess gave the signal, but perhaps with the unconventional seating arrangements and her own table so close to the door, no one would notice. She chose to risk it. ‘Gentlemen, if you will excuse me a moment. I feel slightly faint and in need of some air after such a lovely meal.’ Eight courses. She and her father had never eaten so well. Sometimes they had eight meals all week.
Outside the ballroom, Elidh searched for a door, an exit, anything that led to fresh air and privacy. When she didn’t find one, she settled for a velvet bench set before a large window at the end of the dark hall. No one would notice her there unless they were looking. She needed a moment alone, a moment to think before the post-supper activities began. Sutton Keynes’s visual attentions had unnerved her. Perhaps she was being overdramatic. Perhaps she’d even imagined them simply because they were the one thing she didn’t want. That was the deal she’d made with herself, despite her father’s wishes.
She was here to help her father find a patron. Nothing more. As the Prince and Principessa, they could sing her father’s praises incognito, secure a patron and disappear, resurfacing for the patron as themselves. The patron need never see the Italians again. Sutton Keynes’s attentions made the latter harder to do. If he fixed his attentions on her, disappearing became not only a difficult feat, but a potentially dangerous one.
Perhaps she could blame tonight on the red dress and Rosie’s artful design of braids. She’d hardly recognised herself when she’d looked in the mirror. That woman had been stunning—sophisticated, self-assured. That woman could charm a patron and she had. She could not have done otherwise. She needed the gown, the hair, and the cosmetics to charm the table, to do her duty to her father and to herself. Their survival through the winter would depend on their success here. The gown had succeeded admirably in that regard. Men had been hard pressed to look away. Apparently, even Sutton Keynes, despite the fact they’d been seated on the opposite side of the ballroom.
Yes, that made sense. Tonight was all because of the dress. Without the red dress, she would likely have been invisible. Tomorrow, dressed in pastels like the other girls, she would not stand out and Keynes would forget about her. Elidh closed her eyes and drew a deep breath, starting to feel better. She would give herself just a few minutes more of solitude and she’d go back to the party. She was seeing trouble where there was none. She’d conjured a crisis when the man hadn’t even crossed a room to meet her. He hadn’t even spoken with her yet and it would stay that way.
‘I thought I might find you out here.’
Elidh stiffened at the low voice in the dark. She was alone no longer. She opened her eyes slowly, careful not to jump or to show signs of being startled, careful to buy herself time, time to remember her role, time to hide her fear. A princess was never startled. A princess had the right to be wherever it was she wanted to be. Only guilty people startled when they were found in places they weren’t supposed to be in. But there was no hiding the surprise from her eyes when she saw who was standing there: Sutton Keynes in all his restless-eyed glory.
‘You’ve picked a beautiful place to hide. The view is lovely in the evening with the moon out and the lanterns lit.’ He was so much taller close up. His shoulders broader, his face more handsome, his mouth friendlier than it had been at a distance, the woodenness of him gone, perhaps because now he was smiling. At her and it was dazzling. He bent forward in a bow. ‘A rose for a rose,’ he said gallantly, offering her his plucked offering, liberated from one of the centrepieces that decorated each table. ‘You are a veritable rose in bloom tonight. I apologise for not introducing myself sooner.’
That was her invitation, her cue. Dear lord, it was show time, the curtain was going up on the next scene of this foolish play her father had crafted, and she wasn’t ready: not for the azure eyes that sparked like flames in the dusky hall, or the commanding height of him, or that smile. She’d expected an arrogant man and she’d planned on not being attracted to him, because she couldn’t be. She would garner a patron for her father and leave. She was not playing the same game as her host and as such, she was not prepared for this. She was a two-week wonder, nothing more. And yet, she could not deny the thrill that coursed through her as she took his rose. Perhaps this was how Cinderella felt in the story when the Prince had approached her at the ball—delighted, even knowing that the moment couldn’t last, but excited at the idea of it all the same.
Elidh gathered her wits. This was no fairy tale. Later, when this scheme of her father’s was finished, she could look back on the encounter and indulge in it. But not now. Now, she had to think and act like a princess. A princess wouldn’t sit here and gape as if a handsome man had never spoken to her. A princess would take his attention as her due. ‘Shouldn’t you be in the ballroom with the others instead of playing truant in the hall?’ she teased, once more the vivacious, confident woman from the table.
‘Shouldn’t you?’ he responded easily, his blue-flame eyes turning merry. ‘I think your table finds itself duller for the lack of your company.’ So he had noticed. She’d not imagined it.
The hallway suddenly seemed overheated. Elidh flicked open her fan. Perhaps she could appear cool if she felt cool. ‘My table will survive. You will be missed. I will not be. I dare say the ladies in the ballroom would be glad for one less woman in the room.’
‘They will understand that I am the host and it’s my duty to greet all my guests. If I am out here in the hall chasing you down, it’s because you’ve eluded me, or is it that you’ve avoided me, Principessa?’
Elidh fluttered her fan, managing a look of sophisticated amusement. ‘Allora, an introduction is superfluous, then. You already know who I am and I already know who you are.’
‘You have not answered my question, Principessa. Are you avoiding me?’
‘You are already surrounded by so many admirers, you hardly need to add one more.’ Elidh snapped her fan shut and speared him with a piercing stare full of haughty, royal contemplation. ‘So, I will hazard another reason for your presence in the hall. You don’t want to be in there. It’s been written all over your face the whole evening. You were looking for a reason to escape and I gave you one.’ Perhaps boldness would drive him into retreat.
Instead, the remark won her a laugh. ‘You are beautiful and insightful, Principessa. I can see now why my mother thought you’d be a delightful addition to our party.’ He offered his arm. ‘Come walk with me and tell me how you find our part of the world. In exchange, I’ll show you the portrait gallery, it’s just up ahead. If you’d kept going, you would have run into it.’
Her mouth went dry at the request. Any other girl in the ballroom would have craved such an opportunity. But to her, it was a reminder of how real