She stood straight at last, flushing the embarrassed pink he knew by heart. “Could you check it? It’s the part in the back just next to the train. I can’t twist around quite far enough to see it.”

“Of course,” he replied. He crouched at her feet like a supplicant, his eyes not seeing her dress. The position gave him another welcome few seconds to hide his face for fear of what his expression would show her.

He took another deep breath, then cleared his throat as he stood slowly. “Your gown is fine. You look very nice.”

He still couldn’t trust himself to say more, or even to meet her eye. He pretended to check the arrangement of his cravat again in the glass.

At the edge of the glass, he could just see Julia’s reflection. She lifted her chin and smiled at his lukewarm compliment, cool and proud, looking for all the world like a princess.

“Thank you,” she said, sounding not quite like her usual self.

He turned to face her again, his face schooled into what he thought was a look of normal, friendly interest. “Why were you so worried about your dress?”

She grinned at him — her regular, everyday Julia grin — and its brightness hit him like a punch in the gut. He pitied the poor bachelors who would soon be vying for her hand.

“I’m just nervous,” Julia admitted, the self-deprecating grin still on her face. “It’s my first real ball, you know.” The grin crumpled, and she shuffled one of her dainty slippers on the floor. “Even so, I suppose I’ve let myself dwell too much on things I shouldn’t.”

James allowed himself to place one finger under her chin and tip her face up to his. Even through his glove, he could feel the heat of her smooth skin. “I know the feeling you mean,” he whispered huskily.

Her lips parted as if to reply — and of course she had a reply, because she always had a reply — and he drew his fingertip up to cover her lips for a moment. He’d never allowed himself such a liberty before, and he swore to himself that he never would again.

Probably.

“No protests,” he said, using mock seriousness to hide his deadly earnestness. “I simply must have a dance tonight.”

“Of course,” Julia replied softly, her eyes wide and fixed upon his. “As many as you like.”

She blinked and laughed suddenly. “In fact, please watch over me throughout the ball, and come to rescue me with that dance if I prove to be too unpopular. I would hate to be a wallflower, tonight of all nights.”

It was too much. She was actually asking him to watch her all evening and seize her for dance after dance. Good Lord, he wasn’t a magician who could just. . not be made of flesh for several hours. He had obviously gone soft in the head, and how he was going to get through this evening without making an utter ass of himself, he wasn’t sure.

Luckily for his presence of mind, Lady Irving marched down the stairs just then and drew all attention to herself. Her ladyship was resplendent in ruby satin and sporting an unusually garish brocaded, bejeweled, and ostrichplumed violet turban on her head.

“Let’s go,” she commanded, thumping James on the back with an imperious hand. “I want Lady Alleyneham to see me with this. . this thing on my head before my curls are completely crushed.”

Noting her niece’s gaping mouth, she explained, “Ever since we were girls together, Sylvia has copied me in everything, so I must have my bit of fun. I’ll take this off as soon as we greet her, but ten to one the silly creature will be sporting a plumed violet turban for her next at-home.”

James was amazed to see her literally rub her hands together in anticipation, and he couldn’t honestly call her laugh anything but a cackle.

“Will Louisa be ready soon?” James asked smoothly, pretending he hadn’t heard a word.

Guilt stabbed through him. Once again, he knew there was a God, because there wasn’t a mind reader in this house. No one but he would know what a cursed fool he was.

“Oh, she’s not coming. Didn’t you know?” Lady Irving said distractedly, gazing at her reflection in the much-used pier glass and prodding at the arrangement of her ostrich plumes. “Sick headache, or some such nonsense. If you ask me, all that girl needs is a good—”

She broke off suddenly, darting her gaze at James, then meeting Julia’s puzzled eyes in the glass, and said, “Well, never mind what she needs. Anyway, we’re free to leave anytime. Is your carriage waiting, Matheson? Come, Julia, my girl; gather your wrap and things.”

“But I should go to Louisa,” Julia interjected. “I didn’t know she wasn’t feeling well. Maybe I should speak to her, or even stay home with her tonight if she’s ill.”

Her expression was so worried that James’s heart turned over in sympathy. Feeling even guiltier that he hadn’t spoken up first, he, too, made an offer. “Certainly we can spare all the time needed for you to run up to your sister. In fact, I’d like to speak with her myself. She seemed well the last time I saw her. I hope it is nothing serious.”

“Don’t bother,” Lady Irving said, as she collected her wrap and began to walk toward the street door. “Either one of you. She told Simone that she was going to lie down, and she didn’t wish to be disturbed at all this evening. By anyone, and that includes both of you. And she said to have a wonderful time and not worry about her.”

She noticed neither James nor Julia was following her, turned on her heel, and looked expectantly from one face to another. “What are you two waiting for? An order? Very well, I order you to follow me, get in the carriage, and come have a marvelous time this evening. Heaven knows, if Louisa is ill, she will have a much better time here at home than getting overheated in the middle of a crowd of shoving nincompoops. And if she doesn’t want company, which she doesn’t, then you will have a much better time at the ball than you would fluttering around her, plaguing the life out of her, and getting no thanks for it.”

Faced with such logic, James allowed some of his guilt to melt away. Louisa should be here at his side. He knew that. But if she didn’t want to be there, he still could accompany her relatives. It was perfectly proper to do so.

He met Julia’s eyes and shrugged. “Cinderella must go to the ball,” he joked lamely, willing her to agree.

Julia bit her lip nervously and glanced upstairs toward Louisa’s chamber.

“It feels wrong,” she murmured.

James said something sympathetic as he took her arm and led her out to his carriage, but he wasn’t sure if he meant it.

He was too far gone. The only thing that felt wrong, at all, was how right it felt to have her hand on his arm.

Chapter 19. In Which the Viscount Eventually Dances


The turban was an immediate success.

Lady Alleyneham, Charissa’s mother, stared with covetous eyes at Lady Irving’s dazzling headdress. Lady Irving pretended not to notice, patting her violet monstrosity absently as she made Louisa’s excuses.

“Of course, she’ll call on you at your next at-home to deliver her regrets in person,” Lady Irving said with a feline smile. “As the season’s begun in earnest, I’m sure you’ll have new garments for the occasion, if I know you, my dear. You are always so elegant.”

Next to her aunt, Julia reeled. Lady Irving had spent the entire carriage ride to Alleyneham House nattering about The Affair of the Turban, as Julia now thought of it. Now that her ladyship had triumphed over her foes — or more accurately, her friends — Julia hoped she could be left alone in silence for a few blessed seconds. Just enough time to come to terms with the fact that Louisa wasn’t here.

And James was.

But before Julia could slip away in search of a quiet place to think, her aunt seized her by the elbow and began steering her into the ballroom, hailing a series of friends and acquaintances as she strode.

“Might as well get all the use I can out of this creation,” she muttered, giving her plumed turban another pat as she nodded to an elderly nobleman. “Good evening, Haverley. Am I not looking ravishing this evening?”

The countess turned to James with a dazzling smile. “Well, we’ll see you later on, Matheson. Perhaps at supper. I’m sure you want to find the card room, or whatever it is that unnecessary young gentlemen do during balls when they’re not dancing.”

Julia’s mouth dropped open. James was her lifeline; her aunt couldn’t send him away. James looked taken aback, too, and seemed about to reply, but Lady Irving waved a dismissive hand at him and began to drag Julia away in her talon-like grip.

“He can’t do you any good this evening, my girl, as he’s already taken,” she explained in a voice that was not nearly quiet enough, considering the number of people pressing against Julia and carrying her away from James. Two dozen perfect strangers, at least, could hear Lady Irving barking out orders. “We need to find Sir Stephen for you at once, or perhaps that Pellington fellow. Remember what I told you — rich and titled. You’ve got to keep your eye on the prize.”

This was utter humiliation. Julia’s thoughts were still in a tumble from Louisa’s sudden illness, and now her aunt was telling half of London that she was on the hunt for a husband.

She began glancing at her surroundings, trying to pretend she didn’t know the strange and magnificent woman prodding her in the arm. It was difficult to see much of the ballroom around the crowd of people. Truly, this event would achieve the triumph of being called a mad crush with no exaggeration whatsoever. The size of the room alone was imposing; to Julia’s unaccustomed eyes, there seemed to be hundreds of people milling about within its walls.

Peering through the crowds of hot, jostling, elegantly dressed people, she could catch glimpses of a polished dance floor already occupied by what looked like dozens of couples winding their way through the ball’s opening minuet. A thicker crowd at one end of the long ballroom indicated the probable location of the refreshments.

The nervousness she’d felt earlier in the evening began to twist through her body again. It choked her throat, made her stomach clench, and caused her feet to feel heavy and clumsy as her aunt pulled her around the ballroom in search of someone with a fat bankroll. James had long since vanished in the crowd, and Julia couldn’t spot Charissa either. Without friendly faces around, the crush and the crowd and the scramble for partners lost their magic and excitement.

Simone had been wrong this evening, completely wrong. Julia couldn’t hold her chin high and pretend that she loved it here. She was just one of a surplus of inexperienced girls in fancy dresses, and she was hardly the richest, prettiest, or wittiest of the bunch. Yet here she was in London, tasked with finding a husband, grasp and scuttle though she must.

Just as she was beginning to wish she were back in the Grosvenor Square house with Louisa, she felt a gentle touch at her elbow. The one not currently being wrenched by her aunt.

She twisted in Lady Irving’s grasp to see Sir Stephen’s smiling countenance behind her.

“Sir Stephen,” she greeted him, curtsying. This drew Lady Irving’s attention, and the countess again switched on her most dazzling smile.

“Sir Stephen,” she echoed, and gave him her hand to kiss. “How delightful to see you. Are you just arrived? Have you had the chance to dance yet?” She raised her arched eyebrows expectantly and looked back and forth from him to her niece.

Julia could have sworn the ostrich plumes on Lady Irving’s turban bobbed from one of them to the other as if colluding in her aunt’s effort to throw her at the baronet. She supposed her aunt could have been more obvious if she had commanded Sir Stephen to dance with, ravish, or wed Julia on the spot (all would probably do equally well, in Lady Irving’s mind), but really, this was embarrassing enough.

Fortunately, Sir Stephen picked up the unmistakable hint. “Indeed I have recently arrived, and have only just finished greeting our host and hostess. I have not yet had the opportunity to dance, but would be most grateful if Miss Herington would do me the honor of accompanying me in the next set.”

His eyes turned from Lady Irving to Julia herself. His smile was kind and genuine, as always. Dependable and reliable; that was Sir Stephen.

She wished she could feel as excited about the proffered dance as her aunt apparently did; Lady Irving was practically quivering with her eagerness to throw Julia at the baronet’s feet.