“Who is the latest wonderful obsession?” Aidan insisted.
Stuart didn’t bother evading the truth this time. “I don’t know.” It sounded idiotic even to him, so he tried again. “I just don’t know her.”
* * * * *
Lady Grey’s box was on the left side of the Grand Tier, which gave Stuart a somewhat strained view of the stage but a perfect vantage point from which to examine everyone else in every other box along the tier except those right beside him. He could also see into the boxes on the balcony level across the way. In the last few minutes of the interval Stuart managed to step into a bare acquaintance’s box on the other side of the auditorium. Just before the lights went down, he studied each face in the boxes next to his own. Both levels. Then, frustration curling through him, he ran his gaze over the lower and upper slips, right up by the roof.
None of the glowing, jewelled women in the audience was Bian.
Troubled, he made his way back around to Lady Grey’s box and his waiting seat. Where was Bian? Had something happened to her?
He could barely concentrate on the drama playing out below him after that. Opera tended to drain his patience at the best of times. He was considering making his excuses and leaving, when Lady Grey beckoned to him with a lift of her chin and a tiny motion with her fan. Stuart dutifully sat on the seat beside her and she leaned closer to him.
“I presume, young Stuart, that you are attending Lord Dumfrey’s post-opera gathering? That was the reason you were suddenly driven to call upon me this afternoon, was it not?”
The after-opera party. Relief flooded through him. He had been in the East far too long, it seemed. He had forgotten this annual, eagerly anticipated event in the calendar of London society. In truth, he had rarely participated even before his posting to Canton. He looked down at Lady Grey’s haughty face and lied without a quiver. “I’m afraid you’ve seen right through me, Lady Grey. You will forgive me?”
“If you will help this old lady into and out of her carriage and up Dumfrey’s formidable front steps, I will.”
* * * * *
Dumfrey’s house was already filled with guests by the time Stuart had Lady Grey safely inside the grand front foyer. After finally being able to make his excuses and leaving her in the company of one of her many friends, Stuart made a strategic round of the public rooms, looking for Bian.
He could not even enquire after her. He didn’t know any of her acquaintances at this affair and he knew no facts about her other than her address and her first name. In order to find her, he would have to keep circling through these rooms until he happened to spot her. There were new guests arriving all the time, filling the rooms with more faces to check…
After three rounds, Stuart began to feel the depth of his foolishness. He headed for the punch table by the conservatory. He’d heard in passing that the punch at this table was the one laced with a fifty-year-old brandy. Fortification would help him face the truth—that he had no proof she had even attended the opera, let alone this gathering of the elite of London.
He was not just a fool. He was an idiot.
Bian was standing by the punchbowl, a crystal cup in her hands.
Stuart found himself brought up short by her appearance. She was staring at him, her eyes wide and her breasts rising and falling, as if he had startled her as much as she had startled him. Her gown was fashionably low in the neck, showing off the beauty of her flesh, the lush richness of her breasts. The dark purple satin of her dress was the perfect frame.
His groin tightened with a high, sweet ache he knew all too well. But over it, drowning it, was a rich delight at seeing her again.
She was the most beautiful woman he had ever met. He wanted to spend time with her. Actually with her, not merely seducing her.
He took a step toward her and was saved from completely and utterly embarrassing himself by Andrew Thorsby sailing into the room, his eye on the punch bowl, until he saw Stuart and changed direction with a big grin on his plain face.
Thorsby thumped Stuart on the shoulder, giving him a reason for looking away from Bian. With something close to relief, Stuart turned to face the man. Relief? He tucked that startling reaction away to consider later, as he shook Thorsby’s hand.
Thorsby was a bore of the first water and a hypocrite besides. Stuart had arrived at that conclusion through hard experience—he and Thorsby had attended Cambridge at the same time. But Stuart forced himself to smile, anyway.
“Sutherland-Bruce, you old dog,” Thorsby said. “Back from China, eh? What’s it been? Three years you’ve been rattling about the halls of diplomacy in that wilderness?”
Stuart glanced at the punchbowl. She had gone. A sharp sensation, almost one of pain, speared his chest. Just disappointment, he assured himself quickly. He took a deep breath. “I was sorry to hear about your father…my Lord,” he added.
Thorsby waved away the acknowledgment with a languid movement. “It was past his time. Although I hear you two chaps haven’t sorted out your inheritance yet.”
Pure annoyance grabbed at Stuart’s gut. It was this sort of callousness that had always made him wary of Thorsby, even before he’d had direct proof of the man’s lack of character. He smiled at Thorsby sourly. “No, my father hasn’t yet managed to shuffle off this mortal coil,” he replied.
Thorsby’s eyes widened a little in response, then they cut away to Stuart’s left and widened even more. His lips parted.
“There you are, Stuart. You promised me a tour of the conservatory, remember?” Bian’s voice was deliciously low and controlled and with beautiful diction. He didn’t need the glimpse of purple from the corner of his eye to know it was her. His gut, his heart, his whole body, seemed to leap in response to her low question and in response to the realization that she was intervening, that she had recognized his discomfort.
He swivelled to face her. “Please forgive me. I was…delayed.”
She smiled at him. Her eyes danced. “I haven’t yet had the pleasure of meeting the reason for your delay,” she told him. She looked up at Thorsby, who was still staring.
“Shut your mouth, Thorsby,” Stuart said.
Thorsby shut it with an audible snap.
Stuart held his hand out toward Bian, intending to introduce her. Then his mind came to a jumbled halt. He had no idea who she was, yet he must introduce her to Thorsby first, despite his rank, as she was the lady. “This is Lady—” he began, desperately.
Bian didn’t even glance at him. She held her hand out to Thorsby. “I am Bian,” she said.
Even Thorsby did not fail to notice the absence of the usual “Lady” before her name, for his brows lifted and he hesitated a slight fraction of a heart beat before reaching out for her hand and nodding shortly over it.
While Thorsby was offended by her lack of status, Stuart was merely intrigued. She had every hallmark of a great lady. Her upright carriage and grace made her more of a lady than many women in the hall. Her diction and manners bespoke gentry. But Thorsby would not see that.
Stuart completed the introduction. “Bian, please meet the Most Honourable Andrew Thorsby, the new Marquess of Thorsby, Baron of Ipswich…did I miss any, my Lord?”
Thorsby nodded again to Bian, then glanced at Stuart. “A couple but they’re not worth mentioning, anyway.” He turned back to Bian. Confirming Stuart’s prediction, he drew himself upright. “I’m not familiar with your antecedents, Bian,” he said stiffly.
“I would be extremely surprised if you were,” Bian shot back. She merely smiled at Thorsby as the snob blinked away his shock.
Stuart hid his own smile. Oh, what a delight she was! It was rare to see Thorsby’s ignorance pierced deeply enough to make him uncomfortable.
Thorsby came at it another way. “Then you are an invited guest of Lord Dumfrey…?” He let the question trail off with an upward note, making it as clear as he could that he wanted to know what on earth a commoner was doing mingling with Dumfrey’s guests.
“A
ctually, I just met Lord Dumfrey. Lovely fellow, isn’t he?”
Thorsby sharply inhaled his brandy, then spluttered most of it back onto his stiff white cuff. He coughed and thumped at his chest, turning red in the face.
Stuart held back his own laugh with effort. Thorsby would find her describing a high ranking member of the peerage a “lovely fellow” outrageous.
Thorsby stared at her, the red of his face deepening and Stuart felt a touch of alarm. He rested his fingers against her elbow, trying to make it look casual, then squeezed a little. It was all the warning he could manage.
Bian did not even glance at him. Her smile stayed fixed in place as she spoke again. “I accompanied the Marquess of Harrington and Lady Beaugard. We met at Windsor.”
“Town?” Thorsby said sharply.
“Castle,” Bian returned.
Even Stuart blinked at that one. Since the Queen had virtually retired to Windsor after the death of her husband, only the most important and influential lords found themselves in audience with her. Stuart had yet to meet her and he knew that Thorsby had only met her once, during his formal investiture as the Marquess.
“Indeed,” Thorsby said at last. He had been neatly out-manoeuvred by Bian’s references. “I didn’t realize that Lord Harrington was here tonight. I must pay my respects. Do you know where I might find him?”
It was a poor attempt at bluffing her. Thorsby had been out-classed by the lady he towered over and all three of them knew it.
“Richard is in the smoking salon, with Lord Dumfrey, I believe.” Bian bowed her head. “It was a pleasure meeting you, Lord Thorsby.”
Thorsby grunted and hurried away.
Stuart let loose his laughter as he turned to face Bian. “That was perfect,” he told her. His mirth faded. She really was the most lovely woman he’d ever met. “Thank you for saving me.”
“My pleasure.”
“How did you know?”
“Your face is very expressive.” She smiled and it seemed to light the room. “You were not the only one observing tonight.” Her cheeks dimpled with mischief and her eyes twinkled. “I, at least, pretended to be serving myself a glass of punch.”
“What were you observing?” Stuart pressed. He would learn more about her if it killed him.
“You.”
“You have been watching me search for you?” he asked. “You let me make a fool of myself circling around this mausoleum, while you watched?”
“I did not see you until you came into this room.” She tilted her head a little, looking up at him as if she were measuring him. “You were searching for me?”
He realized he had exposed himself. “You make a habit of observing, Bian?” he returned stiffly.
“Sometimes watching can be very profitable, especially among these people.” She waved her gloved hand back over her shoulder, toward the rest of the household. “Her Highness urged me to do so whenever “
“My God, you really have met with the Queen!” The words shot from him as he properly interpreted what she was saying.
She did not seem to mind his interruption. Again, she tilted her head to study him curiously. “Did you think I was lying?”
“I think… you’re capable of it. You let Thorsby think we were close friends.”
“You played along with it. Doesn’t that make you as much a liar as me?” She put her hands behind her back, like a small schoolgirl reporting to her head mistress. “Do I not get my tour of the conservatory now?”
The linking of her hands behind her back had a remarkable effect on her décolletage. Stuart found his gaze drawn there, yanked there and held with invisible pincers, despite the fact that as a gentleman, he never looked directly at a lady’s chest in public. He could feel his heart begin to beat with the old excitement that came from the type of hunt he preferred. Was she doing it deliberately? Her breasts were pushed toward him, lifted up by the heavy boning of her corset and almost offered to him. She was petite but her breasts were lush, coffee-cream globes.
He wrenched his gaze away and looked into her eyes. The same amusement was sparkling there and he knew she had done it deliberately.
She was testing him.
Had she been testing him all along?
But now she had moved the game onto pleasurable territory he considered his own. He relaxed and smiled at her, feeling more sure of himself. “I would be honoured to guide you through Lord Dumfrey’s famed conservatory,” he said, holding out his arm.
Chapter Three
Bian slipped her hand under Stuart’s arm and realized that she was trembling.
From the safety of Windsor Castle, becoming intimate with Stuart Sutherland-Bruce had seemed to be no great challenge. Certainly not something she hadn’t already accomplished at least once before.
He was quite tall. And he had very blond hair, almost white—also unusual to her. But it was his eyes that were the most remarkable. They were very blue and had a way of looking right through her…
She wrenched her mind back to the duties Richard had assigned her and took another deep breath. So far, she had been successful. She knew she had managed to jolt Stuart Sutherland-Bruce’s complacency. She had shocked him.
Now she needed to keep him off-balance. It would be a challenge but not one she hadn’t accepted before. This man would prove to be no different from others, she told herself firmly.
She smiled up at him as he pushed open the glass doors that swung onto the famed conservatory. All the gas lights were lit around the edges of the large glass building and there were lamps dotting the major pathways among the greenery. It was a delightful room…and a perfect location for lovers.
Pleased, Bian allowed Stuart to lead her along the primary stone pathway, holding aside large fern leaves and branches for her, until they reached the centre. Here, the path widened into a small paved circle. In the middle stood a tall lamp. Beneath it was a cast iron bench adorned with tapestry cushions for pampered bottoms.
They came to a mutual halt beside the bench. Stuart looked at her, his eyes narrowed speculatively.
Bian was familiar with that expression. She had seen it upon other male faces and knew what it presaged. So she glanced to her left and gave a delighted cry. “Why, a Dau Cat!” She dropped his arm, stepped around the bench and moved over to the opposite edge of the clearing.
There was a man-high bush there with vivid pink coloured flowers with elongated stamens and she touched them gently.
“A…what?” Stuart asked, coming up behind her. She could feel the warmth of his body radiating against her shoulder.
“Dau Cat,” she repeated. “I think it has another name here.” She frowned. “Is it...Fuchsia?”
“I have no idea,” he replied easily. “I don’t spend my time in conservatories studying the flowers.”
She laughed lightly. “This is only the second conservatory I’ve ever stepped into, so I supposed you could say that I do study the flowers. The first time I was picking roses for Queen Victoria, who wanted a particular yellow one.”
“You haven’t been in England long, have you?” It was an unexpected question, a complete departure from the conversational directional she had been trying to lead it.
She turned to face him. “On the contrary. I grew up here.”
“Yet you’ve only been in two conservatories. Did you grow up poor?”
She laughed to hide her true reaction. This man was clever. She had to watch herself more carefully. “I don’t think we were considered poor. I was educated at Cambridge University.”
He was visibly surprised by this. “Which college?” he said sharply.
“Oh, Girton, of course. Newnham is just a little bit too new, don’t you think?”
“I suppose so,” he said slowly. “I studied at Cambridge, you know.”
“Yes.” She smiled at him again, enjoying the secondary wave of shock on his face.
“What are you doing?” he murmured, studying her.
“I thought we were ta
lking.”
He shook his head. “Are you trying to confuse me deliberately? You say you grew up here, yet you name plants with foreign names. ‘I think it has another name here,’ is what you said. That’s something people would say if they’ve only recently arrived here.”
Damn. She stared at him, her pulse racing. Oh, she had been far too lax with this one. “People who have just arrived in England would say something like ‘we call this Dau Cat. I don’t know what they call it here.’ I didn’t say that.”
“But you did imply that you know what it is called somewhere else better than what you know it to be called here in England. That means you’ve lived elsewhere…and for long enough to be more familiar with that foreign name.”
She nodded. “Vietnamese. Dau Cat is Vietnamese. I was born there and lived the first eight years of my life there, until I came to live in England where I grew up. And since finishing my studies at Cambridge, I have spent most of my time overseas.”
He took a deep breath. She watched his chest lift and fall. Relief? Fury? It was hard to tell and that was a frightening thought. She always could tell what a man was thinking. Richard had called it mind-reading and had used her gift as he needed to.
Stuart brought his hand up to her face and for the first time she really appreciated how much bigger than her he really was. His hand felt so large against her face. His thumb touched the corner of her eye. It was a simple brush that left a sweep of tingling, sparkling flesh behind and made her shudder.
“You are not fully Vietnamese,” he said softly.
Her eyes. He was talking about her un-English eyes. Her heart beat hard, for the question that naturally followed such an observation was one she would not answer.
But instead he wrapped his hands around her waist and smiled as the tips of his fingers and thumbs met. “You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen,” he told her. He brought her toward him with his hands and lowered his head. She thought, perhaps, he would kiss her but his lips instead pressed gently against the flesh of her upper breast. “I don’t care who you are. You are a princess to me.”
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