It was like looking into a mirror-they both had hazel eyes. When he looked into hers, he usually saw his own thoughts and feelings, reflected over and again, into infinity.
Not today. Today all he saw was a definite defensive-ness-a shield shutting her off from him. Protecting her from him.
He blinked, breaking the contact. With a curt nod, which she returned, he swung on his heel and strode off.
Slowing as he neared the edge of the lawn, he wondered what he would have done if she'd offered her hand. That unanswerable question led to the thought of when last he'd touched her in any way. He couldn't remember, but it was certainly not in the last decade.
He crossed the street, wriggling his shoulders as his peculiar tension drained; he called it relief at being out of her presence, but it wasn't that. It was the reaction-the one he'd never understood but which she evoked so strongly-subsiding again.
Until next they met.
Alathea watched him go; only when his boots struck the cobbles did she breathe freely again. Her nerves easing, she looked around. Beside her, Mary and Alice blithely chatted, serenely unaware. It always amazed her that their nearest and dearest never saw anything odd in their fraught encounters-other than themselves, only Lucifer saw, presumably because he'd grown up side by side with them and knew them both so well.
As her pulse slowed, elation bloomed within her.
He hadn't recognized her.
Indeed, after the total absence of his typical reaction to her when he'd met the countess last night, combined with the strong resurgence of it in the last hour, she doubted he'd ever make the connection.
This morning, she'd woken to the certain knowledge that it wasn't her physical self that he found so provoking. If he didn't know she was Alathea Morwellan, nothing happened. No suppressed irritation, no sparks, no clashes. Blissful nothing. Cloaked and veiled, she was just another woman.
She didn't want to dwell on why that made her feel so happy, as if a weight had suddenly lifted from her heart. It was clearly her identity that caused his problem-and it was, she now knew, his problem, something that arose first in him, to which she then reacted.
Knowing didn't make the outcome any easier to endure, but…
She focused on the wrought iron gates through which he had emerged. They were open to admit coaches to the courtyard of the Inn. She could see the Inn's archways and the glint of bronze plaques-it wasn't hard to guess the purpose of the plaques.
He'd seemed satisfied and confident when he'd strolled away from the gates.
Drawing in a determined, fully recovered breath, Alathea smiled at Mary and Alice. "Come, girls. Let's stroll about the Inn."
Evening came, and with it a strange restlessness.
Gabriel prowled the parlor of his house in Brook Street. He'd dined and was dressed to go out, to grace the ballroom of whichever tonnish hostess he chose to favor with his presence. There were four invitations from which to choose; none, however, enticed.
He wondered where the countess would spend her evening. He wondered where Alathea would spend hers.
The door opened; he paused in his pacing. His gentleman's gentleman, Chance, pale hair gleaming, immaculately turned out in regulation black, entered with the replenished brandy decanter and fresh glasses on a tray.
"Pour me one, will you?" Gabriel swung away as Chance, short and slight, headed for the sideboard. He felt peculiarly distracted; he hoped a stiff brandy would clear his mind.
He'd left Lincoln's Inn buoyed by his small success, focused on the countess and the sensual game unfolding between them. Then he'd met Alathea. Ten minutes in her company had left him feeling like the earth had shifted beneath his feet.
She'd been part of his life for as long as he could remember; never before had she shut him out of her thoughts. Never before had she been anything but utterly free with her opinions, even when he'd wished otherwise. When they'd met in January, she'd been her usual open, sharp-tongued self. This afternoon, she'd shut him out, kept him at a distance.
Something had changed. He couldn't believe his comments had made her defensive; it had to be something else. Had something happened to her that he hadn't heard about?
The prospect unsettled him. He wanted to focus on the countess, but his thoughts kept drifting to Alathea.
Reaching the room's end, he swung around-and nearly mowed Chance down.
Chance staggered back-Gabriel caught his arm, simultaneously rescuing the brimming tumbler from the wildly tipping salver.
"Hoo!" Chance waved the salver before his unprepossessing visage. "That was a close one."
Gabriel caught his eye, paused, then said, "That will be all."
"Aye, aye, sir!" With cheery insouciance, Chance headed for the door.
Gabriel sighed. "Not 'Aye, aye'-a simple 'Yes, sir' will do."
"Oh." Chance paused at the door. "Right-oh, then. 'Yes-sir,' it is!"
He opened the door, and saw Lucifer about to enter-Chance stepped back, bowing and waving. "Come you right in, sir. I was just a-leaving."
"Thank you, Chance." Grinning, Lucifer strolled in. With unimpaired serenity, Chance bounced out-then remembered and returned to shut the door.
Closing his eyes, Gabriel took a large swallow of brandy.
Lucifer chuckled. "I told you it wouldn't simply be a matter of a suit of clothes."
"I don't care." Opening his eyes, Gabriel regarded the exceedingly large quantity of brandy in the tumbler, then sighed, turned, and sank into a well-stuffed armchair to one side of the hearth. "He'll become something employable if it kills him."
"Judging by his progress to date, it might kill you first."
"Quite possibly." Gabriel took another fortifying swallow. "I'll risk it."
Standing before the mantelpiece checking his own stack of invitations, Lucifer shot him a look. "I thought you were going to say you'd 'chance' it."
"That would be redundant-I am 'chancing' it. Precisely why I named him that."
Chance was not Chance's real name-no one, including Chance, knew what that was. As for his age, they'd settled on twenty-five. Chance was a product of the London slums; his elevation to the house in Brook Street had come about through his own merit. Caught up in the stews while helping a friend, Gabriel might not have made it out again but for Chance's aid, given not for any promise of reward, but simply in the way of helping another man with the scales weighted heavily and unfairly against him. Chance had, in a way, rescued Gabriel-Gabriel, in turn, had rescued Chance.
"Which have you chosen?" Lucifer looked from his invitations to the four lined up on Gabriel's side of the mantelpiece.
"I haven't. They all seem similarly boring."
"Boring?" Lucifer glanced at him. "You want to be careful of using that word, and even more of giving way to the feeling. Just look where it got Richard. And Devil. And Vane, too, come to think of it."
"But not Demon-he wasn't bored."
"He was running, and that didn't work, either." After a moment, Lucifer added, "And anyway, I'm sure he is bored now. He's not even sure they'll come up for any of the Season." His tone labeled such behavior incomprehensible.
"Give him time-they've only been married a week."
A week ago, Demon Harry Cynster, their cousin and a member of the group of six popularly known as the Bar Cynster, had said the fateful words and taken a bride, one who shared his interest in horse-racing. Demon and Felicity were presently making a prolonged tour of the major racecourses.
Nursing his brandy, Gabriel mused, "After a few weeks, or months, I dare say the novelty will wear off."
Lucifer threw him a cynical look. They were both well aware that when Cynsters married, the novelty did not, strange as it seemed, wear off at all. Quite the opposite. To them both, it was an inexplicable conundrum, however, as the last unmarried members of the group, they were exceedingly wary of having it explained to them.