Chloe watched Hugo covertly. He and Lady Carrington were engaged in the most blatant flirtation. She glanced up at the marquis, who seemed completely untroubled by the rapport between his wife and Sir Hugo, indeed was laughing with them over some scandalous on-dit that Judith had whispered into Hugo's ear.
Chloe bit her lip, suddenly finding the conversation around her reduced to the inane chatter of a schoolroom. How could she ever hope to capture and keep Hugo's attention when such a chasm of experience divided them? Of course he would find Judith Devlin irresistible. Several of Judith's friends had joined the trio on the sofa, and to Chloe's jaundiced eyes and ears, they
seemed to be enjoying themselves twice as well as the younger party around her.
She stood up abruptly and addressed her chaperone. "Are you ready to leave, ma'am?"
"Goodness me." Lady Smallwood had been having a most interesting chat with Lady Isobel Henley over a plate of honey cakes and was startled at this abrupt question. "Do you wish to leave?"
"I should return to the house and see how Peg is," she said, searching desperately for something that would make her abrupt departure less discourteous. "The baby's due any day now, and I don't believe Mrs. Herridge is an experienced midwife."
"And you are, Miss Gresham?" inquired Marcus with a half-smile.
"Well, as to that, I've never delivered a human baby," Chloe said, distracted from her discomfiture by this interesting issue. "But I've helped to deliver a calf and a foal and a litter of puppies, and of course Beatrice had six kittens, so-" She stopped, aware that the senior half of the room was in fits of laughter while the younger members of the group were staring in total disbelief.
"Why is it funny?"
Hugo took pity on her. "It's not so much that it's funny, lass," he said. "It's just rather unusual."
"Oh, I see. Well, I must say good-bye, Lady Carrington. Thank you for the tea." She bowed to her hostess, wondering if Hugo would decide to come back with her. But apart from rising courteously as she made her farewells, he made no move to take his own leave, although her circle of admirers leapt to their feet and made their own farewells to their hostess.
Judith accompanied her to the door. "Let me know if I can be of any help with your protegee, Chloe," she said, kissing her cheek. "And don't take any notice of their
laughter. They're just overawed by your knowledge and don't know how else to react."
"I doubt that, ma'am, but I thank you for the kindness," Chloe said with a half-smile of comprehension. She left in the company of her attendants and Lady Smallwood.
"She's nowhere near as naive as she sometimes appears," Judith observed softly, sitting beside Hugo again. "But I daresay you've noticed that."
"I have," he agreed with a dry smile. "It's something she seems to be able to put on at will. The lass is very good at getting her own way without it seeming as if that's what she's doing."
Chloe, if she'd heard this conversation, would have profoundly disagreed with Hugo. It didn't seem as if in the only thing that mattered she was any closer to getting her own way. Hugo seemed to be his usual self, and yet increasingly he wasn't. Something indefinable was missing from his manner toward her. That very particular attention she had come to expect and to rely upon was blunted, if not completely absent.
She tried various means to regain his attention. She flirted outrageously with all and sundry and drew only laughing approval. She went out alone and bought herself the most dashing and sophisticated walking dress she could find. Hugo had simply laughed and challenged her to wear it in Hyde Park during the fashionable hour of the promenade.
Laughter, she found, was a much more potent weapon than opposition. The dress remained in the ar-moire.
The only area in which she sensed his close attention was in her friendship with Denis DeLacy. It wasn't obvious, but his eyes sharpened when Denis was in the house, and whenever she danced with him she could feel Hugo watching her. Was it that he realized she
found Denis more appealing than her other playful suitors? Did he sense another dimension to the relationship? It was certainly there; Denis was infinitely more amusing to be with-much more entertaining and sophisticated than the other cheerful young men at her feet.
Perhaps Hugo was disturbed by that extra dimension. Perhaps, despite his behavior, he was jealous. Of course he wouldn't admit it… to her or to himself… but perhaps that was the explanation.
If it was, then all was not lost. With great deliberation she began to single Denis out for ever more marked partiality.
Hugo watched the growing intimacy closely and after a while decided that Denis couldn't know the truth. If he did, he would have behaved differently in Hugo's company. Instead of his habitual open, straightforward manner, he would surely have shown some deviousness, some shiftiness. He was far too young and inexperienced to be able to keep such a secret under Hugo's skillful probing.
Having reached that conclusion, Hugo decided he had nothing to fear from the friendship, yet for some reason he remained uneasy.
Chapter 21
"You always said you didn't care for Almack's," Chloe said at the luncheon table when Hugo announced his intention of accompanying her to the Subscription Ball that evening.
"Oh, I don't mind," he said, carving a wafer-thin slice of ham. "Curiously, my memories of insipidity strike me as false. Perhaps my advanced years have softened me." He smiled down the table at her. Chloe lowered her eyes to her plate and toyed with a morsel of chicken.
"Well, I own I'm grateful, Hugo," Lady Smallwood declared, taking several mushroom tartlets from the basket in front of her. "It's been such a week of engagements, I'm quite fatigued. A quiet evening at home will be wonderful. I shall ask Alphonse to prepare me some of his crab patties and a Rhenish cream for dinner." She nodded with a contented little smile.
"I'm perfectly happy to chaperone Chloe, ma'am, so don't give it another thought."
He was perfectly happy to chaperone her, Chloe thought disconsolately, because he was perfectly happy to flirt and dance with half a dozen women all of whom seemed to light up when he walked into the room. They weren't all married women either. Lady Harley was a widow in her early thirties whom Hugo seemed to find very good company. And then there was Miss Anselm, who had never been married and was pronounced a bluestocking, but she and Hugo could talk for hours about music and he said she had the purest pitch. He would accompany her singing at the slightest opportunity and, even from her jaundiced perspective, Chloe had to admit that they complemented each other very well. Indeed, only the other day someone had commented in jocular fashion that it seemed as if her guardian was heading for the altar.
And to make matters worse, while he was always welcoming when she came to his room at night, he often seemed to be thinking of something else. Or someone else, she thought miserably.
"What are your plans for the afternoon, lass?" He interrupted her dismal musing.
"I don't have any."
"That's unusual." Hugo gave her a teasing smile. "No young men beating down the door for once?"
Chioe didn't respond to the smile or the comment, both of which she found supremely irritating.
"Perhaps you'd like a singing lesson," Hugo suggested. "We could practice the Irish melody by Moore that you liked so much."
"If you wish," she said.
"No, lass, if you wish."
It was one of Miss Anselm's favorite songs. Chloe decided she wasn't going to compete. She was trying to find an excuse that wouldn't sound childishly petulant, when Samuel came into the dining room.