Page 6 of Deceiving an Earl
“Lord Fairview.”
Good God, but her voice hit him like a ship being broadsided. Low and raspy. Not the high-pitched squeals of all the other girls he had met.
Miss Hillgrave was poised, holding herself straight and giving off an air of someone who was very comfortable in her own skin.
A waltz started up, and Oliver threw all caution to the wind. Later, he would find that Ellen had that effect on him. He lost all sense when he was near her.
“Would you care to dance?” he asked.
Both brows went up this time. “My dance card is full, I’m afraid.”
Oliver refused to let her see that this wounded him. “Of course,” he said smoothly. “Silly of me to think that there would be an available spot.”
The girls around her tittered, and he felt his face warm but kept his gaze steady on her. She was measuring him, sizing him up. He wondered what thoughts were going through her mind and found that he very much cared what she thought of him.
“Maybe some other time,” he said. “It was a pleasure to meet you.” He nodded at the other girls who were standing in a semicircle around Ellen. “Ladies.”
Even though it was one of the hardest things he’d done, he turned and walked away. He could feel Miss Hillgrave’s gaze upon his back. His shoulder blades itched with it, but he kept walking.
Pulled from his reminiscence by a smattering of polite applause, he opened his eyes to find that he’d missed the poetry reading entirely.
A plain, young woman with thick glasses and hair pulled so tightly it made her eyes slanted, stood, clutching a book to her chest, and blushed at the applause. She scurried away, pushing her glasses up her nose with the tip of her index finger.
People began moving around and talking.
Oliver spied Ellen in the front row. She leaned to her left and said something to the person sitting next to her. Oliver had to shift to the right and tilt his head to see to whom she was speaking. It was a gentleman with black hair liberally shot with gray and combed straight back. He was in a black jacket, and that was all Oliver could see of him.
Ellen whispered something in the man’s ear, leaning far too close for this to be a casual acquaintance. She smiled, and the man turned to look at her, revealing his profile to Oliver. He was older than Ellen. Why was Ellen attracted to the older men? Her husband had been twice her age when they’d wed. The man smiled down at her, and Oliver caught a flash of white teeth, eyes crinkled with laugh lines, a prominent nose.
Who is he?
Not an aristocrat. Oliver would know him if he was. A businessman? He wouldn’t put it past Ellen to allow a businessman to court her. Not that there was anything wrong with businessmen. He was one himself.
Society had changed. It used to be that businessmen were looked down upon by nobility. Part of the working class, nearly indistinguishable from the laborers. But, as he’d predicted long ago, times were changing. There were many businessmen far wealthier than nobles, who had been impoverished by vast estates that gobbled up any spare cash they might have.
People rose and talked quietly among themselves. Oliver stood there awkwardly. At the balls he attended there was always someone for him to talk to, but here there was no one. He had nothing in common with these people, and he wasn’t sure how to act.
“Did you enjoy the reading?”
Startled, he looked down at the woman who had been on the Chartist’s arm. What luck.
“I did,” he lied. “And you?”
Her lips twisted. “I don’t understand the attraction to his poetry.” She shrugged, and he confirmed that she was quite young. More his sister’s age. And she was French. “But people seem to enjoy it.”
“They do,” he agreed.
Her gown was cream-colored and off the shoulder. It would not have been appropriate for the societal events that he attended, but it looked good on her, hugging all her curves before dropping into a full skirt.
“I am Amelie Bertrand,” she said.
How was she related to Antoine Bertrand? She seemed far too young to be his wife, but Oliver couldn’t be sure.
“Oliver Armbruster,” he said, leaving off his title. Women sometimes acted strange about his title. They either coveted it or were frightened of it. Of course, all the women he met knew he was an earl. This anonymity was rather nice and besides, he wanted to get close to the man she was with and was afraid a title would scare him off.
“It is a pleasure meeting you, Mr. Armbruster.”
“Do you come to these salons often?” he asked.
