Page 79 of Cora
“Might I inquire what you two are whispering about?” Lysander asked. He was trailed by two men. Cora recognized one, Lord Silas Huntley. The other man was a stranger to her, though he looked vaguely familiar.
Honey’s mouth snapped closed loudly enough for Cora to hear her teeth click. Her cheeks turned red like two summer roses blossoming. She gaped at the unknown man.
Then, in a breathtakingly rude and wholly uncharacteristic move, she turned on her heel and stalked away.
Cora eyed the newcomer, who watched Honey go with astonishment.
“Lord Pindell, my wife, Cora Wentworth,” Gideon said by way of introduction. Ah, that explained the familiarity of the newcomer.
“I was once acquainted with your parents,” she said. Pindell would have likely been away at school during her disgrace, and he’d likely spent time abroad in the interim. “She isn’t always this rude,” Cora explained. “Honey is a little put out.”
“Not with you, I trust?”
“Not with me, no. Nor you.”
Gideon captured her hand and brushed a kiss across her knuckles.
“Newlyweds,” Pindell groaned.
“Not that new anymore,” Gideon said. Cora gave him a secret smile, and his eyes crinkled at the corners. Soft warmth melted those brown depths. Her stomach flipped.
“I hope we still feel like newlyweds a decade from now,” she murmured.
“Five decades from now,” Gideon countered. Scandalously, he slipped his arms around her waist and brushed a kiss on her cheek. “You will still be my beautiful bride in fifty years.”
“Shall I leave you alone?” Huntley said, then prodded Pindell in the ribs. “Come on. Let’s go and chase down a wife for you. Miss Kingston won’t wait long.”
“Max already took my choice. Hardly sporting of him to marry your ward simply because I liked her,” Pindell grumbled as the men sauntered in Miss Kingston’s direction. “Not at all fair. He had years to do anything other than scowl at Emma. Didn’t court her properly at all.”
“Oh dear, we chased them off.” Cora leaned into the solid wall of her husband’s body.
“Good. Now I have you all to myself.”
He dropped a kiss along her jaw, a scandalous display of affection in public. Cora chuckled and eased out of his grasp. “I had better go and find out what happened to Isabelle. The poor girl is as nervous as a rabbit being chased by a pack of hounds.”
Gideon released her with reluctance, his movements promising a continuation of the kiss he’d given her once they were home later that evening.
Cora searched the ballroom, but Isabelle’s bright hair was nowhere to be found. She did spy Lysander’s unruly mane, akin to a lion’s, clustered with Max and Lord Pindell, and a few other men. One separated himself from their group and sauntered out onto the balcony.
The French doors closed behind him.
Odd.
Frowning, Cora went to it and nudged the heavy curtain aside to find the handle. She pushed the double doors open with a solid shove.
“Shit,” a man swore behind her. Cora blinked. Heat at her back as the men crowded around her to peer at the scene.
Lord Silas Huntley was kissing Isabelle Kingston. The sight was more comical than shocking, though surprise jolted her at the unexpected sight of him bent forward, his face captured between her palms, with a startled expression. Eyes wide open.
He made a sound and pulled away violently enough to make Isabelle stagger. Uncertainty and triumph shone in her bright blue eyes.
“This is not what it looks like,” stammered Huntley. “I barely know her. I had just come outside—I didn’t know she was here.”
“What is happening?” Esther, Isabelle’s mother, pushed her way to the front of the crowd. Her eyes widened. “What did you do to my daughter?”
“Nothing,” Silas declared. “I didn’t know she was going to fling herself at me.”
“Nonsense. Isabelle is the brightest star of the Season. She has no reason to throw herself at a man when she can have her choice of husbands!”
Isabelle flinched. She wrung her hands and refused to meet her mother’s eye.
Cora blew out a breath. “Some sponsor I turned out to be,” she said wryly to her brother.
“Silas is a cunning man. Knows what he wants and goes after it. Guess he wanted to get himself leg-shackled.”
The man in question blanched. He glared at Isabelle and shoved his way out, the crowd parting before him.
Isabelle watched him go with such pained longing in her eyes that not a soul could have missed it.
* * *
