Page 2 of Enticing Odds
He spoke the set-down as casually as he had when they were young.You ought to smile more, Cressida. It’s your fairest feature, so I’ve been told. You’ll never make an advantageous match with a dour look like that.
“How poorly you esteem your own sister,” she replied with equal flatness, for she knew he spoke not in jest, but the truth as he saw it.
He didn’t respond, his gaze still locked upon Miss Doussot.
He was enchanted.
Cressida narrowed her eyes, focusing on the lovely young woman as she seemed to float across the floor, taking her place for the upcoming dance. Her dress was an insipid pastel color, covered in ruffles, the skirts so full one couldn’t help but marvel at the sheer amount of silk packed into just one garment. Thenthe orchestra kicked up and the dancers set off, weaving about one another.
Cressida jerked her gaze away, then gently crossed her arms, resting her fan upon her chin as if deep in thought. Everything Cressida was, everything she possessed, had been won by her own efforts, through naught but her sheer force of will.
Frederick, by contrast, had been given everything. Anything he had ever desired. And yet he hadn’t even the decency to possess an amiable disposition. Terribly annoying, to see one so exceedingly spoiled. Well. She would not allow him this, at the very least. A meager balm it would be, but satisfying all the same.
“You should get on, then,” Cressida tutted. “I would think Miss Doussot’s card ought to be nearly full.”
He straightened up, visibly worried.
Cressida turned to leave. “Although, I shouldn’t think her much to your taste,” she said as she drifted away.
She heard his footsteps halt behind her, heard him clear his throat.
“And why not?”
“Just that one hears things. She’s of a poor constitution, I gather. Ill-suited to breeding.”
It wasn’t true, at least not as far as Cressida knew. But it suited her purpose, and she smiled slyly to herself, enjoying Frederick’s silence.
She turned about, feigning contrition.
“Oh no, I ought not to have said anything. Silly me! Sometimes I don’t know where my head is at. Please, you must have a marvelous time. Dance! I’m sure there are plenty of…fecundyoung ladies who would be grateful for your attentions, Frederick.”
And then Cressida smiled once more, wider, with only a hint of smugness.
Frederick looked haggard, a man who’d overdone the first decades of his life only to find that everything that had thrilled him before now came up short, but who was still desperate to grasp whatever fine thing was left to be had.
“Go on then,” she said brightly, urging him forth with her fan. “Pay me no heed.”
He paused as he weighed her words, his expression mirthless, before slowly descending the grand staircase.
Once he’d put enough distance between them, Cressida snapped her fan open and set to cooling herself.
How dearly she wished he’d step into the path of an omnibus and be crushed into the muck of the street, his irritating presence snuffed from her life as handily as her husband’s had been by rheumatic fever.
But at least she’d saved Miss Doussot from a fate similar to her own, with all the joy in her life sucked from her by the parasite that was Sir Frederick Catton.
Pathetic men, her brother and her husband. Never content with what they had. Always grasping, always clamoring for more.
The dreaded encounter with her execrable brother now behind her, Cressida threw herself back into her hosting duties—making her rounds about the ballroom, picking up delicious morsels of gossip, seeking out partners for wallflowers, offering lovely smiles and pointed remarks where needed. She far preferred the role of hostess to that of guest, for no one expected her to dance. She hated dancing. It was a terrible waste of one’s time; if she wanted a partner to clutch at her waist, she would seek out a more private assignation.
The proceedings continued without incident as she made her rounds. That is, until she entered the gaming parlor, where she spotted an unfamiliar man across the room.
She paused.
He was a handsome man. Alargeman, with sandy hair and a wide jaw. Spectacles. A doctor, wasn’t he? She recalled he’d arrived with a Mr. Thomas Rickard—neither of them on the guest list, both in passable dress but betrayed by the obvious relief that had passed across the larger one’s face when she did not have them tossed out onto the street. But of course she hadn’t done that.
After all, what was a ball without a measure of intrigue?
Well. Cressida certainly wouldn’t mind engagingthisfellow in a bit of intrigue; she could say that much from her vantage point. The hour was still early—who was to say what might transpire? She couldn’t help but smile. Bolstered by the thought, she sauntered forward.
