Page 11 of Burning Secrets of a Lady's Pen
Run from the dinner back home.
Get run over by fifty carriages with elephants leading the rear.
Anything but look into his tawny eyes and revisit that hurt that she had locked away inside of her for the last two years.
“I’ll escort you,” Corin said, his tone brokering no argument as he held his arm out.
Imelda stared at it, and then at him, her temper rising with the thought that he, a married man, dared to try and have her bend to his whims.
“I need to go and powder my nose,” she finished frostily, turning on her heel and going to walk off…only to stop and realize that she had no idea where the powder rooms were in relation to where they stood.
“I’d be happy to show you to them,” Corin called dryly from behind her.
Imelda closed her eyes, taking a steadying breath before turning back with her nose in the air. “I suppose I could do without,” she said primly.
She fought very hard not to look at him as she took his arm and followed his lead in toward the dining room. If she could just slip away…
“Ah, what luck,” Corin said, no hint of any emotion in his voice. “It seems we are seated next to one another.”
Luck?
Imelda thought that was anything but.
Was it too late to be trampled by elephants?
Her heart stuttered in her throat as Corin pulled her chair out for her, pushing her up to the table and effectively trapping her before taking his seat at her side.
She could feel the effusive heat of him all along her, his body so close to hers that it had to be indecent. It felt indecent, or maybe that was just her. Her and her memories of how his hands had once strayed during dinner. Innocent touches that felt anything but.
Just a seat away, Spencer was happily engaging Charlotte in conversation, completely oblivious to Imelda even existing.
“Your aunt has a very fine estate, Lord Salthouse.” Imelda tried to keep it impersonal, the kind of conversation one would expect to overhear two recently introduced strangers having. She didn’t want anyone to guess at the tension between them, but she could hardly keep her tone anything but icy, either.
“She does, though I gather you didn’t know she was my aunt before seeing me here tonight,” Corin answered with a strange note in his voice. Was that remorse? An apology?
Imelda flashed back to the image of him standing on her doorstep back home, his tawny eyes full of apology as he announced his betrothal, and her heart felt as if she had pierced it with the cutlery laid out in front of her.
“I didn’t,” she answered shortly, trying to dismiss that image from her head.
“I didn’t know you were going to be attending tonight,” Corin continued, that same note in his voice still. “Or that you were in London at all. It’s been, what, two years?”
Did he really not know? Was that an actual question?
Imelda couldn’t look at him to tell, her throat closing up as she stared stoically ahead.
“How have you been, Im—Miss Merrit?”
The near slip of his tongue put Imelda’s back up even further.
“Fine,” Imelda answered curtly. She’d been fine. Not mourning after him if that was what he had wanted. Not going to waste in her room dreaming about all of what could have been or the promises that he had made.
She took a slow, steadying breath, trying to rein herself in.
She could do this.
It was one dinner.
She just had to make it through dinner, and then she could get Spencer or her aunt to see how much she needed to leave and—
