Page 17 of Lady Daring
Henrietta abandoned the courtesies. She couldn’t look at him, so fascinating, so forbidden. She took Marsibel’s elbow and marched them down the gallery, her antique panniers asway. She fled the notorious Lord Daring as Daphne did her Apollo, and unlike Daphne, she did not look back.
CHAPTER SIX
“Lord Daring!” Marsibel located her fan and applied it as she and Henrietta sought refuge in the expansive drawing room where the Ellesmeres’ guests chatted brightly among the ruins of ancient civilizations. “Heismore handsome in person.” Her voice dropped. “Do you suppose he has ruined Forsythia Pennyroyal?”
“My dear Miss Pomeroy, how fortunate that you had me as your escort,” Pinochle said. “I alone stood between you and the dreadful Lord Daring!”
Henrietta glared at him. Given the choice between Pinochle, the man who kept his depredations secret, and Lord Daring, whose were broadcast across town, she would choose the man who at least owned his faults. She cast about the room for recourse and spotted Lady Bess conversing with a group of elegant women. The countess spotted Pinochle, and her eyebrows rose.
“Miss Pomeroy.” Bess appeared beside them a moment later. “I was hoping to catch you. You won’t mind, Pinochle, if I steal this darling girl away?”
Pinochle turned brick red. He knew what else Lady Bess had stolen from him. Henrietta stopped breathing, fearful of what he might do.
But Bess was right; her influence, and her secret knowledge, cowed his lordship into silence. As she drew Marsibel away, she muttered to Henrietta, “Pinochle? Surely your aunt would not condone him.”
“I’m afraid every unmarried lord is in consideration at this point,” Henrietta muttered back.
“Never mind,” the countess said. “Come, Miss Pomeroy, let me introduce you to some friends of mine. Hetty will handle your suitor.”
Pinochle, relinquishing his prize with ill grace, stalked off without an acknowledgement to Henrietta. She wondered whether he had detected her gawping at the very elegant Lord Daring. Aunt Althea would have a thing or two to say about that. At least no one knew—yet—of their interlude in the Chapel Royal. Who could say what the consequences would be if Lord Daring chose to advertisethatevent?
Henrietta had nerves of steel, but the gossip apparently had her being a complete ninny at court, and she was wearing another outmoded, disastrous gown. If there were any Daughters of Minerva here tonight, they were not seeing her at her best. And if they were to judge her as Forsythia Pennyroyal had?—
Marsibel safe with Lady Bess and a circle of important-looking women, Henrietta dawdled among the artifacts, taking the chance to compose herself. So she lacked style and countenance. She was intelligent and—intelligent. And she had cast her lot this morning, starting the work she meant to continue. If Pinochle exposed her, she would have far more to bear than ridicule for her dress.
She stood regarding an elaborate funerary run when a deep voice sounded at her shoulder. “Everyone speaks of Roman influence, but I think the Etruscans drew more from the Greeks.”
She tossed up her head and met his smile of greeting, but his face held a shadow of caution, as if he were unsure how he might be received.
She had no wish to repulse him. He was the most fascinating man she had ever met, and he had done her a great kindness that morning. Furthermore, they stood in the middle of a crowded room.Surely her reputation could not be destroyed by a civil conversation.
She tilted her head, noting that her heart rate ticked up in his presence. Interesting. “Greek influence, you say?”
“The Romans were ravishing the Sabine women while the Etruscans were inventing the dome. A rather sophisticated architectural technique.”
“I’ve heard their circular designs were unique,” she replied, her ears warm. The scandalous Lord Daring was speaking to her of ravishment, with the Daughters of Minerva watching! She could not cut him, not after what he had done for her earlier. But she did possess one weapon guaranteed to rout a man: the aforementioned intellect.
“Herodotus suggests the Etruscans were not native but migrated to the peninsula,” Henrietta said. “Perhaps they learned their pottery techniques alongside the Greek vase makers. Though I thought this black pottery was distinctive?”
Daring stepped forward. Her fingertips tingled. He was tall, but leaning to peer at the piece brought his face close enough that she could detect the bronze tone of his skin, the wheat-gold streaks in his hair and sideburns, the rather perfect shape of his lips and jaw. Her stomach knotted.
“Bucchero,” he said, glancing at her. “They also worked in bronze, but that glossy black finish is the mark of Etruscan work. One sees it all about the Mediterranean, including Greece and Rome.”
He wasn’t taking flight. She shouldn’t feel pleased about that.
“This is not bronze,” she challenged him, moving to a small figure of a man with a blank, nearly featureless face but a body carved with strong detail very like the shape of the man beside her. Daring’s broad shoulders could be due to padding and the flat, narrow stomach achieved by a corset. However, there was no mistaking the curvature of muscled male thigh in his close-fitting breeches.
“Terracotta,” Daring said. He brushed her skirts as he stepped close, and the sway of her panniers sent a bolt of awareness from her hips up her spine. “Apollo or Hercules is my guess.”
“But those are Greek deities. Did they worship the same pantheon?”
He fairly vibrated with masculine energy, much like the statue. It was rare that a man could make Henrietta feel delicate.
His smile reached his eyes. “Once we can decipher Etruscan writing, we might know. Have you read Herodotus, or are you teasing me?”
It took her breath away to think this man suspected her of flirting with him. “The Earl of Warrefield has a copy of theHistoriesprinted at Venice in 1502 for the doge. One of the earliest print editions, bound in calf gilt. An exquisite book.”
He tilted his head. She needed to stop staring at his lips.
