Tied With a Bow

Hartfell. He had beautiful eyes, bright and green as emeralds, gleaming in the light of the candles.
    Aimée’s heart beat faster. For a moment, when she first looked up and caught him staring, she had been drawn. Dazzled. Like a moth to a flame, like Icarus flying into the heat of the sun, completely insensitive to danger.
    She clasped her hands together in her lap, focusing with determined concentration on sixteen-year-old Freddy Keasdon, who had launched into a description of his last cricket match at school.
    “. . . off the wicket on the on side,” he said, his Adam’s apple working earnestly. “So I went out at it on my left leg—no, wait, it was my right—and . . .”
    She had no idea what he was talking about. But as long as their conversation revolved around him, he was quite willing to give her his full attention. Like any other man, she supposed.
    Living in her cousin’s house, she had learned to be wary of masculine attention. But Freddy—“caught it square a couple feet from the ground,” he told her—was charming in his enthusiasm. And quite harmless.
    She felt very sure the same could not be said of Lucien Hartfell.
    Really, he had no business staring at her at all. He was here to court Julia.
    Her cousin was sitting right there beside him, looking as fresh and lovely as spring in a gown the soft pink of apple blossoms. The deep neckline and short, puffed sleeves revealed a great deal of her rounded bosom and arms.
    Aimée had taken care that her own dress revealed nothing at all. Its original sour green color still showed faintly at the seams where she had picked them apart, letting out the bodice until her shape resembled nothing so much as a sack of flour tied with ribbon. She would not be accused of luring Cousin Howard’s attention again.
    At least Mr. Hartfell had been staring at her face and not her breasts.
    It was a relief when Lady Basing signaled that dinner was over. The ladies withdrew, leaving the men to their port.
    In the drawing room, the other young ladies engaged in polite competition to entertain the company. Aimée began to calculate how soon she could excuse herself. But then Julia required her sheet music and Lady Basing demanded her shawl. Aimée had just finished passing the cakes from the tea tray when the gentlemen trooped in.
    A throat cleared behind her. “Er, Miss Blanchard.”
    No escape. Her back stiffened. She turned to smile at young Freddy Keasdon.
    And Mr. Hartfell. She caught her breath as her gaze tangled with his.
    Close up, he appeared even more handsome and very large, his broad shoulders made wider by his tight-fitting evening clothes. His thick gold hair, worn slightly longer than was fashionable, created a halo around his severely beautiful face.
    Something wavered in the corners of her memory, but she could not bring it quite into focus.
    Freddy ducked his head bashfully. “May I present Mr. Hartfell?” he asked, indicating the man beside him. “You didn’t meet him before dinner, did you?”
    She had not been presented to any of the Basings’ guests, a slight that did not trouble her in the least. She would have preferred to say in the nursery, out of sight. Out of mind.
    Out of trouble.
    Mr. Hartfell bowed. “Miss Blanchard,” he said, a faint emphasis on the first word.
    As if he had the slightest interest whether she were married or not, Aimée thought wryly. She was not an heiress like Julia.
    She bobbed a curtsey. “Mr. Hartfell.”
    “Your name is an old and noble one in France,” he said politely. “You are not by chance related to the Comte de Brissac?”
    For a bastard, he was very interested in her antecedents. Perhaps his own birth made him sensitive to such things? “My father,” she admitted.
    His eyebrows arched. “Then—forgive me—are you not the Lady Aimée?”
    “A distinction without a difference,” Aimée said. “Titles have been abolished in France, Mr. Hartfell. The king himself signed the decree a decade ago.”
    Even if her rank had survived the Revolution, it could not have survived life with her mother’s relatives. It would be untenable, intolerable, for the impoverished Lady Aimée to take precedence over Miss Julia Basing and Lady Basing in their own home.
    She glanced toward the pianoforte where Julia was settling herself to play. Her cousin was bright-eyed and pink-cheeked with anticipation. Or annoyance. Tom Whitmore hovered stiffly beside her, ready to turn the pages of her music. Julia,