Lavinia laughed, and then, being kind, tried to look severe. "You ought at least to look as though you wished to be asked. Mamma says a girl who stands apart is either proud or desperate, and that people will decide which for her."
"Your mother is quite right." Honora's eyes went once around the room, over the bright moving surface of it. "Lady Prestwick would tell me that a woman in my position must look eager, and grateful, and a little anxious. That pretending not to care is unbecoming."
"Then perhaps caring too much is worse."
The voice came from just behind Lavinia's shoulder. It was low and quite level, and it did not sound as though its owner had meant to speak aloud.
Lavinia turned, and the feathers of her fan shivered. "Your Grace." She sank into a curtsey so swift and so deep that the pearls in her ringlets clicked. When she rose her cheeks had gone the colour of her gown. She glanced once at Honora—a look of pure astonishment—and then, with a murmur about her mother, she retreated into the crowd like a ship going about.
The Duke of Hartsmere remained.
He was perhaps seven-and-twenty, tall, and not as handsome as the gossip in the retiring room had made him; he was something more uncomfortable than handsome. His hair was dark and inclined to wave in a way his valet had plainly fought and lost. He wore a coat of dark blue, a waistcoat of pale gold silk patterned with some small figure that caught the light, and a white cravat tied without any flourish. His face was all lines and shadow, and his eyes, which were grey, had the brooding attention of a man who has spent the evening being looked at and has decided to look back.
He was looking at her.
"Dance with me," he said.
It was not a question. Honora had heard that dukes seldom troubled themselves with questions. She held her reticule a little more tightly, and felt the edge of the folded card through the silk.
"Out of pity?"
"No."
"Then why?"
He considered her—the turned silk, the washed gloves, the beads in her hair—with no change of expression at all. "Because you are the only woman here who did not chase me."
There it was: the plain, slightly weary arrogance of a man who knew exactly what he was worth on the market, and who was tired of it. She ought to have been offended. Instead, something moved in her face that she could not stop—a slow, sly smile, the first real one she had worn all evening.
"Perhaps I know something they do not."