This was Lady Lucinda Abernathy, and she was not the woman with whom he intended to spend the rest of his life.
She was perfectly nice, perfectly intelligent, and certainly more than attractive. But Lucy Abernathy was not for him. And he almost laughed, because it all would have been so much easier if his heart had flipped the first time he saw her. She might be practically engaged, but she wasn’t in love. Of that he was certain.
But Hermione Watson . . .
“What did she say?” he whispered, dreading the answer.
Lady Lucinda tilted her head to the side, and she looked nothing so much as puzzled. “She said that she didn’t even see his face. Just the back of his head—”
Just the back of her neck.
“—and then he turned, and she thought she heard music, and all she could think was—”
I am wrecked.
“—‘I am ruined.’ That is what she said to me.” She looked up at him, her head still tilting curiously to the side. “Can you imagine? Ruined? Of all things. I couldn’t quite grasp it.”
But he could. He could.
Exactly.
He looked at Lady Lucinda, and he saw that she was watching his face. She looked puzzled still. And concerned. And just a little bit bewildered when she asked, “Don’t you find it odd?”
“Yes.” Just one word, but with his entire heart wrapped around it. Because it was strange. It cut like a knife. She wasn’t supposed to feel that way about someone else.
This wasn’t the way it was supposed to happen.
And then, as if a spell had been broken, Lady Lucinda turned and took a few steps to the right. She peered at the bookshelves—not that she could possibly make out any of the titles in this light—then ran her fingers along the spines.
Gregory watched her hand; he didn’t know why. He just watched it as it moved. She was quite elegant, he realized. It wasn’t noticeable at first, because her looks were so wholesome and traditional. One expected elegance to shimmer like silk, to glow, to transfix. Elegance was an orchid, not a simple daisy.
But when Lady Lucinda moved, she looked different. She seemed to . . . flow.
She would be a good dancer. He was sure of it.
Although he wasn’t quite sure why that mattered.
“I’m sorry,” she said, turning quite suddenly around.
“About Miss Watson?”
“Yes. I did not mean to hurt your feelings.”
“You didn’t,” he said, perhaps a little too sharply.
“Oh.” She blinked, perhaps with surprise. “I’m glad for that. I didn’t mean to.”
She wouldn’t mean to, he realized. She wasn’t the sort.
Her lips parted, but she didn’t speak right away. Her eyes seemed to focus beyond his shoulder, as if she were searching behind him for the correct words. “It was just that . . . Well, when you said what you said about love,” she began, “it just sounded so familiar. I couldn’t quite fathom it.”
“Nor could I,” he said softly.
She held silent, not quite looking at him. Her lips were pursed—just a touch—and every now and then she would blink. Not a fluttery sort of movement but rather something quite deliberate.
She was thinking, he realized. She was the sort who thought about things, probably to the neverending frustration of anyone charged with the task of guiding her through life.
“What will you do now?” she asked.