‘You are a very charming hawk and I like you for it, but I am far too prudent to fall for your nonsense. Please, take my advice and heed it well. Never flirt with me again, Mr Warriner, else I will stop liking you and I would hate to do that. Now, if you will just point me in the direction of the refreshment table, I fear I have been lost long enough.’
In a soulless bedchamber at Uncle Crispin’s Mayfair town house
Somewhere in the distance a clock chimed the hour, reminding Fliss it was now three in the morning, but she was still nowhere near ready to sleep. How could she when her mind was still whirring with images of the evening? The provincial plays she had seen paled into insignificance when compared to the splendour of the opera. Everything about it had been breathtaking, from the sumptuous and vivid costumes to the aching purity of the soprano’s beautiful voice. And watching the audience had been equally as thrilling. The Prime Minister had been there and so had the famous Duke of Wellington. Aunt Cressida had pointed out both men in their private boxes just a few feet away from Uncle Crispin’s, although even if she hadn’t, Fliss’s eyes would have soon been drawn to the spots where everyone else was staring.
All around them had been a sea of people dressed in their finery and, thanks to the opera glasses she had been given upon entering the box, Fliss was able to see every tiny detail despite her lack of spectacles. Spectacles she had been politely banned from wearing in public by her stand-offish uncle and which her new maid, Kitty, had already mislaid twice the moment Fliss dared to put them down.
During the interval, she had drunk champagne for the first time. It had been brought to their box perfectly chilled and served in crystal glasses; the delicious bubbles tickled her nose and the alcohol went straight to her head, making everything sharper and brighter than before. She allowed herself a second glass. Her aunts smartly finished the second bottle while Uncle Crispin discussed business with an older gentleman who had joined them. The Earl of Redditch was a portly man who creaked when he moved, thanks to the corset he was squashed into beneath his evening coat. A coat which bore the stain of recently spilled food on one lapel. He had a profusion of wiry grey hair which grew at right angles out of his head and sprouted out of his ears. He also smelled a little musty and had a habit of spitting slighting each time he talked. Fliss was painfully aware of both things because he had been placed next to her during the first half, but as soon as the orchestra began to warm up, signalling the interval was over, she cleverly sandwiched herself between her aunts to watch the second act.
Just before the lights dimmed, she experienced the oddest sense someone was watching her and instinctively dropped her eyes to the stalls below where they locked with the intense blue gaze of Mr Jacob Warriner. There was a wry smile on his outrageously handsome face that did peculiar things to her insides. They heated. As did her flesh, while her tummy fizzed with unwanted bubbles of excitement which were surprisingly reminiscent of those in the heady champagne. Then the lights had faded, casting him in silhouette, and the odd yet special moment was gone.
As much as she adored the second half of the opera, she was constantly aware of him. Every time she glanced down, he was gazing back at her in the darkness. Flirting with his eyes in a more tempting way than he had with his practised words two nights before. She made a half-hearted attempt at ignoring him when the performance ended, but that stare drew her like a moth to a flame. A secret smile played at the corners of his mouth when their gazes briefly met and, before she could turn away, he pressed a kiss on the tips of his fingers and then blew it towards her. Thank goodness nobody else appeared to witness it in the melee exiting the theatre, nor did anyone comment on the ferocious blush which decided to bloom on her cheeks in response to his scandalous lack of propriety in a crowded public place.
After that, and to her great chagrin, Fliss had practically floated home. The carriage ride had been silent. Her aunts were softly snoring from the after-effects of all the champagne they had consumed and Uncle Crispin made no effort at engaging her in conversation, so she had stared out of the window up at the stars, trying and failing not to notice that they twinkled like Jacob Warriner’s eyes. Now she was lying on her bed, recalling every nuance of the evening, more awake than she had ever been in the small hours of the morning.
Yet thinking about him was not constructive. Twinkling eyes aside, he was a rake through and through and Fliss was too savvy to be seduced by a handsome rogue. At Sister Ursuline’s, she had seen the consequences of seduction first-hand. Ruined reputations, scandal, broken hearts, divided families and, on more occasions than she cared to count, inconvenient pregnancies. A succession of wayward girls had spent their confinement hidden at the convent and then were forced to say heart-wrenching goodbyes to those innocent babes when the girls were dragged back into society by their parents. Sister Ursuline always found those cherubs good, loving homes, but Fliss still thought each incident a tragedy and one that could have been easily avoided if the young lady had the wherewithal to resist the scoundrel in the first place.
While she knew that not all men were so inclined, regrettably all the male role models in her life were also scoundrels. Her father had been one through and through. He might have done the decent thing and married her mother when he had got her into trouble, but from the moment he had placed that ring on her finger he had abdicated all responsibility. Like all the men Fliss had encountered since, he was inherently untrustworthy and proved time and again to be an unreliable husband and father.
Fliss had spent her formative years with her mother growing up in his crumbling house in the country, while he frittered away all the money in town. The only benefit to that situation was her mother was happy when there were a significant number of miles between her and her wastrel husband. Fliss rarely saw him and they conversed little when they did. Much like her fledgling relationship with Uncle Crispin.
Perhaps one of these days she would meet a man who didn’t fit the mould? A selfless man whom she could truly depend upon in the same way she could always depend upon Sister Ursuline, and before that her mother. A man who would always be there for her. One who put his family above his own selfish needs. A man who absolutely adored her...
And perhaps one day humans would fly. Both eventualities were as unlikely as the other. While she liked some men for their wit or their intelligence, found some interesting and wise, nothing would ever tempt her to want one all of her very own unless he measured up to the same exacting high standards of dependency Fliss set for herself. In most cases, experience had taught her the best you could hope for with a man was that he entertained you and had a back strong enough to lift heavy things. You didn’t need to marry them for either.
Her uncle wasn’t proving her theory wrong. Already, after some serious thought, Fliss had come to the regrettable conclusion she didn’t like him at all. The only thing she had been able to truly ascertain was that he was dependably domineering and emotionless. She supposed the signs had been there all along, because she hadn’t heard hide nor hair of the man in years, but it still didn’t sit right to completely dislike the only blood relative she had in the world. Or half-blood at least. She had hoped to see bits of her mother in him, when in fact he behaved more like her uninterested and feckless father.
After her mother had died, dear Papa had found having a grieving and ever-so-precocious ten-year-old daughter taxing, so had parcelled her off to Sister Ursuline’s School for Wayward Girls without so much as a backwards glance. She had never seen the man again.
However, for years her childish heart had secretly hoped one day her uncle would come to rescue her and she had assumed for the longest time he was prevented from doing so because her father was still alive. Even after the demise of her sire, she continued to kindle the tiny flame of hope with regular missives to remind him she was still alive and still hoping. Still praying that he might miraculously become someone she could depend upon.
It was only after she turned twenty-one that she stopped sending him an annual letter at Christmas, by which time she had embarked on her new life as a schoolmistress at the same school she had called home from eleven, and couldn’t muster the enthusiasm to feel