‘I think you should hardly be—’
He interrupted her.
‘Tell her to find a dark blue velvet and to slash down both the neckline and the sleeves. More is not always better,’ he added and she saw a definite twinkle in his eyes.
‘The Parisian love of decadence might not suit the British mentality.’
‘And you think the Puritan look does? Look around you. Others show much more than an inch of skin. You are still a woman beneath the heavy serge and one with gentle curves. I felt them when you helped me up from the frozen street.’
‘A gentleman does not mention such things, sir.’
‘Yet it seems to me you need to hear them, my lady. You are hiding yourself and I am wondering why?’
This sort of conversation was one she was unpractised at, though the tone of it was exhilarating.
‘Is every young lord in Paris tutored in this art of shallow flattery?’
‘I wasn’t at school in France.’
‘Oh.’ She was surprised by his answer.
‘I went to Eton and then on to Oxford. A proper English upbringing with all my manners minded.’
‘But then you left. You went home again?’
‘Home,’ he repeated, ‘is often not where one expects it to be.’
‘You talk in riddles, my lord, and I comprehend that your dancing style is so much more proficient than my own. Do not ask me to stand up with you again because I shall refuse.’
‘Because you would worry about the opinions of those around you?’
‘Oh, indeed I would, sir. If you do not realise that, then you fail to know me at all.’
‘A disappointing honesty.’
‘And there are so many more of them.’
‘Violet.’
‘Yes.’ She jumped at his informal use of her name.
‘Stop talking and dance with me.’
When he pulled her closer and his arms led her into steps she had never before learned she wondered if perhaps he was a magician making gold from clay, making flame from ashes.
‘Will you be in London for long, Comte de Beaumont?’ She asked this as the music slowed a few moments later.
‘I hope not.’
‘You will return to Paris, then?’
‘No.’
Her effort at small talk faltered back into silence and on the final flourish of the violin he dropped her hand and bowed at her solemnly. Then he was gone.
Violet found Antonia with two of her other friends and joined their small group. She would have simply liked to have walked to the door and left, to have found her carriage and retreated from the battle. For that is exactly what this meeting had felt like. As it was, she would need to wait for Amara’s return from wherever it was she had disappeared to because she knew there would be questions otherwise.
It seemed that any conversation with the unknowable French Count always spiralled into uncertainty. She felt the anger of him, too, the hidden man under the urbanity of the more public one. His hands were not soft. They were the hands of one who had toiled and worked hard. He smelt of both brandy and lavender, the two scents combining into a wholly masculine flavour.
His sense of humour worried her the most. She knew that he watched her for she caught his glance across the room and hurriedly looked away.
What could he want? What did she? She wished suddenly that they might have met in the park, sheltered by the greenery from the eyes of others. And then what?
Lord, what was happening to her? For six years she had been frozen into shame and woodenness, any sense of the intimate pushed away firmly and resolutely. Yet just with one small dance it was as if a dam had been breached, allowing life to begin again, to green and blossom.
Le Comte de Beaumont probably had not even realised he was doing it. He was a man who would be overrun with feminine company, a male who would understand exactly his effect on the opposite sex.
She was twenty-seven years old, after all, and not a debutante filled with hopes and fantasy. She frowned, remembering Harland. He had swept her off her feet within a month and she had never thought to question all the things that did not quite add up about him.
Well, here was another man where nothing about him truly made sense. A wealthy foreign aristocrat in London and looking for what? He had said that he would not be here long and yet he had purchased a place in Sussex? A further question. The top portion of the third finger on his right hand was missing, a scar attesting to the injury.
A man of war, she thought, but not a soldier.
The settle of coldness within her began to build just as a shout of anger and challenge rang out from his direction.
‘You think that you can get away with this, you French bastard, just walk in here and have society at your feet?’
The shorter fellow standing before de Beaumont had pulled himself right up into the Comte’s face and had raised his voice in a threatening manner.
‘You are more than inebriated, sir, and most irritating with it. Perhaps you should go away?’ These words were strained and less than flattering, the Comte’s accent all perfect English privilege and wealth.
But the other man was not backing off, whether by reason of hard liquor or of poor judgement, and she watched him raise his fist and slam it directly into the mouth of the Frenchman.
A general gasp emanated all around them and there was a skittering as those in the burst of violence rushed out of the way, the exodus bringing her in closer to the action. It was easy to see the fury on de Beaumont’s face.
Another assailant spun into the fracas, but the Comte simply caught his hand and twisted it, the aggressor screaming in pain. Then everything disintegrated as further punches were thrown. Suddenly the whole side at this end of the room seemed to be involved in a brawling fight.
This would never have happened in any other social situation of the ton, but those here this evening were a varied lot and the chance of a fight seemed to be exactly what they were waiting for.
De Beaumont looked more than at home and he was a most proficient adversary, for he shook off his assailants while barely breaking a sweat.
Violet shouted out a warning as a further man came from behind him, but already Antonia was pulling at her arm.
‘Come, Violet. It is dangerous to be so close. There is no sense here—’
She did not finish, for there was the crash of a body hard against their own and then dizziness. When Violet put her hand up to her head she felt a sizeable lump and she straightened her silk turban with shaking fingers.
The room stood still, a slow-motion dance of eyes turning, the floating yellow fabric ballooned against each wall strange and blurring. Sound seemed diminished and distant and she was having difficulty in breathing.
Tilting her head, she saw the Comte watching her, blood on his lip and fury in his eyes. Then Antonia grabbed at her and lead her away.
‘Are you hurt, Violet? My goodness, I have never in my whole life seen such a terrible thing.’
Her