As if reading her thoughts, he smiled at her, a slow, lazy, brazenly seductive smile that seemed to float toward her over the frenzy of the game.
To her mortification she felt her cheeks grow hot. Gentlemen gawked and gazed at her all the time at Penny House—she was perfectly aware that being decorative was a large part of her role as hostess—but somehow, after last night, it seemed different with Guilford. It felt different, in a way that made absolutely no sense, as if they were sharing something very private, very intimate between them—something that, as far as she was concerned, did not exist and never would.
She made a determined small harrumph, and raised her chin. She couldn’t believe he’d look at her in such a way in so public a place as this, with so many others as witnesses. Not, of course, that any of these gentlemen were ready to witness anything but the dice dancing across the green cloth. She and the duke might have been the only ones in the room for all the rest might notice. Guilford knew this, too, just as he’d known she’d be here, and his smile widened, enough to show his infamous single dimple.
Indignation rippled through her, and the fan fluttered more rapidly in her hand. Hadn’t he understood the note she’d returned with the bracelet? She’d been polite, but firm, excruciatingly explicit in offering no hope. Had he even read it? She shook her head and frowned in the sternest glare she could muster, and pointedly began to look away.
But before she could, he nodded, tossing his dark, wavy hair back from his brow, and then, to her horror, he winked.
It was, she decided, time to retreat.
“I am returning to the front parlor,” she said to the guard behind Mr. Walthrip. “Summon me at once if anything changes.”
With her head high, she quickly slipped through the crowd to the doorway and into the hall, greeting, smiling, chatting, falling back into her customary routine as if nothing were amiss. Down the curving staircase, to her favorite post before the Italian marble fireplace in the front room. Here she was able to see every gentleman who came or went through the front door, and here she could stand and receive them like a queen, with the row of silver candlesticks on the mantelpiece behind her.
“Ah, good evening, my lord!” she called, raising her voice so the elderly marquis could hear her. “I trust a footman is bringing your regular glass of canary?”
“The lackey ran off quick as a hare the moment he saw me,” the white-haired marquis said with a wheezing cackle, seizing Amariah’s hand in his gnarled fingers. “You know how to make a man happy, my dear Miss Penny. If my wife had half your talents, why, I’d be home with her twice as often!”
“Double the halves, and halve the double! Oh, my lord, no wonder you’re such a marvel at whist!” Amariah used the excuse of opening her fan to draw her hand free from his. It didn’t matter that the marquis was old enough to be her grandfather; the same club rules applied. “What a head you have for ciphering!”
“Dear, dear Miss Penny, if only I could halve my years for your sake!” The marquis sighed sorrowfully as he took the glass of wine from the footman’s tray. “Here now, Guilford, you’re a young buck. You show Miss Penny the appreciation she deserves.”
“Oh, I’ll endeavor to oblige,” Guilford said, bowing as the old marquis shuffled away with his wine in hand to join another friend.
“Good evening, your grace,” Amariah said, determined to greet Guilford like any other member of the club. “How glad we are to have you join us. Might I offer you something to drink, or a light supper before you head for the tables?”
“What you might offer me, Miss Penny, is an explanation, for I’m sorely confused.” He smiled, adding a neat, self-mocking little bow. “Did you intend to refuse my apology as well as the bracelet?”
“I refused the gift, your grace,” Amariah said. They were standing side by side, which allowed her to nod and smile at the gentlemen passing through the hallway without having to face Guilford himself. “I gave you my reasons for so doing in my note.”
He made a disparaging little grunt. “A note which might be printed out by the hundreds, as common as a broadsheet, for all that it showed the personal interest of the lady who purportedly wrote it.”
“I did write it, your grace,” she said warmly. “I always do.”
“Following by rote the words as composed by your solicitor?”
“Following the words of my choosing!” she said as she nodded and smiled to a marquis and his brother-in-law as they passed by. “What about my words did you not understand, your grace? What did I not make clear?”
“If you didn’t like the rubies, you should just say so,” he said, more wounded than irate. “Robitaille’s got a whole shop full of other baubles for you to choose from. You can go have your pick.”
“Whether I like rubies or not has nothing to do with anything, your grace,” she said. He was being purposefully obtuse, and her patience, already stretched thin, was fraying fast. “My sisters and I have never accepted any gifts from any gentlemen. It’s not in the spirit of my father’s wishes for us, or for Penny House.”
“It’s not in the spirit of being a lady to send back a ruby bracelet,” he declared. “It’s unnatural.”
“For my sisters and me, your grace, it’s the most natural thing in the world,” she said. “If a gentlemen does wish to show his especial appreciation, then we suggest that a contribution be made instead to the Penny House charity fund.”
Again he made that grumbly, growl of displeasure. “Where’s the pleasure in making a contribution to charity, I ask you that?”
Her smile now included him as well as the others passing by. She’d long ago learned to tell when a man had realized he was losing, and she could hear that unhappy resignation now in Guilford’s voice. But she wouldn’t gloat. She’d likewise learned long ago that it was far better to let a defeated man salvage his pride however he could than to crow in victory. That was how duels began, and though she doubted that Guilford would call her out for pistols at dawn over a ruby bracelet, she could still afford to be a gracious winner.
“You will not take the bracelet, then?” he asked, one final attempt. “Nor anything else in its stead from old Robitaille’s shop?”
“I’m sorry, your grace,” she said generously. “But I shall be most happy to accept your contribution to our fund.”
He sighed glumly. “You may not choose to believe me, Miss Penny, but you are the first lady I’ve ever known to send back a piece of jewelry.”
“I’ll believe you, your grace.” She smiled, and finally turned back toward him. “Life is full of firsts. I suppose I should feel honored that one of yours involved me.”
“I hope only the first of many,” he said. “For both of us.”
His glumness gone, his face seemed to light with enough fresh hope that she felt a little twinge of uneasiness. Whatever was he thinking? She hadn’t promised him anything.
Had she?
At once she shoved aside the question as small-minded. It was only because she was still so weary from yesterday’s wedding and the possibility of a cheating scandal that she’d let herself even consider such an unworthy possibility. Guilford had just conceded; she should be using this as an opportunity to benefit Penny House, not to suspect his motives.
“If you wish, your grace, I would be glad to show you exactly how the funds we raise are distributed and employed,” she said. “It would be my pleasure.”
He raised his brows with a great show of surprise. “You have forgiven me, then, even if you returned my peace offering?”
She wished she didn’t have this nagging feeling that he was saying more than she realized. “Is there a reason why I shouldn’t, your grace?”
He