Lady Eleanor said, “Rosefield! At last. Where have you been?”
He said, “Mother, my friends, I do apologize. There is a problem with the roof of the stable block, and I lost track of time.” He nodded to each guest in turn, saying their names. When he came to Frances, he paused, glancing at Lady Eleanor.
She said, “May I present Mrs. George Allington, Rosefield? She is our American guest. Mrs. Allington, allow me to introduce my son, the Marquess of Rosefield.”
Frances curtsied. The marquess bowed. As he straightened, his gaze moved up the table to the place where Annis stood, wide-eyed, her breath stopped in her throat. The marquess stared back, his lips parted in surprise.
Lady Eleanor said, “And this is Mrs. Allington’s stepdaughter, Miss Annis Allington. Miss Allington, my son, the Marquess of Rosefield.”
Annis couldn’t think what to say, so she dropped a curtsy and dropped her gaze at the same time.
His Lordship cleared his throat and started toward his place at the table on her left. When he reached Annis, he bowed. “Miss Allington,” he said, with a hint of irony in his tone she hoped only she could hear.
“M-my l-lord,” she managed, through a dry throat. She straightened and lifted her head to meet his gaze directly. Her heart thudded beneath her pearl-encrusted bodice. She didn’t know what her response should be. Surely it was up to him to reveal—or not to reveal—that they had met. He was her host. He was a Lord Something or Other, for heaven’s sake.
She decided in a heartbeat. It was his house. Let him solve the problem.
She looked away, and he stepped past her to his chair. A servant held it for him, and once he took his seat, there was a rustle of silken fabric and a scraping of chair legs on the tiled floor as the rest of the dinner guests settled into their chairs at last. Annis did, too, the footman sliding her chair neatly in behind her knees, then lifting her napkin from the charger before her. He managed, somehow, to flutter it open and let it drift across her lap without so much as brushing her with a fingertip.
Annis settled herself, smoothing the snowy napkin across her knees as she stole a glance at the young man to her left. His fair hair was carefully brushed, and it shone as if it had been smoothed with a bit of macassar oil. He had taken time to shave, or perhaps his valet did it for him. He looked younger in his dinner clothes, a bit like a boy playing at being a grown-up. Indeed, his shirt collar was ever so slightly too big, and it made his neck look boyish and vulnerable.
He was careful, she saw, to keep his gaze averted from her. As the soup was served, he engaged Mrs. Derbyshire in conversation, leaning toward her as if to emphasize how interested he was in what she had to say.
Mrs. Derbyshire spoke with him, but as the first course began, she pulled back a little and turned to speak to Mr. Hyde-Smith. Her message was clear: His Lordship was to speak with the girl on his right. The seating arrangement was deliberate.
Annis glanced down the table to where Frances sat next to Mr. Derbyshire, with Mrs. Hyde-Smith opposite and Lady Eleanor on her right. Frances’s elegantly coiffed head was bent as she respectfully listened to something Mr. Derbyshire was saying, but she managed to cast a sidelong look at Annis. Annis, with His Lordship ignoring her and Mr. Derbyshire engaged with Frances, had no one to speak to.
Annis lifted one eyebrow in Frances’s direction, suppressed a sigh, and began on her soup. An excruciating evening stretched ahead of her, even more enervating than the afternoon had been. If His Lordship—what was she supposed to call him? Not Rosefield, as his mother did, surely? In any case, if he was not going to speak to her, her hopes of visiting the stables and getting close to those magnificent horses in the pasture were going to come to nothing. That was the only activity she could imagine that would alleviate the tedium of this visit.
The soup was taken away, and a small chilled salad took its place. The footman bent close to Annis and asked if he might pour her a glass of wine. She hesitated, then saw that everyone else had accepted. She murmured, “A half glass only, please,” and he obeyed.