him, challenging him.
The servants had noticed her loss too; Lagrasse had been grumbling about “unappreciative audiences” for days and even Mickey had been unusually morose.
Tonight, Seb was as edgy as before a military push. Dorothea had done an excellent job of intimating that there would be some kind of revelation, and the ballroom was already uncomfortably crowded with guests all waiting to meet the silvery goddess in front of him.
The presence of so many people made him nervous. It would be difficult to protect the princess when Petrov made his move—as Seb was sure he would. The Russian would doubtless come to repeat his demand for the “evidence” he thought she possessed. Seb had sent Anya strict instructions to stay inside the ballroom, no matter how overheated it became. There would be no chance of the Russian getting her alone.
He’d had agents following Petrov all week, but the man had done nothing out of the ordinary. The runners watching this house had reported a figure lurking in Grosvenor Square yesterday evening, but the man had slipped away before he could be identified. Had it been one of Petrov’s minions? Seb had men stationed around the perimeter, just in case.
That Petrov might decide to silence Anya with a sniper was not beyond the realm of possibility. A good rifleman—one as skilled as Alex, Ben, or Seb himself—could hit a target through a window from a hundred yards away. The thought of a bullet passing anywhere near her made his blood run cold.
Anya turned as Dorothea announced him, and he watched the smile she’d given Geoffrey fade, replaced with a polite, wary expression, and for the first time in his life, he was conscious of being jealous of his brother. He’d never begrudged Geoffrey the title, or the responsibility of running the estate he’d one day inherit. But he hated him stealing a smile from Anya.
Geoffrey was a marquis. He’d be Duke of Southwick when their father died. He’d be a suitable match for her. Seb clenched his jaw.
“What have you there?” Dorothea glanced with undisguised interest at the leather-covered jeweler’s box he’d collected earlier from Ludgate Hill. Seb forced himself to step forward and offer it to Anya with a casualness that belied the emotional weight of the gift. Already he regretted the foolish impulse.
“If you’re going to go out in the ton, you should dress the part,” he said stiffly.
Their gloved fingers brushed as she took the box, and even that slight contact was enough to send a shiver of awareness through him.
A gasp escaped her as she opened the lid.
“I took your drawing to Bridge & Rundell,” he said.
The tiara was perfection, the physical embodiment of her elevated status. He’d meant it to serve as a reminder of the cavernous gulf that separated them—the Bow Street Bastard and the fairy-tale princess. A reminder of just how different they were. But his heart still pounded against his ribs as he waited for her response.
Tears sprang to her eyes. “Oh, I—” She seemed at a loss for words.
“You had one just like it, you said.”
Her throat bobbed as she swallowed a knot of emotion and blinked rapidly. “Yes. The Denisov tiara. I had to break it up to get enough money to come here.”
Her brows twitched into a frown and a wave of panic swept through him. Every other time he’d given a woman a piece of jewelry, it had been as a parting gift, a “thank you” for a few weeks of mutual pleasure. Would she think of it as a douceur? They’d only shared one night, but he prayed she wouldn’t interpret it as a crude attempt at payment. There weren’t enough jewels in the world for that.
But her fingers skimmed over the sapphires and diamonds like a lover’s caress, and he found he could be envious of inanimate objects too. Then her glistening eyes lifted to his and the rest of the world fell away.
“Thank you,” she managed huskily. “This means … so much to me. You have no idea.”
He had a fair idea. The yearning and rapture on her face was reward enough for the foolish, quixotic gesture, even if it revealed the depths of his regard for her to anyone with a pair of eyes. He wasn’t wearing his heart upon his sleeve—he’d put in it a bloody jeweler’s box and handed it to her with a roomful of witnesses.
Shit. He should have bought her a fan or a silver card case—some meaningless, less sentimental trinket