To Dance until Dawn - Emma V. Leech Page 0,25

answer to if you hurt her, and that’s only if Montagu doesn’t get to you first.”

“Duly noted,” Alvanly said, smiling, though the expression did not reach his eyes.

Max nodded and stalked away.

Chapter 6

Dear Phoebe,

Thank you very much for my birthday presents. Especially the book by Washington Irving, which is excellent. I have already much enjoyed Rip Van Winkle and The story of Sleepy Hollow. The illustrations are wonderful too, though the stories never come to life quite as vividly as when you read them out. I do hope I may persuade you to read Sleepy Hollow one day, you will scare everyone witless no doubt, especially Bella, and I should like to see that.

―Excerpt of a letter to Miss Phoebe Barrington from her cousin, Master Leo Hunt, aged 12.

7th April 1827. Mrs Manning’s rout party, Old Burlington Street, London.

Phoebe saw Alvanly several times over the next weeks and, as he was scrupulously polite and as charming as he could possibly be, little by little she relaxed. It seemed he no longer desired to make her blush, or to enjoy her discomfort at his lewd talk and flirtation, and was content to be her friend. Though she knew better than to trust him, this was such a relief that she forgot the strange evening and tried to put his words far out of her head. They would come back to her at times, usually in the quiet moments before she fell asleep, only to wake the next morning to discover she’d been dreaming of Max and feeling annoyed and irritable with herself for being such a ninny.

The notion that Max had feelings like that for her was ridiculous, surely. Despite that one time when he’d said the last thing he felt for her was disgust, he treated her as he might an annoying little sister, looking at her with amusement for her entertainment value at best and, the rest of the time, scolding her and wishing she would behave like a young lady ought. Not that she blamed him entirely. Phoebe knew she was spoiled and reckless and ought to be better than she was. Indeed, she did try. It was just so… difficult. She was too easily bored, and she spoke without thinking, and her temper flared far too quickly. Mama said she was what Papa would have been if life had not taught him to hide his true nature. Happily, it was a lesson Phoebe had never needed to learn, though she rather thought she ought to have done.

Max kept his distance now, though, and rarely looked her way. Phoebe decided that Alvanly really did not have the first idea about the earl if he was so bottle-headed as to believe Max had any feelings at all for her past irritation.

“Do you have any idea what it is Mrs Manning intends to display this evening?”

Phoebe turned to attend the conversation between her Aunt Alice and Aashini.

“I believe it is a picture, but not just any picture,” Aashini confided in an undertone which would have been considered shouting in any other circumstance, for the burble of conversation was so loud.

Mrs Manning’s parties were always a crush, and it mattered little that every stick of furniture had been removed from her lavish home to make way for her guests. People seemed to enter the house in noisy rivers of rich fabric and wafts of perfume, though Phoebe saw few of them leave. The grand house would soon burst at the seams.

“What kind, then?” Alice demanded, intrigued.

Phoebe floated away from the conversation. So far the evening had been dull indeed, and she was bored to tears. She had already played cards but it was too tempting to cheat to simply to amuse herself, and she’d caused enough trouble of late, so she’d decided she’d better stop. At least it was close to midnight, and Mrs Manning always provided a lavish late supper, so there was that. Even the painting that would be shown afterwards was not terribly interesting to Phoebe tonight, such was her mood.

She knew well enough that Mrs Manning was a great art lover and was always on the hunt for some new talent or undiscovered work of genius. There were those that said she was not only an art lover, but a lover of artists, too, for she had taken several as her paramours over the years. Phoebe didn’t much care. She was restless and out of sorts after another night where she had slept ill. It made her