Hawk & the Lady - Elizabeth Stevens Page 0,7

idea, why don’t you do me the honour of this dance?” I said, holding my hand out.

“You’re only going to get so far on longing, lingering looks, Patrick,” she chided, but she took my hand and let me lead her onto the dancefloor.

“No one’s longing or lingering or looking,” I said adamantly.

“Tsh,” she tutted. “The two of you could set the room on fire.”

I rolled my eyes at her, but we shared a smile. “I do believe I have a job to do.”

“Your employer might be so good as to give you an early minute if you were going to do anything useful with it.” She waggled her eyebrows at me encouragingly and I begrudgingly laughed.

“Does going home alone count as useful?”

“Incredibly useless,” she replied, her tone telling me how utterly unimpressed she was with me. “She’s not as intimidating as you think.”

“I’m not intimidated.”

“Oh, yes? That’d be why you’ve tried your luck already.”

“I’m not intimidated by her reputation,” I clarified with a wry smirk. My eye caught Leah Carmichael’s as we passed each other and I’m man enough to say something hitched at the slight return smile she gave me.

“What does intimidate you, then?” Mrs Fortescue asked me.

“I have a one hundred per cent hit rate,” I said and it needed no further explanation.

She levelled her light blue eyes on me. “Because you’re a coward.”

“You know me too well,” I chuckled quietly.

“If you don’t take a chance, Patrick, you’re going to miss when the perfect woman comes along.”

“Nonsense,” I told her. “I noticed. But Mr Fortescue has strict rules on our engagement.”

She gave me a knowing smirk and batted my arm. “I’m being serious a moment, Patrick. You don’t take a sure thing home to your mother.”

I barked a laugh, but quickly got myself under control. I knew what she was saying and a part of me agreed. The women I ‘took home’ weren’t exactly the sort Mum would welcome with open arms. They weren’t even the sort to leave their number. I liked it that way. It was easy. It was safe. And it didn’t change the facts.

“No, I don’t suppose I do.”

She nodded, knowing she was right. “No. You take the risk home to your mother and strive to be worth them.”

“Is that what you did with Mr Fortescue, then?” I joked.

Her smile turned wistful, like she was remembering the first time she took her husband home to her mother. “Mama hated him, but she couldn’t disapprove of the match. We both got what we wanted.”

“You got the money and he got the freedom?”

She smirked. “As a dutiful and loving wife, I allow him his…indiscretions.”

I huffed a short laugh. “Bullshit.”

She let him do what he wanted because it meant he let her do whatever she wanted. Within reason. She’d never been the unfaithful kind. Not, as she would say, romantically anyway.

“Now who knows whom too well?” she said to me fondly.

Mrs Fortescue liked to tell people that she chose me to accompany her out and about because I was kind and polite and easy enough on the eyes. Those in the know understood that that meant I played my part well and complemented her. In reality, it was more than that. We had an easy rapport, built on respect and an understanding that we’d be – brutally, if necessary – honest with each other. It bit me in the arse far more often than it bit her. Mainly, she found me amusing.

We danced for a bit longer, until she claimed an old woman needed a break. I offered to get her a drink and saw her sitting comfortably before heading to the bar.

“How’s your night going?” my little sister asked as she appeared beside me, flushed and smiling, and just a little bit out of breath.

I nodded. “Same old, same old, Bert.”

It was a nickname I’d accidentally coined as a rambunctious – her word, not mine – six-year-old who had desperately wanted a little brother but found himself with the disappointment of a little sister instead. I’d refused to call her Amber, instead deciding to name her after that Muppet on Sesame Street. This was largely because I’d always been an Ernie type, and partly because, at such a wise age, I’d known for a fact she was going to be a boring, bookish, stick in the mud. I was man enough now to admit my prediction had only been partially right. But the name had stuck, and was now less an insult and more a term