ballroom, she had initially gotten lost and wound up in one of the chambers she had been warned against. By that time, she had possessed the presence of mind to have at least restored her mask.
To her shame, she had searched the debauched ladies within that room for a head of flaming curls. Thankfully, she had not discovered Lottie within.
Little different than now, for she still could not find her friend.
What if a similar fate had befallen Lottie? Feeling dizzied, Hyacinth walked the periphery of the gathering, searching for a tall, black-clad gentleman and a vibrant-haired lady.
“Hyacinth?”
The familiar sound of her friend’s voice had her spinning on her heel, relief flooding her, as Lottie approached. Alone, she noticed. Brandon’s towering form was nowhere to be seen.
“Lottie!” Her face was hot. Indeed, her entire body was thoroughly overheated. She could only blame her fluster upon one thing.
Or rather, one man.
Was she flushing? She hoped not. It hit her as her friend approached, smiling benignly behind her mask, nary a curl out of place, that she could not bear to ask Lottie for help in the fashion she had assured Tom she would. Because she had no wish to reveal what had just happened in the library.
She did not fear her friend would judge her. Lottie would applaud her for taking a lover at last. But what had happened between her and Tom had been private. She wanted some time to keep it to herself.
What was the risk, anyway? There hardly seemed one. Just as Southwick had always told her, she was barren. She was the problem. He would have been better off without ever having wed her. Just once, she wished she would have had the courage to say the same words back to him.
“Where have you been, dearest?” Lottie asked, cutting through Hyacinth’s heavy remembrances of the past. “I have been looking everywhere for you.”
Hyacinth feigned a smile. “I could say the same of you. I feared Brandon had swept you off to one of his dens of iniquity and I would be forced to spend the remainder of the ball alone.”
Lottie gave her a small smile beneath her mask. “The duke was a consummate gentleman. Why, if I did not know better, I would believe an entirely different man had staged this sinful affair. I own, it is strange, Hyacinth. He danced with me and bowed and I have not seen him since.”
Hmm. Now that was intriguing. The irony was not lost upon Hyacinth that the very couple most likely to have been engaged in wickedness had instead shared a simple, platonic dance. Meanwhile, Hyacinth and Tom had run off to the library and shagged like a pair of wild beasts unable to help themselves.
A renewed flush swept over her. “That is indeed unexpected, Lottie.” She cleared her throat. “Do you think we might go? I am finding myself suddenly weary.”
“Already? I suspect the festivities have only just begun.” Her friend frowned at her. “Is something amiss, Hyacinth? You look rather flushed. You are not feverish, are you?”
The fever which had so recently been her affliction was of a decidedly different variety.
Hyacinth cleared her throat. “I am perfectly well. It is merely that Lady is up to her usual scrapes. I have hardly slept a proper wink since taking her under my wing.”
Excellent excuse. Inwardly, she offered poor Adelaide a fleeting apology for placing all the blame upon her furred little back.
“I told you to get a cat,” Lottie said, nodding sagely. “Cats are not nearly as cumbersome as dogs. They groom themselves, and they sleep through the night. To say nothing of their inability to become tangled up in rosebushes. Felines are far too intelligent to fall for such a snare.”
Lady was not the only one falling for snares.
What had she been thinking, making love with Tom? In the midst of a ball? In the Duke of Brandon’s library, of all places, when they could have been interrupted at any moment? She had ventured to London to seize the reins of her life, to experience everything she had missed. But all it required was the attentions of one man beautiful enough to rival Apollo himself, and she had cast aside all her morals.
Drowning herself in champagne and throwing parties was one thing.
Allowing a man to take her against a wall of books…that was decidedly another.
Even if his lovemaking had been nothing short of miraculous. A revelation of what she had been missing. Her body still hummed with the