all beguiled her, reminding her of his wild, stunning kiss.
“I like being with you, Grizelda Niven,” he murmured. “Too much, if the truth be told.”
Suddenly, there was something more serious to her happiness, something she was afraid to read too much into. She liked his company, too, more than that of anyone else she had ever known. And as the music came to a close, she found she could not look away, could not breathe…
Somehow, her hand was on his arm. She seemed to be walking on air as a wonderful and terrifying truth began to form in her head.
“Good evening, Griz.”
Bewildered, she looked up into the face of her brother and blinked. “Horace?”
Chapter Thirteen
“What are you doing here?” she blurted.
“I was about to ask you the same question,” Horace drawled. “I am assuming you did not come alone.”
“Of course not,” she replied with dignity. “I came with Annabelle Worth.”
Horace’s gaze shifted at last to Dragan. “Won’t you introduce your companion?”
It was, she supposed, inevitable. After all, Azalea had already met him. “Mr. Tizsa,” she said resignedly. “My brother, Lord Horace Niven. Oh, and Mr. Gabriel,” she added, catching sight of Horace’s underling, hovering discreetly nearby.
Dragan, who was clearly never overwhelmed by rank or supercilious looks, bowed as distantly as Horace. “You don’t have wine, gentlemen,” he noted.
It might have been a hospitable offer or a request to go away.
Mr. Gabriel chose to take it as the former. “You will join me in a glass, Mr. Tizsa?”
After a quick interrogative glance at her, which Griz found rather touching, Dragan walked reluctantly away with Mr. Gabriel.
“What are you about, Griz?” Horace demanded, urging her to walk with him around the room. “I suppose this Tizsa is the same man you insisted on springing from police headquarters. What is he to you?”
“A friend.” She regarded him uneasily. “What is he to you?”
“Nothing, yet.”
“But you are working, aren’t you? This is a charitable event, Horace. Even Her Grace is happy to donate.”
He looked amused. “I donated, too. You don’t need to protect them from me, you know. Just keeping my ear to the ground, you might say. These people began a revolution, remember, one that very nearly succeeded. I wouldn’t like our people to be learning from them.”
“Our people already have what they were fighting for. A constitutional monarchy with an elected parliament.”
“A worthy aim,” Horace agreed. “But I think you already know some of them wanted a great deal more.”
Following his gaze, she saw he was looking at Lazar.
“I think you are being over careful,” she said quickly.
Horace smiled faintly. “So I believe. But at least I discovered one of your hideaways.”
“I’m not exactly hiding! Horace, that thief you arrested last week—Goddard.”
“What about him?” Horace asked distractedly.
Griz bit back her grin of triumph. “Are you sure he didn’t know Nancy?”
“Nancy?” His frowning gaze came back to her. “Of course not. Nancy was a respectable girl.”
“Then what was she doing in a back street at Covent Garden, with His Grace’s dagger?”
“That is a problem for the police,” Horace said severely. “It is not my area of expertise. Or yours.”
“You know Goddard can’t read, don’t you?” she threw at him.
His scowl deepened. “No, but it wouldn’t surprise me. Trust me, the documents he was distributing were barely literate.” His gaze moved suddenly from Gabriel and Dragan back to Griz. “Why do you even know that?”
“I heard from someone who knows him,” she said vaguely. “On one of my good works.”
“Is that fellow, Tizsa, also one of your good works?”
“I told you, Mr. Tizsa is a friend. What are you going to do here, Horace?”
His eyebrows shot up. “Nothing. Just donating and observing.”
“I’m sure Mrs. Cartwright is thrilled to have two of the duke’s children here.”
“Quite a coup,” he agreed blandly.
“How did you hear about it?” She expected him to make some lofty, if vague statement about knowing everything that went on in London, but again he surprised her.
“Countess Miranyi invited me. We shall be leaving again in ten minutes. I trust you will accompany me.”
“Oh, no,” she said. “Annabelle will bring me home.”
Irritation flashed in his eyes, though he only murmured, “Then do yourself a favor and don’t dance again with that fellow, Tizsa. You looked like a moonling.”
She glared at him, although the tell-tale blush must have been visible to everyone. What if he had seen them at the top of the stairs outside, only an hour before? What if he had witnessed that soul-shattering kiss?