If she hasn’t left for home, we will find her.”
Prim shook her head miserably. It was getting late. She could only hazard a guess at the hour. “Have you any idea the time?” she asked abruptly.
“I, ah . . .” He fumbled inside his jacket and pulled out a pocket watch. “It’s half past eleven.”
“Half past eleven,” she repeated, an edge of shrillness to her voice. The night was getting away from her. His company was distracting on multiple levels.
She swallowed and this time managed to speak in a much calmer voice. “It’s half past eleven and I don’t know where Olympia is.”
She was nowhere to be seen. Prim’s dearest friend was lost.
Perhaps scared or hurt or—
She silenced her thoughts, stopping them from going down that dark path.
“I’m a wretch,” she mumbled again for good measure.
“Not true. You’re a clever and sweet girl.”
Her chest seized tightly. He thought her clever? And sweet?
And a girl . . .
She inwardly cringed. That last bit stung. He didn’t have to haul her from that tavern and then attach himself to her side, but he did so because he thought her a sweet girl. A child needing care.
He stayed with her to keep her safe. It was an obligatory compulsion because he was an honorable man. She was not so naïve as to believe chivalry was inherent among the gentry. Not every nob was so noble, but this one was—he was.
Jacob was helping her as she would have a child she found lost on the street. It was a necessary reminder, she supposed. She was not special to him. All the feelings she was experiencing were exclusive to her alone. There might be only a small age difference between them, but the gulf might as well have been the English Channel for as wide and yawning as it felt.
At ten and nine, Jacob was of great consequence. That much was evident. That was his birthright. Green as she might be, Prim was cognizant of the differences between them better than anyone. As the fourth-born daughter in a family of modest resources with a social-climbing mama, how could she not be aware?
She’d allowed herself an infatuation with him. It had started at Gunter’s when he was simply a stranger with a handsome face, but now, over the last few hours, it had developed into something more. Something of substance. She didn’t have much experience with . . . well, anything. But this felt special. It felt real.
Prim winced. She must stop that line of thinking so as not to suffer a bruised heart at the end of this night. She would never see him again. She knew that and she should not forget it.
Prim opened her mouth to respond, and then she froze. Speech was beyond her. She could only stare. No air passed her lips to fill her lungs. All of her was as still as stone, frozen as though that could somehow make her invisible.
Ironic, was it not? Wanting to be invisible when tonight had started as an exercise in being seen. Not reputation-ending visibility, of course. She had not wanted to be discovered. Simply seen. A participant in the world, not just an observer. She had wanted an adventure—a brief taste of freedom for one night.
Now all of that was about to come to an end.
Disaster headed her way.
The only thing a proper lady should do with her lips when in the company of a gentleman is smile demurely.
—Lady Druthers’s Guide to Perfect Deportment and Etiquette
A gentleman who doesn’t care to hear your thoughts isn’t worth your time. You would be better served talking to yourself.
Chapter Ten
The disaster marching Prim’s way was in the form of Redding. He and his friends were walking directly toward her. And she was without her mask. Exposed. One step—one glance—from ruin.
No no no no no.
Certainly standing as rigid as a statue wouldn’t help her plight. She attempted to speak again, but no words came. Panic coated her tongue, acrid as smoke. She cast a desperate glance behind her to the bench where she’d retched so ignominiously earlier. Her domino lay on the ground beside it, sad and forlorn and out of her reach.
What had she been thinking in discarding it and then forgetting to put it back on? True, it likely had a little vomit on it, but she should have overlooked that for the sake of caution. Now she found herself in quite a predicament.
She touched her face—felt her skin smooth and bare for all