Almost Heaven by Judith McNaught Page B

forward and take her hand. “A pleasure,” he said, but his voice was lightly tinged with mockery.
    Already beginning to regret ever agreeing to this plan, Elizabeth racked her brain for an opening, which in the past she’d left to the besotted boys who desperately wanted to engage her in conversation. The subject of whom one knew was always appropriate among the ton and Elizabeth seized on that with relief. Gesturing with her fan toward the place they’d last seen her friends, she said, “The young lady in the pink gown was Miss Valerie Jamison, and Miss Georgina Granger was in the yellow one.” When he showed no sign of recognition, she provided helpfully, “Miss Jamison is the daughter of Lord and Lady Jamison.” When he merely continued to watch her with mild interest. Elizabeth added a little desperately, “They are the Herfordshire Jamisons. You know – the earl and countess.”
    “Really?” he responded with amused indulgence.
    “Yes indeed,” Elizabeth rambled, feeling more ill at ease by the second, “and Miss Granger is the daughter of the Wiltshire Grangers – the Baron and Baroness of Grangerley.”
    “Really?” he mocked, watching her in speculative silence. It hit her then, what the girls had said about his questionable parentage, and she felt faint with shame for thoughtlessly speaking of titles to someone who might have been cheated of his own. The palms of her hands grew damp; she rubbed them against her knees, realized what she was doing and hastily stopped. Then she cleared her throat fanning herself vigorously. “We are all here for the Season,” she finished lamely.
    The cool amber eyes warmed suddenly with a mixture of amusement and sympathy, and there was a smile in his deep voice as he asked, “And are you enjoying yourselves?”
    “Yes, very much,” Elizabeth said with a sigh of relief that he was finally participating a little in the conversation. “Miss Granger, though you couldn’t see her at all well from here, is excessively pretty, with the sweetest manners imaginable. She has dozens of beaux.”
    “All titled, I imagine?”
    Still thinking he might be longing for a ducal title he’d missed having, Elizabeth bit her lip and nodded in sublime discomfort. “I’m afraid so,” she admitted abjectly, and to her astonishment, that made him grin – a slow, dazzling smile swept across his bronzed features, and its effect on his face was almost as dramatic as its effect on Elizabeth’s nervous system. Her heart gave a hard bump, and she suddenly stood up, feeling unaccountably jumpy. “Miss Jamison is lovely also,” she said, reverting to the discussion of her friends and smiling uncertainly at him.
    “How many contenders have there been for her hand?” Elizabeth finally realized he was teasing and his irreverent view of what everyone else regarded as a matter of the utmost gravity startled an irrepressible, relieved chuckle from her.
    “I have it on the best authority,” she replied, trying to match his grave, teasing tone, “that her beaux have paraded to her papa in record numbers.”
    His eyes warmed with laughter, and as she stood there, smiling back at him, her tension and nervousness evaporated. Suddenly and inexplicably she felt quite as if they were old friends sharing the same secret irreverence – only he was bold enough to admit his feelings, while she still tried to repress her own,
    “And what about you?”
    “What about me?”
    “How many offers have you had?”
    A bubble of startled laughter escaped her, and she shook her head. To have told him proudly about her friends’ achievements was acceptable, but to boast about her own was beyond all bounds, and she had no doubt he knew it. “Now that.” she admonished with laughing severity, “was really too bad of you.”
    “I apologize,” he said, inclining his head in a mocking little bow; the smile still lurking at his mouth.
    Darkness had fallen over the garden, and Elizabeth realized she ought