“I think we’ve lost our chaperone,” Raven said and his gaze lowered to her lips. “Seems to me that we should adjourn to the conservatory for . . . research.”
“I cannot.” She hated that those words fell from her lips. “I promised the children we’d start our Christmas puddings this afternoon. It takes weeks before they’re ready to be steamed. And I know,” she dropped her voice to the barest whisper, “that time would escape us if we engaged in more . . . research.”
He growled in response, his grip possessive as he brought her hand to his lips. “You’re right. I’m in a mood to be quite thorough.”
His warm gaze never left hers as he kissed each knuckle, and every vulnerable niche in between. Her knees went weak.
Before she could stop herself, she asked, “Will you come back tomorrow?”
From the piano, Henry cleared his throat and Jane made a hasty amendment.
“For another lesson, of course,” she said in a rush. “You still need to improve your polite parlor conversation and—Oh! I just had another epiphany. You could come to dinner and meet my parents.”
“Your parents?” he parroted with a horrified grimace.
“Opus two,” Henry remarked with a snicker, “the bluestocking spins her matrimonial web on a new victim.”
Jane sent a glare to her brother.
Before Raven acquired the wrong impression, she slipped her arm into his and ushered him out of the ballroom and away from Henry’s interfering ears.
“I have no ulterior motive,” she said once they advanced to the corridor. “I simply believe there is no better way for you to gain experience on practicing superficial conversation than with the two leading experts in society. To be honest, I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of it before.”
“I work in a gaming hell, Jane. What am I possibly going to converse about—the odds of winning at faro?”
“Oh, believe me, they’ll do all the talking,” she said. “It will be excellent practice for you.”
Raven’s mouth twisted with patent skepticism. “I don’t know. It just seems a bit too proper.”
“If it makes you feel any better, they likely won’t even realize you’re there. I often have dinner with them and they are startled to look down the table to see me.”
Unfortunately, it was all too true. She was so plain and forgettable that even her parents couldn’t seem to remember her. But after all these years, it didn’t bother her. Not much. In fact, hardly at all.
A pair of astute gray eyes studied her for a long moment and his head fell back on a taut sigh. Then he grumbled under his breath, “What the hell. It’s just dinner, eh?”
Chapter 23
Jane knew this evening was bound to be a disaster. Dinner with her parents? What had she been thinking?
Oh, but she knew. She’d been under the spell of the waltz. She hadn’t been thinking at all about how humiliating it would be for him to witness how utterly unimportant she was to her parents. And he would soon realize how she wasn’t at all what a debutante ought to be.
At that point, he would see her as an oddity like the other gentlemen had, and whatever connection they’d shared would soon be severed.
She was a bundle of nerves. Waiting outside the door to the drawing room, she fanned her hands at her sides in an effort not to wrinkle her gown with the perspiration that dampened her palms.
Inside, her parents were trying to recall which one of them had invited a guest to dinner.
Jane had already told them three times that she had issued the invitation, but they paid no attention. They never did.
But none of that mattered now, because Raven was here. Early, in fact.
In his usual commanding prowl, he traversed the length of the hall in a floor-eating stride. A tailored dark blue coat drew her attention to the breadth of his shoulders and his trim torso in a cashmere waistcoat. He looked exceedingly handsome in his snowy cravat with his hair tamed back from his forehead.
A pair of frostbitten eyes stood out in sharp relief beneath the dark slash of his brows. The only thing that hinted at his reluctance to be here was the muscle ticking along the hard, chiseled ridge of his mandible as he clenched his teeth.
But then his gray gaze warmed as he drew closer, and witnessing it eased some of her agitation. He took in every inch of her form in a single, thorough sweep, from her lips to her pointlessly low-cut bodice and all the way down the rose-colored silk gown to the ruffled hem.
By the time his eyes met hers again, they were smoldering in blatant hunger, as if he’d come to dinner and believed that she was the intended buffet. No one had ever looked at her the way he did.
A pleasant fluttering stirred in her stomach and lungs, twirling in giddy circles. She laid a hand over her midriff, feeling peculiarly breathless. “Thank you for coming. Truth be told, I don’t know what possess—”
“Is that our guest?” Lord Hollybrook asked, coming up behind her.
She turned and took a step into the drawing room as Raven followed. “Yes, Father. I’d like to introduce—”
“No. No. Don’t tell me,” her father said, falling into his practiced guise of blandisher by grinning and wagging his finger. Then he tapped that same digit against the side of his pursed lips as he scrutinized the cut of Raven’s clothes. “I know! You’re the King of Waistcoats. That cut is positively smashing. You must tell me who your tailor is. I’m giving mine the sack this instant.” Then he genially held out his hand and offered, “Beauregard Pickerington, Viscount Hollybrook, and you are—Oh, wait just a moment, for I have spotted the most divine creature across the room. Love, come hither and greet our guest with your beatific smile. Sir, I am delighted to introduce my own Clementina, Viscountess Hollybrook.”
“An honor, my lord, my lady. I am Raven.”
“Yes, I’m sure we’ve met before. Raven . . . Raven . . . Ravenscroft. Of course! Excellent family, excellent.” Beneath a carefully coiffed dishevelment of short, sandy-silver hair, Father squinted, displaying two small fans of faint wrinkles beside each blue eye. “And which one are you?”
“Dearest, how rude,” Mother said. With a graceful fingertip touch to her own coiffure, smoothing one errant pale strand back into the arrangement, she sashayed across the Axminister carpet in a dramatic mazarine blue gown.
“Yes, yes. Quite right,” Father said. “None of that matters when our trenchers await in the dining room and our empty goblets are eager for libation.”
Her mother issued a tittering laugh as she placed her hand on Father’s proffered arm. “Lord Hollybrook paints quite a barbaric portrait of my place settings. Trenchers, indeed. The silver has been in my family for three generations. Or would it be four, now, dear?”
“Hmm,” he mused, escorting his wife from the room without a backward glance. “Let’s see. It was either your great-grandmama’s mother, or your great-grandmama’s great-grandmama. Then again . . .”
Left alone in the parlor with Raven, Jane shrugged. “And there you have Lord and Lady Hollybrook. I trust the introduction was as painless as promised.”
Raven looked away from the vacant doorway to her, his brow knitted in perplexity. “I ought to correct their assumption. I don’t want to mislead your parents into thinking I’m someone else.”