As if he’d lost something precious.
And he had—if he were here now, if he intended, as James suspected, to make himself known once again to his former fiancée, the woman he’d thrown over three years prior, then it could almost certainly be said that he now knew exactly what it was he had given up. He had little fear that Jillian would wish to renew her acquaintance with him, that she would be inclined to listen to whatever explanation he chose to give her; not when she had suffered so, been gossiped about across all of London for his defection, not when it had cost her the happiness and the future that ought to have been hers. But neither would she wish to cause a scene.
If he wanted to earn her trust, sway her opinion of him, he could do it right here, right now. It wouldn’t even be hard—he found a dark and possessive part of him was actually looking forward to it, blazed with a sort of smug superiority at the prospect of rubbing Lord Kirkland’s nose into what he’d lost. No, not lost—what he had carelessly tossed away.
Jillian would have withdrawn from him, but he did not allow her to do so. Instead, he tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow and escorted her off the floor—straight toward Lord Kirkland.
He heard her breath catch, felt tension seize her muscles, felt her slippered feet drag across the floor as he pulled her along.
“No,” she whispered out of the corner of her mouth. “No, please. I can’t.”
“You won’t have to,” he whispered back. “Trust me, Jilly.” But she couldn’t, and he ought to be sent straight to hell for those words alone.
The fight went out of her. He had no illusions that his plea for her trust had swayed her; probably she had only despaired of causing a scene. But she let him pull her off the floor, and together they swept right past Lord Kirkland without even the briefest hint of acknowledgment.
James heard the scandalized murmur sweep the room, slanted a glance at Jillian’s suddenly pale face, and felt her hand tighten on his arm.
“Jilly.” The word emerged as a pained whisper from the man who had so slighted her years before. He didn’t deserve to whisper her name in that tone, didn’t deserve her acknowledgment, had no right to expect her attention. How dared he come here seeking it? How dared he present himself before her as if he had some sort of right to it?
James rounded on the man, enjoyed the fact that his superior height enabled him to look down his elegant, patrician nose at Lord Kirkland. He let all of his antipathy show clearly in the icy depths of his eyes, freed the sneer that had lurked at the corners of his mouth. “Lady Jillian,” he corrected sharply, cuttingly. “That is Lady Jillian to you, Kirkland.” With a show of casual affection, he patted Jillian’s hand where it lay snug in the crook of his arm.