“Come, my dear—we must secure Lady Ravenhurst’s company for a turn about the garden.”
He sensed her desire to turn, to see what his commanding voice had wrought from Lord Kirkland, and urged her ahead instead. Eleanora, Lady Ravenhurst, elbowed her way through the thick of the crowd, her dark hair shining in the candlelight.
“I’m here,” she said. “I’m happy to act as chaperone,” she said breathlessly, half elated, half concerned. Her eyes slid over Jillian’s face, her brows drawing to see the barely-masked anxiety written there. She took her place at Jillian’s side, lending the propriety she had as a matron to his company as James led Jillian away from the murmuring crowd and toward the doors leading out into the garden.
The instant the night air washed over them, he felt Jillian release the breath that had been trapped within her lungs on a shuddering sigh. She extracted her hand from his arm, rubbed the both of them over her face in a futile attempt to exorcise the distress etched across her fine features.
“Jilly,” Eleanora said, her voice soft and comforting. “Are you…all right?”
“Yes,” Jillian said immediately. “Yes, I am quite all right. It is only that I did not expect—I never thought—”
“I don’t think anyone did,” Eleanora replied. “How could he show his face here? How could Lady Lennox invite him? And without any warning to you? It is most unseemly.” She touched her hand to Jillian’s arm in a show of sisterly solidarity. “You were so brave,” she said. “So composed—if I did not know you, I would have said you were utterly unaffected.”
Jillian’s eyes flitted to James, as if embarrassed once again that he had caught her in such a state. “I’m quite all right, Nora,” she said once again. “Really, I am.”
“Thank goodness. Well, then—I’ll just be along here. Guard the door, you know. Someone’s bound to try to sneak out here.” Her voice lowered to a dangerous lilt. “If it’s Lord Kirkland, I swear I shall hit him with my reticule.”
James smothered a laugh in his gloved hand at the thought of Lady Ravenhurst attempting to do the man an injury with so trifling an object. “I thank you, my lady,” he said. “I promise Lady Jillian will come to no harm from me.” Yet.
She fluttered her fingers at him. “Ten minutes,” she said. “That’s all I can allot you, you understand.”
He seized Jillian’s hand in his, turning about to drag her off into the gardens.
“Wait!” she squeaked. “I cannot go off alone with you!”
“Oh, yes you can,” he said. “And you will. We have things to discuss.” Heedless of her efforts to shake his iron grip on her hand, he dragged her along behind him. They passed a row of hedges, boxes of flowers which had closed up in the night, and finally came to the pergola buried in the heart of the garden, where a small, wrought-iron bench rested beneath a bower of climbing tea roses.