So she put her best smile on her face and was quite sure she looked terribly interested in everything he had to say as he answered, “I didn’t want to miss the musicale.”

“Oh, now I know you’re lying.”

“No, really,” he insisted. “The knowledge of your true feelings will bring an entirely new dimension to the endeavor.”

She rolled her eyes. “Please. No matter how much you think you are laughing with me, and not at me, you cannot escape the cacophony.”

“I am pondering discreet balls of cotton for my ears.”

“If my mother catches you, she shall be mortally wounded. And she, who saved you from a mortal wound.”

He looked at her with some surprise. “She still thinks you’re talented?”

“Every one of us,” Honoria confirmed. “I think she is a little sad that I am the last of her daughters to perform. But I suppose the torch will soon pass to a new generation. I have many nieces who are practicing their little fingers off on their tiny little violins.”

“Really? Tiny ones?”

“No. It just sounds better to describe them that way.”

He chuckled at that, then fell silent. They were both silent, just standing there in the drawing room, uncharacteristically awkward and, well, silent.

It was odd. It was not like them at all.

“Would you care to take a stroll?” he asked suddenly. “The weather is fine.”

“No,” she said, a little more brusquely than she would have liked. “Thank you.”

A shadow passed over his eyes and then was gone so quickly she thought she might have imagined it. “Very well,” he said stiffly.

“I can’t,” she added, because she hadn’t really meant to hurt his feelings. Or maybe she had, and now she felt guilty. “My cousins are all here. We’re practicing.”

A faint look of alarm crossed his face.

“You will probably want to find some sort of business that removes you from Mayfair entirely,” she told him. “Daisy has not yet managed pianissimo.” At his blank stare, she added, “She’s loud.”

“And the rest of you aren’t?”

“Touché, but no, not like that.”

“So what you are saying is that when I do attend the musicale, I should endeavor to secure a seat at the back?”

“In the next room, if you can manage it.”

“Really?” He looked remarkably—no, make that comically—hopeful. “Will there be seats in the next room?”

“No,” she replied, rolling her eyes yet again. “But I don’t think the back row is going to save you. Not from Daisy.”

He sighed.

“You should have considered this before you rushed your convalescence.”

“So I am coming to realize.”

“Well,” she said, trying to sound as if she was a very busy young lady with many appointments and quite a few things to do who also happened not to be pining over him in the least, “I really must be going.”