He stepped backward and bowed. “I wish you good evening, Lady Penshallow. I’m afraid that, like your cousin, I must leave before the dinner dance. Perhaps you will dance with me another time.” He felt a primitive desire to get out the doors before his lady managed to run away from him.

That’s what she was doing.

Running.

She had taken one look at him from under those absurdly long eyelashes and headed for the ballroom door. That meant she felt something. Maybe not the same thing he did—not the same jolt of absolute certainty—but something.

He could work with it.

A butler, resplendent in red livery, handed him his greatcoat. The man was dignified, but given his raisin-sized eyes, not too dignified for a bribe. A moment later, Hugo had a name.

Ophelia, Lady Astley, the widow of Sir Peter Astley.

He turned it over in his head. Ophelia. One of Shakespeare’s heroines, and a melancholy one, if he had the play right. This Ophelia wasn’t melancholy. Her eyes were intelligent and fiery; he’d bet anything she had a temper that would blaze as hot as her hair.

He walked through the door and saw with satisfaction that the street was just as snarled in carriages as it had been forty minutes ago. Carriages were taking a half hour to traverse the street before the house.

When he arrived, he had jumped out and walked, telling his coachman that he would make his own way home later. Other guests remained in their carriages like a line of patient cows waiting to be milked. Likely some of them had been here then, and they were still here now.

Night had fallen. Linkboys were milling about in front of the house and running between carriages, their flaming torches held high, biting circles into the darkness. Snowflakes were falling lazily into the patches of light, as if the white fluff popped into existence when light met the dark air.

Ophelia was nowhere in sight, which meant her coachman had escorted her to her carriage—but he doubted the vehicle had gone anywhere. Traffic was at a standstill; two coachmen had descended from their perches and were shouting about a scratched side panel.

Which carriage might she be in? To his left were three commodious family carriages, the doors picked out with crests. She wouldn’t be found in one of those. Sir Peter Astley had been a baronet, not a peer.

If there was an elegant barouche, it would have gone to the heir, not to the widow. His brows drew together as he realized that many a young widow, especially one who hadn’t given birth to a male heir, might find herself in financial straits. Rational thought quickly asserted itself.