“Only with my husband, Lady Wooddale.” The old cat! She knew very well the rumors that were running amok about Steve and the opera singer! It was time to defuse them. Her smile was mechanical and polite. “Please excuse me.”

Gliding through the crowd that seemed to magically part for her, Ginny approached the little group by the open door of the portico. Steve saw her first, his blue eyes crinkled the smallest bit in amusement as she held his gaze, her chin up in customary defiance.

This was familiar footing, this cat-and-mouse game they had always played with one another, much more comfortable than the awkward courtesy of careful reacquaintance.

“Mrs. Morgan,” Lord Grayson said when she reached their group, “it is an honor to have you join us.”

Though she murmured a polite reply to the baronet, her gaze held Steve’s eyes with relentless tenacity. She would not allow anyone to intimidate or ignore her ever again, she vowed silently, and finally shifted her attention to the woman on Steve’s arm.

Francesca di Paoli watched her with dark eyes that burned like banked coals, not attempting to hide her disdain for the wife of her former lover.

“Stefano, is this your little wife?” she asked with a haughty lift of her brow. “She is not at all as I expected her to be, caro.”

It was not, Ginny knew, meant as a compliment. Green eyes clashed with black, fiercely competitive.

“No? Yet you are everything I thought you would be. Steve, darling, it is getting late and I’m worried about our children. Don’t you think we should be going home?”

“Leaving?” the man at her elbow protested. “Surely not so soon, I hope! I have not yet had the honor of a dance with so lovely a lady. If your husband does not mind, of course.”

As the viscount turned toward him, Steve shrugged, the suggestion of a smile touching his lips. “My wife has a mind of her own, Lord Hartsfield.”

Hartsfield turned back to Ginny. A tall man, with large brown eyes that reminded her of Laura’s puppy, he had an eager, boyish expression and manner, and she found herself in the awkward position of being rude or forced into a dance she did not want.

Courtesy demanded she acquiesce to Hartsfield with a gracious smile, and as he swept her onto the dance floor to the lovely tune of a Strauss waltz, she caught a glimpse of malicious triumph in Francesca’s eyes.

“I understand that your husband supports the opera most generously,” Lord Hartsfield remarked. “It was his efforts that brought Signorina di Paoli to London to appear in a production of Caglisotro, the Strauss operetta, was it not?”