“I have not had the pleasure.”

“Pleasure,” Sarah repeated, tucking her chin back toward her neck as she tried to choke down her disbelief.

“Is something wrong?” Lord Hugh asked.

She opened her mouth to explain, but just then the butler came in and called them in for supper.

“Your prayers are answered,” Lord Hugh said wryly.

“Not all of them,” she muttered.

He offered her his arm. “Yes, you’re still stuck with me, aren’t you?”

Indeed.

Chapter Seven

The following afternoon

And so the Earl of Chatteris and Lady Honoria Smythe-Smith were joined in holy matrimony. The sun was shining, the wine was flowing, and judging by the laughter and smiles at the wedding breakfast (which had long since metamorphosed into a wedding luncheon), a good time was being had by all.

Even Lady Sarah Pleinsworth.

From where Hugh was sitting at the head table (rather by himself; everyone else had got up to dance), she was the very embodiment of carefree English womanhood. She spoke easily to the other guests, she laughed often (but never too loudly), and when she danced, she looked so bloody happy it nearly lit the room on fire.

Hugh had once liked to dance.

He’d been good at it, too. Music was not so very different from mathematics. It was all just patterns and sequences. The only difference was that they hung in the air instead of on a piece of paper.

Dancing was a grand equation. One side was sound, the other movement. The dancer’s job was to make them equal.

Hugh might not have felt music, the way the choral master at Eton had insisted he must, but he certainly understood it.

“Hullo, Lord Hugh. Would you like some cake?”

Hugh looked up and smiled. It was little Lady Frances Pleinsworth, holding two plates. One had a gigantic slice of cake, the other a merely enormous one. Both had been liberally frosted with lavender-hued icing and tiny candy violets. Hugh had seen the cake in all its glory before it had been cut; he had immediately begun to wonder how many eggs such a gateau might have required. When that had proved an impossible calculation, he’d started thinking about how long it would have taken to make the confection. Then he’d moved on to—

“Lord Hugh?” Lady Frances said, cutting into his thoughts. She lifted one of the plates a few inches higher in the air, reminding him of why she’d come over.

“I do like cake,” he said.

She sat down next to him, setting the plates on the table. “You looked lonely.”

Hugh smiled again. It was the sort of thing an adult would never have said aloud. And precisely the reason he’d rather have been chatting with her than anyone else in the room. “I was alone, not lonely.”

Frances frowned, considering that. Hugh was just about to explain the difference when she cocked her head and asked, “Are you sure?”