A draft of cold air rustled her skirts, and she turned to find that a set of great double doors behind her had been opened—no doubt to combat the stifling heat in the room—and one had blown wide. She moved to close it, leaning out onto the great stone balcony to reach the door’s handle.
That’s when she heard it.
“You need me.”
“I need no such thing. I have taken care of myself without you for some time.”
Pippa paused. Someone was out there. Two someones.
“I can fix this. I can help. Just give me time. Six days.”
“Since when are you interested in helping?”
Pippa’s hand closed on the edge of the glass-paneled door, and she willed herself to close it. To pretend she had heard nothing. To return to the ball.
She did not move.
“I’ve always wanted to help.” The man’s voice was soft and urgent. Pippa stepped out onto the balcony.
“You certainly haven’t showed it.” The lady’s voice was steel. Angry and unwavering. “In fact, you have never helped. You have only hindered.”
“You’re in trouble.”
“It is not the first time.”
A hesitation. When the man spoke, his whispered words were clipped and filled with concern. “What else?”
She laughed quietly, but there was no humor in the sound—only bitterness. “Nothing you can repair now.”
“You shouldn’t have married him.”
“I didn’t have a choice. You didn’t leave me with one.”
Pippa’s eyes went wide. She’d stumbled into a lover’s quarrel. Well, not current lovers by the sound of it . . . past lovers. The question was, who where the lovers in question?
“I should have stopped it,” he whispered.
“Well, you didn’t,” she shot back.
Pippa pressed against a great stone column that provided a lovely shadow in which to hide, and edged her head to one side, holding her breath, unable to resist her attempt to discover their identity.
The balcony was empty.
She poked her head out from behind the column.
Totally empty.
Where were they?
“I can repair the damage. But you must stay away from him. Far away. He mustn’t have access to you.”
In the gardens below.
Pippa moved quietly toward the stone balustrade, curiosity piqued in the extreme.
“Oh, I am to believe you now? Suddenly, you are willing to keep me safe?”
Pippa winced. The lady’s tone was scathing. The gentleman in question—who was no gentleman at all, if Pippa had to guess—had most definitely wronged her in the past. She increased her pace, nearly to the edge, almost able to peer over the side of the balcony and identify the mysterious ex-lovers below.
“Lavinia . . .” he began softly, pleading, and excitement coursed through Pippa. A name!
That’s when she kicked the flowerpot.
They might not have heard the little scrape that came as she made contact with the great, footed beast of a thing . . . if only she hadn’t cried out in pain. It did not matter that her hand immediately flew to cover her mouth, turning her very loud “Oh!” into a very garbled “Oof.”
But the instant silence from below was enough to prove that they’d heard her quite clearly.
“I shouldn’t be here,” the lady whispered, and Pippa heard a rustle of skirts fading away.
There was a long moment of silence, during which she remained still as stone, biting her lip against the throbbing pain in her foot before he finally spoke, cursing in the darkness. “Goddammit.”
Pippa crouched low, feeling for her toes, and muttered, “You no doubt deserved that,” before realizing that taunting an unidentified man in the darkened gardens of her ancestral home was not a sound idea.
“I beg your pardon?” he asked quietly, no longer whispering.
She should return to the ball. Instead, she said, “It does not sound as though you have been very kind to the lady.”
Silence. “I haven’t been.”
“Well then, you deserve her desertion.” She squeezed her smallest toe and hissed in pain. “Likely more than that.”
“You hurt yourself.”
She was distracted by the pain, or she wouldn’t have responded. “I stubbed my toe.”
“Punishment for eavesdropping?”
“No doubt.”
“That will teach you.”
She smiled. “I hardly think so.”
She couldn’t be sure, but she was almost positive that he chuckled. “You had best be certain that your partners do not tread upon your toes when you return.”
A vision of Castleton flashed. “I am afraid it is very likely that at least one of them will do just that.” She paused. “It seems you gravely wronged the lady. How?”
He was quiet for so long that she thought he might have left. “I was not there for her when she needed me.”
“Ah,” she said.
“Ah?” he asked.
“One need not read romantic novels as frequently as my sister does to understand what happened.”
“You don’t read romantic novels, of course.”
“Not often,” Pippa said.
“I imagine you read books on more important things.”
“I do, as a matter of fact,” she said, proudly.
“Tomes on physics and horticulture.” Pippa’s eyes went wide. “Those are the purview of Lady Philippa Marbury.”
She shot to her feet and peered over the edge of the balcony, into the pit of darkness below. She couldn’t see anything. She heard the swipe of wool as his arms shifted, or perhaps his legs. He was right there. Directly beneath her.