She froze. A dark figure had entered her peripheral vision.
A thrill of panic ran down her back. It was him, standing in the wing doors. Her skin prickled from top to toe as his presence rippled like a disturbance through the ether.
“I think he’s here,” she whispered without moving her lips. “Do not look.”
Catriona’s gaze slid sideways as she raised her glass to feign a sip. “Oh my.”
They angled their backs to the main door as one and pretended to study the buffet.
Hattie wasn’t seeing a thing. “Do you see? Do you see why I first thought he was a pirate?”
“I don’t, to be truthful,” Catriona murmured after a small pause.
“You don’t?”
“He’s hardly a gibface, Hattie.”
“He isn’t,” she conceded. “But he is no gentleman.”
“You said he’s a Scotsman. Perhaps from the Highlands? He would look braw in a kilt.”
Hattie blinked. Would he? And why was Catriona picturing men in kilts?
“Why do you think he’s a Highlander?”
Catriona’s smile was a little crooked. “They have a certain look about them when they enter a room full of Englishmen. A sharp glance in their eyes, like a broadsword at the ready to be drawn—You beat us at Culloden, it says, but our spirit remains unbroken.”
Hattie’s mouth fell open. “Is that what you think when you enter a room full of Englishmen?”
“Oh, worry not,” Catriona said. “My mother was from Sussex. And I spent more time in Oxford than in Applecross.” She glanced back over her shoulder. “You can look now—he is engaged in conversation with your mother.”
Her fingers tightened around the stem of her glass. “Oh golly.”
“It means nothing—he must address the hostess.”
She saw it, the furtive glance Catriona cast at the clock. “No— please stay.”
“I’m sorry,” Catriona said reluctantly. “I truly am, but I must be on my way.” She put her empty glass onto a tray floating past. “Could you not accompany me to the door, then go and hide in your room?”
“Yes,” Hattie murmured, feeling ill. “Excellent plan.”
She avoided looking at him while she approached. She avoided looking at him while Catriona said her good-byes to the hostess. Through her light-headed state, she still heard her mother instruct a footman to escort Catriona to the door. A last, helpless exchange of glances with her friend, and the inevitable was upon her.
“Harriet, I would like you to meet Mr. Blackstone,” her mother said. “Mr. Blackstone is a man of business here in London. Mr. Blackstone, allow me to present Miss Harriet Greenfield, our second-eldest daughter.”
His cool gray gaze locked with hers and her heart began to race. He was as striking as she remembered him: pale, dark brows, broad cheekbones. His lips were well drawn but not full. How had his mouth felt so soft? A mistake to even think of it. His eyes brightened knowingly, and the memory of their kiss flared between them like embers leaping back to life, the heat so palpable, everyone in the circle would have to feel the warmth, too.
She tilted her flaming face. “Sir.”
“Miss Greenfield.” His voice was deeper than she recalled. She cast him a nervous glance from beneath her lashes. He was properly attired today in a navy jacket, oxblood cravat, gray waistcoat, and fawn-colored trousers, and he had rigorously slicked back his hair. He still could not suggest good breeding. He had an untamable quality to him that radiated from his very core, and clothing would not conceal it. Catriona was right; a kilt and a broadsword would suit him better, enhancing rather than poorly disguising him. . . .
“Miss Greenfield,” Mrs. Astorp said, making her snap to attention. “Mrs. Greenfield mentioned you are still up at Oxford?” Genuine curiosity shone in Mrs. Astorp’s hazel eyes. The young woman had been married to an industrialist twice her age for a few years now, though she was scarcely older than Hattie. Acquiring a university degree had to strike her as an alien form of life.
“I am,” Hattie said. “I’m at Lady Margaret Hall. Trinity term finished last week.”
“How neat,” said Mrs. Hewitt-Cook, the American. “How many female students are enrolled at present?” Mrs. Hewitt-Cook was a handsome brunette and older, closer to Hattie’s mother’s age. Her burgundy ensemble was very fashionable, and if it was a little tight, it was probably a deliberate choice. Hattie fixed her gaze on the oval brooch at the woman’s throat to avoid Mr. Blackstone. “There are five-and-twenty women enrolled between Somerville Hall and Lady Margaret Hall,” she said.
“What a jolly bunch,” Mrs. Hewitt-Cook said brightly. “You must have a famously good time, being a new woman—tell us, what is it like?”
Too many answers at once rushed at her, none of them appropriate. The pet rat she had contemplated keeping in order to appear sufficiently eccentric in her new student role came to mind, and how just before the term began, she had learned that another female student already kept a rat, a white one that sat on her shoulder. . . . She felt the weight of Mr. Blackstone’s gaze on her profile. Her reply came out in a mumble: “It’s very diverting,” she said, and touched her hair. “Being a new woman, it’s diverting.”
“I imagine,” said Mrs. Hewitt-Cook. “Such terribly colorful characters among the bluestockings, surely.”
Hattie saw her mother’s back stiffen at the veiled barb. “Perhaps one or two,” she said. “Most of us, however, are still perfectly monochrome.”
Mrs. Hewitt-Cook laughed softly. “Why, she’s charming, Mrs. Greenfield.”
“A lot of excitement surrounds the matter of women in higher education,” Adele said with a cool undertone. “The truth is the young women are more rigorously supervised at university than they would be in any other place. Harriet, for example, is never without Mrs. Greenfield-Carruther”—and here she nodded at Aunty—“and of course she is always under the watchful eye of her protection officer.”
At this, Mr. Blackstone’s left brow rose very slightly. Help.
“It’s lovely to see female talent fostered,” young Mrs. Astorp said. “We were admiring your painting earlier, you see.”
Worse and worse. Everyone turned to look at the practice piece she had so haphazardly chosen during her crisis over Persephone. There was the bowl, the wood-grain texture of it poorly done. Therein followed the uninspiring assortment of fruit and some vegetables.
Mr. Blackstone looked her in the eye. “You painted this?”