He was mad.
He had to be. Because he couldn’t seem to stop himself.
Which made him madder, still. He was mad, because at precisely nine o’clock on the evening of December 6th, Miss Flora Conway stepped into the drawing room of Lady Augusta Ivers’s Christmastide soirée and everything else—every other sound and person—seemed to fade away, leaving only her.
He knew the exact time, because he consulted his pocket watch, both to mark the moment and to force himself to look away from her. While he imagined a beautiful girl like Miss Conway might be used to the weight of people’s wonder, he didn’t imagine it was an altogether comfortable burden. Either way, he was determined not to burden her with his heavy gaze. He accounted himself too self-disciplined to become some infernal ogler. Even now.
Especially now.
So, he turned away to contemplate a painting, or a sconce, or a bloody crack in the wall. Anything. Anything but her.
But it was impossible.
At nine-sixteen, she undertook a slow, but solitary perambulation of the room—everything graceful and elegant, an aloof swan gliding along a snowy shore. At nine twenty-two, she refused a glass of champagne and sat by herself on a chair along the far wall, having quietly rebuffed any number of people who sought to speak with her. She all but radiated uncharacteristic solitude.
She was, to his acute eye, engaged in the contemplation of some deep thought or problem—a small pleat had formed between the otherwise flawless arch of her golden brows.
Not that he cared exclusively for physical beauty—he had learned the hard way that it was character that counted. But Miss Flora Conway’s character had been set for quite some time as being as exemplary as her beauty. She was thoughtful, kind and generous. Everyone said so. Quick to smile and a pleasure to be around. Transparently open and inviting.
Everything he was not. Especially now.
At ten-o-six, she sighed and rearranged her silken skirts, but otherwise did not move. She did not stand. She did not smile. She stared at the floor of Lady Augusta Ivers’s drawing room until he could no longer stand it.
And so, at ten twenty-two, after consulting his pocket watch one last time, he cursed his demons, accepted his fate and stepped away from the wall, resolved at last to do something about the fact that he was hopelessly, stupidly and inconveniently in love with Miss Flora Conway— before it was too late to do anything at all.
