at her; she met his eyes, mentally shrugged. “Just the picture we must make.” Looking ahead, she nodded at the ladies in the carriages before them. “We’re creating quite a stir.”
Dillon merely inclined his head; inwardly, he grinned. They were creating a stir for a more potent reason than their glamorous appearance. He didn’t, however, feel any great need to explain that, not yet.
Indeed, if ever. From the point of attaining his goal, there were some things it might be better she never learned.
He saw a flash of blue ahead. “There they are-to the left.”
The space beside Flick’s carriage was just wide enough for him to ease his curricle into. He’d borrowed one of Demon’s London grooms as a tiger; consigning the blacks to his care, he rounded the curricle and handed Pris down.
Eugenia and Flick were settled in the carriage. As he and Pris drew near, Rus assisted Adelaide to the lawn.
As soon as Pris had greeted Eugenia and Flick, Adelaide, all but bubbling with exuberance, said, “We’ve been waiting to stroll the lawns.”
Pris had to smile at her eagerness. “Yes, of course. Shall we?”
She looked at the carriage, received Eugenia’s approving nod, then turned-and found Dillon waiting to offer his arm. She hesitated for only an instant before laying her hand on his sleeve. It was only a walk in the park, after all.
A walk she frankly enjoyed. Strolling with just Dillon, Rus, and Adelaide was relaxing; she didn’t have to be on guard socially. Although other couples and groups crossed their path, all merely exchanged greetings, swapped comments on the weather or the entertainments they expected to attend that evening, then moved on.
Following Rus and Adelaide down the gravel path that led to the banks of the Serpentine, it was on the tip of her tongue to mention that yesterday, she’d had to fight off the gentlemen, both the eligible and the not-so-eligible, when caution, and suspicion, caught her tongue.
She glanced at Dillon; while she might know what lurked beneath his urbanity, there was nothing in his appearance as he gazed about to declare his possessiveness. Nothing she could see that could possibly be warning other gentlemen away-off, as if he owned her.
He sensed her gaze, turned his head, and caught her eyes. Arched a dark brow.
She looked ahead to where the slate waters of the lake rippled beneath the breeze. “I was just thinking how pleasant it was to walk in the fresh air.” She glanced at him. “I haven’t walked this way, or so far, before. Indeed, yesterday there were so many around, I got barely ten yards from the carriage.”
Dillon kept his smile easy and assured. “One day, a few appearances at balls, can make a big difference in the ton. Once people know who you are…”
She tilted her head, and seemed to accept the suggestion.
He studied her face, then looked ahead, and reiterated his earlier wisdom. There was absolutely no sense in explaining just how the good ladies and the interested gentlemen were interpreting his driving her in the park, and strolling with her over the lawns, at least not yet, not given the suspicion he’d glimpsed in her eyes.
After the standard half hour, he gathered Rus and Adelaide and steered the three back to the waiting carriages.
Flick beamed at him; she was thrilled to her teeth that he was behaving as he was. He could only pray she didn’t do anything to give Pris’s nascent suspicions some direction.
“Celia’s?” He did his best to distract Flick as Rus handed Adelaide into the carriage. He kept his hand over Pris’s on his sleeve.
“Yes.” Flick glanced at Eugenia, who smiled at him.
“Lady Celia insisted that we impose on you-her very words were: be
Dillon had no difficulty believing that. “In that case, Pris and I will follow in my curricle.”
Flick waved. “Go ahead. Your horses will hate to be held back behind us.”
He looked down at Pris. “Would you rather travel in the carriage?”
The look she bent on him was measuring. Turning, she surveyed his blacks. “Flick’s horses are well enough, but given the choice, I prefer yours.”
They parted from the others. He led her to the curricle and helped her up to the seat. He was climbing up to sit beside her when she asked, “Can I handle the ribbons?”
He grasped the reins and sat beside her. “Only after I die.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “I’m perfectly proficient.”
“Really?”
While they rattled over the London streets, she tried to persuade him to entrust his prize cattle with their velvet mouths to her. In vain.
She was distinctly huffy when he drew up outside Lady Celia Cynster’s house, but the gathering inside distracted her.
He found it distracting, too; he was constantly on pins that one of the assembled ladies-those of the wider Cynster clan as well as many of their connections and a significant collection of their bosom-bows-would make some comment that would alert Pris to his strategy. While the ladies certainly saw and understood it, and were quick to twit him over it, while those like Horatia, Helena, and Honoria came tantalizingly close to saying one word too many in Pris’s hearing, all deigned to let him escape. For the moment.
The implication was obvious. They expected action. They expected success.
“The truth,” he growled, in response to Flick’s query regarding progress, specifically his, “is that I’d rather be reporting to the Jockey Club Committee on yet another substitution scam-one I had no notion existed-than face this inquisition if I fail.”
Flick arched her brows at him. “But you aren’t going to fail, are you?”
“No. But a trifle less pressure would be appreciated.”
She grinned and patted his arm. “Gentlemen like you respond best to artfully applied pressure.”
She swanned off before, astonished, he could reply.
Vane grinned. “We’ve all had to live through it. We survived. No doubt you will, too.”
“One can but hope,” Dillon muttered, as Pris came up to join them.
He introduced her to Vane. Straightening from his bow, Vane shot him an intrigued glance-as if he now understood Dillon’s uncertainty. None of those who’d run the Cynster ladies’ gauntlet before had had to deal with a lady quite like Pris.
One in whom the wild and reckless held quite so much sway.
“I wanted to congratulate you”-Vane included them both, and Rus nearby, in his glance-“on your success in bringing the substitution racket to such a resounding end. It was a significant risk, so Demon tells me, but from all I’m hearing, the results have been extraordinary.”
“What have you heard?” Pris asked.
Vane smiled at her. Watching, Dillon noted that the legendary Cynster charm had no discernible effect on Pris; she waited, patently undeflected. Vane glanced briefly at Dillon, so fleetingly Dillon was sure Pris didn’t catch his infinitesimal nod.
Looking back at her, choosing his words with a care Dillon appreciated, Vane replied, “The atmosphere in the gentlemen’s clubs is one of open glee. Further down the social scale, there’s much nodding and wise comments, and a gratifying spreading of the word to beware of being drawn into such schemes.”
Glancing at Dillon, he continued, “Lower still, and comments are rather hotter and a great deal sharper. It’s like a seething cauldron, with everyone looking for who to blame.”
Dillon raised his brows. “No word on who that is?”
“None that I’ve heard, although there’s quite an army searching.” Vane looked across the room. “But here’s one who might have some light to shed on that.”
Turning, Pris beheld yet another tall, elegant, patently dangerous gentleman. All the Cynster males seemed to be cast from the same mold; glancing back at Dillon while they waited for the other to finish greeting Lady Celia- from her comments he was one of her sons, by name Rupert-Pris found no difficulty seeing Dillon as part of the
