“Oh!” Grace exclaimed, clapping her hands together. “A direct cut!”
Arabella nodded, reluctantly impressed.
The encounter hadn’t gone unnoticed. She saw a stir of interest among those close enough to have witnessed it.
Sir Arnold Gorrie’s face was scarlet, a color that didn’t go well with the orange-brown hue of his coat.
“He looks even more like a cockerel now,” Arabella observed, with quiet satisfaction.
Grace gave a choke of laughter. “Doesn’t he just!”
Arabella watched as St. Just walked towards them. His behavior this afternoon had been surprising. She’d expected him to turn tail and flee like Sir Arnold Gorrie. Instead, he’d done the opposite.
She chewed on her lower lip and observed him obliquely as he greeted his aunt.
St. Just turned to her. “Miss Knightley,” he said politely. “How do you do?”
“Adam!” Grace leaned forward, her face alight with adoration. “That was marvelous!”
“Er . . . what was?”
“A direct cut!”
To Arabella’s amusement, his sister’s admiration seemed to embarrass St. Just. He flushed slightly. “Oh. You saw that?”
“Yes,” Grace said. “It was magnificent! Wasn’t it, Arabella?”
Thus appealed to, Arabella nodded. “Worthy of Beau Brummell himself.”
St. Just glanced sharply at her, as if he suspected the sincerity of her praise.
“It made him look even more like a cockerel,” Grace said with satisfaction.
St. Just’s forehead creased slightly. “A cockerel?”
“Yes, look at him. He’s a cockerel.”
St. Just swung on his heel and stared across the ballroom. His eyebrows rose. “So he is.”
“Bella saw it,” Grace said, as smugly as if the observation had been her own.
St. Just turned and looked at her. His eyes narrowed slightly. “A talent of yours, Miss Knightley?”
“Yes,” Grace said. “She saw that Miss Brook looks like a pug dog.”
Arabella blinked. She’d forgotten that conversation.
“A pug dog?” St. Just turned on his heel again and scanned the ballroom. “Oh, yes, I suppose she does. An unfortunate nose.” His expression, when he looked at her, was tinged with suspicion. “Who else have you applied this . . . er, talent to, Miss Knightley?”
Arabella shrugged. “The comparison isn’t always easy to make.” But often it was. Adam St. Just was definitely a stag. It was easy to imagine him standing on the crest of a hill, handsome and arrogant, looking down that long nose of his, aware of his superiority over all other creatures. He carried his pride with him the way a stag carried its antlers. It was in the way he held his head. She could almost see them in the air above his carefully tousled hair, branching invisibly upwards, heavy with the weight of his lineage, his breeding, his bloodline.
“But who else?” Grace persisted.
Arabella shrugged again. “Some people are easy. Your friend Miss Wootton, for example. She reminds me of a robin; her cheeks are so rosy and her eyes so bright.”
“Oh, yes!” cried Grace. “She does!”
“And the Marquis of Revelstoke is clearly a—”
“Peacock,” St. Just said.
Arabella glanced at him, slightly disconcerted by his swiftness and accuracy. “Yes, a peacock.”
“Who else?” Grace asked.
“Well . . .” Arabella scanned the ballroom. “Lady Bicknell. I know it’s not very polite, but she reminds me of a—”
“Toad,” St. Just said.
Arabella turned her head and stared at him, her mouth still partly open. How had he known? She’d been going to say frog, but even so . . . “Yes,” she said.
Grace clapped her hands together. “How clever you both are! What am I?”
“A kitten,” Arabella said promptly. “A fluffy white kitten with big blue eyes.”
Grace blushed in delight. “And Adam?”
“A stag,” Arabella said, looking up at him. His eyebrows rose slightly. Did he take it as a compliment? It wasn’t.
“And Aunt Seraphina?”
Arabella checked that Grace’s aunt was in conversation with the lady seated alongside her. She lowered her voice slightly, “Your aunt reminds me of a beautiful Jersey cow, placid and gentle.”
Adam St. Just uttered a crack of laughter. “So she does.” He hastily straightened his face as his aunt looked around.
Arabella bit her lip and tried not to laugh, too—not at him, but with him. She looked down at her hands, clasped in her lap, and gently pinched the tip of one gloved finger. It was disturbing to find herself wanting to laugh with St. Just.
“And what about you, Bella? What are you?”
She glanced up and shrugged. “I’ve never given it any thought.”
Grace pursed her lips. “I think . . . a doe.”
A doe? She had an instant image of one—slender and shy, peering from the green fringes of a forest with large, dark eyes. Is that what I seem like to others?
“No,” St. Just said dryly. “Miss Knightley has claws.”
Arabella looked sharply at him. His expression was bland, but his eyes held a gleam of amusement.
There was no mockery in that gleam, no nastiness, but something friendlier, as if St. Just was inviting her to share a joke.
She was so taken aback that she couldn’t think of anything to say.
“Adam!” Grace protested. “That’s not very nice.”
St. Just shrugged. “You disagree, Miss Knightley?”
“No,” Arabella said, slightly flustered. “I think it very accurate.”
“Well, I don’t think Bella has claws!”
“That’s because she hasn’t sharpened them on you,” St. Just said, in the same dry voice. He raised his champagne glass to his lips and paused, listening to the orchestra. “The quadrille’s finishing. Excuse me, I’m engaged for the next dance.”
Arabella watched him walk away, more than a little disconcerted. Had they come close to laughing together, she and Adam St. Just?
“I’m engaged for this dance, too,” Grace said. “With Viscount Mayroyd.” She smoothed her glove up her arm and said with an attempt at nonchalance, “What do you think of him?”
“He seems a very nice young man.”
“He stutters,” Grace said, studying the seam of her glove.
“Does it bother you?”
Grace looked up. She shook her head firmly. “No. But . . .” Her brow creased for a few seconds, as if she sought words. “I think people have laughed at him because of it.”
“I’m certain they have.” Arabella hesitated, and then said softly, “Grace, be careful not to confuse pity with a . . . a warmer emotion.”
“I don’t pity him,” Grace said.
