Lady Elizabeth stood abruptly, her cheeks flushing with colour. The movement drew some stares in their direction and he saw Lady Elizabeth notice them too, forcing herself to sit back down slowly.
‘I meant no offence. I merely wanted to lighten the tension.’
‘You haven’t said anything to your brother?’ She didn’t look at him as she spoke and he had the irrational urge to do something to provoke her.
‘About?’
‘You know what about.’
He normally thought of himself as a chivalrous man, but Lady Elizabeth was still refusing to look at him and he knew they had at most a couple of minutes before either her mother or his brother returned.
‘Leo is a very understanding man,’ he said quietly.
Lady Elizabeth finally turned her horrified eyes on him and immediately he regretted deceiving her.
‘I haven’t said anything,’ he reassured her quickly. ‘Part of me wanted to, but it isn’t just my secret to tell.’
‘Thank you.’ Her expression was serious again and he wondered if she had been worrying that Leo would find out about the kiss ever since the evening they’d spent in the pleasure gardens. She sighed and Josh had the impression she was weighed down by her worries this evening.
‘Is something else troubling you?’
‘My mother,’ she said eventually, tilting her head towards him so no one in the surrounding boxes would be able to ascertain her words. ‘She keeps pressing me on where I am with the...engagement.’
‘Of course, she thinks Leo took you for a stroll through the pleasure gardens.’
‘She thinks he should have had enough time to assess our suitability.’ Lady Elizabeth bit her lip and Josh’s eyes were drawn to where her teeth made an indent in the rosy skin. For a moment he was completely distracted from what she was saying, imagining instead tracing a finger over her lip and smoothing the frown off her brow at the same time.
‘Ah, Mr Ashburton, what a delight it is to see you again.’ Lady Hummingford sailed into the box and greeted him. She flashed him her most charming smile as he stood and bowed and he realised she’d once again mistaken him for his brother. She eyed her daughter and seemed to decide it would be a good idea to leave them alone for a few more minutes, albeit with the eyes of all the other opera-goers on them. ‘I’m just going to have a little word with Mrs Arlington. I’ll be back shortly.’
‘Mother...’ Lady Elizabeth started, but Lady Hummingford was already halfway out of the box.
‘Do we really look that similar?’
Lady Elizabeth smiled for the first time since being left alone in the box with him. ‘No, at least I don’t think so. There are many similarities between you, especially on first glance, but you don’t look identical. At least not to me.’ The last sentence was added quietly as she raised her eyes up to meet his.
Josh felt the pull of desire, the undeniable attraction, but there was something more there too. Of course, he found Lady Elizabeth physically attractive, she was pretty and petite and her smile was nothing short of dazzling, but there was more to it than that. He’d never grown close to a woman before, he’d always been too focussed on the business to take much notice of the young women thrust towards him in society in India, but now he wanted to know Lady Elizabeth. He wanted to know what made her happy and what made her sad. He wanted to uncover her sense of humour and discover why she frowned every time she spoke of her childhood.
Careful, he cautioned himself silently. Even to his mind it sounded as if he was falling for Lady Elizabeth.
‘Tell me how this works,’ Josh said, searching for an innocuous subject to distract him from the thoughts in his head. He didn’t want to feel anything for Lady Elizabeth, didn’t want to complicate his short stay in England with anything unnecessary. Three months and he would be returning to India and she would need her reputation intact to marry.
‘How what works?’
‘The opera. All of this.’ He gestured to the beautiful people sitting in the boxes, the ladies fluttering their fans and deep in conversation with one another, the men often sitting slightly further back and observing the proceedings.
‘Can I tell you a secret?’
‘Of course.’
Lady Elizabeth lowered her voice and leaned in closer to him. There was still a chair separating them but even so Josh fancied he caught a hint of the rose perfume she used to scent her hair.
‘This is my first time at the opera too. Mother made me promise I wouldn’t say anything.’
‘She worries Leo will be put off by your lack of funds?’
‘Perhaps, although your brother cannot be ignorant of how we’ve struggled since my father’s death. I think she worries more I will seem unrefined. It must be unheard of for a young woman of the aristocracy not to have attended the opera by her twenty-second year.’ She shook her head with a wry smile. ‘Mother made sure I had good tutors, could play three different instruments, speak French and organise wonderful dinner parties, but we haven’t been to London for years and there are some experiences the wilds of Sussex just can’t give you.’ She gave a brief smile and Josh felt a surge of desire as his body inched towards her. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from her lips and found it hard to focus on anything but the thought of kissing her again.
‘I’m hardly the person to reassure you on the matter of refinement,’ Josh said with an answering smile, ‘but I doubt Leo would be so shallow. What does it matter to him if you’ve been to the opera before?’
‘One of the main roles as the wife of a member of the aristocracy is to make their husband look good. A wife who isn’t refined, who doesn’t know when to applaud and when to sit back, that could make the husband look bad.’
Josh shook
