"Oh, I was," Gillian said cheerfully. "I tried any way I could to get him to cry off. I couldn't break the engagement myself as his mother held the mortgage to my father's estate. Luckily"—and she had the smile of a cat who'd found the cream—"she was kind enough to give it back to us when Draven married you. I believe she was afraid of a breach-of-promise suit. So you see, Lady Maitland, not only do you have nothing to apologize to me for, but I have every need to thank you."
"You were truly attempting to get Draven to call off your wedding?"
"Absolutely. I was desperate."
"How odd," Imogen said after a moment of silence. "I'm afraid I felt the same emotion, reversed. I was desperate to marry."
"What a lovely contrast you must have presented to me," Gillian said. "There I was, trying to bore him to death by reciting Shakespeare morning, noon, and night. But Draven was so affable… he simply refused to be annoyed by me." She opened her eyes wide. "I can promise you that I can be very annoying."
"I've no doubt," Imogen said wryly. "Perhaps Draven didn't listen very closely."
"By all accounts, such deafness was a formative part of his character," Gillian agreed. "I am quite envious of you for being able to overcome that fact and love him enough to elope with him."
Imogen shrugged. "At the time, I couldn't conceive that he wasn't perfect in any way."
The corner of Gillian's mouth quirked up but she said nothing.
"I know," Imogen said. "There was a great deal of Draven that I had to overlook in order to find him perfect. But I mastered it."
"How lovely for him," Gillian said. "Now if only I could manage to be hit by a kindred stroke of lightning, I might fall in love someday."
"I shall do my best to help you if I may," Imogen said earnestly. "Whether I overlooked Draven's faults or not, the truth is that I should never have overlooked you."
"I am most grateful for your offer of help, but I'm afraid that your kindness is likely unnecessary. I seem to be missing the necessary trait. I'm truly finding it difficult to imagine falling in love. I'm afraid—"she said it lightly—"that I am destined to marry for thoroughly practical reasons. I am schooling myself to view marriage like Chaucer's Wife of Bath: a thoroughly commercial exchange, with interesting benefits."
There was something so dry about her voice that Imo-gen found herself laughing out loud. "How can you be so elegant and yet so witty?" she asked. "It is taking all my intellect merely to dress myself with a modicum of grace, and though I read Chaucer with my sisters, I don't remember very much."
"There is more than elegance involved in the dress you wear tonight," Gillian said, with a twinkle in her eye.
Imogen grinned at her. "And what, pray, do you imply by that?" By all rights, Gillian's thick lashes should lend her eyes a limpid innocence. And yet somehow she managed to turn a mere glance at Imogen's shoulders into a laughing commentary.
"You appear to be in full battle regalia. I would have to be unobservant indeed not to notice. Should I take it that you mean to go a-courting, as the old song goes?"
"I am not a frog," Imogen said.
Gillian waited.
"Perhaps not courting…"
"In the sense of an endeavor aimed at the altar," Gillian finished for her.
"Precisely."
"You are surely thinking to bedazzle, if not marry. Your erstwhile guardian?"
"Absolutely not!"
"Then his brother," Gillian said. "The ineligible Mr. Spenser."
"He is ineligible."
"But?"
"Indeed," Imogen said. "I find him appealing."
"An interesting pursuit."
"Indecent by many standards," Imogen said.
"Yes," Miss Pythian-Adams sounded thoughtful and utterly unperturbed by the truth of Imogen's statement. "I shall watch you with interest, Lady Maitland."
"Oh, please, you must call me Imogen. I have been missing the presence of my sisters, and you and I have had such a frank conversation… don't you think that we are practically sisters, given that we almost married the same man?"
"And that fact gives us a claim to family?" Gillian asked, cocking her head to the side. "I am honored."
"We should go downstairs to the sitting room," Imogen said. "I have to be there before Rafe, if only to stop him from being alone with the whiskey decanters."
"My maid told me that he has recently stopped drinking. It seems a terrible process."
"Only if you were thoroughly pickled when you gave up spirits," Imogen said, glancing at the mirror. "Am I outrageously overdressed, or will it simply pass for eccentricity?"
Gillian looked at her. "You would not be out of place dressed for a formal dinner in Paris. If I were you, I would remove the rubies, as they are perhaps a trifle too anxious."
Imogen looked back at the mirror. "I see what you mean."
"There is a great charm in the obvious," Gillian said. "For example, if you hadn't been quite so forthright with Draven, I would likely be widowed at this moment. There are certain men with whom one has to be blunt."
"But Mr. Spenser—"
"I would judge him to be quite a different sort of gentleman," Gillian said. "There is his illegitimacy, for instance. That in itself makes him an altogether more complicated man than an average self-satisfied English gentleman."
"Yet he is a gentleman," Imogen said. "I find it fascinating that he looks every inch the aristocrat… in contrast to his lamentable brother, the duke."
"Indubitably," Gillian said. "But likely he is more sensitive than the typical Englishman."
"I'm not used to sensitivity in the male sex," Imogen said, thinking of her burly, shouting father.
"Since we were engaged to the same man," Gillian said wryly, "you'll understand that I can offer very few pointers in that direction myself. This promises to be a truly interesting evening," she added. "I am so happy that I came."
"Why did you come?"
"To put on the play, of course. And to escape a most unpleasant suitor."
Imogen looked at her and shook her head. "I am not sure I entirely believe you, Gillian Pythian-Adams. You, like Mr. Spenser, are a good deal more complex than the typical English nobleman."
Gillian smiled but said nothing.
Imogen looked at Gillian, at her gleaming copper curls, her slim white arms, and the discreet swell of her bosom. She looked delectable.
She was courting as well.
"It's Rafe," she said with a little gasp. "You're courting… Rafe."
Gillian smiled. "I had thought of it. He is such a tremendously kind man, isn't he? And"—her eyes were sparkling now—"I find him rather—"
"I know he's attractive," Imogen said hastily, "but have you thought about actually living with him? He is the opposite of fastidious, after all."
"He is untidy because he is unhappy, or so I thought when I last met him," Gillian said. "I would like to see him happy."