“Perhaps,” she said, noncommittally.
He turned to Cecelia. “Mrs. Thorne,” he said, his tone jovial and light. “May I claim the next dance?”
***
Marcus moved to step forward, but she pushed him back with a glance. “I’d be honored,” she said.
Mayden was tall and thin. His hair was dark as night, and his eyes were tiny pinpricks in a sea of nothingness.
He smiled and took her hand into the crook of his arm. A reel began, so she didn’t have to waltz about clasped in his arms, at least. She breathed a sigh of relief.
They came together for a moment, and Mayden said, “It was stupid of me to come here.”
Cecelia startled. She hadn’t expected that. Not at all. “I wouldn’t say that,” she tried.
He snorted. “Quite bacon-brained of me,” he admitted. “I’d hoped to let bygones be bygones. But I see that’s not possible.”
They stepped apart and then came back together. “You did some terrible things.”
“I belonged in Bedlam,” he explained. His eyes were troubled.
“Are you still mad?” she asked. She searched his face for the truth but couldn’t find any. Perhaps there was none left.
“I am thinking much more clearly now than I have in a long time. A man can become desperate when he’s faced with losing everything.” He stepped back, and then they switched partners with the people beside them.
She could see that happening. Her father had gone a bit mad when he’d lost her mother. Yet Mayden was speaking of material things. Not a love or a life. Not a soul. He spoke of his wealth. His home. His livelihood, perhaps.
“Your wife is lovely,” Cecelia said.
“She’s a twit,” he snarled.
Cecelia startled. “Beg your pardon.”
“She’s a treat,” he said, correcting himself.
“Oh,” Cecelia breathed.
The dance ended and Mayden escorted her back to Marcus, and he went to stand beside his wife on the edge of the room.
After a few minutes, Mayden walked toward the corridor that led to Robinsworth’s study. He stepped out of view, and Marcus, his father, Lord Phineas, and the duke all filed out behind him.
Cecelia took a deep breath and walked to stand beside Claire and Sophia. “I don’t have a good feeling about this,” Claire said.
“Nor do I,” Sophia agreed. She raised a finger to her lips and began to nibble a nail.
“What’s the worst that could happen?” Cecelia asked. “Certainly he wouldn’t do anything terrible with this many people looking on.”
“You don’t know him,” Claire scolded.
A clatter at the refreshment table drew their attention. Marcus’s mother rushed from the dance floor when a table holding three large ice sculptures overturned.
“Oh, dear,” Claire said, startled.
“Mother,” Sophia said, and both the girls rushed forward to help her.
Everyone in the room was looking in the direction of the clatter. Cecelia noted absently that the American girl who’d married Mayden was in the middle of the throng screaming at the top of her lungs. What the devil?
But just then, an arm snaked around Cecelia’s waist and pulled her toward a corridor at the back of the room. “Don’t say a word,” Mayden hissed in her ear. “If you do, I will have no choice but to shoot blindly into the crowd.” Mayden was supposed to be in Robinsworth’s study. He must have never gone to meet them after all.