Bea feigned bemusement. ‘Aren’t I looking at one?’
‘Where?’ the little girl asked, craning her neck to see behind her.
‘Here.’ Bea gestured to the girl.
She looked surprised then shook her head. ‘I’m not a princess.’
‘Aren’t you? You could have fooled me.’
Pink spots appeared on the girl’s cheeks and then she was giggling. ‘I’m American. We don’t have princesses.’
‘Hmm. Technically, I suppose you’re right. Yet I could have sworn you were. Are you having fun, Your Highness?’
The little girl’s smile brightened and then dipped away completely. ‘Um...honestly?’
‘Of course.’
‘Not really.’ She ran the toe of her shoe across the lines in the parquetry. ‘I hate stupid balls. They’re so boring.’
‘They can be,’ Bea agreed. ‘Do you attend many?’
‘Way too many,’ the girl groaned. ‘Dad’s job means we always have to come and I hate them. There’s never any other kids here and nothing for me to do but stand quietly and wait.’
Bea nodded sympathetically. ‘I used to feel exactly the same way.’
‘Really? My mom says I’m ungrateful. She says she would have loved to come to fancy parties at my age.’
Bea wrinkled her nose. ‘Everyone’s different, but I always found this sort of thing incredibly tedious.’
‘Did you have to come when you were little?’
‘Oh, yes, all the time.’ Bea shuddered at the memories. ‘To parties and shows and I would get bored and then so tired that sometimes I’d fall asleep on a chair in the corner!’ she half joked.
‘What happened?’
‘They stopped bringing me,’ she murmured, not mentioning that once the twins had been born she’d been shipped off to boarding school and only seen her adoptive parents a few weeks a year.
‘I wish mine would stop bringing me,’ the girl said a little too loudly, so her mother turned in preparation to scold her, pausing only when she saw Bea in conversation with the child.
‘You know, I used to keep myself busy by playing maths games. Want me to show you what I mean?’
The girl nodded eagerly.
‘Well, first of all, I’d count all the women wearing pink.’ She frowned as she surveyed the crowd. ‘There aren’t very many tonight, so that won’t take you long. Once you’ve done that, look for men wearing black shoes. Then women wearing tiaras, then men with ties versus bow ties. You’d be amazed at how it helps to pass the time.’
Having spent almost thirty minutes locked in conversation with Harry, expecting Beatrice to reappear at his side at any minute, he’d moved beyond frustration and onto irritation when she seemed to have simply disappeared into thin air.
He’d circumnavigated the room for another twenty minutes, being interrupted too many times to count to make short conversation with acquaintances and business contacts. As he’d scanned the room, his eyes had landed on something that made very little sense, and he’d drawn his gaze back.
A woman sitting on the ground at a ball was a strange sight indeed, so he knew somehow instinctively that it could only be Bea. Sure enough, as he moved closer, assiduously avoiding several more attempts to draw him into conversation, he saw that she wasn’t, in fact, sitting so much as crouching beside a little girl, who was cross-legged beside her. They were staring into the crowd, a matching expression of concentration on their faces. Bea pointed at something and the little girl frowned as she followed the gesture, then she burst out laughing.
Something grabbed at his chest at the unexpected sight and his impatience changed gear. No longer irritated by her disappearance, he was now irritated by the fact that there were so many people surrounding them when he wanted to be all alone with her.
It was a warning bell he heeded. He hadn’t brought Bea to be distracted by her. He’d been honest with her earlier when he’d explained that he didn’t want any complications. Perhaps ending this night prematurely was the wisest course of action.
‘Ares—’ she smiled to cover the rapid beating of her heart as she stood up ‘—there you are.’
‘You sound as though you’ve been looking for me, but I suspect this is not the case.’