She was almost familiar to him. Not Nephilim, despite her angel’s face. She was . . . He didn’t know what she was. His hand curled around his wineglass.
She did not immediately drop her gaze as any well-bred lady ought, as any meek companion must. She stared back at him, her lips parted, her eyes wide and dark. He watched her take one swift, deep breath, giving shape to her shapeless dress, and his own breathing stopped.
Her lashes swept down. With a visible effort, she collected herself, turning to address a remark to the spotty youth at her side. The boy flushed and launched into speech.
Lucien released his grip on the glass. His hand shook slightly.
“Amy does not often join us for dinner when we have company,” Miss Basing confided beside him. “I am so pleased Mama invited her to make up the numbers after Freddy threw the table off. But he is home from school so seldom, poor boy, it would have been a shame to exclude him.”
Lucien dragged his memory. Freddy would be young Keasdon, the son of local gentry. And . . .
“Amy?” he repeated.
“Cousin Amy. Weren’t you looking at her just now? Oh.” Miss Basing bit her lip. “But you were not presented, were you?”
“I have not had that pleasure,” he said curtly. “She was not in the drawing room before dinner.”
“I expect she was still in the nursery settling my sister’s children—my sister Susan, Mrs. Netherby,” Miss Basing explained. “They were overexcited after the long carriage ride here.”
“She is their governess?”
Miss Basing looked surprised. “Oh, no. My sister let the governess go to her family for the holiday. Why should Mr. Netherby be put to the expense of paying the creature a Christmas bonus when Amy is willing to watch the children?”
Lucien hid his distaste. “Very obliging of her.”
“Amy is always obliging. Of course, she must be conscious of what she owes Mama. We took her in, you know, after her parents were killed. In the Terror. It was a great tragedy,” Julia said comfortably.
She was French, then. An émigré. A refugee.
Perhaps that explained his jolt of recognition, his feeling of déjà vu. Perhaps he had seen her, even rescued her on one of his forays across the Channel.
He frowned at the ruby reflection of his wine on the snow white tablecloth. He and Gerard and Tripp had snatched hundreds from the shadow of the guillotine, men, women, and children. He could not remember them all.
“How long ago?” he asked tightly.
“Oh, ages. I was just a child when she came to live with us. Ten? Eleven. Amy was older, of course.”
Before his time on earth, he thought. Before he’d found Amherst.
His mouth dried. Holy God.
He remembered very little from before his Fall. The Nephilim were not born as human infants. That distinction was reserved for the Most High. They Fell as children or adolescents, losing their knowledge of Heaven along with their angelic powers, thrust into human existence in the land and year of their offense.
But the circumstances of that night were seared into his brain, the filthy prison, the dying mother, the defiant child in her nest of straw.
You are killing me, she had cried passionately.
He stared unseeing at the table, recalling her wide blue eyes, her rounded, jutting jaw. He had violated her free will, tearing her from both the life she knew and the death she had chosen.
And so he had been condemned to lose his own life, his very identity as a child of air.
His stomach knotted. Was it possible . . . ?
He reached for his glass, risking another glance down the table at Julia Basing’s French cousin.
Amy. Aimée.
She was not very old. Early twenties, at a guess. The cap aged her. She could be . . . Ah, he hoped she was not. He hated to think he had saved her from one prison only to thrust her into another. Both of them sentenced by his choice to live out their lives in the shadows, condemned to a life of servitude. Her bright light, dimmed.
He set down his wine untasted.
It made no difference, he told himself. His course was set. Even if she were the same woman, she was not his responsibility now.
He glanced again down the table. But he had to know.
He was staring at her. Mr. Hartfell. He had beautiful eyes, bright and green as emeralds, gleaming in the light of the candles.
Aimée’s heart beat faster. For a moment, when she first looked up and caught him staring, she had been drawn. Dazzled. Like a moth to a flame, like Icarus flying into the heat of the sun, completely insensitive to danger.
She clasped her hands together in her lap, focusing with determined concentration on sixteen-year-old Freddy Keasdon, who had launched into a description of his last cricket match at school.
“. . . off the wicket on the on side,” he said, his Adam’s apple working earnestly. “So I went out at it on my left leg—no, wait, it was my right—and . . .”
She had no idea what he was talking about. But as long as their conversation revolved around him, he was quite willing to give her his full attention. Like any other man, she supposed.
Living in her cousin’s house, she had learned to be wary of masculine attention. But Freddy—“caught it square a couple feet from the ground,” he told her—was charming in his enthusiasm. And quite harmless.
She felt very sure the same could not be said of Lucien Hartfell.
Really, he had no business staring at her at all. He was here to court Julia.
Her cousin was sitting right there beside him, looking as fresh and lovely as spring in a gown the soft pink of apple blossoms. The deep neckline and short, puffed sleeves revealed a great deal of her rounded bosom and arms.
Aimée had taken care that her own dress revealed nothing at all. Its original sour green color still showed faintly at the seams where she had picked them apart, letting out the bodice until her shape resembled nothing so much as a sack of flour tied with ribbon. She would not be accused of luring Cousin Howard’s attention again.
At least Mr. Hartfell had been staring at her face and not her br**sts.
It was a relief when Lady Basing signaled that dinner was over. The ladies withdrew, leaving the men to their port.
In the drawing room, the other young ladies engaged in polite competition to entertain the company. Aimée began to calculate how soon she could excuse herself. But then Julia required her sheet music and Lady Basing demanded her shawl. Aimée had just finished passing the cakes from the tea tray when the gentlemen trooped in.