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after her. “Dinner is about to
be served,” she said coolly.
    Nicolas scoured the place
settings, searching the cards for his name. “Please tell me you haven’t put me
anywhere near that ridiculous baboon.”
    It wasn’t difficult to
guess whom he was referring to amongst her distinguished guests. Loyalty to
Geoffrey and an unwillingness to accommodate Nicolas in any way after his last
performance kept Catherine silent. She watched him flick up another place card.
    “I’m referring to
Geoffrey. The idiot thinks he’s engaged to you.”
    “Oh.” Her disconnected
aloofness collapsed. She should have seen this coming. “That is…”
    Panic kicked Nicolas in
the gut. “You’re not, are you?”
    The pause was but a
moment. It felt like a month.
    “Not yet,” Catherine said,
suddenly unable to meet his eyes.
    And Nicolas wished that
pause had gone on forever. That he’d never had to hear those words. “No.”
    “No?”
    He looked at her downcast
eyes. Waited until she finally raised her head to face him.
    No. That single word reverberated in his
skull. It drained his blood. Wound tightly around his lungs. Knocked behind his
knees. Shot arrows through his heart. “Just no.”
    Catherine took a steadying
breath. She could have softened the truth, but there were enough
misunderstandings between them and, apparently, not nearly enough barriers. She
was still upset at the incident outside the bathroom. Her body was still on
high alert to everything about the man. She was holding onto her composure by a
thread and Nicolas’s reaction stunned her. She might have expected some caustic
remark, a jaded referral to their aborted engagement, but this, she didn’t know
how to interpret.  
    “You’re not making any
sense,” she said, deciding it would be wise to keep the edges of this
particular conversation fuzzy. With that, she swept around him in a wide berth
to make yet another exit. At this rate, there were too few doors in the castle
to contain the many exits she required.
    Catherine put her smile in
place before moving between the natural groups that had formed while she waited
for Serge to announce dinner. Abandoned by Nicolas, Eleanor had attached
herself to Geoffrey. Reginald Arratore was bemoaning some hot spot situation to
the Swedish ambassador while both their wives were standing to the side,
throwing looks as sharp as daggers at Eleanor that no doubt matched bitchy
comments that stopped as soon as Catherine was within hearing.
    “I hear that Alice finally
got Hammond to say yes,” Catherine told the ladies as she walked with them to
the dining room.
    “I don’t believe it.”
    “I do, my dear. That woman
has more tricks up her sleeve than David Copperfield,” Reginald’s wife said of
Alice, a mutual acquaintance who’d broadcast her intentions to marry the
cosmetic billionaire at a gathering last Christmas. Since then, the bets were
on, aided and abetted by Alice herself, who thrived on attention almost as much
as Eleanor.
    Their attention and gossip
successfully diverted from Eleanor, Catherine was free to ensure that everyone
found their seats and to indicate with a discreet signal for the first course
to be brought in. Nicolas had recovered sufficiently to charm his dinner
partners on either side, but that didn’t surprise her. He was a diplomat in his
own right, accustomed to dealing and negotiating at the highest levels for the
many grants he’d secured.
    Right now, for example, he
was chuckling heartily at something Eleanor had said, something obviously meant
for his ears only. Could their two heads be any closer together?
    “Amelia?”
    She started, then guiltily
lifted a smile at Reginald who’d been regaling her with stories of his son. She
thought to brazen her way through a plausible response, then decided on the
truth. “I’m sorry, Reginald. My thoughts tend to drift these days.”
    He put a hand to her arm
and squeezed gently. “No need to apologise, my dear. How is your