The ugly Luna

Flirting is her game

*Polly*

"Do you see him anywhere?" I hiss a moment later, smiling and nodding at Luna Bower, who seems distinctly intrigued by the sight of Fennec at my side. Of course, she would be: she has three daughters all looking for the perfect mate.

"Who?" Fennec says absentmindedly, pulling at his neck cloth again. "I think I'm going to suffocate. I don't think I can take even a half hour of this."

"Geoffrey!" I whisper, pinching his arm. "Remember? That's why you're here. You have to introduce me."

Fennec frowns down at me. "I thought you already knew him."

"But he has never paid any attention to me," I say with remarkable patience, to my mind. "I already told you that."

Fennec snorts. "That's right. I'm supposed to turn the conversation around to dowries and then announce that yours is bigger than..."

"Hush!" I pinch him again, so sharply that he winces. "I'm counting on you not to botch this up."

"I won't."

His eyes look a little haunted. "It's not so terrible being here, is it?" I ask, rather startled by the strain in his face. "I know you don't like balls, Fennec. If you just take me to Geoffrey, I promise to leave directly afterwards."

We stop to let pass a herd of people making their way to the refreshments table. "I believe you are making a mistake," he says.

"About Geoffrey?"

Fennec nods. "I had to live with Trevelyan at the Alpha School, and I wouldn't want to repeat the experience or wish it on you."

"It's different if you're married, silly!" I say. I can just see myself and Geoffrey sitting opposite each other at the breakfast table, reading the papers. He's so clever, and he would appreciate my wit the way no one else does, including Fennec and my own mother.

"Marriage would be even worse," Fennec says. The crowd in front of us clears, and we move further into the ballroom. "At least I could wallop him when he was particularly pestilent. Why not wait for your true mate?"

“True mates are a thing of fairytales,” I sigh. "My marriage is nothing for you to worry about. Just please keep an eye out for him, will you? I'm not quite tall enough to see over people's heads."

"All right, I see Trevelyan," Fennec says, drawing me to an opening in the crowd and motioning in the general direction of my quarry. "He's with Claribel."

"Naturally," I groan.

"She's dashed pretty."

"Flirt with her!" I command, struck by the idea. "You could do worse than marry her, you know."

"You want me to marry cretinous Claribel?" Fennec says, in a not-very-effective whisper.

"I suppose not." I've just caught sight of Geoffrey, and I find myself clinging to Fennec's arm in a sudden bout of nerves.

Alpha Geoffrey Trevelyan has light brown hair that he wears tousled in a style known as the Titus, and his clothes are always elegant, though not overly fastidious. But it's his face that fascinates me. It's narrow and sardonic, and the edges of his eyes slightly tilt up. You could take one glance and know that the Alpha has graduated from Alpha School with a double first in philosophy and history.

He's just the right sort of man for me… not so handsome that I would always be aware that my husband is far better looking than I. Honestly I actually feel a mild pity for whomever Fennec marries; that she-wolf would forever remain in his shade.

As it happens, Geoffrey is standing at the center of a knot of beautiful people. They all have high cheekbones, deep bottom lips, and finely shaped noses. Even worse, they look abominably clever, all except Claribel, of course.

My stomach sinks down to my knees, and for a moment I try to hold Fennec back. But just at that moment the group catches sight of him, and their faces light up like tradesmen’s wives seeing the queen.

There are even a few who greet me.

Geoffrey is one of them. "Miss Svane," he says, bowing.

My heart is pounding in my throat from pure excitement. "Alpha Geoffrey," I say, dropping a curtsy.

"Oh, Miss Svane," Miss Claribel says in her high, piping voice. "You look lovely. Come meet my cousin, Miss Althea."

"We've met," Althea says with perfect indifference, her eyes skating over my bodice and then, without subtlety, riveting on Fennec.

Watching Miss Althea simper and hold out her hand to be kissed, I decide that there's nothing more rapacious than a young Miss in the midst of a huddle of eligible gentlemen. Althea is like a fox with a clutch of hen’s eggs.

“Is he your escort for this evening?” Claribel whispers to me. “How lucky you are to have grown up with him.”

I really wish that Claribel were more of a beast; it would be easier to dislike her. Instead, she's like tepid milk at bedtime. “Fennec is very dear to me,” I say, trying to sound romantically inclined.

Just then Geoffrey makes some sort of joke about the deposed Alpha King of Imeretia, who's been visiting the English court for the last fortnight, and everyone laughs. I turn, resolved to be as witty as he is, no matter the subject. Fennec, of course, is right in the middle of the group, entirely at ease.

It would be very easy to resent Fennec. Wherever he goes, people like, if not love, him, and he doesn't even bother to be witty.

“In truth,” Geoffrey is saying, “Her Royal Highness is by all accounts discreet, of admirable temper, and guilty of not a single vice.”

“When someone is said to have no vices,” I say, before I lose my courage, “it generally turns out that they have as many sins as hairs on their head.”

“You think that the Princess of Imeretia has that many sins?” Geoffrey drawls. “Do tell us more, Miss Svane.”

I'm aware that the entire group is listening, and my heartbeat grows even faster, though I manage to keep my expression casual. “Avarice is one of the seven deadly sins, and Her Highness bathes, it is said, in a solid silver bathtub,” I say with a careless wave of my fan. “She has a private quartet that lulls her to sleep on restless nights. And surely you have noticed that she has a lover? Beta Grébert, the man with drooping mustaches and too much hair. He looks like a lion pretending to be a lion-tamer.”

Claribel titters nervously, but Geoffrey’s eyebrow shoots up and he looks at me more closely, a little smile curling his lips.

“And Her Highness,” he asks. “How would you describe her?”

“A fox terrier in skirts,” I say.

Geoffrey throws back his head and laughs, and all the other young men echo him. Except Fennec. He scowls, because he never likes it when I'm malicious, even when the malice is funny.

“I think I’m rather afraid of you,” Geoffrey says. His eyes are warm and admiring.

“Yes, you should be,” Fennec states.

“Prince Islay, you know Miss Svane better than anyone,” Claribel puts in with a girlish squeal. “Surely she is not dangerous!”

Claribel is so dim that I think there's a good chance she isn’t even joking.

“Pollyanna has a tongue as sharp as a cracked mirror,” Fennec says.

“Pish. I have sweet moments!” I say, flirting with Geoffrey over the edge of my fan.

“Yes, and they’re about as convincing as Marie Antoinette pretending to be a shepherdess,” Fennec retorts. “It’s bloody hot in here.” He yanks at his neck cloth again, this time managing to untie it.

“Perhaps you should take yourself off, Islay,” Geoffrey murmurs. “You are looking conspicuously ungroomed; it quite reminds me of school, and not in a good way, either. Miss Svane, that is a remarkable pendant.”

I meet his eyes just as he raises his from my cleavage… a moment we both enjoy. “A gift from my grandmother,” I murmur.

“The same grandmother who turned Pollyanna into a rich heiress,” Fennec says with the air of someone getting an unpleasant duty over with. “Well, I think it’s time to leave, darling.”

Geoffrey’s eyebrow shoots up at this, and he takes a step back.

“Oh, but Fennec,” I say, “I’m not ready to leave.” I smile at Geoffrey, but I can see Fennec’s face from the corner of my eye. He looks as if he is going to explode, and I hastily decide that perhaps I have made sufficient inroads on Geoffrey’s attentions for one evening.

I have the feeling that he will look for me the next night, and the one afterward.

Feeling magnanimous, I drop a curtsy in the general direction of Claribel and the unpleasant Althea, and allow Fennec to tow me away.

Fennec strides through the crowded ballroom like one of those Greek gods in a bad mood.

I trot along beside him, feeling too happy to protest.