The Taming of Victoria Colton

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter 13

With regard to flirtation, it is difficult to draw a limit where the predilection of the moment becomes the more tender and serious feeling, and flirtation sobers into a more honourable form of devoted attention.

~ The Habits of Good Society: A Handbook for Ladies and Gentlemen (The Last London Editor; 1860)

“What are you looking at?” Dani demanded of Victoria, who was presently craning her chin above the heads present at the recital.

She started guiltily and gave Dani a sheepish look. “Nothing.”

“Liar.”

Vicky ignored her and inconspicuously endeavoured to continue her surveillance of the room from behind her programme. Where the devil was she? Surely the Brightmore girls would be easy to spot. After all, there weren’t that many people in the small room. Maybe about forty or so, but surely not enough for her to overlook a pretty girl who had just been proposed to by Gabriel Sinclair.

The man in question was unreadable and Vicky hadn’t been allocated the opportunity to corner him and demand whether he was an engaged man or not. Oh, the notion was sickening and it brought a painful tightening of her gut that threatened to prick her eyes with tears and make her feel positively ill. It was jealousy, pure and unadulterated, and Vicky loathed herself for feeling it, but there we have it. She was jealous. Blindingly, impotently, ragingly jealous, and she thought she might scream and kick her legs like a spoilt child should she learn that the happy couple were indeed engaged.

But from Gabriel there was no clue. The arrogant man reclined in his chair adjacent and slightly in front of Vicky’s, beside Townsend and Desdemona Fitzgerald. Oh! Oh the swine! She was going to hiss and spit and cause a monumental scandal. First a proposal to Oriana Brightmore and now this! And just look at the way the silly tramp touched his arm and murmured in his ear! Had she no shame?

“Vicky,” Dani asked, concerned, “are you sure you are feeling better? You look like you are about to burst into tears.”

She was! She was about to burst into tears and it was all his sodding fault! “I’m fine!” she barked, her tumultuous inner emotive state blistering to the surface in her tone. “I’m fine,” she repeated, calmer. It was not Dani’s fault that she was feeling so childishly miserable. It was his fault.

“Oh, look. Here come Oriana and Imogen,” she pointed out and waved, indicating that the other two women were to seat themselves near them, which they did.

Vicky studied Oriana carefully, narrowing her eyes and peering at her face as a scientist would a curious unknown specimen he wished to scrutinize. “Does she look like a woman who’s just been proposed to?” she hissed to Dani.

Dani frowned, puzzled, but turned to look at Oriana who seated herself on the chair beside her. “Hmmm. I don’t think so. Then again, I’m not sure I could identify the face of a woman who has just been proposed to.”

“Oh, you’re no sodding help at all!” Vicky snarled quietly.

“My, aren’t we testy this evening,” Dani chided and promptly turned to the other two women who had joined them. “Imogen, I hear you are playing the flute this evening and Ori, you’re giving us a much-anticipated sonata on the pianoforte.”

Oriana smiled politely but the gesture did not meet her eyes, inspiring Vicky to conclude that surely she had not been proposed to. But that simply was not enough. She needed, needed, solid verbal evidence of such a fact. So she eagerly leaned over Dani, shoving the other woman back against her chair, and demanded, “You looked piqued. Has something, er, happened, Ori?”