Betraying Season by Marissa Doyle Page B

Keating?”
    He smiled down at her averted face. Was she flirting back? “I had noticed that very same thing, Miss Leland,” he said. “Quite drawn.”
    “Oh!” she breathed, so quietly that he barely heard it.
    It made him smile again, but with less pleasure. If she had been flirting with him, she should have given him a sidelong look and a faint smile just then, not that half-shocked, half-pleased monosyllable.
    Mother was wrong. This girl may have had a London season, but she was no experienced coquette. Blast. She was going to get hurt if he kept going down this path. A mental picture of her beautiful blueeyes, raised to his in pain and anguish, struck him so forcibly that he nearly stopped dead in the street.
    “Are you all right?” Miss Leland looked at him as he stumbled slightly.
    “I’m fine. Stone in my shoe, that’s all.” He patted her hand, smiled, and tried to ignore the small voice in the back of his mind jeering “Liar!”

For dining at the Keatings’, Dr. Carrighar made a concession to fashion and wore clothes of more modern cut than his usual long, loose coat and breeches. Tonight, Pen thought with amusement as she surveyed him seated across from her in the gig, he at least looked nineteenth century. Beau Brummel or the Prince Regent might have worn a similar coat once.
    She smiled down at her hands, encased in delicate lace mitts. Persy had sent them to her, along with a length of pale gold organdy for a gown and an enthusiastic request that Pen indeed send her an Irish cloak. Pen would be glad to; it would give her an excuse for another outing with Lady Keating to her modiste, and perhaps time with Niall. . . .
    There she went again. How many times did she need to be reminded to keep her mind where it belonged—on her studies?
    But even Pen’s interior scold was starting to sound halfhearted, at least on the subject of Niall Keating. Snippets of his conversation on their walk last Saturday kept sounding in her mind—not so much his words as the tone and timbre of his voice. It made her feel slightly warm and breathless, as if her corset were too tight.
    It also left her hungry for more. She hadn’t seen him since that day, though she had gone driving once with Lady Keating. Would he have more to say to her tonight?
    “I am sorry Melusine did not feel up to coming with us.” Dr. Carrighar’s baritone rumble broke into her thoughts. “It would have been a good opportunity for her to get to know more of Cork society.”
    Pen shushed Niall’s voice in her mind. “At least she’s feeling better than she was.” She then asked, “Do you think it’s proper for her to be sleeping so much? I mean, is it healthy?”
    Over the last few days, Ally had spent twenty out of each twenty-four hours asleep. She was actually eating now—toast and soft-boiled eggs or Cook’s milk puddings, mostly—and keeping down what she ate. As soon as she finished breakfast, she eagerly drank a glass of water with Lady Keating’s elixir and drifted off to sleep until late afternoon. Then, after a light supper, another dose sent her back to sleep until morning. Her color was better and her face less wasted, but still . . . it seemed strange to see the energetic Ally so indolent.
    Dr. Carrighar sighed. “I don’t know, Penelope. This stage of gestation is a prodigious labor for women, and most tend to be somnolent. And at least when she is asleep she’s not uncomfortable. The one day we tried to go without Lady Keating’s remedy, poor Melusine reverted to her old distressed state. I don’t see that the sleep is harmful, but I understand your unease. It’s not like her, is it? Remind me this evening to ask Lady Keating what is in her elixir, won’t you? I am sure it is entirely harmless, whatever it is. Yet . . .”
    “Yes, sir. Thank you.” It would be easier for Dr. Carrighar to asksuch a question than for her. Pen didn’t want to offend Lady Keating, after all her kindness. Or jeopardize