Most Eagerly Yours by Allison Chase Page B

of a pistol behind a closed door, to blot out the horror he’d discovered after shouldering his way in. . . .
    In a way, Lewis Wescott and the Home Office had saved him—saved his very life—by recognizing his talents and insisting he put them to use. Ever since, he had savored the game of ferreting out evidence, piecing together clues, and seeing that bastards like the one who destroyed his father got exactly what they deserved.
    Sighing, he raised a gaze to the sky. The constellations took immediate shape. Most people needed time to discern the figures, if they saw them at all. But for him, he supposed due to his uncanny ability with numbers and patterns, they appeared like eager hounds to their master’s call: the Big Dipper with the diamondlike Arcturus glittering to the west. Leo to the south. A little to the east, Virgo . . . the maiden.
    Mrs. Sanderson could be no maiden, yet in his arms she had seemed as inexperienced as a young virgin. Why was that?
    She had been so adamant about their having never met that he had begun to entertain doubts, to believe he had merely mistaken her for the lass he had saved . . . had kissed. His error would have been understandable. He had been exhausted that morning, worn-out from a night spent drinking, gambling, and keeping Fitz in tow.
    Tuning out the music and voices from inside, he concentrated on the morning the queen had driven from her childhood home at Kensington Palace to her new home at Buckingham. Frantic shouts for help all but filled his ears. The sight of glittering emerald eyes peering out from a cloud of golden hair filled his vision.
    With a wink at Virgo, he shook his head. The similarities were too striking to be a coincidence. Which meant either she didn’t remember him—possible, but unlikely—or she had lied.
    Back inside the jarring confusion of the octagon room, he spotted Beatrice and Devonlea. Near them stood Lady Fairmont—Melinda to him, for he had known her all his life. She was talking to Fitz. . . .
    Mrs. Sanderson stood at his side, seeming to hang on his every word. She gazed up at him as though he were conveying the most fascinating piece of wisdom ever divulged.
    The stab to Aidan’s gut caught him off guard and momentarily stole his breath.
    Jealousy? For a woman he barely knew and had no intention of pursuing?
    No. For a woman with the spirit to wade into a dangerously tight crowd and risk her life to save a child because, as she had so ingenuously stated, someone had had to do something. By God, she’d shown remarkable gumption that day.
    He started toward them, then came to such an abrupt halt that a gentleman ran into him from behind. Aidan absently apologized while another memory crashed through his thoughts. If Mrs. Sanderson was that woman from London, then something was wrong. Very wrong.
    She hadn’t been wearing black crepe. He couldn’t say with any accuracy what she had been wearing that day, but . . . yellow. Not amber like tonight but sunny yellow sprigged with a leafy pattern. He specifically remembered because the dress had torn at the waist, revealing an enticing scrap of petticoat.
    How could she be recently out of mourning for her husband now if she had not been in mourning then ?
    “Aidan! Aidan, dearest!”
    Melinda Radcliffe, Countess of Fairmont, stretched her silk-clad arm high and waved her fan above heads. With a speed that belied her years, she wound a circuitous path to him. Upon arriving, she seized his wrists and, with all the license of an honorary aunt, kissed his cheeks.
    “Is this how I am to learn of your arrival in Bath, by literally running into you in the midst of an assembly crush? For shame, young man.”
    Until he had gone up to Eton at the age of eight, he had accompanied his mother on her frequent visits to the home of her closest friend, and afterward at least once a year during the summer months. During those final, dark days of Eugenia Phillips’s life, Melinda had been at her side, even