Chapter 7
Vaughn lounged against the wall at the back of the large drawing room which was already full of gentlemen in their evening clothes. He did not feel like joining in their conversations at the moment. The ladies had been coming down in pairs for the last hour before dinner, but there was no sign of Perdita.
He didn’t like it. She wasn’t the sort of woman who took overly long preparing herself for dinner. Guilt gnawed at him. He worried that what he’d done in the woods had been a step too far. She had been pale and withdrawn on the journey back, and he hadn’t been able to coax her out of her thoughts, even to tell him more about her love of science. He’d even teased her about the names of constellations, pronouncing them wrong, but she hadn’t corrected him.
The distant look in he
