Page 11 of Arcane Entanglement

They took the champagne flutes a footman offered them and began navigating the ballroom, Ginny’s hand resting lightly on his arm.

“Who’s your mark tonight?” Evander murmured.

He nodded at several distant acquaintances with the polite, detached expression that had earned him his reputation as the Ice Mage.

“Lord Aldous Fairfax.” Ginny smiled coquettishly at one of her many admirers and blissfully ignored the glower directed at her by his wife. “We met at a business gathering last week. I intend to approach him about my new venture.”

Evander had missed the meeting at the mercantile guild. He’d been up in Yorkshire, busy consulting on a case involving a cursed artefact.

He took a sip of his drink. “Does this concern your enchanted soap factory idea?”

“Yes. Fairfax owns a few enterprises that can source the raw materials I will need.” Ginny’s eyes gleamed. “He is rumoured to be a skilled alchemist himself. He will make a good partner.”

Evander was conscious of the avid stares they were drawing as they meandered to a table laden with roast meats, oysters, truffled pâté, and various other expensive delicacies. They’d been the subject of many an extravagant rumour over the years. It seemed that unless something especially scandalous happened at tonight’s ball, they would be the subject of fresh gossip fodder come morning.

Ginny’s mouth curved in a beatific smile as they helped themselves to some entrées. “If looks could kill, I would be as dead as a doornail right now.”

Evander gave her a quizzical look.

“Our favourite rumourmongers are in attendance,” Ginny said wryly. “Twenty feet. Your seven o’clock.” She turned so Evander would have a reason to look in that direction.

He picked out the couple glaring at them straightaway.

Hector Thompkins was a young nobleman with a reputation for dark proclivities and for wasting his family’s fortunes in gaming houses and dens. Standing beside him was Lady Amanda Vane, a woman who had used scandal and strife to climb the social ladder.

Having each been respectively spurned by Ginny and Evander when they’d sought to make romantic advances towards them during the previous season, the pair were now seemingly hellbent on bringing them down in the eyes of the aristocracy.

In a society where gossip and scandal still counted as powerful weapons and where even the most baseless rumours could ruin lives and reputations, it was a dangerous game to play indeed.

Unfortunately for them, Ginny was more skilled at it.

“Lord Thompkins and Lady Vane appear to be in a particularly murderous mood tonight,” Evander said lightly. “What did you do to them?”

“Oh, nothing much.”

Evander arched an eyebrow, not in the least bit fooled by her innocent tone. “Really?”

Ginny finished the last bite of her roast beef and horseradish finger sandwich and dabbed her mouth delicately with a lace handkerchief.

“I may have inferred that Lord Thompkins has developed the pox on his genitals and that Lady Vane is partial to riding well-hung horses.”

A man on the other side of the table choked on a canapé.

Evander gave Ginny a stern look. “That’s low, even for you.”

Ginny shrugged. “They started it first.”

Evander couldn’t help but smile faintly at her unabashed mien. An evening with Ginny was never boring.

They filled up on more finger food before heading into the crowd.

Ginny brightened a few minutes later. “Ah. There is Lord Fairfax.”

Evander followed her gaze to a tall man with silver-streaked hair standing next to a potted plant.

“Oh hell and tarnation!” Ginny cursed with her next breath. She grasped Evander’s arm and pulled him behind a column, startling a portly, middle-aged couple.

Ginny eyeballed them until they moved away. She scowled in the direction of Lord Fairfax. “He’s been cornered by that Wentworth shrew.”