Julia London

by The Vicars Widow

  Her brows formed something of a furious vee above her glittering green eyes. “I vow to be as gracious as you are ever faithful, my lord.”

  “Then you might do it with a smile. Grace is all the lovelier with a smile.”

  “I would not smile if you were the last man on earth,” she said evenly, her eyes narrowing even more as the waltz drew to a close.

  Darien chuckled and squeezed her hand before he let her go. “Before you stick your foot completely in your mouth, Kate, remember what I said. There is no one but you.” And with that, he dropped her hand, stepped back, and bowed deep.

  Kate gave him a skeptical look, then turned and walked away from him on the dance floor.

  Darien smiled at her departing back and strolled away in the opposite direction, in search of Emily.

  He found her sitting with Miss Townsend on chairs that lined one wall. She tried to be coy as he approached, tried to pretend she didn’t see him, and very poorly pretended to be surprised when he clicked his heels before her and bowed low. “Miss Forsythe, how do you do.”

  “Oh! You startled me sir!” she cried with a false laugh. “I do very well, indeed.”

  “Will you do me the honor of giving me this dance?” he asked, extending his hand. “Unless, of course, you are already spoken for?”

  Miss Forsythe looked at her friend, who was still staring at Darien as if she couldn’t quite believe he’d asked. “I’d be delighted,” Miss Forsythe said, and nudged her friend before rising to her feet and accompanying him to the dance floor, smiling broadly for everyone to see.

  The dance was a quadrille, and Darien took his place across from her, bowing low. As the music started, he took his steps toward her and around her. “You look resplendent.”

  She blushed.

  “You must be expecting an extraordinary evening.”

  The girl blushed again, looked a little nonplussed, as if she didn’t quite know how to respond.

  “I know that I am,” he said, smiling. “An extraordinary evening.”

  Now she beamed at him. “Oh dear, my lord, you are making me quite nervous! When will you do it? At the auction? Lady Southbridge said these sorts of things were always done at the auction in the past.”

  “What sort of things?” he asked nonchalantly, and had to keep from laughing when the girl stumbled in her effort to retract what she’d said.

  “I, ah . . . I’m not really certain what she meant.”

  “I was rather surprised to know that Lady Southbridge knew of my intentions, frankly,” he said evenly, watching her closely.

  The girl averted her gaze. “Were you?”

  “Or your father, for that matter. How do you suppose your father knew?”

  “Oh! I, ah . . . I suppose he, ah heard my mother speak of it.”

  “Hmm . . . and do you suppose Lady Southbridge heard your mother speak of it?”

  He could almost hear the conniving little wheels turning in her head as she tried to sort her way through this mess. Her color was high—a casual observer might think he was whispering decadent things in her ear as they danced. At any other dance, under any other circumstance, he might have done so.

  “I suppose she did, my lord,” Miss Forsythe said, and nervously cleared her throat as she twirled around, then back again.

  “How odd. I had not mentioned it to your mother.”

  Miss Forsythe shrugged and in doing so, missed another step.

  “Lady Southbridge surely heard it from someone else. I shall have to inquire, I suppose, for I cannot let our personal affairs be fodder for the ton’s appetite, can I?”

  “Of course not,” she said weakly.

  A thin sheen of perspiration had appeared on her forehead. Pity, that, what with the worst yet to come. Poor girl. He stepped toward her and asked, “Do you suppose Lady Southbridge heard something untoward about Mrs. Becket from the same source?”

  The color rapidly bled from her cheeks. She struggled to look serene, but any confidence she had was melting away. “I ah . . . I suppose it’s possible, my lord,” she said in all but a whisper.

  “Interesting,” Darien said, and left it at that for the remainder of the dance. As the quadrille closed, he bowed once more, offered his arm to Miss Forsythe, who seemed almost reluctant to put her hand there. He led her to the edge of the dance floor. “Now don’t go anywhere, will you?”

  “No?”

  “I shouldn’t want you to miss any of the auction.”

  “The auction,” Miss Forsythe echoed dumbly.

  “That’s right, the auction. I shall want to see you clearly when the time comes.”

  Miss Forsythe nodded, and Darien wondered if this time, her faint might be real.

  Chapter Twelve

  She had no idea what he planned; neverthless, Kate wished she could crawl beneath the floorboards and disappear. There were only four items left on the auction table, and the crowd was literally buzzing with the anticipation of what was quickly becoming the greatest offer ever made in the history of the ton.

  The buzz was quite irrespective of the two main parties, as they had not spoken since dancing the quadrille. Of course Kate had seen them—she couldn’t help but watch. And she’d been appalled by the frenzy of whispering and conjecture as they’d danced. Lady Ramblecourt insisted there would be an August wedding, that she had overheard Lord Montgomery’s sister discuss it with Miss Forsythe. On the other side of the room, however, where Kate had gone to escape Lady Ramblecourt’s talk, she had been the recipient of Lady Cheevers’s speculation.

  “He’ll ask for a dower too large for Forsythe, mark me,” she said with a superior sniff. “The Forsythes would do well to keep their enthusiasm under their own roof, if you take my meaning.”

  “Yes, my lady,” Kate said miserably, at which point Lady Cheevers had turned a judgmental eye to her.

  “You might have done as well for yourself, dear, had you been more circumspect.”

  Kate certainly didn’t argue that.

  At the moment, however, Lady Southbridge was announcing the last of the items to be auctioned—a pair of silver candelabras that had been the gift of Prinny to Lord Daniels. As the bidding started—it was a coveted item—Kate used the opportunity to drift farther back, away from the crowd.

  But as Montgomery made his way to stand next to the platform, he let his gaze idly roam the crowd, and it eventually landed on her, standing in the shadows. A small smile tipped one corner of his mouth; a brow cocked high above the other, and she wondered why he must taunt her at this wretched moment.

  She wished she’d never met him. Honestly, she did.

  “Oooh,” Lady Southbridge trilled when the candelabras had been auctioned off for two hundred pounds. “I do believe that brings us to the last item to be auctioned for charity. Stevens, what is the final tally, if you please?”

  “One thousand forty-two pounds, my lady,” her secretary called out. “A new record!” A round of applause went up from the crowd.

  “I’ll add a thousand pounds to the total,” Montgomery called out to the delight of the crowd, and Kate rolled her eyes at the very same moment she felt her stomach roil with her bloody nerves.

  “Oooh, do come up, my lord Montgomery!” Lady Southbridge cried happily, and endeavored to move her girth aside to allow him room. “Two thousand pounds indeed! That’s quite generous, my lord!”

  “Ah, that would be a thousand,” he kindly corrected her as he gracefully hopped onto the platform beside her.

  “Go on, then, Montgomery, make your offer!” a man shouted, and a cry of howling laughter rose from the crowded ballroom.

  No matter how she despised him, Kate couldn’t help but admire his calm in the face of this half-drunken, half-deranged crowd. He smiled, nodded as the laughter died down. “My offer to you sir, is a carriage and a driver,” he called out cheerfully, and earned another round of laughter from the crowd.

  Lady Southbridge, obviously not pleased that attention had been turned from h
er, managed to wedge herself in front of Montgomery and the crowd, her arms high in the air as she tried to quiet them all. “Hear, hear!” she shouted. “Lord Montgomery has made a very generous offer of two—”

  “One,” he quickly interjected.

  “One, is it?” she asked, clearly disappointed.

  Smiling, he nodded. “One.”

  “One then,” she said in a bit of a huff. “He’s made a very generous offer of one thousand pounds to the Ladies Auxiliary charitable fund, and the least we might do is hear his terms!”

  “His terms, his terms!” the crowd began to shout, and a few sympathetic debutantes began to form a protective circle around Miss Forsythe.

  Kate stepped deeper into the shadows as Montgomery moved forward and raised his hands, gesturing for the crowd to quiet.

  “My terms,” he said thoughtfully as the laughing crowd began to quiet. “Are quite simple, really. I will give one thousand pounds to the Ladies Auxiliary in exchange for the repair of my heart, for it has been quite irreparably damaged, I’m afraid. Unable to function, as it were . . . incapable of beating properly.”

  The crowd grew very quiet. Kate closed her eyes and drew a tortured breath; she knew of damaged hearts. He couldn’t possibly know about them, how they weighed a person down, snatched a person’s breath away, what with all their thrashing about like a wounded bird, beating harshly and erratically.

  “I had not known before now how useless a broken heart can be,” he continued to a rapt crowd. “It does not regulate the body properly and puts everything at sixes and sevens. Day becomes night, night becomes day, and a man is given to wandering about aimlessly.”

  What had this to do with Miss Forsythe? Confused, Kate opened her eyes and looked to where Miss Forsythe was standing. She was not alone in her confusion; several heads swiveled between Miss Forsythe and Montgomery.

  “Having suffered this horrible predicament, I’ve come to the conclusion that there is only one thing to be done for it. A lady—”

  A collective gasp went up from the crowd.

  “For whom this old heart is destined, must take it and repair it—nothing else will do. And not just any lady, but one who is kind and charitable. One with eyes as deep as the sea and the warmest smile in all of England, who has a good keen wit about her so that she may keep me quite on my toes, and never let me believe I am more than I am.

  “What I am, ladies and gentlemen, is a man who is quite impossibly in love. There is only one woman who will do for me, and if she refuses me, then I might as well give this heart of mine to the Ladies Auxiliary, too.”

  Now the crowd was wild with anticipation, and Kate felt her own heart sinking deep into confusion from which she was sure she’d never be able to retrieve it. What was he doing? She wanted to cry out, to vomit, to do something, anything but stand here and listen to him profess his love if it was for another woman, for now her hope had been raised up from the dead. From where she was standing, she could see Miss Forsythe staring up at him with an expression of pure fear. She, too, thought this declaration of love was for another woman. Kate’s hope surged.

  “Therefore,” Montgomery said, riveting everyone’s attention on him again, “I am prepared to offer my name and protection and my lifelong love and adoration to the woman who can repair this heart of mine, if she’ll have me.”

  One could hear the crowd draw their breath and hold it.

  And then Montgomery did something extraordinary. He looked to the back of the ballroom, to where Kate was standing—no, to where she was bleeding—and said, so gently that she wasn’t very certain she heard him, “Will you have me, then, Mrs. Becket?”

  Something snapped inside her—a flood of relief overtook her grief, light covered the dark thoughts she’d had in the last several days. Someone, perhaps Miss Forsythe, cried out, and Kate could hear voices all around her, could feel eyes on her, as she tried to catch her breath.

  Someone shouted that Miss Forsythe had fainted, and Kate was certain she would, too, at any moment, for it seemed as if her knees had ceased to exist; there was nothing to hold her up.

  Pandemonium erupted; people crowded around her, some smiling, some frowning, but the only one she wanted to see was Darien. And then he was there, standing before her—she hadn’t even realized she’d made it halfway to the platform to reach him until she felt his hand on her arm, the other on her waist, steadying her.

  She tried to smile, but she was so shocked, she couldn’t even breathe. “Kate,” he said, his voice penetrating the din around them. “Come with me, Kate, say you’ll come with me now,” he said earnestly.

  “Anywhere,” she whispered hoarsely, and impulsively threw her arms around his neck, oblivious to the cheers surrounding them, oblivious to everything but Darien’s arms around her, holding her tightly, his face in her neck, breathing her in.

  Several days passed after the Southbridge Charity Auction Ball, the newspapers ceased to carry the “Montgomery Offer,” as it had been dubbed, in the gossip columns, and turned instead to the speculation of whether or not Lord Frederick, a close and personal friend of Montgomery, would offer for Miss Forsythe in the wake of this trauma.

  She was reported to have said that she would have refused Montgomery’s offer, had it been made to her, and that she never expected such a thing.

  Darien and Kate never heard the latest gossip flowing in and out of salons in Mayfair, for they had departed London a scant two days after the Southbridge ball for Gretna Green, along with Darien’s sister and her family, and Kate’s father. It was the third Sunday church service Kate had missed since arriving in London.

  After a fortnight had passed, the weather was so fine that Lady Southbridge decided to take her two dogs on a doggie walkabout, and had her butler leash them up properly while her lady’s maid saw to it that Lady Southbridge was properly leashed up. In Hyde Park, where she had paused and instructed her footman to see to the dogs’ needs, preferably behind the bushes, she had occasion to meet Lady Ramblecourt.

  The two friends exchanged pleasantries, and as they waited for the footman to return with the two yapping dogs, Lady Ramblecourt said, in a soft voice so that no passersby would hear, “Have you heard, Elizabeth? The child?”

  “W-what?” Lady Southbridge demanded, focusing all her attention on Lady Ramblecourt.

  “The widow, of course!” the woman hissed, looking around them covertly. “They say she’s with child!”

  “No!” Lady Southbridge said, aghast.

  “Mmm,” Lady Ramblecourt said, nodding adamantly. “That explains quite a lot, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Indeed it does!” Lady Southbridge loudly agreed.

  And in truth, the information bothered her the rest of the afternoon. It was a mystery, she confessed to her good friend Lady Marlton, why Mrs. Kimbro would want another child, having birthed six of them already.

  “Because,” Lady Marlton said authoritatively. “She’s taken a lover.”

  “Who?” Lady Southbridge demanded.

  “Lord Tarelton.”

  Lady Southbridge fell back in surprise. Lord Darlington was at least ten years Mrs. Kimbro’s junior. Would the wonders never cease?

  Keep reading for a preview of another sexy romance from Julia London

  LUCKY CHARM

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  Parker Price hadn’t had a hit in two weeks.

  It wouldn’t be a big deal if he was playing in a church league in Hoboken, but he was playing for the New York Mets, who had inked a deal to pay him one hundred ten million over seven years, plus bonuses, because they thought he could hit, among other things. And furthermore, it probably wouldn’t have been that big of a deal if the Mets had at least won a game in the last two weeks.

  They hadn’t.

  Even worse, with the humiliating end to last night’s game—in which they had been swept by the team nemesis, the New York Yankees—they were on a downhill slide, picking up steam for a spectacular crash at rock bott
om. And for some reason, all of New York seemed to think it was Parker Price’s fault.

  Okay so he’d had a couple bad weeks, but he wasn’t the only one swinging at air out there. There big hitter, bought from the Angels for almost as much as Parker, hadn’t been able to hit a damn thing, either. But did they boo him? No. Yell at him to get back on his mule and ride for Texas? Hell no. Just Parker.

  Maybe these people just hated Texans in general—there had been some press to that effect when the Mets had lured him away from the Houston Astros. And maybe he really just sucked. God knew he was wondering of late—no one was more surprised than him by the base-running error he’d made last night. No wait, that didn’t do it justice—what he’d done last night had to be the most incredibly boneheaded base-running error in the history of the sport.

  It was bad enough that he couldn’t get out of the parking lot without hot dogs and beer bottles being thrown at his car. It was bad enough that his neighbor, Mrs. Frankel, who had to be ninety if she was a day, was waiting for him at the bottom of the drive when he arrived home. The old bat was standing in his drive, wearing her Mets jacket and Mets hat perched atop of her cotton-ball head, carrying a bat that had the words New York Mets Swing for the Fences! emblazoned down the side.

  He knew right then it was trouble.

  Parker eased himself out of his Hummer and tried to smile. “Evening, Mrs. Frankel.”

  “Don’t evening me!” she shrieked and came at him with the bat raised, blubbering something about how no one was paying her one hundred million dollars to hit a baseball, but she could damn sure hit a head as swollen as his.

  Parker gently but firmly took the bat from her, at which point Mrs. Frankel dissolved into huge crocodile tears and sobbed how much she loved the Mets and just couldn’t stand to see what was happening to them.

  “Neither can I, Mrs. Frankel,” he sighed, and pointed her in the direction of her house. As she teetered down the drive, he called out, “You’re sure you’ll be all right, Mrs. Frankel?”