by Barbara Metzger, Connie Brockway, Casey Claybourne; Catherine Anderson
“No, Alex,” he’d said gently. “Miss St. James is unwed.”
He hadn’t needed to see the relief flood Alex’s eyes. He’d seen it in the way Alex’s entire body had relaxed. Alex had risen and made his way through the crowded little inn to her table. There, he had bowed over her hand and greeted her with some mild triviality. She had responded in kind. And just as easily as that, they’d agreed to act as if nothing had ever been between them. For the sake of their pride.
Since then Alex had never asked another question regarding Lucy St. James, nor, indeed, had he ever mentioned her name.
Now, if only Hugh had been as civil as his sister. Unfortunately Hugh made it clear to all and sundry that he laid the blame for his sister’s ongoing spinsterhood firmly at Alex’s door. Because “who would wed a woman whose onetime fiancé found her so unfeminine and forward that he must make a public declaration of such?”
Such a mess, Penworthy thought unhappily.
“There was no reason to bother her,” Alex was saying in reply to St. James’s last accusation.
St. James’s lip curled. “So you were a coward then, too. Lucy is well shut of you.”
“Damn you, Hugh,” Alex said, his palm slamming into the tabletop, sending the piles of coins skittering and jumping across the felt.
“Really, Alex. Shouldn’t you be saving your insults for my sister? Or is there some other unfortunate girl dangling along after you waiting for her public dismissal?”
“That is hardly fair, Hugh!” Penworthy protested.
“Now you’ve gone too far, Hugh,” Alex said coldly. “Since you insist on your own ruin, far be it from me to dissuade you. I’ll take your wager and revel in your loss. Don’t think I won’t.”
“As will I! Deal the last card, Penworthy!”
“But—”
“Do it!” Alex barked.
Reluctantly, Penworthy reached into the box, slid the top card out onto the green table, and flipped it over.
Hugh St. James smiled.
Chapter Two
“Did you see the way he looked at her?” Elizabeth Roberts breathed from behind the safety of her ostrich feather fan.
Mary Penworthy’s round head of blond ringlets bobbed eagerly. “If a man looked at me like that, I should swoon.”
“I should swoon, too,” the third of their little coterie, Theresa Vane, agreed, “but I would wait until I was close enough to him so that when I sank gracefully to the floor he would have to catch me.”
“Shame on you, Terry,” Lady Mary scolded.
“Oh, don’t be a mud lark, Mary. You know you find him just as delicious as any other young lady of the ton does.”
“I don’t,” Elizabeth announced somberly. “He frightens me.”
“Of course he does,” Theresa said with a little puff of exasperation. “He frightens all the young ladies and a good many young men, too, I should warrant. That’s part of his fascination, don’t you see? All those dark, grim good looks and that powerful physique and that nasty, nasty scar. He received it during the Russian War. It gives me shivers just to think on it.”
“When he looks at you, you have no idea what is going on behind that cold expression,” Elizabeth avowed. “He looks as ready to carve you up as to say a civil word.”
“Oh, he’s always civil,” said Lady Mary, whose brother was one of Thorpe’s confidants and thus had personal knowledge that the others—much to their dismay—lacked. “None more so. Frightfully correct.”
“If only one could win an occasional smile from him,” Theresa sighed.
Marcus says that he smiles sometimes.”
“Blue moons happen with greater frequency,” Elizabeth said significantly.
Mary ignored her. “Indeed. Marcus says that he once smiled a good deal before . . . the war.”
“Before Lucy St. James, you mean,” Theresa said. All three young ladies turned from where they stood clustered at the end of the ballroom and looked across the dance floor at the object of their speculation.
Lucy St. James was speaking to her host and great-uncle by marriage, the Marquis of Carroll. The elderly gentleman’s spine had become so twisted with age that he was obliged to angle his head sideways to peer up at his companion. His affliction had made him more and more self-conscious, yet whatever Lucy had said had caused his face to light with a smile and his faded eyes to sparkle.
“She must be telling him off-color jokes,” Theresa murmured.
“Don’t be absurd,” Lady Mary said. “She’s being . . . Lucy.”
Lucy St. James was no longer a girl, not even by the kindest estimation. Yet here she was, the belle of the Season. As she had been the belle of last Season and the belle of the Season before that and for the four preceding those.
And, tiresome as it was, it looked like her ascendancy was far from over. With skin as pale as cream, eyes so dark blue they looked indigo, and hair of a deep, rich auburn hue, she looked like something one ought to find dancing amongst the standing stones on a moonlit night, a slender and delicate and ethereal creature. Even her features were fine wrought. But this waiflike frailty was belied by a vibrant, even willful, personality.
The three young ladies regarded her wistfully.
“She’s even wearing a crinoline,” Mary murmured appreciatively. Not one of them had yet convinced doting parents to let them purchase the new contraption.
As always, Lucy St. James stood in the vanguard of fashion. Her low-cut white organdy bodice was attached to a billowing tulle skirt at the cinched waist. The gossamer overskirt was patterned with faint golden stars and draped in swags over a petticoat comprising no fewer than fourteen layers of fragile lace flounces edged in gold. When she moved, the crinoline swung out gracefully, allowing just the smallest glimpse of white kid slippers with gold heels.
With little sighs of admiration, the three girls turned back and regarded one another morosely. Lucy St. James was as lovely at twenty-five as she’d been at twenty-two. And, as none of the young ladies collected in the trio had been “out” before that, they could only depend on myriad assurances from others that she’d been just as lovely when she’d come out at seventeen, too. And even then the object of Alexander, Lord Thorpe’s affections.
Not that any of them were at all certain that “affections” was the appropriate term for the emotion she currently called up from the cold corridors of Thorpe’s heart. But there could be no doubt that whatever feeling she evoked from him, it was strong. Rumor had it that Thorpe was even now getting monstrously drunk in some anteroom. But then, rumor had also had it that he had vowed never again to accept an invitation to a party that included Lucy St. James.
“I wonder why he came, knowing that she would be here?” Liz asked.
“Don’t be a widgeon, Liz,” Theresa said. “The marchioness is Thorpe’s godmother as well as Lucy St. James’s great-aunt, and this is her eightieth birthday. He couldn’t possibly refuse.”
“Why . . .” Liz’s eyes widened. “It was at the marchioness’s seventy-eighth birthday that he . . . that Lucy St. James . . . that . . . Oh my! How awful. I thought she blanched when he looked upon her so terribly. I thought her lips quivered. I thought—”
“And you thought you’d seen a fairy in the end of your garden last year, too,” Mary broke in dryly. “Lucy St. James looks as pampered and lighthearted as ever. Not a whit of color left her cheeks, and her lips were trembling on the cusp of a smile, nothing more.” Lucy St. James was rather a heroine of the young lady’s.
“Doubtless you are right, Mary. It is only that . . . Whatever is the matter with you?” Theresa asked abruptly as she noted that both Mary and Liz were no longer attending her but instead were staring behind her with eyes as round as saucers.
“What do you see, Liz?” Theresa whispered urgently, loath to do anything so uncouth as to turn around. “Never say that old Lord Menglerott has brought his doxy? Mother said he swore he would, but I—Mary? What is going on?”
Whatever i
t was, nothing could account for such appallingly bad manners. But then, no one in the room was attending to manners. Voices all around had fallen silent, movement had come to a standstill, and every head had turned in the direction of the grand staircase. She might as well look too—
Theresa turned, and her mouth promptly fell open along with everyone else’s.
For standing at the very top of the staircase, brilliantly and brazenly lit by the glare of the marquis’s newly installed gaslight sconces, stood Alexander, Viscount Thorpe.
In a dress.
No one moved. For a full moment, no one even breathed. They stood like sheep in a chute.
The thing was, the dress—and bedamned if it didn’t look like a wedding dress—fit all six feet four inches of Lord Thorpe’s manifestly male figure like it had been made for him. The white lace overdress stretched across his broad shoulders without a wrinkle. The seams on the delicate lace sleeves did not strain a bit over the bulging triceps and biceps muscles in Thorpe’s brawny arms. And the narrow band collar did not appear any tighter than a well-tied cravat about his wide neck. Even the white satin beneath the lace molded to the planed contours of his hard, corrugated belly and trim hips like a second skin.
No one knew quite what to do. Under any circumstances Thorpe was intimidating enough, but standing there in that huge, white bride’s dress, his big hands dark and hairy below the delicate lace-trimmed sleeves, his expression as coolly displeased as if he’d just come in from a walk to find unwanted guests in his home—well . . . one didn’t know how to react.
With one notable exception.
The silence broke on the sound of a single female’s throaty laughter. There was a slight shift of the guests at the far side of the ballroom, and from their midst emerged a fairylike creature, as pretty in her white tulle as Thorpe was monstrous in his white lace.
“My poor Thorpe,” Lucy St. James said, gliding slowly across the ballroom to the bottom of the grand staircase. Her deep blue eyes sparkled wickedly, and her mouth trembled on the verge of a grin. “I hate to be the one to have to tell you this, but white is simply not your color.”
Chapter Three
His skin tingled, his muscles contracted, his heart thundered, and the whole room seemed to dissolve into a haze of indistinct colors and shapes, indistinct except for her. Her he could see with almost supernatural clarity. Her form, her face, her arms and throat, and every stitch of her gossamer-light gown were as crystalline as if he’d put her under a magnifying glass. He could see the pulse beating in the hollow at the base of her neck, the fine sheen of powder glistening on the silky swell of her bosom, the way her spiky dark lashes entangled with one another at the corners of her sapphire blue eyes.
And he could almost smell her, that delectable fragrance that was hers alone. It hung just beneath the surface of his conscious, like autumn mornings and spiced tea and sun-warmed skin.
The tingling in his skin grew more accentuated. The strange, nearly electric sensation strengthened and deepened, reaching into the very core of him and burning away at anger, consuming his bitterness, releasing the despair he would not even acknowledge. Something inside broke, as though he’d been holding his breath for two years and now suddenly could exhale.
Well, there it was, he thought vaguely. He was still in love with her. Madly, impossibly, angrily but apparently also eternally. Why now? Why, when he was standing in front of the ton dressed in a white wedding dress? Because Love was not yet done making a fool of him, and, Lord help him, he was once more a willing victim. The only question remaining was what the bloody hell was he going to do about it?
She was sashaying up the staircase, the absurd contraption she wore swaying, lifting the hooped skirts to allow a peek of the satin laces crossing her delicate ankles and above that, silk embroidered stockings.
She stopped a few steps below him, and let her gaze travel slowly from the hem to the top of the dress he’d found in Lady Carroll’s attic. “I could lend you something green. Perhaps something to match your skin tone?”
She was entirely adorable, winsome and devilish and appealing. How he had missed her flashing eyes, her impertinence, her refusal to take his consequence seriously. She’d made him laugh, sometimes even at himself. Looking down at her now, feeling his mouth twitch irresistibly at the corners, he realized how bereft his life had been without her.
“Could you?” he replied.
“Well”—her lids slipped with feigned bashfulness over her bright eyes—“I would lend it to you, but I’m afraid you’d only be able to use it as a chemise.” She peeked up at him. “But it is, of course, yours for the asking. Shall I have it sent round?” She batted her eyelashes.
The wretch! He took a step forward, but she didn’t back down, not his Lucy. She didn’t even appear to notice that he was being intimidating. Instead she bent forward and with an oddly elegant little gesture flattened her crinoline at her knees so that the whole of the peculiar device canted up a little in the back, held there by her hand, a bell on the cusp of gonging. Then, with every appearance of a woman dreading what she might uncover, she gingerly lifted the hem of his skirt with the tip of her fan, revealing a pair of crisply pressed charcoal gray trousers and well-polished black boots.
“Thank God,” she said devoutly, and around them a ripple of titters erupted, only to be at once contained when Thorpe raised his pale eyes and glared. For a few minutes, he’d forgotten they were not alone. But then, why should anyone leave when the entertainment proved so titillating? He scowled at them. A few had the grace to flush. Most simply avoided his gaze.
Alexander Thorpe disliked being an object of derision.
But the alternative, to stomp out of the room and leave her here, laughing at him—oh, hell and damnation. He was tired of lying to himself. The idea of leaving her anywhere, in any state, was anathema.
“What were you expecting to find?” he asked coolly.
“I was fearing pantaloons,” she said.
More laughter.
Once, a lifetime ago, he would have known exactly how to handle her audacity; he would have kissed the boldness from her lips. Old habits died hard. Her mouth looked the same as it had two years ago after she made some saucy remark, ripe and unrepentant. Her face was raised in just the same attitude as it would have been then, eagerly waiting for him to crush her in his embrace and rain kisses on her mouth in order to keep her from further impertinences. It was only one of a million reasons he loved her.
Now, his arms ached to gather her to him. Instead, he forced himself to look past her at all the riveted faces turned toward them. If only everyone would just go, just continue on with whatever the hell they’d been doing before he arrived, he might have a chance to . . . say something . . . something of a private nature . . . something that would make her—he didn’t know what! All he knew was that he felt like a circus performer. Notably, a clown.
Lucy bit down on her lower lip, obviously trying not to giggle. “Tell me, Thorpe. Wherever did you find a seamstress who could accomplish something like this?” She wiggled her fingertips at him. “All that lace must have kept an entire abbey full of Belgian nuns in work for a year.”
“What?” he started in confusion and then the impact of her words hit him. “Are you suggesting this thing is mine?”
“Isn’t it?” she returned innocently. “It’s just that it fits you so very, very well, and you must admit that you are a very, very unusual size for a bride. And, well, when one takes into account both particulars, how can one conclude other than . . . what one concludes?” she concluded apologetically.
His mouth fell open and snapped shut. So, she was still angry, after all, and not willing to stop short of drawing a little blood in order to get some of her own back. He could appreciate that. She wouldn’t be Lucy if she meekly forgave the sort of insult he’d dealt her in this very room two years ago. But then . . . he wouldn’t be Alexander Thorpe if he timidly tolerated her provocations. And she could be exceedingly p
rovocative.
“I didn’t have it made,” he replied. “I found it in your great-aunt’s attic. By which particular one can only conclude that there must be some truly amazing antecedents lurking in the branches of your family tree, Miss St. James.”
“Doubtless from the Carroll side of the family,” she replied with a dismissive sniff. “No blood relation to me. We St. Jameses are a fine-boned people. But that does rather beg the question of what on earth you were doing in my great-aunt’s attic looking for a wedding dress to don.”
One side of his mouth crept up before the other followed. Once, she’d liked his lopsided smile. She called it wicked and kissed the corner that got left behind, saying it deserved encouragement. Still, he couldn’t help but savor the moment. Lucy St. James was one of the few women he knew who could match him in pride. And his answer was going to deal it a sharp little sting. No, she wasn’t going to like this. Not at all.
“I’m afraid you’ll have to ask your brother for the answer to that.”
“Hugh?” For the first time, she looked a little nonplussed. Her straight dark brows dipped in consternation. “What the devil has Hugh to do with this?”
“I suggest you ask him.” He stood aside, and Lucy peered into the gloom of the corridor where her nefarious sibling lurked, or at least had been lurking ten minutes ago. Lurking and sniggering. Though in all fairness the sniggering had probably been Davidson—Hugh had been too righteously triumphant to be amused.
“Hugh?” There was an odd note in Lucy’s voice. Embarrassment, one might have been tempted to say. Or hoped to say, he amended truthfully.
Alex turned, wondering how Hugh would answer his sister. But as soon as he saw his onetime schoolmate he realized that Hugh might not be answering at all—for St. James was slumped against the far wall, his eyelids drooping over his blue eyes, his chin nestled tenderly amongst the folds of his snowy cravat. He’d passed out. Yet, half sentient though he undoubtably was, the triumphant grin plastered on his face still managed to irk Alex.