“I know you meant no harm,” he said gruffly. “But for my mother, that was when…when everything went wrong. You think there cannot be anything worse than losing a child, but in a way, it was the beginning of the end for her. My father died not long after, broken heart, and my uncle –my mother’s brother – was lost at sea a week later. Three of the four most precious people to her, lost in three months.”
He could feel his jaw clenching as it always did when he was grieving, or frustrated, and angry. That year had begun with cheer and happiness with Uncle Howard back on land and his sister laughing as she performed on the pianoforte for the first time in public.
By Easter, that room had been emptied of all he loved, save his mother.
“I am so sorry,” Westray murmured, and Charles knew he was genuine. “I did not mean to offend. Damnit, Orrinshire, you know me better than that.”
“I know, do not worry, old thing. No offense was meant, and none was taken,” Charles said heavily. “But now it is just the two of us, and Mama and I are perhaps closer than most mothers and sons at my age. If Mary had lived…well. Everything would have been different.”
Silence fell between the two friends, but it was a silence of comfort and understanding. Westray was an orphan himself, Charles remembered. Parents lost at sea when he was a child. He had never known the closeness of a mother, the protection of a father. Who was to say that he, Charles, was the one to be most pitied?
“I saw, isn’t that your friend…Petunia, or something?”
Charles looked up, and a smile broke across his face. Priscilla, and once again, she had decided to raid her jewelry box. She was an absolute delight in a sea of Miss Nothings—an elegant, sloping gown in a yellow that was almost golden. There was more gold thread embroidered in that silk than in the Regent’s crown, he was sure of that, and a plume of gold feathers billowed from her hair.
Something lurched in his stomach, and his breathing faltered.
“Priscilla,” he whispered.
As though able to catch her own name from across a crowded room, she turned, and her eyes met his. She smiled, a smile that heated his body, and she began to walk toward them.
“Christ, Orrinshire, you never mentioned she was absolutely beautiful,” Westray breathed. “Is she attached to anyone, do you know?”
“I…I do not know,” said Charles, surprised to think he had never asked the question before. “And I have to admit, I never noticed before. Not in that way.”
Not in the way that sensational ladies become renowned for their beauty. As Priscilla wove through the crowd, her body moved in an alluring way that had a disconcerting effect on his own.
But this was Priscilla! Little Prissy Seton, as she had been when a child.
Charles swallowed. She was not a child any longer.
By this time, she had reached them and dropped into a low curtsey.
“Well, Orrinshire,” Westray said with an approving smile. “Won’t you introduce me?”
“Of course, of course. Lord Westray, Miss Priscilla Seton. Miss Seton, Jack Beauvale, Lord Westray. Jacob, sorry – we have known each other for too long.”
Westray bowed. “And may I say, Miss Seton, that you are incomparably beautiful this evening – and I would suppose every evening. How does it feel to know you are the most delectable woman in the room?”
Priscilla smiled and tilted her head as she replied, “Why, Lord Westray, how does it feel to trot out the same platitudes to every lady you meet? I would have hoped for originality, at the very least.”
They both laughed, and their conversation continued as Charles was overcome by an emotion he rarely felt. It tasted bitter, churned his stomach, and made him want to call out Westray immediately for a duel outside.
It took a few moments to realize what it was.
Jealousy.
He felt jealous, jealous of Priscilla! The bitter green emotion flooded through him as he was forced to watch Westray flirt with her, a possessiveness he had never known creeping through the veins of his heart and poisoning them.
What right had he to feel jealous? Priscilla was not his sister that he should act in such a controlling manner. But seeing her here, in that gown, with those feathers in her hair…the curve of her cheek, the way her chest moved as she laughed at Westray’s jests…
That laughter used to be for him. He could always make her laugh, even when in the doldrums, and now it was Westray, Westray, who was making her smile and glow.
Charles glanced at his friend and saw the telltale signs of desire. He leaned closer to her, lowering his voice so she would be forced to take a step closer.
The instinct to pull them apart and punch Westray in the mouth rose in Charles’s heart like an ocean, but he allowed it to flow away into nothingness. This was protectiveness, nothing more, surely. Priscilla was a friend, a close friend. It was natural to feel…protective.
Natural to feel like Westray should be torn limb from limb for speaking with her?
“And are you dancing with anyone, Miss Seton?”
Charles’s head twitched to stare at her, waiting for her response.
Priscilla smiled coquettishly. Where in God’s name did she learn to do that?
“No one at present,” she said lightly. “Why, Lord Westray, have you not noticed? I am talking to you.”
Westray chuckled. “Well, would you accept my hand?”
She glanced at Charles, and he felt heat rush to his cheeks as she asked, “If you have no objection?”
How was he supposed to answer a blasted question like that? To sweep Priscilla in his arms and –
No, he must not act on that particular whim.
“Of course. I mean, of course not,” he corrected hastily.
Westray offered his hand to Priscilla, who accepted it, and they moved away to join the dancers in the center of the room.
Charles watched them, feeling the bitterness and anger rising in his chest, unsure exactly what to do with the emotions. Where did they come from? Why were they so damn irrational? Couldn’t a friend of his dance with another friend?
Priscilla laughed as she and Westray promenaded down the center of the set, and Charles had to force his fingers to unclench once again.
This was Priscilla, for goodness sake! He could not remember a time when they had not been friends. She and Mary and him, the three of them together, and then Priscilla and he against the world when all he wanted to do was rage against it for taking his sister.
He was engaged to Miss Lloyd. That fact had slipped his mind for a moment, and he clung to it like flotsam in a storm.
Still, the memory of his betrothed did nothing to prevent him from watching Westray and Priscilla closely as they spun closer and closer, weaving with others in the dance, and the tension in his temples had doubled by the time the dance ended.
“What a shame it was such a short dance,” Westray was saying as they returned, both a little out of breath. “Can I persuade you to step up with me again, Miss Seton?”
Priscilla opened her mouth to reply, eyes shining, but before she spoke a word, Charles interrupted.
“She cannot.”
Both Priscilla and Westray stared, the latter in great surprise.
“Why on earth not, Charles?” Priscilla asked innocently.
“Because you are going to dance with me. Come on.”
Without waiting for a response, he stepped forward and took her hand – and that was when it all came undone. She was warm, warmer than she should be after a simple dance, and his whole body reacted in tune with that heat.
Did she feel it, too? Did she just gasp? Was that the sound he heard?
Charles tried not to look at her as they stepped to the set, but he could feel every pair of eyes in the room, watching him as they did so. The Duke of Orrinshire and Miss Seton. Why did those names feel so right together?
He was forced to release her hand to permit her to join her side of the set, and it was a loss he had never known before. Impa
tience flowed through him as he glared at the musicians. The sooner they played, the sooner Priscilla could be in his arms again.
Where were these thoughts coming from? What did they mean? Nothing seemed to make sense, and they made even less sense as the music began, and Priscilla stepped forward to take his hands. Sparks flew from their touch, his own body crackled with the energy between them. Surely everyone in the room could see the connection between them.
Charles could barely concentrate on the dance, and when Priscilla spoke, he had to ask her to repeat herself.
“I said, you are unusually quiet.”
He barely knew how to reply. “When dancing with you, I do not know what to say,” he admitted honestly.
They twirled around the pair beside them and came together once more.
Priscilla laughed. “I will take that as a compliment.”
“You should,” Charles said, the words escaping his mouth before he could stop them.
This was not the Priscilla he knew, and yet it was. She had not changed but had somehow come into focus as never before.
He tried not to think too much about her, but it was impossible. She was beautiful, witty, radiant. She was his friend, but today, somehow, she was more.
He swallowed as he took her hands and circled the pair on their other side. He knew what that strange tug in his stomach was now, and thought back guiltily to their walk through the village, their encounter at his engagement picnic.
It was all the same feeling, for he wanted her.
He wanted Priscilla, wanted her in a way he had never wanted her before. He wanted her tight in his arms, quivering with desire, her lip on his. He wanted that, and so much more.
An image flashed through his mind, Priscilla in his arms but with significantly fewer clothes…
Charles turned his face away as he encircled her. How had he never seen her like this before?
Now it was too late. His damned pride and his sense of honor had led him to an arranged marriage, and Priscilla did not see him in that way. How could she?
He returned to his space in the set. She smiled, and guilt washed over him. What was he doing, thinking of Priscilla in such a scandalous way when engaged to another?
The music ended, and the room applauded. Neither Charles nor Priscilla moved.
“I…” Charles swallowed, his voice jagged, unable to take his eyes from her. “I could have kept dancing with you forever.”
Priscilla’s eyes never left his. “I wish you would.”
“Now, I have been more than patient, Miss Seton, and I demand this next dance!”
Jolted from the connection between them, Charles blinked at Westray, who was grinning.
Priscilla curtseyed. “Yes, of course, Lord Westray.”
She moved to place her hand in his, turning her back on Charles.
His breathing was coarse, his body raging. What had just happened? Had he realized, for the first time and far too late, that he was…in love with Priscilla Seton?
Chapter Six
Priscilla blew her nose for the third time and finally felt air rush into her nose. Her handkerchief was sopping wet, and she threw it into the wastepaper bin with a snotty sigh.
“Ugggh,” she moaned, sinking further into the settee and closing her eyes. Had she ever felt more pathetic than this? Had anyone suffered as she was? There was nothing in the world that could help her, nothing. “Ugggghhhh…”
The sound of her mother tutting forced her bleary eyes to open.
“Well, what did you think you were doing, staying out until two in the morning – two o’clock in the morning!” Mrs. Seton chided, fussing around her like a mother hen, plumping up her cushion and offering a clean, dry handkerchief. “The early hours are no time for a lady to be out in this cold weather!”
Priscilla raised a hand to her throbbing temple and tried to nod without moving her head. The pain would go away if only she could breathe properly.
“I always said if you do not wrap up warm, particularly around the neck, then you will get a cold,” said her mother, moving about the drawing room with the air of someone who, once again, had been proven right. “Especially as autumn draws near. Really, Priscilla! A woman with your dowry should consider things more carefully!”
Priscilla’s only reply was to blow her nose again, the little trumpeting sound ending in an ‘uggghh’ as the doorbell clanged.
If her throat had not hurt so much, she would have replied. Merely blowing her nose put more pressure on her head, and she clutched it, closing her eyes. A woman with her dowry – two thousand pounds – was hardly likely to get her far in the marital market, head cold or no head cold.
It had all been worth it, though. Despite the agony, and Priscilla knew herself well enough to know she always suffered far more with a cold than anyone else, the evening had been entirely well spent.
Dancing with Charles. Nothing made her feel so alive. Not like that. She had felt something between them, a spark, a moment she could not describe.
Had he? It had passed quickly, and that foolish Lord Westray had interrupted what could have been…
Priscilla opened her eyes and swallowed, her throat scratchy. No, she could not think that way. Charles thought nothing of it, and here she was, celebrating a simple dance. They had danced before. They would dance again.
But next time, he would be a married man.
“I really have no way to release myself from this engagement,” her mother sighed. “Oh, and there goes the doorbell again. Mrs. Howarth has invited me three times for lunch, and I have been previously engaged each time, so it would hurt her feelings to cancel now – but if you need me to stay –”
“No,” croaked Priscilla. She swallowed again and said a little more strongly, “No, Mrs. Busby is here. If I am in dire need of anything, I can ring the bell, and she will attend to me.”
She gestured to the small silver bell beside her. It was a childhood favorite, the bell that had brought Priscilla in for her dinner each evening – unless, of course, she had disobeyed her parents and wandered into the grounds of Orrinspire Park, as she so often did.
“You go and enjoy your luncheon with Mrs. Howarth,” Priscilla continued, “and I will see you when you get back. Give her my best regards.”
Mrs. Seton frowned. She was a handsome woman, silver-haired and with a few wrinkles around the eyes, but you could still see the debutante who had entered society in 1783.
“I would be happier if someone was with you,” she began. “Mrs. Busby cannot sit with –”
The doorbell clanged for the third time, and Mrs. Seton’s frown became more pronounced. “Mrs. Busby!”
The sound of footsteps echoed through the door from the hall, and then a murmur of voices.
Priscilla tried to push herself more upright. “It is only a cold, Mother, and I will stay right here with this book and not stir an inch. I will be perfectly – Charles!”
The door to the hallway had opened, and there stood Charles, his hair ruffled by the wind but a smile on his face, nonetheless.
His face fell. “Oh, no, you caught the same lurgy that got Lord Westray, by the looks of it!”
“Lord Westray?” Mrs. Seton said, turning quickly to greet her guest. “Who is Lord Westray, pray?”
Priscilla rolled her eyes at Charles over her mother’s shoulder. Of course, her mother would ignore the fact that she should be greeting the Duke of Orrinshire to their home and focus instead on the passing mention of a new gentleman’s name.
A gentleman, any gentleman – anyone who may marry her daughter.
The pressure in her head increased as she tried not to sneeze. Could her mother not see the perfect gentleman for her was standing quite literally before her?
“Why, my friend Jacob Beauvale, Lord Westray,” Charles was saying with a bow to his host. “He is a friend of mine, residing in town at present…”
Priscilla stopped paying attention, though her mother stood raptly, following every word. What
care did she have about Lord Westray? He was a nice enough fellow, but he was not Charles, and that was the fault of every gentleman.
But she could not spend time moping. She needed to rescue Charles from her mother.
“Yes, I have a cold,” she said, interrupting her mother’s frantic questions about Lord Westray’s family and connection. “And it was nice of you to visit, Charles, but for your own health, I beg you, stay away.”
Stepping around her mother, he waved her concerns away. “Nonsense! I came to see you, and so all I need to do is sit on this settee here,” pointing to the one opposite her, “and you can hack and cough all you want. Mrs. Seton, where are you sitting?”
Mrs. Seton looked a little disgruntled that her questioning about Lord Westray had come to such an abrupt end, but her charming smile returned. “Sadly, I am just about to depart, Your Grace, as I would greatly appreciate your company. I am due at Mrs. Howarth’s for luncheon, but if you are content to sit here with Priscilla, I would be most grateful. She needs someone to keep her company.”
Charles bowed and dropped onto the settee. “It would be my pleasure, Mrs. Seton – and please do give my regards to Mrs. Howarth. Thinking about it, Priscilla, would your housekeeper, Mrs. Busby, be happy to feed me luncheon?”
Priscilla imagined Mrs. Busby’s face at the idea she would be feeding a duke with twenty minutes’ notice.
“Let me go and speak with her,” said her mother, and she caught Priscilla’s eye with a smile. She had clearly thought the same thing.
Charles stretched out his legs and sighed. “Goodness, I hope so. I missed breakfast, and I slept in so late. I almost decided to sleep at the club, but then nowhere is quite as comfortable as your own bed, is it? What time did you get home?”
Priscilla opened her mouth to reply, but the door opened, and her mother popped her head through.
“Mrs. Busby is delighted to have you for luncheon, Your Grace,” she said with a smile that Priscilla knew meant, Mrs. Busby has been instructed not to panic, and just give His Grace what she was going to give Miss Seton. “Good afternoon, Charles, and I hope we see you again soon. Bring Lord Westray.”
Always the Rival (Never the Bride Book 7) Page 6