Six months ago, the duchess had rescued her and brought Arielle along with her to Rothmeade, the ducal seat of the Rothminsters, to serve as a companion of sorts. Arielle knew the duchess's reasoning to be a sham – Catherine Denning had such a busy, full life there was no place in it for a companion. Still, Arielle was grateful to her for her benevolence.
“Why, it's perfect!”
“What? What is perfect?” Having tuned out the sound of his voice, it appeared she had missed something important. With Max, that could be dangerous. She peered at him, alert and unable to ignore the warnings in her head telling her she should proceed with caution. “Max, I do not like that scheming look in your eye.”
“I've just figured out how I may enjoy myself at the ball, keep all the scheming, title hungry women at bay, and still pick the most suitable Rothminster bride from the crowd.”
She peered at him, suspect. “And how do you propose to do that, exactly?”
“You.”
“Me? Oh, no, have I not just explai-”
“Give over, Arielle. You must admit no one would dare suggest I picked someone out of my household to vet my guests for me, just as they will never suspect you shouldn't be there - you never forget a title, your comportment is superb, and in the correct outfit you would probably even look the part.” His gaze skipped quickly over her plain, serviceable gown and she narrowed her eyes, threatening him with a look.
“I won't do it, Max. You are the one who decided a ball would suit your bride finding needs.” Leaning away from the table where she and Max had shared a light luncheon on the terrace, she reminded him, “You had your mother send the invitations and you even had her include the fact you intend to choose your bride from among those in attendance.”
“You aren't telling me I must lie in the bed I've made for myself, are you, Arielle? It's a bit like the pot calling the kettle-”
“That is precisely what I am doing,” she said, ignoring the heated blush making its way across her cheeks.
“You simply must do this, Arielle. Please. Do this one thing for me and I'll...”
Exasperated, she pressed, “What will you do, Max? Erase my past? Make me respectable? Find a man who will love me despite all the reasons he should not?”
“Yes.”
The word sounded very much like a promise, but Arielle knew what he proposed was impossible. She was destined to be beholden to the Dennings forever.
“Alright, I suppose that is a bit far-fetched,” he admitted finally, although his eyes said he fully believed he could perform such a miracle. “But suppose I buy you a house, provide you with an annual stipend. You'd be an independent woman, Arielle. No need to complicate matters by bringing in some man who will never appreciate the jewel he would get because of his hangups with what is or is not acceptable to society.”
“You would do that?” She was surprised and even felt a tiny frisson of excitement, but no. She shook her head. “People would talk, Max. They would think me your mistress.”
“People always talk, Arielle. I'm a bloody duke.” A fierce scowl seemed to punctuate the remark and Arielle bit back a laugh. “I can damn well do whatever I please, and to hell with the gossips.”
Her brow rose. “Even if the person doing the talking is your duchess?”
“You would choose such a woman for me?”
His wounded look was near as comical as the scowl from a moment before. Would she choose a woman who would think so little of him she would accuse him of having a mistress without knowing the facts at hand? Arielle shook her head. “No.”
“Then it's settled. You will be at that ball. You will stay by my side the entire time and you will advise me in matters of choosing a bride – to ensure I do not shame my family and the great Rothminster name by choosing someone truly horrible as my future duchess.”
Arielle could not believe he was serious. She peered at him in disbelief, but whether serious or not, at this point she knew he would refuse to back down from the challenge she had presented. If there was one thing she had learned about the duke of Rothminster during her brief stay at Rothmeade, it was the fact that he never backed down from a challenge. Still, she offered one last argument. “What if I am recognized?”
Max grinned. “Leave everything to me. When I am done, not even Mother will know who you are.”
Chapter Two
“There is more?” Staring in awe at box after gilded box of clothing and accessories being delivered to her rooms on the third floor, Arielle turned to reprimand the man responsible. “Max, I hardly think so much is required for a few dances over the course of a couple nights. Tell me you have not beggared the family coffers with this quite unnecessary extravagance.”
“Shush. We have to be sure you are completely unrecognizable, yes? In this finery, no one would ever believe you were, well, you. Have a look.”
He held up a gown that was so lovely it almost brought tears to her eyes.
Made from a rather creamy looking ivory silk, trimmed in gold, the gown was supposed to be fitted to the hips, with elegant sleeves that draped from the wrists, and a long, sweeping train. She would be stunning in it and that would be enough to keep the wagging tongues gossiping about her dress rather than her lineage – at least Max hoped it would.
“It looks like a wedding gown for a princess, Max. I cannot possibly...”
“You can and you will, Arielle. You promised.” The corners of his mouth turned up in what could only be described as a half-smirk, half-smile. “Think of your little cottage in the country while you're being forced to dance in the most beautiful creations ever stitched. That should make the experience bearable.”
Arielle rolled her eyes at his rather dramatic bend, but she could not resist touching the fabric, caressing it, awed by the realization she truly would be allowed to wear it.
“And look at these...”
Arielle's eyes widened and then narrowed. “Are those made of glass?”
Max grinned. “No one in all of England could wear anything like this. Only you, Arielle.”
Tamping down the special thrill his words gave her, especially when he said them in his intimate sort of way, she lifted one of the dainty slippers from its specially created case to inspect it more closely. “But where on earth did you get them, Max?”
He shrugged. “The jeweler. They are actually made of crystal, I do believe. Cost a mite, but we aren't concerned with a few hundred pounds here and there with so much at stake. I was worried they might not fit, but then I remembered you have such tiny feet...”
Distracted from imagining just how outrageous a sum he might have paid for the shoes by his indelicate mention of her body parts, Arielle gasped. “When have you ever seen my feet?”
The impropriety of it had her back stiffening, and he laughed, his eyes twinkling merrily with mischief.
“How you do go on,” Max mocked. “Remember when you were fishing last month and I accidentally knocked you into the pond? When I fished you out – sorry, wholly inappropriate pun, I agree - I was a little more concerned with making sure you were still alive than whether or not I caught a glimpse of the bare skin below your hem - a hem which had tangled high around your thigh, mind you.”
She gasped again, horrified at the thought.
“Maxwell Denning if you dare tell me you've seen my bare thighs, even while I lay incapacitated-” Her eyes narrowed. “You are a vile, lecherous, scandalous...!”
Max chuckled and held up a hand in surrender. “Teasing. I am only teasing you, Arielle, but you do blush quite delightfully when your sense of propriety has been compromised, and you do have smallish feet,” he pointed out. “Still, you should try them on, to be sure.”
He knelt and reached for her foot, which Arielle immediately snatched out of his reach. “Turn your back.”
He rolled his eyes, but he did so, and waited. And waited more still until, finally, he could take the suspense no more. He turned back to her, pinning her with his impatient, questionin
g gaze. “Well?”
“They're perfect,” she breathed, lifting the hem of her gown a mere fraction of an inch to let the toe of one glass slipper peek from underneath.
Before she could guess his intent, Max grabbed her skirts and tugged upward. Her face burned while her insides did the most unusual little flip.
“Ah, they do fit,” he said, assured now, at the expense of her composure, that her heel was not sticking over the back or that her toes were not scrunched up inside.
Tugging her skirts furiously back into place, Arielle squealed, “Max! What on earth did you think I meant when I said they were perfect, you dolt! Now get out of my rooms so I can find somewhere to put all this. If your mother finds out what you've done...” she started, but Max cut her off.
“She isn't going to know, Arielle. She isn't going to know, and neither will the rest of Society.”
“No one else will know,” she parroted, agreeing mostly in an attempt to reassure herself, and it had worked somewhat, until Max nodded and said...
“Only you and I.”
Chapter Three
Both of the Rothmeade ballrooms were filled to practically overflowing with dancing couples. It seemed the line of arriving guests would go on forever, but Max had welcomed what appeared to be the last arrival nigh onto an hour ago with more than a little relief.
With five hundred sixty eight guests mingling in his home, every one of which had attended specifically to watch him try to muck his way through it all and still come out with a bride, there was only one person he cared at the moment to see.
Arielle.
Max checked his fob watch and glanced at the doors leading down to the garden for what must have been the tenth time in as many minutes.
Where was she?
She had promised and in the few months he had known her, brief though they were, he had learned that Arielle Tremaine never went back on her word.
Still, she was late and he wondered if perhaps she were lurking in the shadows somewhere just outside the doors, nibbling at her lower lip in the delightful way she often did when she was unsure of something. The thought of how much fun he could have while trying to calm her uncertainty made him grin and he turned to excuse himself from the few guests at his side. It was time to go and find her, he decided.
But he didn't have to.
He had barely taken a step forward to go in search of her when he saw her warily step into the ballroom, one cautious step forward after another. Her head held high, silk gloved-encased fingers fidgeting at her hips as they always did when she was feeling a bit self-conscious, she scanned the crowd as she moved.
Looking for him, he supposed, and he would have made himself known immediately if he hadn't been quite so stricken by her appearance.
From head to toe, his gaze roamed, trying desperately to find something, anything within the exquisite vision of feminine perfection gliding toward him to remind himself she was not that which she so utterly portrayed.
He found nothing.
Her hair, rather than having been merely pulled back in its usual, simple style, had been loosely piled atop her head, with a strand allowed escape here and a tendril there to provide a uniquely feminine frame for her face which served to bring out the startling clarity of her eyes.
Clear green and clearly searching for him at the moment, those eyes of hers seemed changed somehow. Lightly ringed with kohl and dusted with a faint brush of deep green, the sparkle within their depths became intensified. Instead of merely being those things with which she was able to see, for Max, they had become a dangerous sea of deep, endless green into which he quite feared even he might fall.
He felt... explanation escaped him, but whatever it was, Max had felt it from the instant her eyes settled on him at last. Her relief at finding him obvious in both the way her shoulders relaxed and how the studied set of her lips changed instantly into a hesitant but no less beautiful smile, she lifted her hem a tiny bit and slightly arched a brow, awaiting his approval.
Breaking away from the intense effect the playfulness in her gaze was having on him at the moment, Max ignored her silent request to look lower – and groaned. Gone was the dowdy, servile dress she usually wore. In its place was the ivory and gold silk gown he had specifically chosen for her to wear tonight, and it fit. In fact, it fit her so well...he drew in a breath.
It had been one thing to hold up the gown for her inspection, he thought, but quite another to inspect her in it. When had she grown such delectable curves?
She was beyond stunning. In fact, dressed as she was at the moment, Arielle was nothing short of utterly, breathtakingly, beautiful. Shapely and soft, all graceful and womanly, and to his surprise, more than a little exciting, her presence beckoned to him like a siren's voice calling from the sea to an unwary sailor.
And he was completely, irretrievably lost.
She hurried forward – at least Max recognized it as her "hurrying" gait - yet it seemed as if she merely glided across the floor. Unsuspecting, he was caught within her spell as surely as every male in attendance would be if he did not get her out of here, and fast.
“Max,” she breathed when she reached his side. “I thought I would never find you in this crush.”
Arielle ran nervous palms down the sides of her skirts and squared her shoulders, ready to perform the duty he had required of her. Bride choosing. “Are you ready to begin?”
“I've changed my mind.”
She looked up into his eyes, saw the frown on his face, and laughed. The warm, low trill of her laughter blasted him with sensations very much not unlike lust, and Max shook his head, feeling as confused as her expression had become.
“Changed your mind? I don't understand. But look,” she prompted, placing her gloved hand lightly on his arm. “We are here, the gown and shoes both fit and are so lovely it would be a crime not to show them off - especially considering how much you must have paid for them. Come, let us dance and you can point out whichever woman you would like me to advise you against...”
Against?
Images of Arielle's surprisingly lusciously curved body pressed against him suddenly crowded in his mind. So many images inspired by such a tiny word. His lips against the exposed curve of her neck just below her ear. His hands against the gentle curve of her waist, his body against hers. He shook his head to clear it. If every word out of her mouth was going to have this sort of effect on him tonight...
“Arielle, this was a very bad idea.”
She ignored him, pulling him toward the crowded ballroom floor instead while making it seem it was she who was being led, a ballroom which was crowded, Max thought, with far too many men whom he could already see were staring with much too much interest in the lady on his arm.
Chapter Four
Max watched Arielle being whirled about the ballroom in the arms of his soon to be ex best friend. Andrew Skuffing, Marquess Atlindale, was being altogether too friendly with what he usually believed to be a member of the Rothminster staff - only Drew had no way of knowing that, until tonight, Arielle had kept mostly to herself at Rothmeade, preferring to purposely place herself among the staff despite both his and his mother's encouragement to do otherwise.
She had changed so easily, Max thought.
Like a chameleon, Arielle was one minute humble and much beholden house guest who chose to spend her days waiting on the family in a bid to repay them in some small way for their kindness, and in the next instant, she became the exquisitely beautiful and charming lady "Ari," a visiting, foreign princess who immediately captured the thoughts and imagination of every blasted one of his guests.
Watching her laugh and dance with one man after another, Max's mood grew ever more surly. And then, when she had stepped onto the floor and into the arms of his best friend, the final straw had been broken. Max strode, determined, through the crowd and tapped Andrew on the shoulder. “Pardon me, Drew, but I do believe it is high time you disappeared.”
Arielle frowned and discr
eetly shook her head, warning him against causing a scene, but without another word, Max insisted. He merely took her hand and fled with her across the ballroom to one of the adjoining rooms where a sumptuous buffet had been laid for his guests.
Pushing her into a chair, he took a plate and made his way down the long table, heaping the dish full from the mouth-watering array displayed from one end of the table to the other, joining her again where she waited, still sitting, at the far end of the room where they could speak without being interrupted or overheard.
“Enjoying yourself, princess?” Max offered her a morsel, ignoring the hint of accusation in his voice.
“Yes, of course I am. Thank you for allowing me to be here, Max. If it weren't for you, for your generosity-”
He could not hold back the snort of mockery her choice of words caused. Allowing her to be here? He had promised to pay her for the privilege and pleasure of her company, and that truth lay bitter in his mouth.
“For my scheming, you mean. If I had not been so obsessed with finding a way out of doing my duty here tonight-” He would never have seen what lay right beneath his nose, Max realized. “I should toss you out for your perfidy.”
“Perf- Max, what nonsense are you spouting now?” Her moment of confusion swiftly morphed into stinging reproach. “I have not engaged in one single moment of treachery here other than that which you instigated. And speaking of your maleficence, Your Grace, while you've been sulking about, scowling darkly and making yourself altogether wholly unapproachable, I have been doing exactly as you asked - vetting your guests to help you find a duchess.”
His brows drew sharply together. “You have?”
“Yes. I have.”
“And just who would you have me wed, princess?”
She glared at him. “I would have you rot, Sir Grump, especially if you mean to continue for the next two days in your present mien. However, considering your bequest for my presence here tonight included my surveillance and interrogation of your guests to find for you a suitable bride, I am happy to announce that I have narrowed your choices down to three.”
Fancytales: The Once Upon A Time Collection Page 8