Interest lit Lady Ellis’s gray eyes, and Helena had the impression the countess was taking her measure. “It is a pleasure to meet you, Lady Prestwick. I’ve heard much about you.”
Before Helena could wonder what tales Olive had been spreading, a handsome gentleman with dark blond hair approached. Lady Ellis linked arms with him. “Anthony, this is Lady Prestwick.”
Helena could only assume the gentleman was Lord Ellis, given the lady’s familiarity. His blue eyes were kind and warm just like his wife’s. Olive introduced Lady Ellis’s husband and everyone exchanged pleasantries.
Even after the duchess excused herself, and Olive left to attend to her hostess duties, Lord and Lady Ellis remained at Helena’s side.
“Have you met anyone interesting in London?” the lady asked.
Helena blinked. “Interesting?”
She nodded, her dark curls bouncing slightly. “Yes, I found quite a few interesting gentlemen are in Town for the Season. Has one in particular caught your eye?”
“Uh…” Words abandoned Helena.
Lord Ellis smiled fondly at his wife. “Subtlety has never been your strength, love. Do you not recall our conversation in the carriage about minding our own affairs?”
“I recall it, but we never reached an agreement.”
“I am fairly certain we did, Gabrielle.”
She patted his arm and batted her lashes at him. “Now, dear husband, you mustn’t argue with me, or Lady Prestwick will think you are a terrible bore.”
He laughed and the affection in his gaze warmed Helena’s heart. She had no idea there were married couples who behaved this way. Lord and Lady Ellis seemed to genuinely enjoy one another’s companionship.
The orchestra began to play a waltz.
Lord Ellis smiled at Helena. “I believe that’s my cue to whisk away my meddling wife. I will keep her occupied while you find a place to hide.”
“Anthony!” Despite Lady Ellis’s protest, she beamed at him. If ever a love match existed, Lord and Lady Ellis were living proof. The countess took Helena’s hand between hers. “It was lovely to meet you, Lady Prestwick. I hope we can speak again soon.”
“I would welcome your company anytime, Lady Ellis.” Awkward questions and all. The countess seemed the most genuine person Helena had met in London. It was refreshing.
She bid the couple a good evening then sought out a quiet place to think. No sooner had she turned her thoughts back to solving the problem of gaining access to her sister than a rich baritone interrupted.
“I thought they would never leave.”
Helena’s heart slammed against her ribs. She didn’t need to turn to know the baron had come up behind her. The air was heavier, more electrified when he was near.
“Lord Thorne, I didn’t expect to cross paths with you this evening.”
He moved closer, his body heat saturating her back and yet causing a chill to race down her spine. If she shifted an inch, their bodies would come in contact.
“The ballroom isn’t our usual rendezvous location, is it, angel?” he whispered, his breath whisking across her nape.
She could barely swallow. Pretending a calm she didn’t feel, she tossed an amused look over her shoulder only to come up short. His mouth was entirely too close. And tempting beyond reason.
An image of Sebastian Thorne’s elegant fingers grazing her cheek, sliding down her neck and along her collarbone before cupping her breast, and his lips nibbling the slope between her neck and shoulder made her legs tremble.
Blast! If she swooned, she would never forgive herself.
“What is it you want, my lord?” Her voice had grown husky.
A small smirk played upon his lips. “I want my curiosity satisfied.”
She returned her attention to the dancers and shuffled a step forward to create a little distance between them. “I don’t take your meaning.”
“We both know what you have been up to, Lady Prestwick. You don’t want me to spell it out in front of witnesses. The ton does enjoy a good scandal, but not as much as I relish denying them pleasure.”
She wheeled around to face him. If she’d had doubts that he had been the one to warn her of the footpad’s attack, they were eradicated looking into his intense brown eyes. He knew her secret, or at least he knew one piece to it. How long he would keep it, she didn’t know. Perhaps she could buy his silence.
“Come to the town house tonight, but pleasebe discreet.”
She tried to sweep past, but he captured her elbow and guided her toward the dance floor.
“What are you doing?” she whispered harshly.
“Dancing with you.”
***
The lady bristled as Sebastian led her into the waltz. It was the middle of the dance and he wouldn’t have long to hold her, but he would savor every moment.
Her eyes narrowed at him. “Why are we dancing? I already invited you back to my home.”
“And if we leave now, tongues will begin wagging. You have a reputation to protect, do you not, Lady Prestwick?”
A crimson blush spread across her face, and her lashes fluttered as she looked everywhere but at him. Tonight she wore a sheer robe trimmed in embroidered black ribbon over an ivory silk gown. Her attire was uncharacteristically demure for a widow, as if she shied away from drawing attention to herself.
Sebastian couldn’t take his eyes off her.
“I believe you can see the logic in remaining at the ball, madam. Enjoy the festivities. Dance with other gentlemen.” His voice thinned. He cleared his throat and pretended it meant nothing. “Later, you will depart for home and soon after I will leave as well, but only when I’m certain no one will link our names.”
Her gaze snapped up. “It sounds as if you have had your fair share of secret liaisons, my lord.”
He couldn’t hold back a grin. “What exactly did your invitation entail? I thought we were just going to talk.”
She turned a deeper shade of red and pressed her lips tightly together.
He didn’t push her to answer but drew her closer on the spin. Her sweet scent filled his head with memories of her soft breasts crushed against him when they had collided outside St. Saviour’s Church. She had smiled at him that day, dimples winking up at him. Her plump mouth ripe for tasting.
If she offered more than conversation tonight, he might forget about wanting answers, but only temporarily. The mystery of what she had been doing in Whitechapel was eating at him. If it were nothing more than a charity mission, there would be no reason for her servant to leave her alone.
The music faded; the waltz finished too soon. They still held each other, neither of them moving even as the other couples began filing from the dance floor. She glanced up with wide eyes. Her pink tongue darted across her lips. God, he wanted this woman. But a vulnerability about her held him in check.
He released her and led her into the promenade. At the end of the line, he lifted her hand to his lips. Eyes that reminded him of the blue-green waters off the Spanish coast regarded him warily. The same optimism that had overtaken him as he’d stood on the sands as a younger man and viewed the vast sea filled him again in that moment. It was irrational. Unexpected. Marvelous.
“Thank you for the pleasure of your company, my lady, but I must bid you farewell. For now.”
A slight frown turned down the corners of her mouth.
As he sauntered away, he could feel her eyes on him and he smiled.
Seven
Sebastian headed toward the card room to put distance between him and Lady Prestwick. If he stayed in the ballroom, he feared he would be unable to ignore her, and he didn’t want anyone speculating about his association with her. From the snippets of conversation he had overheard while waiting for Ellis and Gabrielle to take their leave, Lady Prestwick was well thought of by the ton at large, and he didn’t wish her any harm.
Her connection with Lady Eldridge afforded her some advantage, but her participation in the Mayfair Ladies Charitable So
ciety had secured her place among the ranks. Apparently, the ladies found her quite demure and amenable. The footpad she’d unmanned would probably disagree. He chuckled, finding he liked that she was more than she seemed to be.
Sebastian’s jovial mood carried over to the card room and improved even more when an old schoolmate waved him over to join a game of loo. With his mind preoccupied by his coming meeting with the intriguing Lady Prestwick, he lost several rounds, but even parting with his money didn’t put a damper on his mood.
The Earl of Ellis’s arrival, however, did the trick.
The last time Sebastian had laid eyes on Ellis, they both had been bloody messes from fighting over Gabrielle. His temper flared as the entire affair came back in vivid detail. Sebastian’s fiancée staying with his longtime rival and onetime friend. Gabrielle as bare as the day she was born underneath her cloak. Her hand linked with Ellis’s as she declared her intentions to stay with him. It was too much to forgive and forget.
As Ellis neared the table, Sebastian snatched his stack of money and pushed to his feet.
“Where are you going?” one of his competitors asked in a harassed tone.
“Away.” He ignored the protests, brushed past Ellis, and stalked from the card room. He made it halfway down the corridor when a door closed behind him.
“Thorne, I would like a word.” It was Ellis.
Sebastian came to a halt, his fingers curling into a fist. The sounds of muffled music and laughter beyond the double doors at the end of the corridor reached him. He should keep moving. If they came to blows at a ball, Sebastian would only make things worse for Eve and Mother. Instead, he turned to face his adversary.
“Lying. Traitorous. Jackass.” Sebastian bit out each insult. “There are three words for you. I think they all fit.”
The muscles in Ellis’s jaw bulged and fire flared in his eyes, but the earl doused the flames. His smile was grim and forced. “I could say those words fit you as well, but I promised Gabby I would mindmy manners.”
“What do you want?”
Ellis took a step toward him, his footfall silent on the thick Turkish carpet. “My wife suggested we try to make amends.”
“Has your bollocks in hand, does she?”
The earl’s brows dipped low and he crossed his arms. “I refuse to exchange insults. I only meant to tell you I didn’t intend for matters to end badly for you.”
“Are you trying to say you are sorry?”
“For doing what I did? Never. I need Gabby as much as the air I breathe.”
Sebastian scoffed. “The chit has turned you into a sap.” He continued toward the ballroom, dismissing Ellis.
“I’m sorry for what my actions did to you, my friend.”
Sebastian paused with his hand on the door handle. The word friend was bittersweet. In all his years of competing with Ellis, Sebastian had never realized the earl was the only real friend he’d ever had. Now there was nothing but anger in Sebastian’s heart.
“I want to help,” the earl said.
“I never needed your help, and I don’t need it now.”
Ellis’s assistance had made his life hell years ago at Eton. When the earl had intervened in a fight between Sebastian and three older boys who had been tormenting Sebastian since his arrival at the school, he thought he’d made a lifelong friend. Then Ellis hadn’t arrived at the stables the next morning to ride with him as planned. The bullies had ambushed him. Their leader had taunted him. Where is your wet nurse, Thorne?
No one else had been in the building. Not even a groom could be found. The biggest one had smacked a riding crop against his meaty palm. Ellis won’t be here to save you today. He has better ways to spend his time.
Sebastian took a beating like he’d never known that day, and the attacks increased in intensity and duration over the next few weeks. He had lain in bed at night with the taste of his own blood feeding his desperation. He couldn’t stop fighting back. If he had, he would have always been seen as a victim in need of rescue from the heroic Anthony Keaton. Sebastian’s only hope had been to become better than Ellis.
At fisticuffs. At riding. At anything and everything.
Eventually, Sebastian established a reputation for fighting like the devil’s spawn, and the other boys began to give him wide berth and grudging respect. By the time he no longer needed to prove his superiority over Ellis, challenging the earl had become a game. One Sebastian enjoyed playing and winning until Gabrielle.
He met his former friend’s shuttered gaze. The sting of betrayal was as sharp as the moment Sebastian learned Ellis had run away with Gabrielle. As hurtful as the day the earl hadn’t come to the stables as promised.
Sebastian would be a fool to trust the man ever again. “Bugger off.”
Eight
Helena was ashamed to admit she was hiding from Lord Thorne. In the ladies’ retiring room, of all places. It was the one place she felt certain she wouldn’t bump into him again.
Unfortunately, one could only do so much primping before earning curious stares from the retiring room attendant. Helena glanced up to catch the young woman goggling her in the looking glass for the third time. The attendant averted her gaze.
Helena swallowed a resigned sigh. Hiding was pointless given he would be standing in her drawing room before the night was over. Carefully, she replaced the lid on her lip rouge, slid it into her beaded reticule, then slowly gained her feet.
The retiring room door swung open and Celeste, Baroness Lovelace, entered. Her step faltered when she spotted Helena, but she covered her hesitation with a pretty smile. “Lady Prestwick, I thought you had gone.”
“I will be leaving soon.” Helena avoided looking in the mirror. If she didn’t see the blood rushing to her cheeks, she could deny she was blushing. She had definitely spent too long loitering in the retiring room if a mere acquaintance had noticed her absence.
Lady Lovelace strode to the dressing table, and Helena shuffled out of her way. The widow’s regal bearing caused a sick tumble inside Helena. Even though she knew Society saw her as one of them, she couldn’t help from time to time still seeing herself as the common girl her father had cast away.
She rolled her shoulders and held her head high. Her dealings with Wickie had taught her never to show weakness. It’s like blood in a shark-filled ocean, he’d said when she asked to come to London. The ton will pick your flesh from their teeth.
Her experiences so far suggested her husband had held a skewed view of Society. The ladies of Mayfair extended many kindnesses to her, but she was always cautious, never speaking of anything controversial and keeping her opinions to herself. Her aim was survival.
“I saw you dancing with Lord Thorne.” Lady Lovelace plopped onto the tufted stool and smoothed a hand over her hair. “If you’ve a rendezvous with Sebastian, you will not regret it.”
Helena’s breath hitched.
The widow’s eyes gleamed in the looking glass. “Just as I suspected. He is worth the risk, so long as no one else finds out. Most every lady desires him in her bed, but she would be mortified if others knew she’d been bedded by a Bedlamite.”
She twittered at her joke, but Helena didn’t find her amusing in the least.
“Forgive me, my lady, but you are mistaken about Lord Thorne and me.” Helena headed for the retiring room door, brushing past the attendant who wasn’t even bothering to pretend she wasn’t eavesdropping. Her owl-like eyes blinked several times at Helena.
“Oh?” The widow swiveled on the seat. “You haven’t succumbed to his charms yet? You would be the only woman whose skirts he has chased but failed to lift.”
“I don’t know what you are babbling on about.” Helena stalked from the retiring room. But she did know what the widow meant.
Obviously, Lady Lovelace had been Lord Thorne’s lover at some point—perhaps even now he paid her visits—and she thought Helena would be his next conquest.
God help her, she wished her association with the man was as si
mple as that, but Lord Thorne wanted something more than a tumble between the sheets. What that was, exactly, she didn’t know. Money? A special favor? She could pay for his silence, but the true cost would be surrendering her pride. She’d vowed never to be at a man’s mercy again, and Sebastian Thorne had her at a decided disadvantage.
***
Sebastian searched for Lady Prestwick inside the crowded ballroom. The Countess of Eldridge’s theme for the evening was “excess.” Rivers of lavender silk flooded the great room, and there were enough white gardenias to choke a man. The concentrated aroma clawed at his throat. He covered a cough with his fist as he circled the dance floor.
Lady Prestwick wasn’t with her kin or among the ladies gossiping together. She wasn’t visiting with Gabrielle either, who stood surrounded by her brothers’ wives, the current Duchess of Foxhaven, Lady Phoebe, and Lady Lana. He had little doubt his former betrothed would recover from scandal no worse for the experience, thanks to the support of her kinswomen.
He felt a pinch in his chest. That was what his sister lacked, a powerful circle of women to protect her. A man could only do so much. Eve could have had that if he hadn’t failed in his bid for Gabrielle’s hand.
When he was certain Lady Prestwick had taken her leave, he sent a footman to call for his carriage. Lady Lovelace, an attractive widow he’d spent a few entertaining nights with early in the Season, was standing in the foyer with her prim and very respectable mother-in-law. He understood the widow’s reluctance to let on they knew one another and didn’t expect her to acknowledge him, but she surprised him.
“It’s rather stifling in the ballroom, is it not, Lord Thorne?”
He returned her polite smile with a bemused one. “Er. Yes, it is.”
The elder Lady Lovelace peered at him through her quizzing glass. “You danced with Lady Prestwick this evening.”
“The lady was kind enough to grant me the privilege,” he said, expecting the conversation had run its course.
She nodded. “She is a lovely young woman with a generous heart.”
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