by Mary Balogh
“It is Lord Montford,” Margaret said after lifting the card from the tray. She looked directly at Katherine and raised her eyebrows.
“Monty,” Stephen said gladly “Oh, show him up by all means. He was at the ball last evening, Con. Did I tell you?”
“Was he?” Constantine said. “I suppose he spent all evening in the card room relieving a few of the other guests of their fortunes.”
“Not all evening,” Stephen said. “He actually danced once.”
Oh, please, Stephen, say no more.
Katherine wished fervently that she could obliterate that dance from both fact and memory. It had kept her awake half the night. She had been able to think of little else all day. Goodness, she had almost been goaded into agreeing to that ridiculous and horribly improper wager he had suggested. She could not believe she had almost agreed. With Lord Montford of all people.
But just imagine how it would be, Miss Huxtable, if we were both to win. We could have a grand wedding at St. George’s in Hanover Square with every member of the ton in attendance and then proceed to a lifetime of sleepless nights, making babies and passionate love, not necessarily in that order.
Oh!
And now, just as those words were popping into her mind for surely the dozenth time—at a conservative estimate— since they had been spoken, he was stepping into Stephen’s drawing room, looking handsome and immaculately elegant. He was escorting a young and exquisitely pretty lady.
Oh, how dared he come like this after last evening— and after three years ago. Except that he had declared last evening that he had a wager to win, and he could not do that without contriving meetings with her.
He bowed and the young lady curtsied deeply
“Miss Huxtable,” he said, focusing his attention— and his charm—upon Margaret. “I have come to tell you how delighted I was to make your acquaintance last evening, even if I was not fortunate enough to secure a dance with you. And I have been presumptuous enough to bring my young half sister, Charlotte Wrayburn, with me in the hope that you will allow me to present her to your notice and Miss Katherine Huxtable’s.”
He oozed respectability and perfect good manners, Katherine noticed in some indignation.
“But of course.” Meg hurried across the room, reaching out her right hand to the girl as she went. “Miss Wrayburn. How delightful! Meet my sister too, and our brother, the Earl of Merton. And our cousin, Mr. Constantine Huxtable.”
The girl blushed and made a series of curtsies as Meg indicated each of them in turn.
“I have not yet made my come- out,” she explained, “because I am not quite eighteen. But Jasper and Miss Daniels, my companion, have said that it is unexceptionable for me to make a few carefully selected acquaintances this year.”
“And since I wished to call here anyway,” Lord Montford said, “and Miss Daniels is otherwise occupied this afternoon, I suggested that Charlotte accompany me.”
“I am delighted you did, Monty,” Stephen said, smiling and bowing. “I shall be sure to reserve a set with you at your come- out ball next spring, Miss Wrayburn— well in advance and on the strength of a prior acquaintance.”
She laughed and blushed.
“Charmed, Miss Wrayburn,” Constantine said with a smile.
“And I am delighted too,” Margaret said. “Do come and sit here beside me, Miss Wrayburn. Constantine, pull the bell rope beside you, if you will, and I will have more tea and cakes brought up. Lord Montford, please have a seat.”
Katherine, who had got to her feet on the entry of the visitors, sat down on the half of the love seat she had been occupying before. Before Constantine could pull the bell rope and rejoin her on the other half, Lord Montford took it. And as he did so, he looked at her for the first time since he had entered the room—with a very direct, very intense, very… sizzling glance that was hidden from all the other occupants of the room.
It was a glance quite deliberately intended to discompose her, of course, and announce to her that he had not for a moment forgotten last evening or his determination to win his wager.
Neither his shoulder nor his thigh touched her own after he had seated himself, but she could feelboth, and her heart raced, half with indignation and half with an awareness of his physical proximity even stronger than she had felt last evening when they had actually been touching.
“I trust, Miss Huxtable,” he said, turning his head to address Katherine, “you enjoyed the ball last evening?”
“I did, indeed, my lord, I thank you,” she said. Despite the fact that one particular waltz ruined it, she would have added if there had not been the chance that someone else might have overheard the words.
“So did I,” he said. “It is always a pleasure, is it not, to discover some of one’s dearest friends at any social entertainment.”
His manners were impeccable. His eyes smiled. Only she, who was looking into them from the distance of a mere foot or so, could see the merriment and the mockery lurking in their depths. He was enjoying himself.
Miss Wrayburn, who was at first blushing and silent, soon relaxed under the combined kind ministrations of Meg and Stephen, and chattered happily upon any topic that was suggested to her. Katherine smiled warmly at her.
“Ah,” she said as Margaret poured the tea and Stephen offered the cakes, “so you have a love of the country too, Miss Wrayburn. So do I. Much as I enjoy the occasional visit to London, I am always more than happy to return home.”
She talked determinedly about Warren Hall and even about Throckbridge. She talked about Isabelle and Samuel, her niece and nephew, and about Vanessa, her sister. She did not monopolize the conversation— that would have been discourteous—but she did talk more than she usually did.
And at every moment she was aware of the man who sat almost silently at her side and at whom she did not once glance. But she knew he was amused. She knew he was aware of her awareness and was deliberately causing it. How he did it she did not know, but after sitting beside him for ten minutes or so she felt as if her left side were on fire and as if her heart were running a footrace uphill against a stiff wind.
She deeply resented all this. Why had she not simply refused to dance with him? But she had done so, had she not? And had danced with him anyway?
Lord Montford, she concluded, was a master puppeteer, and she was his helpless marionette.
It was a thought that made her bristle and turn her head to glare at him. He was looking politely back at her, a benign smile on his lips.
“Your sister being the Duchess of Moreland,” he said.
“I suppose you have not met her,” Katherine said, turning back to Miss Wrayburn. “Perhaps we may have the pleasure of taking you to call on her one day She would enjoy that, and I am sure you would like her. She has the sunniest nature of us all, does she not, Meg?”
The girl was delightful. Even so, it was perhaps not the best of ideas to prolong their acquaintance with her since she had the distinct misfortune to be a half sister to Baron Montford. The words had been spoken now, though.
“A duchess,” Miss Wrayburn said, looking suddenly nervous again. But then she smiled brightly “I would indeed like it.”
“And perhaps,” Meg said, “you would care to accompany Kate and me on a walk in Hyde Park tomorrow afternoon, Miss Wrayburn—if you do not have other, more interesting plans, that is.”
“Oh, I do not,” the girl assured her, leaning forward in her chair. “I am not out yet and have been hardly anywhere except to a few shops and galleries. And I have met hardly anyone except ladies as old as my mother, though some of them do have daughters like me, it is true, and sons. Walking in the park with you sounds very interesting indeed to me. I will come. May I, Jasper? I do hope it will not rain.”
“I shall escort you, Char,” he said, “if the company of a male will not offend Miss Huxtable and her sister. I will certainly be the envy of every other gentleman in the park when I am seen with three of the loveliest ladies in town.”
They had, of course, Katherine realized, played right into his hands. He must have hoped for just this sort of chance to see them—or her—again. He had not even had to exert himself beyond coming here to introduce his young sister.
“Jasper!” Miss Wrayburn laughed gleefully “How silly you are.”
“What?” he said. “I ought to have said with two of the loveliest ladies, then, Char? I have overlooked all sorts of imperfections in your appearance, have I, because you are my sister and I am partial to you?”
He spoke to the girl with a lazy affection in his voice, Katherine noticed grudgingly She did not want to discover that there was any goodness in him.
“You have certainly not, Monty,” Stephen said. “There are no imperfections in either my sisters or yours. And not all the other gentlemen will envy you. You are not to be allowed to have the pleasure of walking with the ladies entirely to yourself. I will come along too.”
“That will be lovely, Stephen,” Katherine said. “It always gives me the greatest pleasure to walk on your arm and watch all the young ladies expire with envy as they pass.”
She was aware, even though she did not look directly at Lord Montford, that he pursed his lips and looked amused.
“I would come too,” Constantine said, “but I have another commitment for tomorrow, alas.”
Lord Montford rose to his feet and raised his eyebrows in his sister’s direction, and they proceeded to take their leave.
“I shall look forward with the greatest of pleasure to tomorrow afternoon,” he said as he bowed over Meg’s hand. He favored Stephen and Constantine with an affable nod. He ignored Katherine, whose hand Miss Wrayburn was shaking.
Except that he had somehow conveyed the message that the words spoken to Meg were intended for her.
Oh, how did he do it?
And was it just her imagination? Was she being ridiculous?
She knew she was not.
He had set himself the task, purely for his own amusement and because he was a very bored gentleman indeed, of making her fall in love with him.
Even though she had assured him it could not be done in a billion years.
That assurance, of course, had merely goaded him on.
“It was a waltz Monty danced last evening,” Stephen said after the visitors had left. “With Kate. He dances as well as he seems to do everything else. I could not waltz, alas. I was obliged to sit out with Miss Acton because she has not yet been granted permission to waltz.”
Constantine was looking steadily at her, Katherine was aware. She turned her head and smiled more fully at him.
“And Monty brought his half sister to call upon you this afternoon,” he said to her, shaking his head slightly, “even though she has not yet made her come- out. I can remember warning you against him once a long time ago, Katherine. Nothing has changed, you know Monty is one of my closest friends, but if I had a sister, I would not allow her within five miles of him unless she had a chaperone chained to each wrist.”
She laughed.
So did Stephen.
“Constantine!” Margaret said reproachfully. “Lord Montford is a gentleman. His manners are more than pleasing. And his fondness for Miss Wrayburn is to be commended.”
“I am no green girl, Constantine,” Katherine said— just as she had said last evening to Lord Montford himself.
“I suppose not,” Constantine admitted. “I forget that by now you are almost elderly, Katherine. You are… what? Three-and-twenty? Do remember, though, that he is not safe company for any unescorted lady”
“And you are, Constantine?” she asked with a laugh.
He winced deliberately “Sometimes,” he said, “it takes one rakehell to recognize another. Not that I am making any admissions that might incriminate me.”
She loved him dearly—he was a second cousin they had discovered late in life. He had always been kind to them. Yet she was aware that she really did not know him at all. He hardly ever came to Warren Hall, and he was not often in London either—neither were they, of course. He had a home and estate in Gloucestershire but had never invited them there or told them anything about it. And he had a long- standing quarrel with Elliott, Duke of Moreland—his first cousin and her brother- in- law—that had somehow drawn Vanessa in too a few years ago. Neither of them spoke to him whenever they could decently avoid doing so. Katherine had no idea why. There was, in fact, an intriguing aura of mystery surrounding Constantine that was, she supposed, part of his appeal.
Was he a rakehell? He was a friend of Lord Montford’s and every bit as dashing and handsome as he was, even if his looks did narrowly escape perfection because of his nose, which had been broken at some time in the past and not quite straightened afterward. Though actually the bend in his nose made him look more attractive than perfection would have done.
“Enough of this,” Margaret said firmly “You will stay for dinner, Constantine? Bar the doors, Stephen, lest he say no.”
“Coercion succeeds with me every time,” Constantine said. “But so does a friendly invitation. I will be delighted to stay.”
And so, Katherine thought, she was surely doomed to another disturbed night. She was to go walking with Lord Montford tomorrow—and Meg and Stephen and Miss Wrayburn. She must make a determined effort to walk with one of them.
She must also pray very fervently that it would rain tomorrow.
The five of them went walking as planned the following afternoon, which was fortunately fine, even sunny, after a damp, unpromising morning. Jasper walked with Miss Huxtable while Merton had Charlotte on one arm and Miss Katherine Huxtable on the other. After they had all spent a while down by the Serpentine, admiring the swans and watching a young boy sail his small boat on the water under the eagle eye of his nurse, they walked back again with Merton between Charlotte and his eldest sister and Jasper with the younger.
As he had planned from the start, of course. One must never be too obvious in such pursuits, but one must be relentless. He had maneuvered the exchange without any of the others even suspecting that maneu-verings were going on. Except, perhaps, Katherine Huxtable herself. She favored him with a tight- lipped but otherwise expressionless stare as she took his arm.
“Miss Wrayburn is charming,” she said almost venge-fully
“But sometimes anxious about how she will be received,” he said, inhaling to see if he could catch a whiff of that soap smell again. He could. It was faint but unmistakable. It must be the most seductive scent ever invented.
She looked very fetching too in a sage green, high-waisted walking dress with a straw bonnet adorned with ruched pale green silk about the crown and ribbons of a matching color beneath her chin. Her hair looked very golden beneath its wide brim.
“Oh, but she need not be anxious with us,” she said. “There is no reason to be. We are very ordinary people.”
“Indeed?” He looked down at her with raised eyebrows, but she was being quite serious. “One wonders, then, what extraordinary people would be like. One might need an eye shade just to look at them.”
She clucked her tongue and raised a reproachful face at the same time.
“That was a compliment, was it?” she said dryly. “Thank you, my lord, on behalf of Stephen and Meg.”
“Charlotte is very taken with you,” he said quite truthfully. “And with your sister,” he added to be fair. “She is flattered by your kindness and condescension in taking notice of her.”
“It is hardly condescension,” she said. “We were very ordinary mortals indeed just a few years ago and living in a small cottage in a small country village. I was contributing to our meager income by teaching at the village school a few mornings a week. The most glamorous events in our lives were the infrequent village assemblies and the annual summer fete at Rundle Park, the manor of Sir Humphrey Dew. Our circumstances have changed since then, but we have not, I hope. I liked us as we were.”
Was she deliberately making herself sound dull? He felt a wave of
amusement.
“I believe, Miss Huxtable,” he said, dipping his head a little closer to hers, “I would have liked you then too. Did you dance about a maypole on the village green every spring, by any chance? There is nothing more enticing than the sight of a lovely woman weaving her ribbon about the pole, dipping and swaying and flashing her ankles as she goes.”
“No maypoles.” But she laughed suddenly. “And no flashing ankles.”
He felt enveloped by sunshine and warmth and noted with some surprise when he glanced upward that the sun was hidden behind clouds. It amazed him that he had tried to forget her for three whole years, that his memories of her had not been pleasant ones. That, of course, was because his memories of her had been all tied up with memories of humiliation.
“No maypoles or flashing ankles,” he said. “How very sad. Though perhaps not. Perhaps the males of your village from the age of twelve to ninety were thereby saved from unutterable suffering at your hands—or should I say rather, at your ankles.”
“I wonder, Lord Montford,” she said, though her face still laughed, “if you have any skill or experience with ordinary conversation.”
“But of course I have,” he said, all astonishment. “I am a gentleman, am I not? You wound me with your assumption that I have none.”
“But I have never heard any evidence of it,” she said.
“Would you say,” he said, looking upward, “that those clouds overhead presage more rain to come later? I would say not. You will observe that they are white and fluffy and really quite benign. And there is blue sky beyond them. My prediction is that in one hour’s time, or even less, the sky will be a pure blue and we will bask in the bliss of it for a short while before the pessimists among us start to worry about tomorrow Have you noticed how good weather invariably brings on the prediction that we will have to suffer for it with some shockingly infelicitous storm in the near future? Have you ever heard anyone do the opposite? Have you ever heard anyone on a day of cold sleet and arctic gales gloomily predict that we will suffer for this with blue skies and sunshine and warmth at some time in the future?”