His Reluctant Lady

by Aydra Richards

  Poppy ground her teeth together. “I am not seeking a husband,” she said. And then, lest Lady Winifred think her a giddy girl with delusions of grandeur, she added, “And even if I were, it would not be men like those.” This, with the barest nod toward the gentlemen that Lady Winifred had indicated. “They’re too…too merry.”

  Papa had been merry, too—when he had had a rare good day at the track. But his moods had always been subject to the whims of fate, and Poppy had learned quickly that life was much more peaceful when she hadn’t any vacillating humors to contend with. Most of the noblemen she had met—though those were few—had been all stuff and no substance. They could afford to live that way, she supposed, but she did not care to play the unwary captive to their inconstant moods.

  “I can’t like it,” she said. “I simply could not abide such a capricious demeanor. I wouldn’t wed a man like that if he came equipped with a noble title and ten thousand a year to recommend him.” She gave a little shiver, despite the heat of the day. No, that sort of frivolity would never do. Which was not to say she entertained any thoughts, no matter how idle, of marriage. But if she did…if she did, she would choose a different sort of man altogether. Not a nobleman, nor one with any inclination toward the social whirl. A solemn man, to match her own disposition. No, perhaps not solemn, since the word itself evoked a sort of melancholy feeling—but sober.

  Yes. Sober would do nicely.

  Chapter Two

  David Kittridge, Earl of Westwood, who had both a noble title and quite a good deal more than ten thousand a year, was drunk. Although the process of achieving that state hadn’t been quite as pleasing as he would have expected, now that he’d arrived at it he was finding it very satisfactory indeed.

  Elaine was getting married. He’d known it was coming, of course. Everyone had. One could hardly go about London these days without tripping over the two of them, Leighton and Elaine.

  It seemed unfathomable that only a month ago she’d given him the hope that she might accept his suit instead, but no—the announcement had been in all the papers just this morning, and she’d taken the damned marquess after all.

  He slouched in his chair. Noticed his glass had gone empty again. Snared the decanter of whisky and abandoned the glass altogether.

  After a good swig or two—or five, who was counting?—he turned his head to the side and saw a pair of boots. How very odd. One would think that whomever had left them ought to know better than to abandon their footwear in the library. But then they moved a step closer, and David was certain that couldn’t be right—footwear did not move on its own. Even three sheets to the wind, he could still recall that much.

  He let his eyes wander up, past the boots and legs—they were attached, after all—all the way up to the rather disapproving face of his brother-in-law, the Duke of Rushton.

  “Go away and let me soak myself in peace,” David said, affecting a careless tone. “There’s a good chap.” He gave the duke a bland smile and took another hearty swig of whisky.

  Instead the duke pried the bottle from his clenched fingers and set it quite out of reach. “Everyone else has left,” he said. “And yet I find you in my library, availing yourself of my whisky.”

  “Stubble it,” David gritted out. “Need I remind you how often you once found yourself in precisely the same state?”

  “I had good reason,” the duke reminded him. “So what’s yours?”

  Wordlessly, David extended the crumpled-up newspaper in his direction, and the duke took it and shook it out to ease some of the crinkles that David’s tense fingers had wrought in the offending object.

  “Ah,” the duke said at last. “Lady Elaine, of the golden curls.”

  And lovely blue eyes. And rosebud lips. And breasts the size of cantaloupes, which always seemed to be an instant away from bursting from the bodice of her sinful gowns. She was everything that David had ever wanted, all wrapped up into one delicious package.

  Which had then been delivered to another man.

  “I love her,” David said morosely.

  The duke snorted. “No, you don’t—you don’t know her well enough to love her. You’re besotted with her cleavage.”

  Well, there was rather a lot of it to be besotted with.

  “I would have married her,” David said, “but it seems as though she’d rather be Leighton’s marchioness than my countess.” Damned Leighton could go straight to the devil, with David’s compliments. The man had two mistresses. He didn’t need Elaine, too.

  “She’s vapid,” Rushton said, taking the seat across from him. “Entirely empty-headed. Hasn’t the good sense God gave a gnat.”

  Having never once considered intelligence—in either party—a prerequisite for marriage, David blinked in befuddlement. “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “You’d have been bored to tears in a week.” Rushton sighed, pouring himself a measure of brandy. “She might be beautiful, but that’s all she is. Can you imagine sitting down to breakfast, day after day, with a woman of no more intelligence than the average sheep?”

  David slanted Rushton a poisonous glance. “I thought you had likened her to a gnat.”

  “The intellect of a sheep, and the good sense of a gnat,” Rushton replied, sipping his brandy. He made a vague gesture with his free hand. “Unless you’ve a marked preference for farmyard creatures and irritating insects, you’re well rid of her.”

  Of course he wasn’t. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw her beautiful face, the enchanting dip of her upper lip, the silky pout of the lower. Her eyelashes, so long and graceful. The delicate curve of her cheeks, her elegant neck.

  “I could live without breakfast conversation,” he said. But he could not live without Elaine, without her sparkling beauty, her lustrous gold hair.

  “You think you could,” Rushton said. “But only because you’ve never been married. Entering into that state with the wrong person would be a kind of torture.”

  David cracked an eye. “You had better not be telling me you’ve deserted my sister,” he growled. “Because I’d have to beat you.”

  “In your present state? Unlikely,” the duke scoffed. “No—Jilly is almost alarmingly perfect for me,” he said. “I can’t imagine what it would be like not to have her at my table in the morning. I know I should be able to, since it wasn’t too terribly long ago that we were married, but I can’t. I don’t tolerate her presence; I cherish it. But I don’t simply gaze into her eyes from across the table or marvel at her beauty—although she is beautiful, you understand. We talk,” he said.

  “Talk?” David uttered the word as though he’d never heard it before. “About what?”

  Rushton shrugged. “Everything. Nothing. The point is, when I look at her, I am rarely thinking of her physical attributes, although they are considerable. They’re not what makes her who she is. It’s everything else inside her—her thoughts, her opinions, her feelings. That’s who you marry, Westwood. Not the glorious bosom or the golden hair.”

  It seemed such an abstract concept to David. Still, in an effort to refute what he had taken to be disparagement to his character, he said, “I’d care. About her thoughts and feelings and whatnot.”

  Rushton laughed lightly and shook his head. “No, you wouldn’t,” he said. “Because she almost certainly hasn’t got any. If she has so much as a single opinion beyond what gowns to wear, I’ve seen absolutely no evidence of it. You don’t want to be bored with your wife, Westwood. Learn to look beyond a pretty face.”

  David dropped his head back against the chair. “And the bosom. Don’t forget the bosom.”

  “Just so,” Rushton said, with a wry grin. “Just so.”

  Chapter Three

  It hurt to see Elaine swirling around the ballroom in Leighton’s arms. It physically hurt, like a blow to the gut. The pain he had expected, but the rage had caught him quite by surprise. But then, Leighton had, for the past several years at least, been a bastard of the first order. He�
�d been a likeable enough chap in his younger years—they’d been at school together, and he’d remembered Leighton as an affable sort back then—but somewhere in the intervening years he’d turned into an unmitigated ass, alienating nearly everyone he had once called friend. David wasn’t precisely certain what he had done to earn Leighton’s enmity, but there was no denying that Leighton viewed him with no small amount of loathing.

  But Leighton had won this time, certainly. He’d won, and he knew it, and he kept slanting triumphant glances toward him, as if to rub David’s nose in his victory. And Elaine was so heartbreakingly beautiful. Her frosty blue gown set off her pink and cream complexion and made her eyes sparkle like sapphires. She looked elegant and radiant and, if not happy, then at least satisfied.

  David snagged a second glass of champagne off the refreshment table, surveying them sullenly. Of course she was satisfied. She had made an incredible match, after all. But Leighton wouldn’t love her. One had only to see his face to understand that it wasn’t love that had snared him, but the honor of having won such a beauty, the glory of having stolen what David wanted most away from him. Elaine was a prize that had been won, and nothing more.

  Jealousy seethed in his chest. He wanted nothing better than to stalk across the floor, pull her straight out of Leighton’s arms, and into his own. But she had refused him.

  For all that she sent him the occasional little flirtatious glances, she had refused him.

  No. He had wallowed quite enough already. It was bad enough that Rushton had felt moved to lecturing. He was absolutely not going to give Leighton the satisfaction of watching him wear his heart out on Elaine, nor would he let Elaine see the heartbreak she’d inflicted upon him.

  Pointedly he turned his head away from the happy couple and glanced about the ballroom. Surely there was someone about who would—ah. Lady Gatson. She was a young and vibrant woman, a widow of these past three years or so. If he recalled correctly, there had been more than a few balls at which they had danced, and she had pressed herself altogether too closely to him.

  Lord Sinridge, a friend of David’s brother-in-law, appeared at his side. “I wouldn’t,” he advised, canting his head subtly toward Lady Gatson. “Vanessa can be a bit clingy. And she’s looking for a new husband, so unless you’re of a mind to make her your countess, I’d have to recommend against it.”

  David wanted neither the company nor the advice. “This time of night I would have thought you’d be at your club,” he said. Nonetheless he gave Lady Gatson a second glance and dismissed her. Something about the eyes. Some sort of avaricious gleam.

  “I would have,” Sinridge sighed. “But James asked me to keep an eye on you. Thought you might do something foolish.” He inclined his head once more. “Like Lady Gatson, I assume.”

  “Every man’s entitled to a mistake here and there,” David said.

  “Certainly,” Sinridge admitted. “But leave that one for someone else. If merry widows are to your taste, might I suggest Lady Nettringham? She’s quite content with her current state. Her husband left her a wealthy woman and she’s in absolutely no hurry to sacrifice her freedom on the altar of marriage.” He indicated, with a nod of his head, an elegant brunette some distance away. She was pretty enough, clad in an emerald gown that displayed her neat figure to its best advantage. It wasn’t that he felt an uprising of primal lust or even anything akin to it, but she was a lovely woman and if she were amenable, she would make a nice enough diversion from too much time spent alone with his thoughts.

  “She’ll want a bit of wooing,” Sinridge said.

  “They all do,” David replied. And God knew he’d wasted enough of his charm on Elaine, for all the good it had done him. “I suppose I might as well. Got to take my mind off of her somehow.”

  Of course Sinridge knew exactly of whom he’d been speaking. He clapped David on the back and said, “You know what they say. The best way to get over one woman is to get under another.”

  ∞∞∞

  Poppy sat with the rest of the chaperones at the far edge of the ballroom. She was convinced the slats in the chair had become permanently indented into her back. Once the ball finally concluded, it would no doubt take the strength of at least two footmen to peel her from it.

  For all that she was miserable, at least Victoria and Isobel seemed to be having a good time of it. Neither girl had had more than two unclaimed dances all evening, and thus she’d seen little of them, except as flashes of peach and lilac when they whirled by on the dance floor. Of course, being a chaperone meant being practically invisible, and thus she’d managed to surreptitiously eavesdrop on a good number of conversations. Gossip flowed as freely in ballrooms as did champagne, and though she did not particularly care which lady had been seen walking in Hyde Park with which lord, there were rather a good number of scandalous tidbits that would have made excellent story fodder. If only she could bring out her notebook to jot them down.

  But with Lady Winifred at her right side, it was fruitless. And so she endeavored to commit them all to memory instead, and bided her time until she might take herself off for a bit of a stroll on the terrace and find a quiet place to get her thoughts out on paper.

  Poppy fanned herself with her hand. How Victoria and Isobel managed to look so fresh and bright-eyed in the sweltering heat of the ballroom was quite beyond her.

  “Miss Fairchild, I beseech you, do not,” Lady Winifred hissed.

  Poppy resisted the urge to roll her eyes, but only through sheer dint of will. “But it is so hot,” she whispered back.

  “Then you ought to have brought a fan. Heat is an unavoidable aspect of balls,” Lady Winifred returned. “The well-bred are knowledgeable enough not to remark upon it through either word or deed.” There was a pause. “If you had clothed yourself accordingly, doubtless you would find yourself more comfortable.”

  Poppy had thought her plain brown dress perfectly serviceable for the occasion. It wasn’t as if she was going to be dancing, after all. But she allowed that the long-sleeved garment had likely not been the wisest of choices, even if it ranked her exactly as she was—a chaperone and not a giddy young thing seeking to try her hand on the marriage mart. She thought of it almost as her battle armor. It spoke plainly without words of who she was and who she was not—practical, staid, and content with her life exactly the way it was.

  Well. Almost always, at least. But when one was twenty-six and responsible for the well-being of one’s younger sisters, one had to make sacrifices. And she had her writing, at least.

  If she could simply find the right words to manage it. What a dreadful turn. Since they’d come to London, all of the time she had used to spend writing had been taken up by balls and dinner parties and musicales and trips to the theatre, and there were just a few spare hours in the very early morning left for her to utilize before she had to go to sleep and get up and do it all over again. How did her sisters manage the tedium of such events?

  Oh. But for them it was likely not tedious at all. They had made friends and gained admirers—they chatted and flirted and were generally made much of.

  Poppy had only gained the acquaintance of several walls and more than a few damned uncomfortable chairs. She had never let herself mourn for the Season she might have had because there had been absolutely no sense in it—and she prided herself on her sensibility—but there was something so terribly dull and very nearly melancholy about being a chaperone. The sense that one’s best years, if they could so be called, were behind one, and all that was left was to wither and die like a fern deprived of water.

  Certainly she attracted about as much notice as a fern. Oh, now enough was enough.

  “I’m going out to the terrace,” Poppy whispered to Lady Winifred, making to rise from her seat.

  “No, you are not,” Lady Winifred said back, tapping Poppy’s forearm with her fan. “No young lady of good reputation would be caught on a terrace at a ball—that way lies ruination, and it will hardly serve your sisters well.
” She gave a disdainful sniff. “You’d be shocked, Miss Fairchild, shocked by the sort of behavior that goes on at balls, right beneath everyone’s noses.”

  Ruination. It was an interesting concept, and one she’d flirted with before in her novels. Perhaps she would have to explore it in more depth—though certainly not through personal experience. Lady Winifred was right about that much.

  But if Lady Winifred were to be believed, then she might find the very sort of salacious scene she required for Miss Ainsworth’s Mistake right here at this very ball, if she could summon the courage to seek it out. She only had to sneak away and find it, if such a thing could be found.

  And chaperones were practically invisible. She had reached the age where people were uncomfortable with her very existence, as if her failings as a woman had been etched on her forehead. There was just something unpleasant about spinsters, it seemed, and their eyes always slid away from her.

  No one would take note of her. But she could most certainly take note of them. She traced the outline of her notebook in her pocket and her fingers itched to retrieve it. Anything was better than sitting here for the next two hours.

  “I will go to the ladies’ retiring room,” Poppy said at last. “I really must escape this heat.”

  And no one, least of all Lady Winifred, said a word.

  ∞∞∞

  The house was dark. No lamps had been lit in any corridor but the one where the retiring rooms where located, presumably to discourage the attendees from wandering about the house. As Poppy was currently doing. She shook of the brief flare of guilt—she was not, after all, wandering about the house in search of a room in which to conduct an illicit liaison. She was merely seeking out those who had.

  For research. It was all purely academic.