His Reluctant Lady

by Aydra Richards

  Of course, no one would ever expect that she had even conducted said liaison. No one would ever suspect that she could have captured a gentleman’s interest long enough to engage in one.

  She tugged her nightgown over her head with a sigh. The whole of her body felt altogether too sensitive. Even the linen of her nightgown struck her oddly, sending little sparks of tingling sensation coursing through her.

  She didn’t know why he’d been so insistent that she attend his sister’s dinner party—given the general poor humor with which he’d idly suggested she might expect an offer of marriage, she couldn’t believe he would again countenance another such rendezvous.

  Snatching the brush from her dresser, she sat down at her desk and swiped it through her disordered hair until the strands crackled with static. The evening hadn’t gone at all how she’d expected it to, in any sense. She’d fully expected to be on her way back to Bath in the morning; she’d had to retrieve her nightgown from her still-packed valise.

  She could still leave. She set the brush down, considering the option. It would be safer, perhaps, for all of them. Lady Winifred certainly knew more of London society than did Poppy; she would see both Victoria and Isobel safely settled so long as her payment kept coming. And there would be no risk of Poppy embarrassing any of them with her somewhat lacking social graces, nor would the threat of a spinster sister dependant loom over them, which might well frighten off any gentleman who might otherwise be brought to offer for either of the girls.

  Yes. That would be well and good—she’d likely improve their chances a great deal if she showed the willingness to support herself. She could have Lady Winifred put it about that she’d accepted a position as a governess, or a…a teacher at a school for young ladies.

  But she’d still have to retrieve her notebook from Lord Westwood. Even if he didn’t intend to use its contents against her, she would still feel better, more secure, when it was back in her hands once again.

  There was a slight commotion down on the ground floor, the dulled murmur of voices signifying that ball had at last concluded, and the girls had returned home once more. She heard thundering footsteps on the stairs and Lady Winifred’s sharp admonishment, and smiled.

  A knock sounded upon her door. “Poppy? Are you writing?” Victoria’s voice; Isobel rarely remembered to knock, no matter how many missiles Poppy had absent-mindedly lobbed in her direction when she’d been careless enough to burst into Poppy’s room without first knocking to announce herself.

  “No, dear. Come in.” She laid down her brush, lest the girls think she’d armed herself.

  They sailed in together, fresh and lovely in their gowns of peach and jonquil. In only a moment Isobel had settled in on the narrow mattress on Poppy’s bed, flopping backward in an inelegant sprawl that would have brought Lady Winifred to the very edge of despair. Victoria settled on the edge of Poppy’s desk, kicking her feet.

  “Lord Westwood was at the ball tonight,” Victoria announced without preamble. “He was very distracted. He didn’t dance once all evening.” She made a moue of displeasure. “He’s a fine dancer, you know. I’ve never heard any lady say he trod on her feet.”

  “Lady Elaine was there, too,” Isobel said. “And he didn’t look at her even once, though she stared daggers at him all evening.”

  “I don’t think you ought to be giving his lordship so much of your attention,” Poppy said carefully. “I doubt he’s looking for a wife.”

  Isobel popped her head up. “But we were watching him for you,” she said. “He seemed to be waiting for someone, and it can’t have been Lady Elaine, because she was right there the entire time.”

  “Poppy, what if he was watching for you?” Victoria said. “He must’ve been so disappointed you didn’t come!”

  Disappointed, indeed. Poppy directed her attention to her fingernails and strove for a modicum of composure, but she needn’t have bothered, because neither of the girls was paying the slightest bit of attention to her.

  Instead they shared that special look unique to them, the one that carried meaning that Poppy could never understand but that the girls seemed to know without words. It meant mischief and trouble, and she didn’t like it at all.

  “You must put that nonsense out of your heads at once,” Poppy said briskly. “He certainly wasn’t looking for me.” He might have been looking for her. “You oughtn’t concern yourself with me.”

  “But, Poppy—” Isobel had climbed off the bed, sauntering toward Victoria with a sly grin.

  “No!” Poppy snatched up her brush and aimed a whack at Isobel’s backside, and Isobel darted away, shrieking with laughter. “To bed, both of you. And not one more word about Lord Westwood!”

  Victoria flew from her perch on the desk, lest Poppy try a swipe at her. Giggling, she threaded her arm through Isobel’s, and they made for the door. Poppy followed to shut the door behind them, but even as the door closed, she heard Isobel’s voice sail down the corridor.

  “Bet you half a crown he sends more flowers.”

  And Victoria’s answer, an unladylike snort. “Of course he’ll send more flowers. That’s a fool’s wager.”

  Poppy flopped on her bed and muffled her groan in her battered pillow. God save her from precocious sisters.

  Chapter Seventeen

  David had underestimated the number of people that Jilly had invited to her dinner party. He’d expected thirty, perhaps forty—but more than double that number had turned up, turning what he had expected to be a cozy little affair into a full-blown event.

  He supposed he ought to be grateful, considering it would have been a good deal more difficult to slip away unnoticed were the numbers smaller, but instead he was only irritated with the number of ladies who seemed to be vying for attention. Of course, he was the highest-ranking unattached man present, and the Season was still in its early stages. He’d attended an unusual number of Ton events lately, and each successive one had likely given the impression that he was searching for a bride, though it couldn’t have also escaped notice that he’d kept mostly to himself. His presence had been enough to raise the hopes of the marriage-minded ladies.

  Jilly had assured him that Poppy had sent an affirmative reply for both herself and her sisters, though she had wondered, a bit too pointedly, how he had known that she would. But still she had not arrived, and he had found himself sipping his champagne and staring at the clock, wondering if Poppy in fact intended to put him through the same torture as she had the last time around, sitting through interminable hours of conversation with half-witted fools, waiting for the moment she would at last appear.

  But a slew of women had buzzed around him like annoying little gnats, and the rules of a private dinner party were a bit more relaxed—their chaperones were content to let their charges flitter about and flirt shamelessly, until he’d grown weary of making noncommittal responses and half-hearted assurances of saving dances at future balls and taken his leave of them, to retire to the library with a glass of brandy.

  He’d grown weary of watching the clock as well. And he was reasonably certain that Jilly would come in search of him when Poppy at last arrived. She always seemed to understand more than he wished her to, as if she could peer inside his head and divine truth from his thoughts.

  But Poppy would come, he told himself, absently tracing the outline of the notebook crammed into his pocket. If for no other reason than to retrieve her notebook, she would come. But he hoped she would come for more than just that.

  For anyone else, the library would have been a less than ideal setting for seduction. But for a notorious authoress, it was perfect. Jilly had turned it into quite a cozy room, with a small couch and several comfortable chairs scattered about the room, arranged into several clusters. The couch was a bit too small for a comfortable length-wise sprawl, and even a woman of Poppy’s height would have a difficult time trying to fit. For a moment he imagined pressing her back over it, dragging her hips over the arm of the chair, and thrust
ing her skirts up to bare her to his gaze, to his mouth.

  She would be shocked, certainly. But he had little doubt he could subdue her with little more than one hand pressed to her stomach, at least until pleasure subdued her instead. Her narrow hips would fit perfectly in his hands, and she would make those stirring little sounds—

  “Ah, Westwood. Wondered where you’d gone off to.”

  An acute stab of anger pricked him as David found his privacy interrupted, his pleasant fantasy disturbed by the intrusion of another person. Leighton, of course—it would have to be Leighton.

  “Leighton,” he said, as the marquess approached the sideboard, slinging a measure of brandy into a glass. Gabriel Newsom, Marquess of Leighton. What an unmitigated ass the man was. Either he didn’t know or didn’t care that David would have preferred to be left alone, and he settled into a chair opposite David’s couch, a satisfied smile etched upon his face.

  “Had to get out of there,” Leighton said, the smile sliding into a smirk. “Some of the bolder ladies don’t seem to care that I’m engaged. As if they could ever hope to draw me away from Elaine.”

  Ah. So he’d grown bored of taunting David from a distance, then. “Don’t be an ass, Leighton,” David sighed.

  Leighton’s smug smile slipped, and a measure of antipathy began to burn in the depths of his green eyes. “You’re jealous, of course,” Leighton said. “I expected as much. But the best man won out after all.”

  David gave a disinterested shrug, and sipped his brandy. “I can’t recall whether or not I have extended my congratulations,” he said. “If not, I wish you joy of one another.”

  Leighton’s face contorted into displeasure, his fingers clenching upon his glass as if he were imagining slinging it at David’s head. “You’ll not convince me you feel nothing—I won her, Westwood. She chose me.”

  Weeks ago the words might have wounded him. He had been so bereft, so injured, that he might even have let Leighton goad him into fisticuffs, or some other such row. Now the jibe slipped over him, provoking little more than the sense that he ought to have felt insulted, but wasn’t.

  “As I said,” David replied, tipping his glass toward Leighton in a careless toast. “I wish you joy.”

  With a growl of impotent rage, Leighton jerked out of his seat, his hand poised to lob his own glass at David. “Don’t condescend to me, you worthless—”

  “Gentlemen.” Jilly’s clear voice sliced straight across Leighton’s vicious exclamation. “Now that the last of the guests have arrived”—this, with a pointed glance at David—“we may at last go in to dinner.” The snap in her voice did not invite argument, and even Leighton hesitated. But Jilly was a force to be reckoned with, and one did not offer a duchess insult within her own home.

  Leighton’s hand remained upraised, the glass clenched in his fist.

  “My lord,” Jilly said. “I must insist that you govern your temper. I’m certain it would be embarrassing for both of us if I should be required to eject you from my household.” Nor would she hesitate to do so, did he give her reason, or so David assumed from the steely note in her voice.

  Even Leighton was not so stupid as to realize the inherent idiocy in crossing the formidable Duchess of Rushton. And the duke was fiercely protective of his wife—if Jilly so much as hinted that Leighton had displeased her, James would happily have destroyed the man.

  “My apologies, Your Grace,” Leighton said at last, though his tone left something to be desired. “I don’t know what came over me.”

  Jilly gave a brisk nod. “Lady Elaine awaits you. You would do well to escort her in to dinner.”

  Leighton stiffened, his pride scored by the dismissal, but there was nothing to do for it but heed Jilly’s command, and at last he gave a rigid bow and turned to leave the room, discarding his glass upon a table and muttering something that was probably less than flattering beneath his breath.

  “You, too, David,” Jilly said, turning in a smooth swish of lavender skirts. “Miss Fairchild still requires an escort.”

  David set his glass aside and rose. He supposed he ought to have managed to dredge up some manner of irritation over Jilly’s meddling—and he did not doubt but that she’d neglected to come in search of him until all other partners had already been assigned—but found he could not quite do it.

  Still he couldn’t resist tweaking her nose a bit for it, just to let her know he wasn’t ignorant of her intentions. “But you’ve found escorts for her sisters.”

  “Naturally, their seating partners were delighted to lead them in.” She linked her hands before her, casting a satisfied smile in his direction.

  “And Miss Fairchild’s seating partner wasn’t?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know,” she responded primly. “You’re the only one who can answer that question.” And she turned and sailed out of the room, leaving David to ponder that for half an instant before at last the implication sunk into his thick skull.

  Jilly had placed him with Poppy? Good God. He wasn’t going to survive dinner.

  ∞∞∞

  Poppy stared down at her plate, upon which a medallion of duck breast had been ladled, and contemplated the best way to escape her present predicament. It was bad enough that the duchess had elected to eschew tradition in favor of a more relaxed dinner setting. Typically, the guests would have been arranged in order of precedence; the more esteemed the title, the closer to the head of the table—instead, they were arranged rather haphazardly, so that no guest would believe that he or she had been deliberately slighted.

  Conversation swelled around her. No one could say that the duchess had not taken into account her guests’ interests; she seemed to have paired them off to the best of her abilities, selecting as partners those she felt would suit one another. She’d done an admirable job of it, in all actuality, except for the fact that she’d paired Poppy off with her brother.

  She fisted her hands in her lap and darted a glance across the table, to where Victoria sat chatting with a gentleman who was looking at her as if she’d hung the very moon in the sky.

  Beside her, Westwood cleared his throat. “Nobody will be looking at your hands,” he said, in a scarcely audible voice.

  She gave a little jerk in her seat, surprised that he had understood her dilemma. Gloves were not worn at the dinner table, and hers were draped over her lap—but though she’d scrubbed at the ink stains with soap and a basin of scalding water, her fingertips were still tinged faintly grey.

  Thus far, she’d managed to avoid dinner parties and all the hazards they entailed. Lady Winifred was a suitable enough chaperone for them. But this had been one that she couldn’t avoid, and she’d agonized over the many courses that would proceed, the care she would have to take in avoiding notice.

  The gentleman to her right, whose name she did not know, was presently deeply involved in a discussion with the lady to his left. The lady to Westwood’s left was Nora, Lady Ravenhurst, who had her husband to her left—another startling breach of protocol—and she showed no interest in attempting to engage Westwood in conversation. Poppy was in no way fool enough to believe that these particular seating arrangements had been an accident.

  The duchess was a meddler. But she cast Poppy a brilliant smile from the other side of the table, just to the left of Victoria’s infatuated swain, and Poppy found she couldn’t quite hold onto her aggravation.

  Tentatively she slid her right hand toward her utensils, but as he had predicted, not one person sent even the smallest of glances toward her hands. She curled her fingers around her fork and knife, angling them so her right hand, with its greyed fingertips, would be all but obscured. She sliced off a sliver of duck and popped it into her mouth.

  “Did you receive the flowers?”

  Poppy choked. Abandoning her utensils, she patted delicately patter her mouth with her napkin, trying desperately to pretend she hadn’t made such an uncouth sound. Though nobody seemed to have noticed.

  The flowers had arr
ived first thing this morning, a beautiful bouquet of white roses that Victoria and Isobel had just sighed and sighed over, though they’d each received far more magnificent arrangements in the weeks they’d been in London. There had been no note to accompany them, only his card tucked between the flowers. Of course, a note hadn’t been necessary—he’d said his piece at their last meeting. But she had assumed an implicit threat: he had not forgotten the demand he’d made of her, and sought to remind her of it as well.

  “Yes,” she said at last. “But you needn’t have bothered.” A servant retrieved her wine glass to fill, which she took a healthy swallow from the moment it was returned to her. In short order a few bright stalks of asparagus were delivered onto her plate. She carved off a few bite-sized pieces and pushed them around her plate, aware that she was mangling the defenseless vegetable, but needing something to do with her hands to keep herself from strangling her dinner partner.

  “We are supposed to be making conversation,” he said idly. “Though it would help if you would participate.”

  “To what end?” The words contained a note of sullen resignation.

  “It makes the time pass more quickly, I expect,” he said. “Everyone else is performing admirably.”

  “I don’t attend dinner parties,” she said. “Nor am I particularly schooled in the fine art of conversation.” Roasted potatoes drizzled with olive oil and finished with springs of rosemary appeared on her plate. She tucked them toward the side of her plate, then lined the slices of asparagus beside them. Interminable minutes passed, with naught but the clink of silverware and the fuzzy threads of conversation around them.

  In her peripheral vision she saw him lay his knife upon his plate and his hand dropped into his lap as he speared a bit of potato with his fork and brought it to his lips. A moment later, a hand settled over her thigh, strong fingers curling around it.