Oh God, this was the marquess? She should be elated. For all her attempts at meeting the young bachelor and all her meticulous scheming, he was now before her. Emilia’s words came back to her on a rush. St. James preferred women who could play the pianoforte and embroider. Desperate to escape, Aldora dropped her gaze to his artfully arranged cravat. But that brought his garishly bright-gold, embroidered waistcoat into sharp focus until she thought she might go blind from staring at the fabric.
Her mother cleared her throat. Loudly.
Aldora looked blankly to her and blinked, trying to make sense of why her mother was glowering and why this stranger was…not… the man she wanted him to be.
Her mother silently mouthed the proper words that had momentarily eluded Aldora.
“It is a pleasure to meet you, my lord,” she lied. It was not a pleasure. It was fortuitous and convenient and necessary. But it was not a pleasure.
“I was just saying to His Lordship how very good it was of you to so graciously agree to dance with his brother.” Mother dropped her tone to a loud whisper. “You know, the scandal and all.”
She had… The man whose arms she’d waltzed in…Aldora closed her eyes as a sudden wave of dizziness besieged her and she tried to regain composure. Good God, Michael was the marquess’ younger brother.
Blessedly, Emilia launched into a conversation with Lord St. James, saving her from having to formulate a coherent response. Her brain sought to work through the tide of confusion, and she allowed the words to echo inside her head. Michael is the Marquess of St. James’ brother. No, Michael was the scandalous younger brother, who’d been banished to the far-flung regions of Wales or Ireland, or some area in the British Isles where he now operated an equally scandalous business.
Aldora gave her head a shake. She alternated her gaze among the trio of people as she fought to regain control of her rapidly churning thoughts. A prickle of awareness tingled along the base of her neck and trailed a path down her spine. She knew with a woman’s intuition that Michael—Michael whose middle name she did not know—was studying her meeting with the marquess.
Lord St. James clasped her fingers in his and raised them to his lips. She held her breath in anticipation of any hint of her body’s awareness of him as a man. His lips, too soft and too moist, caressed the top of her hand before she discreetly pulled it back. “It is an honor, my lady.”
Her mother narrowed her gaze.
Struggling for calm while inside her mind and heart were sent into tumult, Aldora squared her shoulders. She hoped Michael hated this exchange as much as she did, hoped it was as agonizing for him, because there were no words to describe the pain knifing through her insides that threatened to bring her to her knees in this crowded hall.
“Will you join me for the next set?” the marquess asked.
Four people stared at Aldora in silent expectation.
No! She made a show of glancing down at the sadly empty dance card on her wrist. “Yes. That would be lovely,” she added, at her mother’s pointed glare.
The marquess held out his arm. With all of Society and Michael watching, he escorted her onto the dance floor where couples were lining up for a quadrille.
Aldora sent small thanks to the heavens. It wasn’t a waltz. She couldn’t bear being enfolded in the arms of Michael’s brother. It felt sinful and wrong. And it would feel a good deal more wrong when she married this man. Because that hadn’t changed. She still required a match to save her family and this man presented as the best option for her complicated circumstances.
She touched the heart that dangled at her neck, bitterness tasting like fire in her throat. How very foolish she’d been. She had allowed herself to believe in the magic of the silly charm. It was all she could do to keep from removing the pendant and passing it on to one of her other friends, friends who most likely still believed in the power of the gypsy’s tale.
Aldora and the marquess took their place on opposite ends of the line. She fell into a curtsy and he returned the bow as the orchestra struck up the first chords of the dance. The lively beat breathed some life into her deflated self as they came together.
“I should properly convey my appreciation,” he said, before they were forced apart by the steps of the dance.
They performed the circular movements, weaving in and out of partners before they were brought back together. “Your appreciation, my lord?” she ventured.
Arm in arm, his hand on hers, he guided her around. “You were dancing with my brother. I confess, many ladies have been far less forgiving.”
Her lips parted in surprise. Unbidden, she scanned the ballroom, searching hopelessly for Michael. He was there. She felt his gaze upon her skin like a physical touch, but he remained out of sight, hidden from her. She believed only a madwoman would be able to shun him for the mistakes of his youth. For if her own family’s scandal didn’t weigh on her shoulders, she’d have wanted nothing more than a gentleman such as him. Aldora was saved from responding by the steps of the dance that separated them yet again. She’d never really preferred the quadrille. Given the freedom from Lord St. James’ questioning and curious stare, she decided she’d been too harsh on the now convenient dance.
They came to stop at the edge of the circle, side by side, as the other partners performed the intricate movements. Her satin skirts brushed the marquess’ satin breeches. There was no thrilling sense of awareness at his body pressed so close to hers, no hungering desire for things she didn’t understand coursing through her belly. She took a moment to study him. At six-feet two-inches he was taller than most gentlemen. He did not, however, possess the same muscular strength and lithe power of his younger brother. Her gaze dipped to his stomach and narrowed. Padding. Why, the Marquess of St. James padded his attributes.
It wasn’t uncommon. Quite the opposite. But Michael’s body exhibited pure masculinity without need for embellishments and adornments. Damn him, he’d ruined her acceptance of other men who chose to use those foolish fripperies.
As if feeling her stare upon him, the marquess glanced down at her. Aldora felt color rush to her cheeks but did not look away. “I saw you.”
Her brow furrowed.
“In Hyde Park,” he clarified.
A rush of panic coursed through her as she thought back to the day she’d first met Michael. Her hair had hung in a mass of riotous curls about her back and she been crawling across the grounds. Oh, blast. Her eyes slid closed.
“You looked lovely,” he murmured. “Even with your out-of-fashion day gown.”
I should be thrilled with his almost compliment. It should cause a fluttering in my belly and provide a sense of triumph. After all, she desired a match with the marquess. So why did his words leave her oddly cold? “Thank you, my lord,” she said softly.
The set came to an end amidst a smattering of applause from the lords and ladies on the dance floor. She met his bow with a curtsy and then accepted the arm he held out. Aldora touched her fingers to his jacket sleeves. Only there was no spark or heat or any sign of her body’s awareness.
“May I call on you, my lady?”
There it was. The words she’d hoped for from him. So, what accounted for this heaviness in her chest? A weight that made it difficult to draw breath. “Why?” she blurted out. She gasped but that guilty exclamation was drowned out by Lord St. James’ laughter.
Nearby, lords and ladies peered at them as they continued walking. “If you’d said that any other way, I would believe you were a young lady searching out compliments.”
“Oh, no, not at all, my lord,” she said on a rush. He couldn’t be farther from the truth. The last things she wished for were empty platitudes about a beauty she didn’t possess. I want a gentleman who doesn’t treat me like a pampered miss, who needs to weigh his words around me. A man like Michael. Oh, God.
He winked. “I know that, my lady. Would you join me for a stroll in Hyde Park tomorrow, with your mother’s permission, of course?”
No.
That denial screamed around the inside of her mind and she forced a smile. “Uh-yes, that would be lovely,” she lied.
The marquess bowed. “I’m looking forward to it.”
Aldora watched him go, all the while dreaming of another. Not for the first time, she damned her late father for having destroyed any hope she’d had for happiness…and love.
Chapter 6
Thick, dark clouds blanketed the London sky, all but ready to unleash a torrent of rain upon the city.
A stroll through Hyde Park at this time was the height of foolishness, yet the marquess had insisted. Mother had concurred, so Aldora walked alongside him with bated breath, waiting for the deluge that would ruin her ridiculously thin wrap and ornamental hood.
A faint breeze rustled her cloak and set a lone lock of hair tumbling over her brow. She brushed it back. Aldora met the marquess’ long strides, easily falling into step. Her maid’s gasping breath indicated the brisk pace was hardly fashionable and not at all appropriate. Regardless, the sooner this outing was over, the sooner she could return home and try to forget that she was hopelessly besotted with the wrong brother.
The angry rumble of thunder sounded in the distance. Aldora frowned. She needed to make a match with the gentleman, but she wasn’t willing to die by a bolt of lightning just to save her family.
“I know ladies possess a significantly weaker constitution. Would you care to rest a moment?”
It was the first thing he’d said since they’d entered the largely empty park. She cringed as Emilia’s words on St. James’ views on women surfaced. It shouldn’t bother her that he saw her as a fragile wisp of a thing. After all, it was the view held by most in Society. And yet it did rankle—a good deal. Aldora couldn’t imagine Michael being possessed of a like opinion.
She closed her eyes. Michael.
“My lady?” he murmured. Her gaze flew to his. He gestured to their surroundings. “I was asking if you’d like to stop a moment?”
Aldora looked around, taking in their area. The knowledge of where they were hit her like a kick to the chest. Her skin tingled with the remembrance of Michael’s hands as he circled her neck with the childhood pendant she now wore.
It hardly worked toward her ultimate goal for the marquess, but she could not bite back the next words. “I don’t believe a riding trail is the best place for us to rest, my lord.”
St. James’ full lips turned upward with amusement.
“Ahh!”
Aldora and St. James looked up in unison, in time to see her maid not even twenty paces away topple over. The older woman landed hard on her knees. A loud gust of wind muted the agonized cry.
Propriety forgotten, Aldora raced to her maid, dropping to a knee. St. James knelt alongside her.
“Silly thing, Lady Aldora. I stepped in a rabbit hole. A rabbit hole. What is a rabbit hole doing in Hyde Park?” The woman dashed back a stray tear.
“Are you injured, Isabella?” Aldora asked.
With effortless grace, St. James stood and helped Isabella to her feet. The maid took a tentative step and cried out. The wrinkles on her narrow face contorted with pain.
He turned to Aldora. “I’m going to carry her to the phaeton and instruct my driver to return her at once.”
Aldora bit the inside of her cheek to keep from suggesting that she be allowed to return home with her maid.
He hesitated. “I do not want to leave you alone, unchaperoned.”
But he could move faster without having to match his stride to hers. He cared more for Isabella’s well-being than propriety. Her mother, however, well, that was a tale of a different color. She nodded. “I’ll be fine, my lord. Truly,” she said when he hesitated.
The marquess inclined his head and then all but sprinted through the park, the older woman in his arms. Aldora stared after him, marveling at the absolute ease in which he handled Isabella’s reed-thin frame. She watched until they’d disappeared from her line of vision.
St. James had behaved as the perfect gentleman. He’d been kind, considerate, and even managed to laugh at her tendency to blurt out exactly what she was thinking.
He was nothing like his brother. Michael, who teased her and challenged her…and who’d also lied to her. Last evening, after she had returned from Lord and Lady Havendale’s ball, she had pounded her pillow, precious sleep eluding her. The shock of discovering that he was not her marquess had crippled her sensibilities. If somebody had wrenched her heart from her chest and stuck a thousand pinpricks within the foolish organ, it couldn’t hurt more.
It was foolish. To feel these things, anything, for a veritable stranger. But she cared for him, cared a good deal. After she had allowed herself a cleansing cry, other thoughts had trickled in and replaced the agony.
Michael had lied to her. He had deliberately misled her into believing he was, in fact, the marquess. She fed that sense of betrayal, because it dulled the ache within her breast. Oh, the fun he must have had at her expense. The heartless deception should have squashed any feelings she had for the darkly handsome, scandal-ridden gentleman. She should wholeheartedly devote her efforts to winning over the powerful, more-gentlemanly Marquess of St. James.
So, why didn’t she feel any of the fluttery waves of awareness deep inside her belly as she did whenever Michael was near?
Thunder sounded in the distance. The wind kicked up a frenzy and the tree branches shook. The breeze sent several leaves fluttering. She tried to catch one, but it sailed through her fingers and landed on the ground. Aldora put the heel of her slipper on it to keep it in place and then bent down to retrieve it.
“Never tell me you’ve lost something again, my lady?”
She froze. The green leaf slipped out of her hands and floated off on the next gust of wind. She swallowed. Why is he here? She remained rooted to her spot upon the ground.
Michael dismounted from his horse. The enormous, black beast pawed the ground nervously but remained in its place. “What are you doing here?” He looked around as if expecting someone to materialize from the breeze. “Alone?”
Aldora’s lips parted, but no words came out. He took a step toward her. She held her ground. “Why are you here?” she tossed back at him, embracing the volatile anger that stirred deep within her chest. It gave her the fortitude to confront him.
Michael paused. “I was riding.”
Well, he had her there. He had far more reason to be out on this dreary gray day than she. Still… “You should have continued riding.”
His body convulsed like he’d been physically struck.
I will not feel bad. I will not feel bad. “And I’m not alone,” she added for spiteful measure. “I’m out walking with the Marquess of St. James.” In unison with her bold declaration, the wind died an instant death and the air stood still.
A savage-like growl spilled from his tense lips and split the sudden, unearthly quiet. An unrestrained darkness lit Michael’s eyes.
She should relish his tangible pain, but it didn’t bring her even a smidgeon of glee. It only made her feel that much worse, which she hadn’t thought possible. “You lied to me,” she whispered. After those brief but meaningful to her encounters, she’d laughed and known happiness and felt more than the fear to dog her all these years. And it had been all on the greatest lie. She curled her toes into the soles of her slipper. “You made light of me, knowing all along I thought you to be your brother.” A half-sob escaped her. “What a laugh you must have had over my mistake.”
His jaw worked. Say something. Say anything… Tell me those exchanges meant as much to you. “I didn’t.”
Stated in that flat, emotionless tone, Aldora gritted her teeth, besieged by an unladylike desire to strike him. “You didn’t what?” she quietly rasped. “Lie to—”
“Find any amusement in your error.” An error he’d gladly let her believe.
With a sound of disgust, she made to step around him, but Michael placed himself in her path. He held his palms up in supplication. �
�It was never my intention to hurt or deceive you.”
But that was what he’d done, anyway. Nor was his exactly an apology. His useless words certainly were not enough to erase the ache in her chest. The agony of knowing she’d allowed herself to imagine a future with him—only to find herself all along dreaming of the wrong gentleman. Aldora tipped her chin back. “What was your intention, Michael?”
Michael should have continued riding. He should have turned Midnight around and rode hard to the opposite end of the park. Lady Aldora was like the nymph, Calypso, who’d held tight to Odysseus for seven years. Only, he suspected that Lady Aldora’s hold would be something a deal more permanent.
He studied the pinched lines at the corner of her lush lips, the glitter of emotion that filled her expressive, brown eyes. Michael removed his hat and beat it against the side of his thigh. It would be easier for both of them—all of them, if he considered his brother—if he offered a hasty apology and left her believing he’d merely been, “making light of her”. There was nothing he could offer her. He had money. Plenty of it. But respectability and a place in London Society? No. Not after he’d killed Lord Everworth. The things he now dreamed of were beyond his reach.
For the first time, he found himself craving a title. Since there was nothing he could say that would excuse his actions, he settled for the truth. “I was wrong. I should have corrected your error from the very beginning instead of letting you believe I was the marquess.”
“So, why didn’t you?” There was a steely edge to her question, a strength that he appreciated. Most any other lady would have descended into a fit of hysterics.
Michael closed the distance separating them. He reached out and brushed back a dark curl that had escaped her neat coiffure. She didn’t pull away from him. “Because I knew the moment you realized who I was, you would have left.”
Aldora frowned.
“Come, can you truly say that you would have continued conversing with me, the younger, untitled brother with a scandalous past?” Silence met his question. “That is what I suspected.”
A Heart of a Duke Collection: Volume 1-A Regency Bundle Page 7