Chapter Two
Ashton Graham, second son of the fifth Duke of Meridian, watched the tart-tongued American exit the earl’s study and grinned. Worth gowns and the Countess of Kew as a sponsor; whoever she was, she’d spent a bundle to attract his brother’s eye. Poor thing, thinking that Arthur could be swayed by satiny curves and a calculated show of bosoms. Even magnificent bosoms. His knuckles tingled where they had stroked her breast. To his knowledge his brother, the sixth Duke of Meridian, had never shown the slightest interest in the females of his own species.
However, the American with the big, bold eyes and exquisite skin could be the first. Wit, beauty, experience; she was no greensick tyro. And, clever chit, she was probably on to something with those butterflies. His brother was obsessed with the things—all manner of six-legged beasties, in fact. Artie was quite the devoted naturalist and collector.
Ashton checked his appearance in the same picture the Nevada girl had used as a mirror. As he straightened his tie, his gaze landed on a swatch of blue caught between the wall and the rear of the console table. It was an ornate silk butterfly that looked the worse for wear.
The thing was the exact color of those patch-of-sky eyes that had registered anticipation at his touch and suggested a deliciously inappropriate knowledge of the pleasures it promised. With a quiver of anticipation he tucked it into his lapel and promised himself he would see that luscious little American again.
Halfway up the stairs to the busy ballroom, Ashton spotted his uncle, Lord Bertram Graham, headed straight for him. He glanced frantically around, but in the middle of the staircase there was no hope of escape. The old man seized his arm with a “my-dear-dear-boy” and hauled him up the steps and through the upstairs hallway to a private sitting room.
Ashton groaned quietly as he stepped inside and found himself facing a contingent of half a dozen family elders, headed by his father’s formidable elder sister, Lady Sylvia Graham Upshaw. There was trouble. He could see it in their razor-sharp stares.
He approached Aunt Sylvia first. She wore full mourning black with demi-veil and mantilla, despite the fact that her husband had been dead the better part of thirty years. Her hand, properly gloved though it was, felt as cold as a corpse’s bum cheek. The old girl sucked the warmth and vitality out of everything unfortunate enough to fall in her vicinity.
“My dear aunt.” He prayed the tension that made his jaw clench would pass for upper-crust diction. “You look the very picture of health.”
“Whereas you look the very picture of profligacy,” the old girl said, causing the hoary heads at her back to exchange nods of agreement.
Ashton braced, scrambling to think which of his peccadilloes had landed him in the court of family opinion this time.
“I take it I am in trouble,” he said, aiming his most beguiling smile at the old aunts. Two responded with furtive delight, while Aunt Sylvia hiked one side of her nose as if she’d detected something sulfurous.
“What you are in, is luck,” she declared. “You have a chance to be useful to the family for a change. We have finally found a task that will employ your natural proclivities to the family’s advantage.”
That gave him a moment’s pause. His natural proclivities? According to them, all he was good at was high living and moral scandal.
“I don’t believe I understand,” he said, truly puzzled. The family must really be in trouble if they were calling on him for help. Pedigree and finance were hardly his long suits, and the desiccated old gourds that shepherded the family fortunes cared little for anything else.
“A situation has arisen that cannot be tolerated. Your brother, as usual, is oblivious. He sees nothing but what is under his cursed specimen glass. It is up to us to protect him and our family heritage from the predations of that gauche American.”
“A dollar princess,” Uncle Bertram clarified with an aggrieved look.
“Dollar princess?” Ashton echoed, knowing full well what they meant.
Over the last ten years, rich American heiresses had arrived in England in droves and had been met with open arms by impoverished but eligible noblemen. These opportunistic alliances of old English blood and new American money were encouraged by no less than His Royal Highness Albert, Prince of Wales. “Bertie” found the American girls pretty, and spirited, and unconventional enough to keep pace in his cosmopolitan social set. It figured that the family creaks and groans would disapprove; they’d never thought much of the queen’s eldest son and heir.
“It’s that rich American chit the Countess of Kew is steering through ballrooms and parlors all over town,” Uncle Bertram said, dipping into his snuffbox for a pinch. “Seems she has set her cap for your brother.”
The American he had just encountered in the library. He glanced down at his lapel, stirring at the memory of her honey-blond petulance.
“Arthur is considering marriage?” he said, trying to imagine it.
“Who knows what that boy has in his head,” Sylvia said with an ill-restrained snarl. “Besides moths.”
“Butterflies,” Bertram corrected.
“Whichever. He’s taken notice of this girl and permitted the countess to introduce them. We cannot allow him to do anything foolish.” Sylvia seemed to resettle herself for a pronouncement. “We have plans.”
“For Arthur?” Ashton wondered if his brother had a clue.
“He is going to marry the Countess of Dorchester.”
Ashton couldn’t hide his astonishment. “Won’t that trouble her good husband just a bit?”
Sylvia’s scowl deepened. “He’s on his deathbed.”
“Could go at any moment,” Cousin Albertine put in, clearly pleased.
“Or not.” Old Uncle Seward felt obliged to counter Albertine’s optimism. “He’s lingerin’. Been draggin’ it out for weeks. Makin’ a disgraceful fuss over departin’ for the hereafter.”
Aunt Sylvia glowered at Seward, then turned back to Ashton. “Out of concern, we’ve sent our personal physician. . . who, in addition to easing the earl’s distress, will discreetly convey our desire for a closer connection to the countess herself.”
“Can’t allow that hound Norwich to get his foot in the door there,” Uncle Bertram broke in, hanging his hands on his vest. “He’s lusted after that estate for years. Prime pheasant country, you know. Big, fat birds—”
“Meanwhile”—Sylvia wrenched them back to the point at hand—“we must deal with this upstart American.”
“Can’t have Arthur getting notions about women and marriage until after old Dorchester snuffs it,” Bertram declared.
“Which is where you come in, Nephew.” Sylvia looked him up and down. “You have the skills and experience to see that this creature is distracted from all thoughts of matrimony with the duke.”
He thought of the determination in the American’s brazen eyes and voluptuous lips. A frisson of anticipation slithered through him.
“And if she should prove impervious to distraction?” he asked.
“She is as fresh and forward as they come,” Aunt Sylvia declared. “I am sure you can find a way to make yourself more interesting than Arthur.”
This was almost beyond belief. He’d lost count of the times the old trots had chastised him for his prodigal living and indiscreet romances. Now they wanted to sic him and his intemperate ways on an upstart American who had the audacity to set her sights on the family coronet.
He glanced from one hooded gaze to another and read in those determined stares a shocking bill of license. They wanted him to do more than just distract her; they wanted him to seduce her.
The thought spun in his mind like a coin on its edge, then fell with a sweet, remunerative-sounding clink. The American was quite the little package. Lovely. Rebellious. Apparently quite rich. He smiled. It was a combination tailor-made for his kind of trouble. Then it occurred to him that there were yet other possibilities in the situation. He had attended the ball tonight hoping for a chance to plead for an increase in his dwindling stipend.
“Distraction,” he said smoothly, “can be a very expensive business.”
Every visible part of Aunt Sylvia puckered at the mention of “expense.”
“I suppose”—she glanced to the others, who seemed more appalled by his demands on the family’s beleaguered treasury than they had been by a suggestion that he seduce on command—“accommodations can be made.”