.
Victor Sommerset, decorated colonel, reluctant duke, and frankly damned irritated, looked around at the assembly hall with distaste.
“Come now, old friend, you are going to scare off the young ladies and their mothers.”
“If scaring them off will give me some space, I certainly will not mind it.”
Charles Hartley, Earl of Wendington laughed as if Victor had made some kind of clever joke rather than simply behaving like an uncouth churl.
“Get used to it, Wellford, you are back in the smoke now. And who knows, the pearl who will grace your household and bear your sons might be right here at Almack’s tonight.”
“If she is, she ought to make herself known so we can get it over with.”
“My dear Victor, you are not on the battlefield now, and though London debutantes are famous for a certain amount of sharp dealing, they can hardly be more vicious than the French. I took some trouble to get us into Almack’s so soon after you were invested with your title. The least you could do is look a little eager.”
Charles sighed as Victor gave him a flat and unimpressed look.
“Well, if you’re going to stand there and look dour, I’ll take myself off to fill my dance card. All of your money woes might have disappeared, but I need a girl with an inheritance.”
“I never had any money woes before,” Victor growled, but Charles was gone, off charming a dark-haired miss in blue.
I feel like a damned monkey in a suit. How the hell do London men tolerate this?
Charles was meant to be making introductions for him, but Victor was fairly relieved with his friend gone. He knew he had a duty to marry and to secure the title that had unexpectedly fallen to him, but perhaps he didn’t have to do it tonight. He frowned reflexively, and a young woman arm in arm with her mother gasped. The pair skittered around him, and he wanted to throw his hands up and storm out.
The scar was not helping matters. He had never considered himself so very handsome before he had gotten on the wrong side of a French saber, and now it gave him a positively demonic demeanor. Soldiers followed a scarred commander better than they did one whose face and body were unmarked, but he had a feeling he couldn’t say the same for eligible Society women.
Victor knew it wasn’t just the scar, however. Wherever he went, he heard whispers of his title and his rank, and more than one person, male and female alike, shuddered. It was all he expected from the Beau Monde, insulated as they were from the ravages of the Peninsular War, but it struck a deep and angry chord inside him.
He knew that anger came through when he was cautiously greeted by some casual acquaintances, and apparently, even the lure of his new titles and holdings were not enough for the older women, who took their young charges by the elbow and steered them away.
That was bad enough, but the girls who seemed fascinated by him were almost worse. The ones who slipped away from their guardians to stand as close as propriety permitted, who watched him with wide and avid eyes, they were equally frustrating in their own way. When one asked him what it was like to be in the heat of a battle and kill a man, Victor excused himself abruptly and walked away.
Give me an honest brothel in the Sierra Morena any day. The girls there would steal the fillings from your teeth, but they are still less mercenary.
Victor was catching his breath under the musicians’ gallery when another girl crashed into his chest. He had a moment to appreciate her pretty face, golden hair, and curvy form before he saw her dance card, and he scowled. He grabbed his temper by the tail, gave the girl the dance she had obviously been dared to take, and stormed away.
It was the only dance that he had asked for that night, and as poorly as the evening was going, he was leaving straight after, no matter how hard Charles had worked to get the vouchers.
Princess Esterházy called the assembly to order and announced the dancing was about to begin. For a moment, Victor thought he had lost the girl whose card he had signed, and then he caught sight of her on the sidelines, composed and with a slightly arrogant lift to her chin. She was an old-fashioned kind of beauty, he thought grudgingly, fair as cream. When he approached and bowed slightly, she inclined her head in a regal nod and took his hand. Victor felt a strange shock run through his body when they touched, and some voice inside his head said, quite clearly, ah, I have been waiting for you.
He brushed both off and escorted her onto the dance floor as the musicians struck the first notes of the waltz. Despite the intimacy of the dance, she said nothing, and Victor began to feel bad.
“I apologize if I was short with you earlier.”
“If you were? Do you mean you do not know, your grace?”
“You are sharp-tongued with me.”
“I can be. You do not know who I am, and it can hardly come back to me if I am.”
Victor found himself smiling a little at her tart response, and she was proving to be a better than fair dancer. They traced the figures of the waltz easily, and Victor remembered a little reluctantly that he did after all like dancing.
“That’s hardly appropriate for a woman who is looking to make a good match. You called me your grace. I assume you must know who I am.”
“My aunt has told me all about you. You are quite the catch.”
“And yet you still will not tell me your name.”
“I am Lady Emily Allensby, not that you bothered to get a proper introduction before asking me to dance, and I have decided, your grace, that you are not a catch for me.”
Victor wondered why that stung a little. He had to assume that it was sheer perversity that made him even more intrigued with the chit.
“And why is that?”
“Why, because I am very particular about the husband I will have, your grace, and you meet none of my requirements.”
“Then your requirements must be very high indeed.”
She batted her long surprisingly dark eyelashes at him, giving him a dry smile.
“How very perfect for you that a woman who finds you undesirable must have requirements that are ‘very high.’“
Instead of being offended, Victor laughed, the first time he had done so, it felt like, since he’d returned to England and discovered the mess of inheritance waiting for him.
“And I don’t think you find me so undesirable as all that.”
He watched in fascination as her cheeks turned bright red, and she looked away.
“No sharp words?”
“Not... at the moment.”
“Well, then.”
The waltz ended, and as the other gentlemen guided their partners to the sidelines, Victor stood still in the center of the room with Emily. He found himself reluctant to let her go, and he tried to tell himself it was only because she was nearly the first person to talk to him as if he were a real person in ages.
“Thank you for the waltz, Lady Emily.”
“You’re very welcome, your grace.”
For a single mad instant, instinct got the better of him. Victor stepped forward, hand curling around Emily’s lower back. He could sense the way she bent toward him for a moment, warm and pliant. He wanted to kiss this girl, kiss her, taste her... Dear god, this was the middle of the Almack’s dance floor.
“Your grace!” Emily hissed, two patches of rosy color high on her cheeks, and he drew back at once, blinking at his own impulse.
“Forgive me,” he said stiffly.
He escorted her back to her fretting guardian, aware the whole time of the way the assembly was watching them, their eyes heavy and bright. Victor didn’t give a damn about the censure of the ton, but he abruptly decided that he was done. This evening had been a disaster, and there was a chance he had harmed an innocent girl’s reputation on top of it. Charles could make his apologies. With a curt nod, he strode toward the exit.
Emily didn’t know what had happened. For a moment, on the dance floor, the Duke of Wellford looked as if he was going to... she didn’t even have a word for it. He looked as if he wanted to devour her, and in his gaze, there was a kind of immolation that drew her in. She felt shaky on her feet at the memory, and she clung to Winnie for a moment before letting go to stand on her own two feet.
“My goodness, what were you talking to the Duke of Wellford about?” asked Winnie, wide-eyed.
“Nothing,” Emily insisted, but had it been nothing? He was quite out of the question as a match for her, so perhaps she had left her tongue more unguarded than she should have, but surely, that wouldn’t have created such a stir.
“Well, you have not any dances for the next set, so perhaps we should get you some more water.”
That proved easier said than done. Before, Emily had been variously invisible and the subject of indifferent contempt. Now it seemed that the attention of the Duke of Wellford had raised her to the level of public notice. All eyes were on her, and everyone wanted to speak with her. She said over and over again that she had no association with the duke, no prior experience. Yes, he was a good dancer. No, she didn’t think the scar was terrifying. He had been perfectly kind.
The questions went on and on, and soon Emily felt as if she were drowning. The weight of the crowd was too much. It was as if a hot wet blanket had been thrown on top of her, and now it was pushing her down.
“I have to get out of here,” Emily whispered, and her nerve broke entirely.
By some trick of providence, a punch bowl across the hall was dropped at just that moment, splashing a few unlucky girls badly. Their shrieks drew every eye, and Emily ran out of the hall entirely. She didn’t have her wrap, and she didn’t have her chaperon. All she had was a terrible urge to get away from it all, to run and to never look back.