Chapter 9
Harry stared into his partially filled tumbler of brandy. He rolled the amber brew around in his glass and ignored the casual greetings tossed at him from gentlemen at White’s.
My father was a wastrel, Harry. A drunkard. A profligate gambler, a womanizer…
He set his glass down with a hard thunk and shoved it aside. The image he’d earned in Society as an unrepentant rogue was one he’d welcomed, or even appreciated. The ton recognized in him a gentleman who’d not become embroiled in emotional entanglements. Ladies vied for a place in his bed, knowing because of that reputation there was little hope of attaining his heart; a heart he’d carefully protected after Margaret’s betrayal.
Margaret had opened his eyes to the truth—women were parsimonious, indulgent creatures and he’d neatly placed Anne into the category of grasping young ladies.
Until now.
After bating Anne about her collection of satin ribbons, he’d learned there was, in fact, a good deal more to the young lady than beauty with a mercurial desire for material possessions. In just a handful of days, she had shattered all the notions he’d carried of her as an empty-headed, self-indulgent, title-grasping miss.
Instead, he saw a woman who’d braved great trials in her young life and had been shaped by them. She was a lady who’d be the arbiter of her own fate, and in a world where women were considered mere property of their husbands, Anne would find security where she could.
She’d selected her duke, enlisted Harry’s aid to attain that duke, and in that, would steal what freedom she could as a woman in a world dominated by men who’d wager the happiness of their wives and daughters on a game of chance.
Since leaving her, he found he rather hated himself for the hard-won reputation that placed him into the class of cads like her father. The world of black and white he’d lived in after Margaret’s betrayal, and before he’d truly come to know Anne, ceased to exist, ushering in a less certain shade between.
“Tsk, tsk. First courting proper, English misses, and now visiting White’s instead of Forbidden Pleasures. The lady has quite the hold over you, doesn’t she?”
Harry glanced up. His friend, Lord Edgerton grinned down at him. He sighed. “Edgerton. Don’t you have a sister to escort around?”
“Two of them to be exact,” his friend muttered. “At Lord and Lady Huntly’s soiree.” He hooked his foot under the chair opposite Harry and tugged it out then settled into the seat, just as a servant rushed forward with a glass. Without asking, he picked up the bottle and sloshed several fingerfuls into his glass.
“Perhaps you should get yourself there,” Harry drawled. All he knew was that he preferred his solitary musings to his friend’s company this evening.
Edgerton grinned. He raised his glass in salute. “Then, one of the benefits of being the spare is being absolved from most responsibilities.”
Harry wouldn’t know much of it. As the only son of the late Earl of Stanhope, he’d never had a sibling and both of his parents had died when he’d been in his early days at university. His responsibilities through the years had been to the title and his own self-comforts. And for a very small while—Margaret. He expected the familiar rush of hurt bitterness—a bitterness that did not come.
“I imagined with your courtship of a certain creature with golden-ringlets, you’d be at the lady’s side.”
He eyed his barely touched brandy, filled with a longing to drink until he was bloody soused so he wouldn’t have to think about the agreement he’d entered into with Anne. Considering Crawford’s early afternoon visit, Anne was one near-offer of marriage away from ending Harry’s role in the whole blasted scheme. He gripped the edge of the table so hard his knuckles turned white. “I intend to put in an appearance at Lady Huntly’s later this evening,” he said at last. After all, he’d pledged his support.
Edgerton took a sip of his brandy. “I’d venture you’d be better served going to Huntly’s sooner rather than later, chap.” His friend dangled that damned bit, attempting intrigue.
Harry swallowed down a curse. “What are you on about?”
Edgerton waved over to the betting book at White’s. “Wagers have been placed that the young lady will find herself the next Duchess of Crawford. And you, my good friend, are already at a great disadvantage with a mere earldom.”
Harry growled. He’d not let his friend bait him.
“Rumors have it, Crawford is quite taken with the young lady.” His lips turned up in a wry smile. “Though I must say I don’t see the fascination with a proper English miss with those silly ringlets—”
Taken with the young lady. “They are not silly,” he mumbled under his breath. And why shouldn't the spirited beauty charm Crawford?
“Crawford was seen with the young lady at Gunter’s yesterday afternoon.”
After Harry had taken his leave of her. His body went taut.
Edgerton chuckled, seeming unbothered by carrying on a conversation with himself. He settled his elbows on the table and waggled his brow. “The gossip sheets report the duke didn’t remove his gaze from the lady’s—”
Harry surged to his feet. He started for the door. As he wound his way through the club, past throngs of dandies and crowded tables, he dimly registered his friend hastening to match his step.
“What in hell is the matter with you, Stanhope?” Edgerton groused.
“Nothing,” he bit out.
The majordomo pulled the door open and they took their leave. His friend scratched his brow. “Is this about Crawford and your Lady Anne?”
He peered around the crowded street for sign of his carriage. “No.” Yes. “And she is not my Lady Anne.” He took a step toward the street as his driver wound through the clogged roadway. Filled with a restive energy he strode onward toward his conveyance. His driver hopped down and opened the carriage door. Harry climbed inside.
Edgerton followed suit. “She is clearly something to you, Stanhope,” he said with far more solemnity than Harry remembered of his friend.
He clenched his jaw hard enough that pain shot up to his temple. “She is not.”
Edgerton rested his ankle over his knee and tapped his foot. “I certainly hope you’d not be fool enough to toss away wasted emotion on a woman such as her.” He knew of the empty shell of a man Harry had become immediately after Margaret’s betrayal. They’d drank together until the liquor had dulled Harry’s pain. And the day she’d wed her lofty duke, a doddering old letch from some far-flung corner of England, Harry drank some more. Then when he was bleary-eyed with too much liquor and a broken heart, Edgerton got him home, and restored him to the carefree rogue he’d been before Margaret.
“I assure you, Edgerton, there is nothing more there. The young lady enlisted my support on a matter.” A matter he didn’t intend to discuss with even his friend. “And as a friend to Lady Katherine, I’ve agreed to help her.” His involvement with Anne had begun as a kind of unknowing favor to the young duchess who’d captured his attention last Season. Only, since that scandalous proposal Anne had put to him in Lord Essex’s conservatory, some great shift had occurred—a desire to help the young minx who’d once been nothing more than a bother.
His friend studied him. He appeared ready to say an additional piece on Harry’s succinct admission, but the carriage rocked to a halt in front of a pale yellow townhouse ablaze with candlelight, cutting into the other man’s words.
The driver pulled open the carriage door. Harry leapt out and started for the handful of steps leading into the luxurious Mayfair townhouse. His friend hastened to match his stride. They entered the palatial townhouse and made their way to the now empty receiving line. From his vantage at top of the ballroom, he scanned the dance floor and frowned.
“Are you per chance, looking for a particular young lady?” His friend asked with entirely too much humor. “Perhaps, a young lady who means absolutely nothing to you?”
“Stuff it,” Harry said as the host and hostess rushed forward to greet the two newly arrived gentlemen. He stalked off just as the couple reached him. Lady Huntly rocked back on her heels with an indignant huff. Edgerton, ever the charmer remained behind to speak to the couple with matching stark white hair and wizened cheeks.
Harry walked the perimeter of the ballroom. A servant stepped forward. The liveried footman bore a silver tray with bubbling French champagne. Harry rescued a glass and continued his search. Where in hell was she? He paused beside a Doric column and leaned against the white, towering structure, scanning the rows of couples performing the lively steps of a reel. He’d taken care to find out the precise details of the lady’s plans for the evening. Perhaps the information his servants had obtained from her servants had been erroneous.
The music came to a rousing conclusion, followed by a wave of applause and laughter from the crush of dancers upon the dance floor. He sipped his champagne as gentlemen escorted their respective partners back to their chaperones, methodically running his gaze through the crowd for the ringlet-wearing, cheeky, young miss.
“Lord Stanhope,” a sultry voice purred.
He froze as a figure sidled up to him. He glanced down disinterestedly as the Viscountess Kendrick brushed herself against him. The generous swells of her breasts crushed hard against his arm. She peered up at him through sooty black lashes.
Harry yawned. “Lady Kendrick.” Had he really once desired the over-blown, pinch-mouthed viscountess?
A catlike smile turned her thin lips up at the corners. Though, if she knew the exact direction of Harry’s thoughts, she’d be spitting and hissing like a wounded feline. “Are you bored, my lord?” She stroked a bold finger over the sleeve of his coat. “I can imagine all manner of delicious ways to drive away your tedium.”
Three days ago, he’d have jerked his chin toward the back of the ballroom and led the scandalous widow to one of the rooms in his host’s home. He’d have tugged up her skirts and made fast and hard love to her and then returned to the ball with a still-bored grin. Now, he shrugged free of her touch and continued to survey the milling guests.
“I missed you the other night, my lord.”
“Did you?” he murmured.
“Have you heard a word I’ve said?” she snapped, the waspish bite to her question at odds with the husky, sultry tone she adopted in most of her exchanges.
“No,” he said. He beat a quick bow. “If you’ll—” The air exploded from his lungs on a rush. The viscountess forgotten, he took a step forward. Then another. And froze.
An Athena with hair dipped in pure gold stood at the edge of the crowded dance floor. She tapped a hand against her thigh as if in time to the one-two-three beat of the orchestra’s tune.
Close your mouth. Breathe. Do something. Do anything.
The glorious beauty, somehow familiar, and yet not, brushed back a long wisp of honey-blonde hair, away from her cheek. Glorious tresses hung in loose waves about her cream-white shoulders. Athena stiffened. She angled her head as if aware of his scrutiny. Or mayhap she registered the interest of every, single gentleman with red blood coursing through his veins, fixed on the perfection of her body, bathed in the soft candlelight.
Then their gazes caught and held.
Harry jerked, as if Gentleman Jackson had delivered a swift, well-placed jab to his midsection.
The pale blue irises of her fathomless eyes, danced with fury.
Anne.
~*~
If Anne was perhaps as good with words as Aldora, she’d have something far more potent, more powerful than spitting mad. But blast and hell…she was spitting mad. She yanked her attention away from Harry.
The blighter.
First, there was the whole business at his clubs, the Forbidden Pleasures two nights past. It had taken her the better part of the afternoon following her trip to Gunter’s with the Duke of Crawford to squint her way through the page about just how Lord Harry had spent his evening after he’d left the recital. Then, if that wasn’t enough to boil a lady’s blood, he’d not come ‘round for the whole of a day. She tossed her loose waves. Waves not ringlets. As he’d suggested.
The bounder.
And the only reason she cared about his absence was the whole business of his lessons on seduction. A lesson each day, he’d pledged. Well, now he owed her two lessons for this nearly completed day.
Only… she looked back to the spot he’d been a moment ago, now vacant. He was assuredly with that scandalous Viscountess Kendricks. The very same woman whose assignation Anne had interrupted five days ago.
She bit the inside of her cheek hard enough to draw blood. She gasped and slapped her hand to the injured area.
“Is there a problem, my lady?”
At the dry, far-too amused baritone she bit down hard on the same poor piece of wounded flash. She gasped, again. “Blast, don’t you know to not sneak up on a lady?” She despised the manner in which her heart sped up at Harry’s sudden appearance.
He’d not followed his viscountess. Instead, he’d come to Anne. Why should that cause this fluttery warmth to unfurl inside her belly, she did not know. Anne continued to study the couples as they performed the delicate steps of a quadrille. “And there is no problem,” she said as an afterthought to his earlier question. There are several problems, you rogue. Your absence, your interest in the viscountess, your promise to school me in the art of seduction, your—
“You’re frowning,” Harry pointed out, a smile in his words.
“Am I?” Which meant he studied her, at least enough to notice whether she frowned or smiled.
“You are. As is your mother. In fact, she has a rather nasty glower trained on the both of us.”
“With good reason,” Anne muttered under her breath. “You’re an unrepentant rogue.”
He grinned as though she’d handed him the finest compliment. Which she hadn’t. She’d intended her words to sting an apparent conscienceless gentleman. “Shall I wave to her?”
Anne stole a glance at her mother, who stood conversing with the Marchioness of Townsend. “You’ll do no such thing.” Though there was some merit to Harry’s observation about Mother. The truth of the matter was that the countess had been furious since Anne had appeared in the foyer with her golden ringlets gone and her loose tresses partially pinned up, the other locks draped about her back and shoulders. The black look in her mother’s eyes suggested she knew very well who to blame for the scandalous arrangement.
And it hadn’t been her maid, Mary.
In fact, if they’d not already been extremely late to Lady Huntly’s’ soiree, Anne suspected her mother would have ordered her above stairs and stood over Mary until each strand of hair was restored to a proper ringlet.
She fingered one of the flowing locks. This is how you should wear your hair, Anne. Not in tight ringlets, but beautiful and free, just as you are. They should caress your shoulders and breasts…
Her mouth screwed up. Yet, for all his opinion of her silly ringlets, he’d not made a mention of her hair. Not that she cared about Harry’s opinion of her ringlets or lack thereof. After all, her intention was to secure the Duke of Crawford’s hand. She merely wanted to know whether she’d affected the appropriate look.
Liar.
Harry leaned ever closer and whispered into her ear. “What has so captivated you, sweet, that—?”
“Do not call me sweet. Especially not here.”
All traces of his relaxed humor fled. “You won’t even deign to look at me?”
She clasped her hands primly in front of her and stole a peek at him from the corner of her eye. “I’m merely trying to better study…” He quirked a golden eyebrow. “The dancers,” she finished lamely. The set concluded.
Lord Forde, a pleasantly handsome, young viscount rumored to be in the market for a wife came forward to claim his set. A waltz.
“Forde?” Harry drawled, the single word a lazy whisper close to her ear.
“Lord Forde is an entirely congenial, honorable,” his eyes narrowed at her deliberate emphasis, “gentleman who would make a—”
The tall, lean gentleman in a sapphire coat drew to a stop before them.
“Get the hell out, Forde,” Harry snapped, not so much as sparing a look for the viscount.
The other gentleman opened and closed his mouth like a fish plucked from a pond. He tugged at his lapels and spun on his heel. “Well,” he mumbled.
Anne closed her eyes. “You cannot go cursing in the middle of the ballroom and running off my dance partners.”
“The hell I can’t,” he muttered.
The orchestra struck up the beginning chords of a waltz. Harry held out his arm.
She stared at the corded muscles that tightened the black fabric of his coat and blinked rapidly. “What are you doing?”
“Claiming your next set. You don’t have a partner.”
Anne pointed her gaze to the ceiling. “Because you ran him off, my lord.” Goodness, the unmitigated gall of him. He’d avoided her for several days, brazenly seduced the viscountess in the midst of Lady Huntly’s’ ball, ran off Lord Forde, a perfectly respectable partner, and now demanded her waltz.
“Anne?”
“Yes?”
“Take my arm,” he commanded through gritted teeth.
“Charming,” she muttered and placed her fingertips along his coat sleeve.
“What was that?” he asked as they reached the dance floor. He guided her hand to his shoulder and placed his long, powerful fingers at her waist.
Her skin burned at his touch upon her person. Her mouth went dry. “I merely was wondering that you’d ever be considered charming. Boorish. Rude. Pompous.”
His gleaming white teeth flashed in a smile. The orchestra plucked the beginning strands of the waltz and Harry guided her through the ballroom in long, sweeping circles.
She directed her gaze to the folds of his cravat, determined to not let him bait her. Something which he seemed remarkably proficient in doing in the year they’d known one another. He applied a gentle pressure to her waist, forcing her stare upward.
“You seem more surly than usual, Anne.”
“I’m not pleased with you, Harry,” she said between gritted teeth.
“I gathered as much,” he said dryly.
Suddenly, his high-handedness and worse, his singular lack of interest or notice boiled like a fresh brewed pot of tea. “You did not come ‘round.” She curled her toes into the soles of her slipper at the revealing admission. And promptly stumbled.
Harry easily caught her. He righted her in his arms. “It’s been a day.” A gentle admonition underscored his response.
Pain slapped at her heart. Fool. Fool. Fool. Why should I care about his singular lack of notice when he should be so indifferent toward me? But blast and double blast…she did care. And she hated that she cared. She dipped her gaze to his cravat. “There are my lessons,” she said. “You pledged to help me—”
He nudged her chin up. “And I am—”
“Each day.”
He shook his head ruefully. “Did I truly say every day?”
Anne nodded solemnly. “Oh, yes. I’m certain of it.” Though in actuality, she couldn’t remember whether they’d settled on a specific number of visits or lessons. She pinched his shoulder. “You owe me a lesson.” She dropped her voice to a hushed whisper. “On seduction, Harry.”