“I will not suggest leading you to the refreshment room, Miss Edgeworth,” he said, the laughter in his voice now as well as his eyes, “even though I daresay you are very thirsty by now. Your family would not approve. They can scarce wait for you to return to their midst so that they can inform you that you have just risked your reputation by waltzing with London’s most notorious rakehell.”
“And have I?” she asked him.
“Waltzed with a rakehell? Oh, undoubtedly,” he murmured.
“Thank you, my lord,” she said politely when he had returned her to Aunt Sadie’s side. She regarded him with deliberate, cool hauteur. He was not even ashamed of his own reputation?
“The pleasure was all mine, Miss Edgeworth,” he told her, and before she could realize his intent, he had possessed himself of the hand she had just removed from his sleeve and raised it to his lips. Her hand was gloved, but even so the gesture seemed starkly, shockingly intimate. She resisted the urge to snatch away her hand as if it had been scalded and so draw unwelcome attention to herself. There was nothing so very improper about such a gesture, after all.
And then he was gone—not just from her side, but from the ballroom itself. She watched him go with considerable relief—and with a strange, unwilling awareness that the rest of the evening was going to seem very flat indeed.
Perhaps even the rest of her life, she thought with uncharacteristic hyperbole.
Chapter 3
Despite the lateness of her return home from the ball, Lauren was up at her usual time the next morning to accompany Elizabeth on her daily walk in Hyde Park. The air was brisk and chill, though it promised fair for later in the day.
“Exercise does feel good,” the duchess said as they approached the house on their return. “I feel remarkably fit despite a growing ungainliness, and I am quite sure it is the walking and fresh air that does it, despite Lyndon’s anxieties.”
Marriage suited Elizabeth, Lauren reflected. She had wed for the first time just seven months before. Pregnancy suited her too. There was a new glow about her.
The footman who opened the door to their knock bowed deferentially as he stood aside to allow them in. “A bouquet has been delivered for Miss Edgeworth, your grace,” he said. “Mr. Powers had it carried into the salon.”
“For me?” Lauren asked in some astonishment.
But Elizabeth was laughing as she took Lauren’s arm and turned her in the direction of the visitors’ salon, which led off the hall. “A bouquet the morning after a ball?” she said. “Goodness me, Lauren, you have a beau.”
“Nonsense!” Lauren winced. “I daresay it is from Mr. Bartlett-Howe. He danced with me twice last evening and led me in to supper. But I did try not to encourage him. How very embarrassing.”
“A gentleman’s admiration need never embarrass you, Lauren,” Elizabeth said, “even if you cannot return it.”
Lauren bit her lip when she entered the salon and saw the handsome bouquet of at least two dozen red rosebuds amid lavish sprays of fern, already arranged in a crystal vase. She crossed the room and picked up the card that was propped against the vase. She hoped fervently he had not made a cake of himself with extravagant sentiments.
“They are quite lovely,” Elizabeth said from behind her. “Roses must have been difficult to find this early in the year. And exorbitantly expensive, I daresay. Poor Mr. Bartlett-Howe. He is so very earnest and worthy.” But there was a tremor of laughter in her voice.
“Alas,” the writing on the card said, “I could find no violets to do justice to your eyes.” The signature was scrawled in a bold, careless hand. “Ravensberg.”
His laughing gray eyes, his devil-may-care smile, his slender grace, his male vitality, the indefinable air of danger that clung about him—Lauren had seen them all behind her closed eyelids as she had tried to fall asleep after the ball. And she had pictured the same man half naked in his skin-tight breeches, uttering shocking profanities. And holding a young woman in his arms and kissing her with obvious enthusiasm.
“The flowers are not from Mr. Bartlett-Howe,” she said. “They are from Viscount Ravensberg. I waltzed with him last evening.”
The duchess looked over her shoulder at the card. “Oh, goodness,” she said gaily, “he is smitten indeed, Lauren. He has complimented your eyes. Who is he? The name is not familiar.”
“He told me,” Lauren said, replacing the card against the vase, “that he sought an introduction to me to discover if my gown matched my eyes in color. Have you ever heard anything more absurd?”
“He does not sound like the sort of gentleman the Earl of Sutton would present to you.” Elizabeth’s voice still shook with amusement. “It must have been Joseph, the rogue.”
“It was Lady Mannering,” Lauren said. “Aunt Sadie and Wilma almost had the vapors. They told me after I had danced with him that I must cut his acquaintance if he should presume upon it again. Uncle Webster called him a black sheep. Joseph told me he was a cavalry officer until recently. He is heir to the Earl of Redfield.”
“Ah.” Elizabeth nodded. “Yes, of course. The earl’s eldest son died a year or two ago, I remember.”
“Elizabeth?” Lauren turned to look at her, and she could feel her cheeks grow hot. “He is the gentleman who was fighting in the park last week.”
“Oh, dear.” But Elizabeth, after the first moment of surprise, chose to laugh again rather than blanch with horror. “Poor Lauren. You must have felt trapped indeed when Lady Mannering presented him and good manners forced you to dance with him—to waltz with him, did you say? And now he is sending you flowers. I did notice on that infamous occasion, of course, that he is a remarkably handsome young man.”
“Not extraordinarily handsome.” Lauren flushed. “Next time I see him, if there is a next time, I shall incline my head just so, thank him for the roses, and make it perfectly clear that I desire no further acquaintance with him.”
“You depress pretension so well,” Elizabeth said, her eyes dancing with merriment. “There is no more perfect lady than Lauren Edgeworth.” She linked her arm through her niece’s. “Now, let us go for breakfast. I shall have a footman carry the vase up to your sitting room so that you may be reminded for the next few days that there is a gentleman in town who is so lost in admiration for your eyes that he searched for flowers to match them in beauty—and was forced to settle for roses instead.”
“It is no laughing matter, Elizabeth,” Lauren said reproachfully, though she smiled despite herself and then chuckled.
Kit jumped down from the high seat of his curricle in Grosvenor Square and tossed the ribbons to his tiger, who had already scrambled down from his perch behind and rushed to the horses’ heads. Kit approached the front door of the Duke of Portfrey’s town house and rapped the knocker. He had ascertained ahead of time that this was one of the afternoons on which the duchess was regularly at home to callers.
At least Lauren Edgeworth was beautiful, he thought. Extremely lovely, in fact, even if one discounted those extraordinary, almost smoky violet eyes. She was no young girl, of course, but then the dignity of extra years enhanced her good looks rather than detracting from them. He was almost thirty himself and was not remotely interested in simpering young misses. Miss Edgeworth bore herself with proud grace and wore on her face the sort of perpetual half smile he had seen on certain Greek statues. Last evening she had given the distinct impression that she was immune to charm and humor and even the mildest attempt at flirtation. He had been somewhat disconcerted by her chilly demeanor, if the truth were known.
But therein lay the challenge.
The door opened, the ducal butler bowed with such stiff hauteur that the uninitiated might have mistaken him for the duke himself, and Kit tossed his card onto the silver salver the man held.