“Ah, there you are, Monty,” he said. “You ought to be dancing. There are so many beauties out there that my eyes are dazzled.”
He grinned cheerfully.
“And I suppose they all want to dance with you,” Jasper said, getting to his feet and setting a hand on the boy’s shoulder.
“Well,” Merton said sheepishly, “I am Merton, you know.”
“Which fact will endear you to every female heart until you finally marry the owner of one of them,” Jasper said. “But those blond curls and that smile probably have something to do with it too.”
The boy looked like an angel, in fact. Fortunately, he possessed enough spirit and firmness of character to save him from appearing either weak or insipid. Jasper genuinely liked him. And the boy was new in town. It was no wonder if he was attracting far more than his share of female attention.
“Come and meet Meg,” Merton said. “My eldest sister. She did not come down to the library the other evening when Kate did.”
Ah. Now what? Hide himself in another game? Accept the inevitable? He accepted the inevitable, largely because he did not like that word hide.
“My pleasure,” he said with cheerful untruth, squeezing the boy’s shoulder.
The orchestra was taking a break. Had it not been, of course, Merton would not have been at liberty to come to the card room. He was much in demand as a dancing partner-and it was definitely not just because he was the Earl of Merton. One had only to look at the smitten, worshipful faces of the very young ladies as he passed to understand that.
It all made Jasper feel like a wizened grandfather at the grand age of twenty-eight. Though his own sudden appearance in the ballroom was not going unnoticed, of course. His lips twitched with amusement-until he recalled where they were going. And if he had entertained any faint hope that Katherine Huxtable would not be standing with her sister, it was soon dashed.
She saw him coming and raised her eyebrows-and her chin. She raised her fan too and wafted it with furious enough vigor to cool an army had there been one standing directly behind her.
“Meg,” Merton said with cheerful unawareness of anything untoward in the atmosphere about him, “here is Lord Montford. I promised to bring him along to introduce him. He is Con’s friend-and mine too. It is a pity Con could not be here tonight. This is my eldest sister, Monty. She was like a mother to me for years after our parents died-and a better mother no fellow could ever desire.”
He beamed affectionately at her as she curtsied.
“Lord Montford,” she said.
Her eyes were as blue as her sister’s. He had expected that they would be dark, to match her hair. She was indeed a rare beauty. They were a family of beauties, in fact-with the possible exception of the duchess, though she was no antidote either.
“Miss Huxtable?” He bowed. “Miss Katherine?”
She did not curtsy. And she was going to shake her hand right off her wrist if she did not stop fanning her cheeks with such desperate intent.
He turned back to her sister.
“May I hope to lead you into the next set?” he asked. He supposed Merton might expect it of him, and the lady had not recoiled in horror at the sight of him. Either she knew nothing of his notoriety or she was made of stern stuff, like her sister.
“Oh,” she said, looking genuinely sorry, “I have already promised the set to the Marquess of Allingham, my lord. He asked me a while ago. But I am much obliged to you for your courtesy.”
He inclined his head to her. He could decently fade away to distant parts now.
“Ah, here he comes,” she said, looking beyond him and smiling a warm welcome at Allingham.
“I am to sit out with Miss Acton,” Merton said a little ruefully. “She is not allowed to waltz, you know, as she has not yet been granted permission by any of the patronesses of Almack’s. I had better go and find her. Excuse me, Meg? Kate? Monty?”
And he was gone.
So, within the next few seconds, was Miss Huxtable.
Which left Jasper stranded with the younger sister.
A waltz.
Hmm.
Distant parts-in the form of the card room-beckoned urgently.
“I have heard,” he said instead of bowing and hurrying away as fast as he decently could, “that moving a single body part continuously, without rest, can cause rheumatics in later life.”
She noted the direction of his gaze, and her fan abruptly stopped waving. Her arm fell to her side.
“That,” she said, “would be my problem, Lord Montford.”
It was not a very witty or original response. But it was firm and spirited enough to show him that she had neither forgotten nor forgiven.
Neither fact surprised him.
“Unlike the infant Miss Acton,” he said, “I daresay you were granted permission to waltz an age ago, Miss Huxtable. Not that I wish to cast aspersions upon your advanced age.”
“I am to dance the set with Mr. Yardley,” she said.
“Yardley,” he told her, “was called away from the card room half an hour or so ago and left at a trot. I believe his wife is in a delicate way and had reached a crisis in her… ah, confinement.”
“Oh,” she said, and looked mortified.
Perhaps she had not realized Yardley was married. He liked to keep the fact a secret whenever he could, being the consummate ladies’ man. This was Mrs. Yardley’s sixth confinement if Lord Montford had not missed one or two when he was not paying attention.
“You had better waltz with me instead,” he said.
Was he quite insane?
“Had I?” Her eyebrows shot up, and her fan went to work on her cheeks again. “I think not, Lord Montford.”
“It will appear that you are a wallflower if you do not,” he said. “That is a nasty feeling for a lady, I have been told. Especially for ladies of a… ah, certain age.”
“Of a certain-” Her nostrils flared, her wrist stilled, her bosom swelled, her eyes glared, and… she laughed. Suddenly, unexpectedly, and unmistakably with genuine humor. Memory caught at the edges of his mind.
“How absolutely outrageous of you,” she said. “I think it is something I liked about you at one time.”
“Until you did not like me at all,” he said, tipping his head slightly to one side, his eyes fixed on hers.
“Yes, until then,” she agreed. She was looking at him consideringly. “For a long time I thought you the embodiment of evil. But then it struck me that the very fact of your deliberately not winning your wager that night proved that there was a shred of decency in you.”
He shuddered theatrically.
“That failure,” he said, “has been a blot upon my reputation that clings to memory like a limpet. That fact, in addition to the humiliation of having someone think me decent, brings me to the very brink of despair.”
“Oh,” she said, closing her fan with a snap, “you need not worry unduly about that, Lord Montford. I certainly do not think you a decent man-only one who on a single occasion in his life did something almost decent.”
He smiled at her.
“We had better waltz,” he said. “You do not wish to be a wallflower, do you? And I do not wish everyone assembled here to see me publicly rejected after I have humbly begged for your hand in the dance.”
He thought she would refuse and marveled over the fact that he hoped she would not.
Lord! Devil take it, he had avoided all thought of her for a number of years. She represented his greatest humiliation. The only humiliation, in fact. Without her, his glorious reputation would have remained unblemished. It was not a pleasant experience to be forced to admit publicly to all one’s peers that one had failed to win a wager. Especially one concerning a woman-and a wager he might have won handily. It was not good for a man’s pride.