Winning the Wallflower Page 3

  But Cyrus thought he might as well hear it now. Get it over with. Every person within earshot appeared not to breathe, waiting for his reaction. “I wish Miss Towerton all the best in whatever good fortune comes to her,” he said, keeping his tone utterly even.

  “She’s become an heiress,” her ladyship told him, a bit disappointed by Cyrus’s composure. “One of Towerton’s aunts has left her a fortune. It has changed her expectations entirely, of course.”

  “No doubt,” he said, bowing again. “I mustn’t keep you, Lady Summers.” And he walked away, surprising himself again with a wave of black rage that swept up his spine.

  Lucy Towerton was his, and her bloody fortune didn’t matter. He had all the fortune she needed.

  But at the same time his mouth twitched in a cynical smile. She would use her inheritance to buy herself a man of higher worth than himself. A title.

  The only question was when she would throw him over: tonight, or at a later, more private date? He thought it would be tonight. Her mother would force her to it, even if she herself wished to be more diplomatic.

  Indeed, the one and only drawback to marrying Lucy had been her mother. He had suffered Lady Towerton’s presence without becoming homicidal only by spending every single visit mentally plotting ruthless action on the Exchange, which he would execute later that same day. If he had something to think about, he could endure a weekly hour of her company, watching her small eyes glint with an aversion so ingrained that she didn’t even try to hide it.

  Why should she hide it? She was giving her daughter to a man who didn’t even have the right to call himself a gentleman. He could surely acquire that precious “Esquire” by petitioning the College of Arms . . . but he had never bothered.

  His father didn’t care. And since Cyrus fully intended that the Crown should bestow upon him a rank far above Esquire (Number Six on his plan), he didn’t care either.

  All too clearly it had wrenched Lady Towerton’s soul to give her daughter to a man who ranked along with her local butcher, for all he’d gone to Eton.

  She wouldn’t have to endure that shame any longer. And he wouldn’t have to endure her any longer, which was a cheering thought.

  So there was no reason for the crushing bleakness that filled his body from head to toe. He could simply turn to another aristocratic lady on his list. A betrothal that barely survived over a month didn’t warrant his feeling of rage and abandonment. Yet his skin felt taut, as if it were too tightly stretched over his bones.

  It didn’t matter.

  She didn’t matter.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The moment Lucy stepped from behind the palms, she realized that Ravensthorpe had just entered the ballroom. Even from clear across the room, the sight of him caused a rush of blood to her cheeks, signaling another attack of the agonizing shyness that beset her in the presence of her fiancé.

  If only Ravensthorpe weren’t so beautiful! He had eyes the color of a stormy ocean, and a chiseled face, the kind that fell somewhere between an aristocrat and a pirate. He was ten times more masculine than his cousin, the Duke of Pole. Though, of course, Pole used those attributes to make derogatory comments about Ravensthorpe’s plebeian father.

  To be honest, she had hardly believed it when Ravensthorpe asked her to dance six weeks earlier, let alone when he asked for her hand in marriage the very next day. Her mother’s response to this development had been to racket around the house moaning about how Ravensthorpe’s mother had been a hussy who ran away with the family solicitor.

  But Lucy had fallen into a chair, dizzy with disbelief—and joy. The joy had dimmed a little when Ravensthorpe showed no wish to seek her out, or even ask her in person if she would marry him.

  In the weeks since their engagement, as Ravensthorpe maintained a scrupulous, if not to say chilly, distance, she kept reminding herself that he was punctilious. More punctilious than any gentleman she knew, but surely that was all to the good? One didn’t want to marry a man who dragged ladies off into the shrubbery for a kiss. Or worse.

  The fact that she would push Ravensthorpe into the shrubbery herself, if she had the nerve, was not the point. Even before she’d been introduced to him, she’d imagined him a pirate who would snatch her from the deck of a burning boat and clutch her in his strong arms as he leapt to another boat. His face would be white with the fear that he had almost lost her . . .

  And after their meeting, her daydreaming only grew worse. They didn’t seem to have much to talk about, so Lucy had stolen looks under her lashes and gone back to imagining the life of a pirate’s beloved, with Ravensthorpe playing the key role of pirate.

  It hardly needed to be said that pirates didn’t sit politely in the parlor, drinking cups of tea and exchanging commonplaces with one’s mother in utterly colorless tones. Pirates lusted. They risked life and limb and sanity to keep their future wives safe. They were possessive, and desirous, and fierce.

  Only an idiot would think that Ravensthorpe felt anything of that kind toward her.

  It was easy to spot him now, across the ballroom; he stood almost a head taller than most of the men present. His face was refined, but somehow chilly. His mouth was beautifully shaped, but she could scarcely imagine a softening, a loving smile appearing there.

  Impossible. His utter lack of emotion seemed to be ingrained, as much a part of him as those clever eyes, eyes that catalogued her every twitch—without comment.

  Lucy sighed. Even if Ravensthorpe was manifestly no pirate, he was still the only man in London who made her feel feverish at the very sight of him.

  Humiliating or not, she would have to force him to kiss her. If she didn’t, he would move on to the next lady who happened to dance with him.

  She couldn’t bear the prospect of marrying a man who came only up to her chin, and after that spending her life watching Ravensthorpe smiling at another woman. Not that she’d ever seen him smile at a woman.

  Lucy took a deep breath, patted her hair into place, and snapped open her fan. She had a pirate side—or so she told herself; she was certainly tall enough to be one. If nothing else, she could launch herself at Ravensthorpe and knock him to the ground when she knew Olivia and Mrs. Lytton were within eyesight.

  The idea was so appalling that it had merit.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Cyrus was walking around the perimeter of the ballroom, keeping an eye out for his fiancée (or was she? He was no longer certain), when a voice broke into his thoughts.

  “Well, if it isn’t the junior solicitor himself.”

  “Your Grace,” Cyrus said to the Duke of Pole, refusing as always to display anything but the greatest courtesy toward the man he loathed most in the world—his cousin.

  There was a distinct resemblance between the two cousins: both Pole and Cyrus possessed naturally muscled physiques—though Pole seemed to have stopped growing upwards at around seventeen—and aristocratic noses that harkened back to the medieval first duke. But to Cyrus’s mind, any resemblance stopped there. Pole was a bad-tempered and rash gambler, a man with a reckless streak so wide that he had lost everything, even the family estate, to debt.

  The duke did not bother to return Cyrus’s greeting. And, as ever, he didn’t care who witnessed his flagrant discourtesies. He believed his title would protect him from censure, and seemingly, it had. No one wanted to make enemies with a duke.

  “Imagine my surprise,” he drawled. “In an hour or so I’m to dance with the leaning Tower of Pisa, except someone gilded her pillars overnight, so it’s not a dead loss.”

  Cyrus felt his hands curl toward fists. But he did not approve of physical violence in any form; he’d had enough of that as a schoolboy. He relaxed his hands, very deliberately. “I’m afraid I don’t have the faintest idea what you’re saying, Cousin.”

  Sure enough, at this most informal address, a ruddy color spread up Pole’s rather thick neck. He couldn’t bear being acknowledged as a relative. Now he gave a short laugh. “I’m talking about
Miss Lucy Towerton. The woman desperate enough to agree to marry you, though now that she’s no longer so desperate, you’ll have to find another woman who will weigh your money against your bloodlines. Or the lack thereof.”

  A small pool of silence spread around them, as everyone waited to see whether Ravensthorpe would finally strike his cousin. But Cyrus had made up his mind long ago that he would not rise to Pole’s bait. Ever.

  “If you’ll excuse me, Your Grace,” he said now, his voice cool and even. “I’m sure you have an engagement to dance, so I shan’t keep you.”

  Pole snorted. “The Tower had a lucky escape when that fortune came her way. She should at least have a decent bedding in trade for giving up her good name. Now she has the chance to marry a man who’s not a cold fish.”

  For a moment Cyrus came perilously close to abandoning his own policy. Every part of his soul itched to give his cousin an undercut to the chin.

  “Reckon I can make the Tower lean in my direction,” Pole added mockingly, barely lowering his voice.

  Cyrus made a lightning quick decision between two less than appealing choices. He could flatten his cousin, or he could reveal Number Seven on his plan. Self-control won out. “I’ve just signed the final papers on a most interesting purchase, Cousin.”

  “Nothing you do could possibly . . .” Pole’s eyes narrowed and his nostrils flared. “No.”

  “I gather you were forced to break up the estate? Such a pity that you haven’t had better luck at cards. Perhaps you’ll do better at love.” He pivoted on his heel.

  But Pole’s roar followed him. “What did you buy?”

  Cyrus stopped and turned to face Pole. “Why, the country estate, Cousin. The one you lost gambling . . . the one where my mother grew up, and her mother, and her grandmother, and her great-grandmother. Your solicitor mentioned that you didn’t wish to be informed as to the identity of the buyer, but I knew you’d be overjoyed to know that the land will stay in the family after all.”

  He turned again and walked away without waiting to see his cousin’s reaction, meeting the fascinated eyes of those around him with a mask of utter composure frozen on his face. “Mrs. Iffleigh,” he said, taking the hand of the first woman he recognized. “If you are not engaged for this dance, may I have the pleasure?”

  “Mr. Ravensthorpe, of course,” the young matron said, her eyes shining as she dropped into a curtsy.

  And then, when he escorted her to the edge of the dance floor and the first strains of a waltz sounded, she leaned over and whispered, “Bravo!”

  Apparently there were a few who noted Pole’s offensiveness, and ventured to disapprove. Cyrus smiled at Mrs. Iffleigh, and they moved onto the floor.

  For all his surface composure, he was well aware that he had just come closer to losing his temper than he had since leaving school. His heart was still pounding.

  It was some consolation to think that his cousin was feeling precisely the same. His buying the estate had surely been a blow to Pole’s kidneys—though he hadn’t done it for that reason.

  Acquiring an estate was always a signal part of his plan. Marry into the nobility, acquire a suitable country house—though he had never dreamed his ancestral estate would be available—acquire a title by gift of the Crown (the adroit lending that generally resulted in such honorifics was already in course), and then reestablish his mother’s place in the ton. He would, thereby, wipe out the scandal incurred by his mother’s class-defying love for his father.

  His mother might not care about the scandal, but he did.

  In fact, a dispassionate observer might say that it was the only thing he cared about.

  CHAPTER SIX

  “Where on earth have you been?” Lady Towerton scolded when Lucy appeared at her side after a brief visit to the ladies’ retiring room to powder her nose. “Your entire dance card is full, and you have already missed two dances. I’ve had to apologize for you, and it was most embarrassing.”

  Lucy sat down and blinked at the dance card her mother held out, every line filled in with a scrawled name. “What?”

  Her mother’s face held an expression that would have suited a dragon appraising his gold. “Every dance,” she said triumphantly. “Every one. The next is a quadrille with Lord Chester; here he comes.” She bent to Lucy’s ear, under the cover of her fan. “If the men asking weren’t suitable, I informed them that you had no dances left.”

  “And Mr. Ravensthorpe?” Lucy asked.

  Lady Towerton wrinkled her nose. “He has not approached to offer his respects. If he has the faintest common sense, he’ll bow out with a word or two. I’m given to understand that our hostess informed him of your good fortune herself, which was rather brash, but quite useful. It will save you an embarrassing conversation, my dear.”

  “Mother,” Lucy said, a trifle sharply, “surely you do not think that I would jilt a gentleman such as Mr. Ravensthorpe without speaking to him myself?”

  “If he were a gentleman,” her mother said, but her eyes fell under Lucy’s glare.

  “You surprise me,” Lucy said. “If you will excuse me.” And with that, she rose to her feet, plucked the dance card from her mother’s fingers, and curtsied to Lord Chester. He was widowed and a good fifty years old, with four daughters and a rather large stomach. The idea of marrying him was slightly horrifying.

  She caught sight of Ravensthorpe as soon as she and Lord Chester began to progress down the room. He stood to the side of the dance floor, head bent, listening to something Miss Edger was telling him. Surely Miss Edger could not be her replacement . . . she was only the daughter of a baron.

  But on the other hand, Miss Edger was small and delicate and oh-so-pretty, with bouncing curls and a genuinely sweet character. Lucy ground her teeth and forced herself to smile again at Lord Chester.

  At length they advanced all the way down the side of the room and finally turned to come back up. Lucy was determined not to look again toward her fiancé. Surely he would seek her out, and she needn’t chase him, if only because he was the most formal—and mannered—of gentlemen.

  As the dance moved them closer and closer to Ravensthorpe, the buzz in the ballroom grew louder. Then, at a point only feet from him, a strange sound, quite near and suggestive of ripping, penetrated the music. Lord Chester abruptly pulled her out of the formation and, breathing heavily and with a look of profound dismay, said, “Miss Towerton, please forgive me. I’m afraid that I have suffered a wardrobe . . . a wardrobe calamity. If you would excuse me.” She would not have thought a man so stout could move so quickly, but before she could reply, he was gone.

  So she found herself standing beside Ravensthorpe and the winsome Miss Edger, much to the voyeuristic delight of everyone in their vicinity. Lucy recognized in the second before he bowed that her fiancé seemed neither anguished nor perturbed at the sight of her. Not in the slightest.

  Never mind the fact that she had sobbed when her mother dictated that their betrothal must come to an end . . . If his present demeanor was any indication, he hadn’t turned a hair.

  For some reason, that realization merely hardened her determination. She would make him hers. If he thought that she was just a speck of dirt that could be flicked from his cravat . . . well, he was wrong.

  She lifted her head and slowly, from under her eyelashes, met his eyes. There were very few men to whom she could give a coy look; men whose eye level was equal with—or below—hers were reluctant to flirt. And she’d never tried it with Ravensthorpe; she’d always been undone by shyness. Anger seemed to be an excellent tonic for that.

  “Mr. Ravensthorpe,” she said, dropping a curtsy. “Miss Edger.”

  Miss Edger was not only pretty, but perceptive. She gave a quick curtsy, murmured something about her dance card, and disappeared into the crowd. Which left a circle of ostensibly well-bred people amusing themselves by gawking at Lucy and Ravensthorpe as avidly as if they were lead singers at the opera.

  “What a pleasure to see you, Mis
s Towerton,” Ravensthorpe stated.

  “If you would—” she said, and at the same moment he said, “May I—”

  “Yes,” she said, slipping a hand under his arm before he offered it.

  He turned and guided her toward the door leading from the ballroom, which likely meant that they were headed to the library, where she knew refreshments were being served. That room too would be thronged with people, which was a good thing, since she could be compromised in the blink of an eye.

  But she wasn’t quite sure she had the courage to force a kiss on a man who seemed so very uninterested.

  The truth was that both her heart—and her courage—were sinking quickly now that she was actually face-to-face with Ravensthorpe. He was far too handsome for someone like her. It wasn’t just his face . . . even his shoulders were broader than most men’s, as Olivia had pointed out. Every inch of his tall, lean body looked fiercely masculine, and yet graceful.

  Even worse than the inadequacy she felt, there had been absolutely no emotion in his eyes when he saw her. She might have been any slight acquaintance. In fact, she thought with a pang that it might be better to marry a fortune hunter than to be faced by that monumental indifference every morning at breakfast.

  Even Lord Chester’s eyes were warm when he looked at her. She could hardly imagine a marriage in which one yearned for one’s husband and never received the slightest affection in return.

  As they neared the door of the ballroom, still without exchanging a word, people on either side drew back. “I feel like Moses,” Lucy murmured.

  “It does have the feeling of an exodus,” Ravensthorpe replied dryly. “Shall we try for a glass of lemonade, or would you prefer to deliver your news in the relative privacy of the entry?”

  Lucy smiled up at him as sweetly as she was able, inasmuch as she felt like giving him a hearty slap. Was he so eager to be rid of her as that? A casual word in the entry, and he would turn his back on the woman he had promised to marry? “No,” she stated. “I would rather find somewhere truly private.”