Lady Whistledown Strikes Back

by Julia Quinn

  “Martin, Martin,” the parrot screeched again and pecked at her ear. Lovely, she was turning thirty and had only ever been kissed by a bird.

  That was utterly pathetic. And in that second, Bella decided that she really ought to do something about it. She had two weeks, after all, before the turning thirty part happened.

  Two weeks.

  Though her imagination did tend to run away with her, she knew, of course, that her prince in shining armor would probably not show up in the next two weeks. He’d had thirty years, after all, and had not found her.

  But perhaps, at least, she could find someone who would kiss her.

  The parrot pecked at her again, and Bella shooed him away. Preferably a someone who lacked feathers and a beak for a mouth.

  Chapter 2

  It is a commonly held belief that the matrons of society are the most mad for marriage (for their progeny, of course, not themselves; far be it from This Author to suggest that any of London’s leading ladies secretly dream of bigamy).

  However, as there is always an exception to prove a rule, might This Author point a finger in the direction of the Earl of Waverly? The gentleman in question is a most affable sort, but terrifyingly single-minded when it comes to the marital status of his as yet unwed son and heir, Lord Roxbury.

  Roxbury, who is, This Author is informed, on the darker side of thirty-five, has yet to show a particular interest in any specific marriageable miss. As a future earl, he is considered a prime catch by persons other than his parents. (This Author assures all Dear Readers that this is not always the case.) But season in and season out, Roxbury evades the marital noose, and This Author fears that poor Lord Waverly might expire of frustration before his son finally accedes to his wishes and walks someone (anyone) down the aisle.

  LADY WHISTLEDOWN’S SOCIETY PAPERS, 29 MAY 1816

  Anthony Doring, Lord Roxbury leaned back against the elegant red silk that covered his favorite chair in his front drawing room and listened as his father, Robert Doring, fourth Earl of Waverly, regaled him with all the reasons Anthony should marry. Anthony nodded and smiled and nodded and smiled some more and then checked his watch and nodded again.

  This was actually a common occurrence. Every Wednesday morning, Lord Waverly sat with his son in the front drawing room of Lord Roxbury’s town house. And each week the conversation was basically the same. The niceties of weather and health were gotten out of the way early and quickly, and they were always followed by an accounting of any new ladies in town that would make perfect Lady Roxburys. And then, of course, Lord Waverly liked to remind his son of the reasons he must marry.

  Lord Roxbury always heartily agreed with everything his father said, for it made the experience much more palatable, and usually shorter.

  Today, just as they were coming up to reason number five, a slight knock at the door interrupted them.

  Anthony glanced up to see his butler, Herman, at the door. “Beg your pardon, my lord, there is a lady—”

  Anthony quickly stopped the man from continuing with a small gesture of his hand. He stood and walked over to the door. “Show her to the green room,” he said quietly before the butler could continue. And then turned to smile and nod at his father.

  He had not expected Lady Brazleton so early in the day, but the last thing he wanted was his father meeting up with the woman in his hallway. Meeting a married, lone woman in his hallway would surely precipitate a lengthy lecture on the downfalls of debauchery. And, since his father would at least have the decency not to subject him to such a tirade with Lady Brazleton in the house, it would most likely mean an extra visit on top of the usual Wednesday visit, and, really, there was just so much a son could take.

  “Now then, Roxbury,” his father said. “I’ve come to a decision.”

  Anthony nodded, but he didn’t smile. His father’s decisions were rarely anything one would smile about.

  “You, son, are giving a party,” his father said.

  Anthony nodded and decided to pace rather than sit. He had to contend with a lot of pent-up energy when he listened to his father. Pacing helped. A good round in the ring at Gentleman Jim’s was exactly the ticket, actually, and Anthony could usually be found in that establishment every Wednesday afternoon.

  “A party, you say?” Anthony asked.

  “Yes, sir, a party. You have managed to make yourself persona non grata with most of the eligible young ladies in society, Roxbury. They all believe you to be a rake and a rogue and not husband material at all.”

  “My job is done.”

  “I think a party is exactly the thing to put you back in good standing with the mamas trying to marry off their daughters,” his father said without acknowledging that Anthony had said anything at all.

  “Ah, and that is exactly my highest goal in life.”

  “No, your goal is marriage.”

  “Right, but first a party, I presume,” Anthony said, stopping for a moment to take in the sight of a very pretty bird in the tree just outside of his window. Spring, finally. Winter had been dreadfully cold, and Anthony was looking forward to a bit of warmth.

  Women tended to wear less when it was warm. It made life rather more interesting.

  “Lady Neeley gave me the idea, actually,” his father continued.

  “Ah,” Anthony murmured. His father and Lady Neeley had spent ten years courting. Actually, his father had asked Lady Neeley to marry him on many occasions, but the lady was intent on keeping her independence.

  It seemed she didn’t mind plotting to take his away, though. “I am assuming,” he said to his father, “this party Lady Neeley has decided I must have will precede my marriage?” Usually Anthony felt a few steps ahead of his father, but this whole party idea was definitely throwing him a bit of a curve.

  “Yes, exactly,” Lord Waverly said, thumping the floor with his silver-headed walking stick. “The mothers will see that you are not completely without social graces, and the daughters will see that you have a very lovely home. I think it will help your standing as an eligible bachelor considerably.”

  “Lovely.”

  “Lady Neeley, of course, is adept at parties. Her parties are always the best.”

  “I hear her dinner party last night was not horribly successful. In fact, I think her guests never got fed and were strip-searched to round out the evening.”

  Lord Waverly pinched his lips in a sour look. “I don’t know what you are talking about, boy. Now, then, Lady Neeley has shared her secret of party success with me, and I am sending her to you.”

  “Her?” Anthony left the bird to its twittering and continued his pacing in earnest. If he had to spend even a minute alone in the company of Lady Neeley, he would surely go mad.

  “You will understand later.” Lord Waverly levered himself up with the help of his walking stick. “I will show myself out. I shall expect an invitation to your party within the week, and should like to see the event scheduled before the end of June. ’Tis a good month for a party, is it not?”

  Anthony nodded and smiled, and decided that he might just have to take a trip out of town for a few weeks. His father had left pestering behind and had definitely crossed the line into intruding. This was a very bad thing.

  As Lord Waverly exited, Anthony let his smile slip into a frown, but then he remembered the tasty morsel awaiting him in the green room, and he smiled again.

  Lady Brazleton, just the thing to take his mind off his father and Lady Neeley and parties. Anthony smoothed his waistcoat as he left the front drawing room and crossed the hall toward the green room. He nodded and shushed Herman, who seemed overly eager to explain Lady Brazleton’s existence in the green room, and slipped through the half-open doorway.

  Lady Brazleton was bent over the table that stood against the opposite wall, obviously intrigued with the ivory inlay. It was a beautiful table, he had to admit.

  Although he would argue that his own view at the moment rivaled any other. He stood still for a moment, enjo
ying the way the soft blue fabric of Lady B’s gown clung to the curve of her bottom. She had a bonnet on, of all things, with a huge rim that made it impossible to see any part of her hair or face, but it did show off the nape of her neck.

  He had not realized what a lovely neck Lady B had. It was long and slender, and he knew that he must, immediately, press his lips to the soft spot that dipped just where her neck met her back.

  Anthony strode forward, placed one hand on the beautiful curve of Lady B’s backside, and put his open mouth against her soft nape.

  Instead of the sensual sound he was expecting, the woman gave a great yelp of surprise, snapped her head up, and savagely smacked his nose with the back of her damned hard head.

  Anthony managed to bite his tongue, and he was pretty sure his nose was broken. He blinked as lights seemed to pop in front of his eyes, and then he saw very large gray eyes staring into his.

  Lady Brazleton, if he remembered correctly, had pale blue eyes, he thought hazily as darkness began to edge into his peripheral vision.

  For a moment, Isabella could only stare in complete shock at Lord Roxbury. But then she realized that he was bleeding profusely, and he did rather look like he might faint.

  “Oh dear,” she said. And then she grabbed the handkerchief she could see poking out of a pocket of his jacket and shoved it against his nose. “Pinch your nose,” she told him. “It will stop the bleeding.”

  He blinked and did nothing, so she pinched his nose through the handkerchief and led him over to a settee. “Lie down, put your head back,” she ordered.

  This time he did exactly what she told him to do. Hopefully that meant his head was clearing. She had hit him terribly hard.

  She rubbed the back of her head. She was going to have a nasty bump there.

  Isabella pressed Lord Roxbury’s nose together and bit her lip. She did feel like giggling, and this surely was neither the time nor the place.

  “Obviously, you thought I was someone else,” she said.

  “Obviouswee.”

  She giggled.

  Over the handkerchief, dark brown eyes glared at her. “Sorry,” she said, trying to subdue her mirth. “You must forgive me, Lord Roxbury, I’ve never been touched so, and it shocked me. I did not even hear you enter the room.”

  He didn’t answer her this time, but he was still glaring at her like she was some errant child.

  That really did not seem fair at all.

  “Anyway, I am sorry to disappoint,” she said. And then she ruined the apology by letting another laugh slip out.

  Lord Roxbury glared a bit more, but then he blinked and seemed more baffled than angry. That was good, at least. She really did not see that he had much of a leg to stand on being angry with her.

  He had grabbed her bottom, after all.

  And he had kissed her neck.

  She suddenly realized that she had been kissed, and her face heated and, probably, turned a few shades of red. Well, goodness, that was fast. She hadn’t really been sure how she’d get a man to kiss her before her thirtieth birthday, and here it had happened already.

  It had felt very lovely, too. She closed her eyes for a moment and tried to remember the fleeting touch. Lord Roxbury had a reputation as a complete rogue, so he must be a very good kisser. Bella remembered that in the split second before she had reacted, Lord Roxbury’s warm lips had felt very soft against her neck.

  Bugger it. She really wished she could turn back time. Rather than break the man’s nose, she would have turned in his arms and tried to grab a kiss on the lips before he’d realized his mistake.

  Bella sighed and opened her eyes.

  Lord Roxbury was staring at her.

  She blinked, as she had rather forgotten that he was there.

  He reached up and put his large, dark hand over hers.

  For a long moment, Bella could only stare at the back of Lord Roxbury’s hand. In all honesty, she had never in her life been this close to a man before. In fact, she was pretty sure she had never had a man touch her hand, other than her father, of course. But her father had been a small man, with slight hands.

  Lord Roxbury was not a small man. She had seen him before, of course, but always at a distance. Now, Bella realized, he had extremely wide shoulders, as he could barely balance on the small settee. And his hands made hers look like those of a porcelain doll.

  He raised his dark brows at her, and Bella realized with a jolt that he was holding the handkerchief, and she could pull away. Obviously, he had been waiting for her to pull her hand away for some time.

  How embarrassing.

  Bella straightened quickly and entwined her fingers together in front of herself.

  Lord Roxbury swung his legs around so that he was sitting, and then pulled the handkerchief away from his face carefully. He folded the bloodied thing and stashed it on the table beside him before looking up at her.

  “Who are you?” he asked finally.

  Bella nearly laughed again, but she managed to keep the impulse checked in the face of Lord Roxbury’s rather dour look. “Martin,” she said. “I am Isabella Martin. Lady Neeley said that you would be expecting me.”

  “Lady Neeley,” Lord Roxbury said as he shook his head. And then he glanced around. “Shouldn’t you have a chaperone?”

  Bella did laugh this time. “Oh, I don’t usually take a chaperone with me. I’m not anyone…that is to say, no one ever takes any notice of me. No one notices that I don’t have a chaperone, so I don’t think it is necessary.”

  Lord Roxbury squinted at her and then leaned his head against his hands. “Could you sit down,” he said, the words a question, but the tone a command.

  Bella quickly sat beside him and then realized that the settee was rather small, but it would be horribly uncomfortable to actually stand and move to another chair. She contemplated the problem for a moment, her eyes on the very small space between her knees and Roxbury’s thigh.

  “You’re Lady Neeley’s companion,” he said. “I recognize you now.”

  Bella nodded and said nothing, though a tiny minx within her wanted to ask whom he had been expecting. Who was supposed to be on the receiving end of that dark, soft kiss and the touch of those large hands? Bella shivered and realized that she was once again staring at Lord Roxbury’s thigh.

  She really couldn’t help it, though. He had a muscle running the length of his thigh that one could actually see. Bella didn’t think she had ever actually seen a man’s muscle through his clothing.

  That thought made her giggle. As if she had seen a muscle without clothing. Bella shoved her hand against her lips to try and keep her laugh at bay.

  “You find this whole incident rather amusing, don’t you?” Roxbury asked darkly.

  Bella could only shrug, for if she spoke, she would laugh. She could not seem to keep her mind or her eyes off Lord Roxbury’s leg. And once she managed to lift her gaze up to his face, the sight only emphasized the fact that she was very close to an exceptionally good looking man.

  He had chocolate brown eyes that seemed to sparkle with hidden amusement, even when he was irritated, like now. He had a long face and a hard jaw, with straight brown hair that, at the moment, at least, tended to hang in his eyes. From her usual vantage point, sitting in the far corners of the ballrooms during the soirees she attended with Lady Neeley, Bella had seen Lord Roxbury. She knew that when he was at a ball, he always had his hair slicked back away from his face.

  And she had really never known that Lord Roxbury’s very body seemed to hum with an energy that radiated warmth and something else that made her feel extremely jumpy.

  “Strange,” Lord Roxbury said. “In my experience, young maidens usually yell and scream and cry and have hysterics if something like this happens to them.”

  Bella smiled. “You mean you’ve done this to other young maidens?” she asked.

  “Well, no, not exactly, but—”

  “Anyway, Lord Roxbury, I’m not a young maiden.” Bella sat a
bit straighter. “I’ll have you know that I shall turn thirty exactly two weeks from this very day. And, thanks to you…” Bella touched his knee lightly and then pulled her hand away quickly. Honestly, she had not meant to touch him, it had been a reflex.

  One she had never had before in her life, but there you go.

  Bella curled her fingers in her skirt and cleared her throat.

  “Thanks to me?” Roxbury prompted her.

  “Thanks to you, I shall at least have been kissed before I turn thirty.” Really, that was not what she should have said. Lady Neeley would have dropped dead in her tracks if she’d heard her.

  Roxbury blinked. And then he leaned his head back and laughed.

  “Sorry,” Bella said. “That was forward of me.”

  “Terribly forward of you,” Roxbury nodded. “But if you think that you have been kissed, then, obviously, being forward is not something you are used to.”

  Bella frowned. “Are you funning me, my lord?”

  “Very much so. Now then, Miss Martin, I am going to guess that you are what my father was speaking of when he said Lady Neeley was sending over her secret weapon for a party.”

  Bella sighed in relief. Finally, a subject she felt in control of. “Yes, I am supposed to help you throw a grand party.”

  “And why are you going to help me?”

  “Because I’m very good at parties, my lord. I organize all of Lady Neeley’s. With the exception of last night, Lady Neeley’s parties are always wonderful. And last night’s debacle was entirely out of my hands.”

  “Of course it was.”

  “Now then, Lord Roxbury, I was thinking that we could do something with the Asian theme of the décor in your home. Perhaps a Japanese party?”

  “A Japanese party?” Lord Roxbury looked perplexed. “What would a Japanese party be like?”

  “I have no idea,” Bella said with a laugh. “But we could do some research.” Bella stood and turned slowly, taking in the Asian panels Lord Roxbury had hung on his walls. “We could do some wonderful things with the decorations. And you could hire girls to dress up in kimonos and walk around with trays of hors d’oeuvres.”