“Have we met, Miss…?”
“Lady Grace Belmont,” Aunt Katherine said, stepping closer and glaring back at the woman, “the Earl of Standen’s daughter. And I am her aunt, Lady Oxbury.”
“Hmm.” The nostrils flared. “Lady Oxbury. So it’s been a year already since Oxbury died?”
Aunt Katherine could look rather impressively haughty herself. “Indeed. I put off my widow’s weeds two months ago.” She raised an eyebrow. “I’m sorry, I don’t believe I heard your name, Mrs…?”
Huffy drew in a sharp breath.
The nostrils flared again. “Of course, it has been so long since you’ve graced the ton with your presence, we can’t expect you to be au courant, can we? How many years has it been, Lady Oxbury?”
“A few.”
The woman smirked. “Quite a few.” She raised her massive nose higher. “I am the Duchess of Rothingham.” She nodded at the blonde. “This is my daughter, Lady Charlotte.” Lady Charlotte yawned and played with her fan. “And my friend, Lady Huffington.”
Lady Huffington nodded slightly, puffing out her scrawny chest as though she were especially proud to be called the duchess’s friend.
The duchess raised her eyebrows and twitched her nostrils at Aunt Katherine. “What, may I ask, brings you to Town, Lady Oxbury?” Her smirk grew. “Husband hunting, perhaps?” She made an odd sound, something between a hiccup and a throat clearing that might have been meant as a giggle. “I’ve heard the new earl is not so delighted to have inherited his cousin’s relict along with the title.”
Bloody hell! The woman might be a duchess, but that gave her no right to be insulting.
“Now—ouch!” Aunt Katherine had trod on her foot! Grace turned to glare at her aunt, but Aunt Katherine ignored her.
“I’m here to chaperone my niece, of course, Your Grace.”
Surely Aunt Katherine wasn’t trying to turn the harpy up sweet, was she? She wouldn’t sink that low!
Apparently she would.
“This is Lady Grace’s first Season.” Aunt Katherine actually smiled at the despicable duchess.
Grace clenched her teeth, clasped her hands, and counted to ten. Lady Charlotte snorted along with her mother. Well, really, Grace couldn’t blame them. She was ridiculously old for a debutante.
“How”—the duchess glanced at Lady Huffington and raised her eyebrows to her damn turban—“nice.”
Lady Huffington snickered.
Grace counted to twenty.
The line advanced, and the duchess’s august party stepped through the front door, thankfully turning their elegantly attired backs on them.
Grace bent to her aunt and hissed, “I can’t believe you didn’t kick that old harridan in the shins.”
“Grace!” Aunt Katherine sent a furtive glance at the duchess’s back. “Shh! We don’t want to annoy the duchess.”
“You may not. I don’t give a flying fig whether I annoy her or not.”
“Well, you should. You don’t want to make such a powerful enemy.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“It is not ridiculous.”
The gentleman and lady behind them paused their conversation to look at them. Aunt Katherine took Grace’s arm and urged her forward.
“London is not Standen, Grace. Everyone knows you in the country; your reputation and your father’s title protect you from malicious gossip. But here in Town…Well, the duchess could ruin your Season before you step into Alvord’s ballroom.”
“Gammon! I don’t believe a word of it.”
“Believe it.” Aunt Katherine’s mouth formed a thin, straight line.
“But they are just in front of us. They can’t—”
“They can.” Aunt Katherine’s mouth twisted. “Gossip runs like fire through straw in London.”
Her voice held a distinctively bitter note. Had she been scorched by the ton’s tittle-tattle? How could she have been? As the duchess had said, it had been years since Aunt Katherine had been in London. Was that why she had stayed away, because of some ancient on dit?
Impossible. Aunt Katherine was the pattern card of composure and restraint. Even when she’d been arguing with Papa at Standen, trying to persuade him to allow this trip, she hadn’t raised her voice. No, surely Aunt Katherine had never done a scandalous thing in her life.
They stepped into the entry hall then and Grace’s mouth dropped open. She snapped it closed when she felt Aunt Katherine’s surreptitious tug on her arm.
She was not completely green. Papa was an earl, after all; Standen was a large, stately pile. She had been to a number of balls and parties, but nothing compared to this.
The broad marble staircase, sweeping up from the wide entry with its black and white patterned floor, was crowded with men in precisely fitted black coats and snowy white cravats and women in debutante white or gowns of brilliant colors, their heads adorned with turbans or flowers or ostrich feathers, their necks dripping with jewels. And the noise! The sound of so many conversations reverberated, becoming a roar. It was hard to imagine how anyone could understand a word.
She and Aunt Katherine made their way slowly up the stairs—Grace looked back to see that people were still coming in the door—and down the receiving line. The duke was young—not yet thirty at a guess—and tall, taller than she, as was the Earl of Westbrooke. Even the American girl, the earl’s cousin, Miss Sarah Hamilton, was roughly Grace’s height, though of a slighter build.
“See,” Aunt Katherine said as soon as they’d stepped through the wide double doors into the ballroom, “you did not tower over the duke or the earl or even Miss Hamilton. You have been in such a pucker over nothing.”
“Hmm.” Could it be that she wouldn’t stand out here as she did at home? She looked out over the crowded ballroom and felt a small frisson, a slight shiver of excitement. Perhaps this trip to Town would not be a complete disaster. Perhaps Papa was wrong. “I might have overreacted slightly.”
“Might have?” Aunt Katherine shook her head. “There’s no ‘might’ about it. I thought you were not going to leave the carriage.”
“Well—”
“And now look.” Katherine made a small, graceful gesture encompassing the ballroom. “You have all of society at your feet.”
“Until we descend these stairs and join the crush.”
Katherine grinned. “True. So take a moment before we do”—they stepped aside to let another couple, just free of the receiving line, pass down the steps to the ballroom—“to look. I see a number of tall gentlemen—and I daresay they see you.”
“Ack.”
Katherine actually giggled. “Shall we make our way to that poor man over by the ficus? Or the one by the windows? Or perhaps the two gentlemen by the…by the—oh, dear God.” Aunt Katherine turned as white as a sheet; she put her hand on Grace’s arm as if to steady herself.
“What is it?”
Grace turned to see what—or who—had so disturbed Aunt Katherine. She saw two gentlemen, partially hidden by a clump of potted palms. Aunt Katherine was focused on a tall, pleasant-looking man, with dark hair, graying slightly at the temples. A distinguished looking gentleman, not alarming in the slightest. What could be the matter with Aunt—
Her gaze traveled to the other man.
Oh, my.
The second man was even taller than his companion and roughly ten years younger. His black coat stretched tightly across impossibly broad shoulders. His hair, dark blond and slightly longer than fashionable, waved back from his broad forehead. He had deep-set eyes, high cheekbones, a straight nose, firm mouth…and was that a cleft in his chin?
He was staring at her. A very odd feeling began low in her belly. Lower even. A heat and a heaviness. A dampness.
She flushed. Could he tell?
Aunt Katherine’s fingers dug into her arm. “I…I…I need to go to the ladies’ retiring room,” she said. “Now!” Retiring—no, retreating—sounded like an excellent notion.
ABOUT THE AUTH
OR
A native of Washington, D.C., Sally MacKenzie still lives in suburban Maryland with her transplanted upstate New Yorker husband. She’s written federal regulations, school newsletters, auction programs, class plays, and swim-league guidance, but it wasn’t until the first of her four sons headed off to college that she tried her hand at romance. She can be reached by email at [email protected] or by snail mail at P. O. Box 2453, Kensington, MD 20891. Please visit her home in cyberspace at www.sallymackenzie.net.
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Copyright © 2008 by Sally MacKenzie
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ISBN: 1-4201-0524-8
The Naked Gentleman Page 32
