by Gaelen Foley
Night enhanced the luscious perfumes wafting from the burgeoning lilacs, the cherry trees dripping with snowy blooms, pearly white in the darkness, and the jasmine climbing up the side of the house. The neat walkways below were lined with demure lilies of the valley and rosebushes showing off their first fruits, red and lush.
As she stood at the balustrade, the night breeze rippling gently through the skirts of her high-waisted ball gown in a delicate almond-blossom shade, she heard giggling and pattering footsteps, and turned as a few trusted members of Daphne’s clique came tripping out over the threshold of the open French doors. The girls hurried across the veranda toward her, all bouncing side-curls and fluttering fans.
“Jacinda! There you are! You must come at once, this instant!” Helena commanded with a breathless laugh, rushing over to her in a whoosh of pink taffeta.
Amelia followed, in jonquil-yellow India muslin with flounces around the hem. “She’s out here, Daphne!”
“Yes, I’m right here,” Jacinda answered brightly, turning to them. “What is it?”
The most curious thing had happened once the news had gotten out that she would not be marrying Lord Griffith: Daphne Taylor had gone on a campaign to become her bosom friend.
Inwardly, Jacinda was having none of it—she was no fool. The reigning beauty’s sudden sugary sweetness merely revealed that Daphne had wanted Ian for herself all along. Still, no matter how Daphne tried to butter her up, Jacinda had no intention of playing matchmaker. That was no way to repay a loyal family friend.
“Oh, there you are!” Daphne exclaimed, striding out to them. “We were wondering where you had gotten off to.” The tall, willowy redhead was clad in a pale green gown of gossamer satin with large pink roses embroidered around the hem and short puff sleeves. “Dear me, you’re not feeling poorly, are you?” she asked solicitously, coming over to her.
“No, I just needed a bit of air,” Jacinda said with a practiced Society smile.
“Good, then come back inside! You are missing the party. Besides—” Daphne gave her a coy smile.
“Guess who’s here? Lord Griffith! He’s just arrived escorting your sister-in-law, Lady Lucien. Mightn’t we go greet them?” With a giggle, Daphne grasped her arm, not waiting for an answer.
“Where are you going, my dear?” Lord Drummond asked in amusement, watching the giggling girls tug her back toward the French doors.
“I hardly know,” she called.
“We’ll bring her back shortly, my lord!” Helena assured him.
Abandoning her wineglass on the balustrade, she allowed her new “friends” to shepherd her merrily back inside, Daphne steering her through the crowded ballroom with Helena and Amelia flitting after them a step behind. After the soothing darkness of the garden, she blinked against the bright lights of the pendulous chandeliers that hung down from the ornately plastered ceiling; each one bore two dozen white candles whose illumination was flung back from the great, gilt-framed mirrors on the surrounding walls.
The ball was already a splendid crush, for the duke of Devonshire’s hospitality was always of the highest caliber. The girls had to take a roundabout course to reach the spot where Lord Griffith stood chatting with Alice and Robert and Bel. Passing through the salon where refreshments and whist tables had been set up, they found Alec sitting at one of the green baize card tables, his crutches leaning against his chair. He was gambling against three old dragon-lady dowagers for the genteel sum of a shilling a point, unabashedly charming them and taking their money. Since he was also a favorite of the young ladies they had to stop to greet him. He sent Jacinda a sly grin, pooh-poohing the girls’ inquiries about his poor broken ankle.
You are shameless, she told her favorite brother with a pointed glance.
Lizzie was hovering about him like a mother hen. Her pretty figure was clad in a sedate gown of sea-green satin trimmed with ivory lace, but lovely as her ensemble was, somehow she always managed to blend into the background. She preferred it. At the moment, Lizzie, who rarely even had a temper to lose, looked like she wanted to pick up one of Alec’s crutches and swing it at the girls who were ogling him. Seeing Jacinda, she detached herself from his side with a look of exasperation and bustled around the card table to her, leaving Alec flirting with the girls.
Jacinda smiled as her hapless friend joined her. Lizzie offered her a sip of her lemonade without a word, but she declined; then both girls glanced at Alec.
“What a scoundrel he is,” Jacinda remarked in amusement.
“I know,” Lizzie sighed, “but one can never stay cross at him.” She shook her head with a worried frown. “I hope he gets the night’s play out of his system before the gentlemen come in to gamble for higher stakes, but I am afraid he is only warming up.”
“I’m sure he can’t be that great a fool? For heaven’s sake, Robert warned him no more high-stakes gambling or he’ll be cut off, didn’t he?”
Lizzie eyed her nervously.
“What is it?” Jacinda prompted.
She lowered her voice in distress. “Robert has cut him off, Jas—partially. It happened while you were in the country. Alec confided it to me a few nights ago. Robert has said he will not give him any more spending money until Alec demonstrates that he can stop gambling for a month. Alec lost quite brutally again at Brook’s, I’m afraid. They had a mighty row. I don’t blame Robert at all. Someone must do something with the poor scoundrel, but…oh, I don’t know. I cannot bear to see him unhappy.”
“Dearest, Alec is going to do what Alec is going to do,” she said gently. “It’s not your responsibility to save him.”
“I know. I just don’t want to see him get into any trouble,” Lizzie said softly, gazing at the rogue in dismay.
“Nor I, you.”
“Nor I, you, Miss Runaway,” Lizzie retorted, then scowled at the other girls. “Would you please get these flighty, jingle-brained henwits out of here?”
Chuckling, Jacinda nodded. Lizzie hurried back to Alec’s side while she and the other girls moved on through the salon, going into the other side of the ballroom. They squeezed their way through the thickening crowd of aristocratic guests until they reached the spot where her family was gathered.
Instantly going onto their best behavior, Daphne and the others curtseyed to Their Graces of Hawkscliffe and Alice, complimenting both ladies lavishly on their gowns before eagerly crowding in around Lord Griffith. Ian appeared rather taken aback by the vivacious attentions of a trio of fast young debutantes. Robert glanced at his friend in amusement, while Bel and Alice each gave Jacinda a kiss on her cheek.
Lucien’s wife, Alice, was a petite fey creature with vivid blue eyes and strawberry-blond hair. She was clad in a pale peach satin gown that beautifully flattered her creamy complexion. Bel, the present duchess of Hawkscliffe, considered one of the most ravishing women in Society, wore a gown of soft rose silk with long sleeves of transparent aerophane crepe. She was a cool, graceful, serene goddess with wheat-colored hair and cornflower-blue eyes, a perfect foil to Robert’s black-haired, dark-eyed intensity as he stood beside her in black superfine magnificence.
“Are you enjoying yourself, Jacinda?” Alice asked her.
“Very much. But where is your silly husband tonight?”
“Pastoral woes in Somerset, I fear,” Alice said with a smile.
“Oh, dear,” Jacinda said. She had not yet seen Revell Court, but she knew that Lucien had inherited the sprawling Jacobean manor from his real father in a state of considerable disrepair. “It’s your first productive harvest there, isn’t it?”
“It should be, but the land agent Lucien hired seems incapable of conducting the harvest in an orderly fashion. Not enough laborers…the tenants are complaining. I don’t know what all has gone awry. He did not want to go, but I told him if the man bungles the job, it will put the whole crop at risk. So he’s gone to try to sort it out before the hay-making begins.”
“Well, I am sure he will have it all in hand quickly.�
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“Are you?” Alice asked with a laugh. “I wish I shared your confidence, my dear. Lucien is hardly the farming type. If not for the children, I would have gone to manage it myself, but,” she added loftily, “I suppose he has to learn sometime.”
Jacinda laughed at her droll tone and agreed.
“Fortunately, Ian was kind enough to escort me tonight in my husband’s absence,” Alice went on, turning fondly to regard the marquess, who looked a little disconcerted by the flirtatious attentions of Daphne and her clique.
“Oh, he is always the best of men,” Bel agreed sympathetically, dropping Jacinda an unmistakable hint.
“And you know…” Alice cast her a wicked look askance. “He has such nicely turned calves. Don’t you think?”
“No padding either, I daresay,” Bel agreed.
“Oh, you are a pair of stubborn creatures!” Jacinda scolded them in a whisper while they laughed at her. “I am not marrying him.” She shook her head at Alice. “You used to be so prim and proper, ma’am. What happened to you?”
“Your brother,” Alice declared.
“I’ll drink to that,” Bel seconded her with a wink.
Laughing, they sipped their wine and regarded Lord Griffith, awash in smitten girls half his age. The tall, brown-haired marquess cast Alice and Bel a look that clearly said, Help!
The ladies merely smiled at him, enjoying his discomfiture.
“We really have to get that poor fellow married off, don’t you think?” Alice remarked. “If not to Lady Jacinda, then to someone.”
“I know of at least one volunteer,” Jacinda murmured dubiously.
Alice wrinkled her nose and glanced discreetly at Daphne. “Oh, no. Never.”
“I think not,” Bel agreed. Twirling a lock of her wheat-blond hair around her finger, she idly looked away. “I wonder, Alice, perhaps Lady Jacinda will change her mind. She does, you know. A lot.”
“True.”
“Humph.” Scowling at their teasing, Jacinda firmly changed the subject, asking Alice about little Harry and Pippa. Alice was reporting her one-year-old daughter’s latest brush with the sniffles when their host unexpectedly joined their group.
“Your Grace,” the women said with pleasure as he greeted them with a gallant bow.
If there was one bachelor in all the ton even more hotly pursued than Lord Griffith, it was the twenty-six-year-old duke of Devonshire. His title was ancient, his pockets deep, and he was not only a fine host and a man of information, but tolerably attractive, to boot. As the young duke shook hands with Lord Griffith, the fluttering girls hardly knew who to fawn upon. Jacinda sincerely hoped someone nearby had smelling salts, for she feared Amelia was going to need them.
“Devonshire, good to see you,” Robert said, stepping forward to shake his hand in turn. “Thank you for the invitation.”
“My pleasure. I hope you are enjoying yourselves,” their host greeted them.
“Very much. It is a lovely ball,” Bel said warmly.
“It will be, when you ladies have graced us with your dancing.”
Her kinswomen laughed at his charming riposte.
“I was wondering if you all have yet had the pleasure of meeting the newcomer in our midst.” The duke glanced over his shoulder, beckoning genially to someone she could not see over the crush of the crowd, then turned back to them. “Allow me to present William Albright, the earl of Rackford.”
Jacinda waited for him to step into view. She recognized the name, for Amelia and Helena had been all abuzz over the mystery man who had appeared in Society during her sojourn in the country. It seemed Lord Rackford was the long-lost son of the marquess of Truro and St. Austell; he was rich, handsome, and eminently eligible. He was a bit odd, in a dangerous sort of way, the girls had told her, giggling with excitement. He reminded them, they said, of a caged tiger. His family had thought him dead since his disappearance as a young lad, but now that he had turned up in London alive and well, the stubborn creature refused to say a word about where he had been or what he had been doing all this time.
In the face of his silence, a few theories had naturally begun to circulate among the ton—that he had adopted a false name and had gone off to sea, or to fight in the war against Napoleon, or that he had been adventuring in the frontier provinces of India. Any of these possibilities explained his rough manners, the girls said, but wasn’t it horrid of him to torment Society this way with curiosity?
Jacinda privately thought it was his way of saying it was nobody’s business, but the only thing that could be said for certain of Lord Rackford was that he had the women in a swoon and the haughtier sets of dandies sulking with jealousy. She was not sure she cared to meet the fellow, for he sounded like pure trouble.
Then he stepped out of the crowd toward her group, and Jacinda’s world stopped. It couldn’t be.
Her stomach flip-flopped like the first time she had taken a six-foot fence on her Thoroughbred hunter. The ballroom spun around her in a colorful blur, and she could not seem to draw a breath.
Lord Rackford? It was Billy Blade.
Either it was he, or her mind was playing dire tricks on her. In a state of utter shock, she watched him meeting each member of her family and felt as if the slightest puff of wind could have knocked her flat. She knew him in an instant, though he was barely recognizable with his sandy hair sleekly cropped and slicked back, showing off the gorgeous bone structure of his chiseled face.
From the starched perfection of his neckcloth to his polished black dress shoes, he looked like the perfect gentleman, but the unbidden image that bloomed in her mind was of his bronzed skin adorned with pagan tattoos. When her stunned gaze drifted to the red carnation in his boutonniere—just like the one he had worn on that day long ago at Knight House—the sight of it snapped her out of her daze.
Good God, I’ve lured a criminal into the ton!
Her light stays suddenly felt too tight. Heart pounding, she glanced around frantically, wondering if anyone had those smelling salts after all.
As she tried in a panic to think what to do, Blade shook hands with Lord Griffith, sizing him up with a shrewd glance. Jacinda was seized with the urge to run before the introductions came round to her, but suddenly, it was too late.
“And this,” said the duke of Devonshire, directing his attention to her, “is the lovely Lady Jacinda Knight.”
Tall and powerfully built, beautiful and virile as a demigod, the elegant stranger turned, looked slyly into her eyes, and gave her a polite bow. “My lady.”
The intimate caress in those two simple words made her shudder. His appearance had changed, but the deep timbre of his voice was the same, aye, and his mesmerizing eyes—fierce and deep. Beneath his tawny lashes, they gleamed, pale, seagreen rimmed with chalcedony.
Her voice was gone, but a world of meaning passed between them as she held his gaze. What he was doing here, she did not want to imagine.
She could scarcely even hear above the crazed pounding of her heart. Though she had been presented at half a dozen of Europe’s crown courts, at the moment, she had no idea how to react. It was all she could do not to faint when he touched her, gently lifting her hand to place a kiss on her knuckles.
His face betrayed nothing, but his bold, rebel’s stare captured hers and flashed with mad, swashbuckling humor and a warning of the danger to them both if anyone realized they were already acquainted. He gave her fingers a firm, subtle squeeze. “My lady, may I have the honor of a dance?”
In dazed, tumultuous alarm, a vague incoherency tumbled from her lips.
Audacious as ever, he took her stammering for a yes and grasped her wrist, tugging her away from her family with a cheerful farewell, as though he had no intention of ever returning her to them. She looked back at them in alarm but had little choice but to follow as he pulled her along by her hand.
He strode a step ahead of her through the crowd with the same vibrant aura of leadership that she remembered from the rookery. The nex
t thing she knew, she was in his arms on the edge of the dance floor as the orchestra struck up a waltz.
“You can dance?” she cried, finding her tongue all of a sudden, though it was an absurd question, under the circumstances.
“Not really,” he said breezily, casting an alert glance around the ballroom, “but you’re worth me making a fool of myself.”
“Blade!”
“Rackford,” he warned softly. “You’re going to have to help me just a little, love. I believe your hand goes…here.” He placed her left hand on his right shoulder, then smiled at her, a soft, possessive glow in his eyes. He offered her his left hand and waited for her to take it.
She stared at it, utterly at a loss, then lifted her stunned gaze to his face. When she spoke, at last, her voice sounded dazed. “You cut your hair.”
He smiled wryly. “Don’t worry, Delilah, I haven’t lost my strength.”
“What are you doing here?” she cried.
“Jacinda, my darling, I’ll explain everything, but we are going to be trampled by waltzing debutantes if you don’t do something. Quickly.”
“But I’m not allowed to dance the waltz,” she said in dismay. “Robert will have a fit.”
“Let me deal with Robert,” he murmured with a knowing little smile. “Take my hand.”
She looked at it, remembering the night in the alley and the moment that he had offered his hand to help her up from the junk heap like some renegade pirate. His rough, callused hand had been streaked with dirt and dried blood. Now it was sheathed in a spotless glove of white kid.
Slowly, tentatively, her heart beating swiftly, she laid her right hand in his left.
“That’s better,” he whispered. “My God, you are luminous.” He slid his right hand around her waist to take her in a slightly firmer hold.
Her soul-deep shudder of response to his touch snapped her out of her daze. A rush of fury and mistrust gusted up from the depths of her confusion.
