If everyone was so intent on there being a curse, why couldn’t there also be a blessing?
“It would be nice to get the upper hand over Amelia just this once…” she said aloud.
“Wait,” Juliet cut in, her eyes wary. “I’m all for teaching Amelia a lesson, but what makes you think that you’ll be able to pass Amelia’s dance card off as your own? And even if you do, I hardly think a few dances will necessarily lead to marriage.”
“I don’t really see a few dances doing the trick,” Cecily said, giving the issue some thought. “But we all know how difficult it is to change the ton’s perception once you’ve been rolled up and stuffed into a pigeonhole. What if all it takes to change things is a couple of dances with some of the more popular gentlemen? The sort who dance with Amelia? Gentlemen are so easily led. If I dance with a few of Amelia’s regular partners, the others will see it and they’ll dance with me too because they’ve seen other men doing it.”
“It is true,” Madeline said. “Once my sister Letitia became engaged it was as if every man in London had decided that she must be desirable. If they see someone else wants you, then they all want you too. It is the nature of men.”
Juliet nodded. “You’re right,” she said, glancing up at Madeline, who clapped her hands. “But if you are to convince these men tonight to dance with you, we’ll need to do something to get Amelia out of the way.”
“Nothing too terrible,” Cecily insisted. Even though Amelia was unpleasant, she didn’t want to see her hurt. “No sprained ankles,” she said to Madeline.
“Don’t worry,” her cousin said, giving Cecily a mischievous smile. “I’ve got the perfect idea…”
* * *
She was hovering behind a pillar on the other side of the ballroom ten minutes later when she heard the commotion from the refreshment area.
“My gown!” she heard Amelia squeal, a red punch stain expanding across the front of her light blue ensemble. “You imbecile!”
Cecily could not hear what Madeline said in return, but bit back a grin as she saw her cousin dab ineffectually at the stain with a handkerchief. She must remember to give Madeline a wonderful gift for her birthday this year.
When she had at last seen Amelia and Felicia escorted from the ballroom by their clucking mamas, Cecily decided it was time to put her plan into action. Suppressing a flutter of excitement in her belly, she made her way toward the side of the ballroom where the single young gentlemen lingered.
Her first victim was deep in conversation with two other men, all dressed in varying degrees of splendor. One wore a cravat tied in such an intricate design that Cecily suspected he’d run through at least ten of the starched neckcloths before achieving the perfect knot. The next, a shorter man, also sported an impressive cravat, but it was his peacock-colored waistcoat that drew the eye. But the third man, her quarry, was by far the most impressive of the trio. His high shirt points hinted that he was a dandy, but the lace that fell from his wrists erased any lingering doubts.
Cecily stood watching for a moment, swamped with self-doubt as she compared her own attire with theirs. How could she possibly compete with such sartorial grace? Taking a deep breath, she looked at her target again.
What would Amelia do?
Thinking back to all the times she’d seen Amelia charm unwitting gentlemen, she stared down at the dance card in her hand, and absently thumbed the edge of a petal that had come loose. Before it could fall away, she grabbed it. Only to see that on the back of the ivory petal were written three phrases:
Smile.
Bat your lashes.
Tilt your head.
What on earth? She checked the next petal to see if it had any writing on the back, but it was blank.
What could this mean? Was it some sort of code?
Before she could retreat back to her cousins, she looked up and saw a familiar face across the room. In boots and breeches he had been handsome, but in evening dress the Duke of Winterson was magnificent. His clothes weren’t showy like those of the dandies. They were elegant. His black coat was offset by a silver waistcoat, its embroidered threads echoing the glinting ruby in his cravat. In deference to his injury, he leaned on an ebony walking stick, its head topped with a silver ornament.
As if sensing her eyes on him, he looked up and their eyes met. Just as she had that morning. Cecily felt a thrill low in her belly. Annoyed by the blush rising in her cheeks, Cecily looked at her hands, and saw the three words on the dance card. Smile. Bat. Tilt.
Of course! It was a primer for flirtation.
Cautiously, like a toddler taking her first steps, she repeated the words in her head before putting them to use. She smiled, though it felt like more of a grimace. Maintaining the expression, she blinked. Rapidly. Then, still smiling, she tilted her head to the side, just as she had seen Amelia do countless times.
Her quarry stared for a moment. Then, a hint of amusement on his lips, he raised one black brow, and lowered his head in a slight bow. Not enough to draw attention to himself, but certainly enough for her to see.
It worked! Sort of.
Their little scene was ended when a pair of simpering debutantes crossed in front of her, blocking her view. Just as well, Cecily thought. She wasn’t quite sure what came after “tilt.”
* * *
Still, she was eager to try out the technique on the dandies. Squaring her shoulders, she stepped forward.
“Dear me,” lisped he of the peacock vest. “I feel as if I should know you, my dear, but I’m da … er, dashed if I can remember where we’ve met. I can’t imagine I would forget a f—a face like yours. Lord Marcus Fulton, at your service.”
He executed a perfect bow and kissed the air above her hand before she even knew she’d extended it.
“Pay no attention to this blackguard, m’dear,” said the chestnut-haired gentleman with the splendid cravat. “I believe it is I you came to slay with your expressive eyes.” He took her hand and elbowed Fulton none too gently out of the way.
“Sir Thomas Ashcroft,” he crooned, making sure to meet her eyes as he hovered over her hand. “The pleasure is all mine, my lady.”
Cecily was momentarily at a loss for words. Being at the center of such scrutiny was both exhilarating and unsettling. But remembering the three little words, she smiled, batted, and tilted and was gratified to see that they seemed pleased with the effort.
“Pay these two fools no heed, Miss Hurston,” the third gentleman—he of the golden hair and lacy cuffs—said, stepping forward. “They haven’t the combined manners of a pair of pigeons.”
Without appearing to do so, he somehow managed to cut out his two friends, and before she could even wonder how he’d known her identity, he had taken her gloved hand in his. “I’m sure you don’t remember me, Miss Hurston, but I’m Lord Alec Deveril. We met at the Symington musicale several weeks ago.”
Of course she remembered him, Cecily thought with an inward laugh. He was one of the most handsome men in the ton. And if that hadn’t been enough, Juliet had been enamored of the man ever since he rescued her from a horse that had gotten away from its rider in the park some weeks back. She could speak of little else for weeks afterward.
But the most salient reason Cecily had for remembering Lord Alec Deveril had nothing to do with his handsome looks or his kindness to Juliet. He was, in fact, the first name penciled onto the pilfered dance card, and a prominent member of the Egyptian Club.
She smiled, batted, and tilted.
He smiled back. Lovely!
“Of course I haven’t forgotten you, Lord Deveril,” she said. A sudden fear that she’d not be able to carry out her ruse gripped her. There was no reason on earth for Deveril to forget he’d promised the first dance to Amelia Snowe; he seemed perfectly sober. Still, this was her only means of getting her father’s journals, and she was not willing to give up. Even if it meant a little embarrassment.
“Indeed, my lord. I was hoping you’d remembered me from our convers
ation earlier when you requested the first dance this evening?”
She ended the statement with a questioning air, with just the right hint of tentative diffidence. She hoped.
Maybe she needed to SBT again.
But Deveril’s brow furrowed, and to Cecily’s profound relief, he seemed to relax and he smiled.
“That must have been right when I came in, Miss Hurston,” he said apologetically. “It was a bit of a madhouse for those first few minutes and I remember signing someone’s dance card, but I hadn’t realized it was you at the time.”
Though he professed not to remember, Cecily thought she saw a flash of understanding in his eyes. As if he knew she had appropriated Amelia’s dance card. But in a moment the look was gone, and for whatever reason, he chose not to take issue with her little deception.
Deveril smiled down at her and tucked her hand into the crook of his arm. “Shall we?”
* * *
Lucas leaned against a pillar in the Bewle ballroom and watched in silence as Miss Cecily Hurston sailed by on the arm of Lord Alec Deveril for the second time. He’d watched her dance with a veritable parade of eligibles in the past two hours.
Her dark curls, hidden beneath her ugly bonnet that afternoon, now were threaded prettily with a bit of ribbon, accentuating her wide green eyes and high cheekbones. Gone too was the drab gray dress she’d worn to the Egyptian Club, and in its place she wore a high-waisted yellow evening gown that suited her curvy figure. Only a eunuch could ignore the expanse of creamy white bosom on display above that prim bodice.
And he was certainly no eunuch.
He smiled, recalling her bout of flirtatiousness earlier in the evening. Perhaps he’d been too harsh with her that morning.
Almost as soon as he stalked away from her in Bruton Street, he had regretted his outburst.
She was not her father, after all, and probably had no idea about the circumstances that had led to his brother’s disappearance during Hurston’s last expedition.
No, he thought, watching Miss Hurston laugh at something Deveril said, unless she had stowed away on the expedition herself, there was no way that she could know what really happened to Will.
Lucas swirled his cup of overly sweet punch and stared into it as if he could read its shadows like tea leaves. But the drink was just as incomprehensible as the strange words his brother crossed and recrossed in his letters home from Egypt.
There was something about the scribbled lines, something in the way his brother had chosen to include them in letters to their mother of all people—who had no more knowledge of foreign languages than she had of Napoleon’s bathwater—that niggled at him.
Those letters, in fact, had been the sole reason for his trip to the Egyptian Club earlier today. He had hoped they might direct him to a scholar with knowledge of such things, but like Cecily he had not been able to get past the front door. “Members only” the guard had told him, and they were not currently accepting new members. When he had inquired as to when that happy event might occur, he had been told that such information was not available to the public. Even his title had carried no weight with the man—a first in Lucas’s experience since inheriting the dukedom.
“Why the devil are you glaring at the dancers as if you are deciding on which one of them you wish to plant a facer first?”
The duke glanced up. Colonel Lord Christian Monteith stood at his side, one blond brow lifted in inquiry.
“Who precisely are we glaring at?” Monteith continued, leaning against the other side of Lucas’s pillar, and sipping his own cup of the wretched punch.
“I’m not glaring,” Lucas said, glaring. “Not on purpose, anyway. I am merely watching the dancers.”
“Ah.” Christian took another sip of punch, pulling a face as he did so. “Any dancers in particular?”
Lucas evaded the question. “What brings you here? I thought you’d rather be run through with a dull sword than attend another ball this season.”
Christian shrugged.
“I told m’sister I would attend so she’ll have the assurance that at least one of her dance partners won’t step on her toes. I gather she had a bad time of it with Wolsey last week.”
Lucas winced in commiseration for Miss Monteith’s toes. John Wolsey was a notoriously bad dancer and a great bull of a man to boot.
“What about you?” Christian asked, turning the question back on his friend. “I thought you were bent on learning something about Will’s Egyptian expedition. Somehow the Bewle ballroom does not seem the appropriate venue for that.”
“You’d be surprised,” Lucas said, keeping his eyes fixed on Cecily’s twirling form.
Christian followed his friend’s gaze and let out a low whistle.
“Aha,” he said with a nod of appreciation. “Well done. It’s quite sensible of you to focus on Hurston’s daughter. She should be able to learn something from her father.”
“The man’s been ill since he got back,” Lucas said. “And besides that, he is apparently not keen on her interest in Egyptology. I’ve asked around and it’s said that he refuses to discuss anything of his expeditions with her.”
“Doesn’t mean he did so this time. People are liable to behave strangely when they know they will soon be shuffling off this mortal coil. Hurston might have confessed all to his daughter in an effort to mend fences.
“Families are a dashed complicated business,” Christian continued. “Though I still think it’s a canny move on your part to concentrate your energies on the daughter. Not only does she seem to be rather intelligent for a female, but she’s also a ripe little piece. Who would have guessed at the curves hidden under those—”
Monteith broke off his assessment of Miss Hurston’s charms at Winterson’s low growl.
“You will not speak in such a disrespectful manner of Miss Hurston again,” the duke ground out, his jaw clenched. “Understood?”
“Absolutely,” Christian responded, raising a hand in appeasement.
The two stood glaring at one another in awkward silence until Lucas backed down, and stared back out at the dance floor.
“What was that?” Christian demanded. “We haven’t tussled over a female since Eton, at least. I had no idea you even knew the lady,” he continued, rubbing a hand over his jaw, as if in contemplation of the uppercut his friend would have delivered. “I meant no disrespect.”
At Lucas’s raised brow, Monteith shrugged. “Perhaps I meant a little disrespect. But I assure you it was well intentioned. I was simply marking my surprise at her … er…”
“Her beauty?”
“Indeed.” Christian clutched at the life rope his friend offered. “I’ve never seen her look so radiant. She’s transformed.”
Lucas declined to mention the head tilt. Perhaps it was a fluke.
“I am less interested in the results of her transformation,” he said, “than in the reason for it. Why on earth would a bluestocking who has spent three years firmly on the shelf develop a taste for fashion and a desire to waltz with the most eligible gentlemen of the ton? It makes no sense.”
“I wasn’t aware you’d made such a study of Miss Hurston’s habits,” Christian said. “Perhaps she tired of sitting out every dance. I know I’d be driven to drink if I had to spend all my time in conversation with the current crop of wallflowers. And don’t get me started on the chaperones. Ghastly.”
Lucas acknowledged that his friend had a point.
“But why tonight?” he asked. “I am not ashamed to admit I’ve never even noticed her before today. I suspect that’s been her goal, to remain unnoticed. She was ejected from the Egyptian Club this morning,” the duke continued, “and this evening she appears at the Bewle’s ball with a fashionable gown and a new hairstyle. Somehow the two are connected.”
“Look at her dance partners,” Christian said, eyeing Miss Hurston as she curtsied to Deveril before taking young Lord Pennington’s hand. “With a couple of exceptions, they all seem to be in the Egyptian
Club. Could she be searching for something with regard to her father in the same way you are?”
Lucas stared, arrested by the notion of what Christian suggested. “Who has she danced with?” He began to tick them off on his fingers. “Deveril, Sydnam, Ashcroft, Fortenbury, Deveril again, and now Pennington.”
“All prominent members of the ton, all bachelors…”
“And all members of the bloody Egyptian Club,” Lucas finished, his voice low but intense.
“I’d say you’ve got a dance in your future, Winterson,” Christian said.
The other man gestured to his walking stick and grimaced in the general direction of his injured leg.
“Dammit, I forgot. Sorry, old fellow.” Brightening, Monteith grinned. “I don’t suppose you’d care for me to do the pretty in your stead?”
“Are you fond of your head, Monteith? Or shall I remove it for you?” Lucas’s tone was friendly, but there was no mistaking the steel behind it. “Watch and learn, my friend, how not to dance with a lady.”
* * *
When Lucas arrived at Miss Hurston’s side, she was giggling at some nonsense Pennington had just said, her head tilted, her eyes blinking.
Two could play at that gesture game, he thought.
He raised his brow and lifted his quizzing glass.
“You are in fine looks this evening, Miss Hurston,” he drawled, enjoying the blush that rose from her chest to her cheeks.
She glanced down, but it was no act. Miss Hurston was genuinely flummoxed by his arrival. He felt a tightening in his chest at the thought.
“Your Grace,” she said, sinking into a deep curtsy. A curtsy that gave him an excellent view of her excellent bosom. Christian had been right. She had been hiding some delectable curves beneath those ugly gowns.
When he looked up, he saw that he wasn’t the only one enjoying the view of Miss Hurston’s charms. Pennington was looking his fill, the insolent puppy. Lucas resisted the urge to throw her over his shoulder and carry her from the room.
A raised brow and a meaningful gesture of his chin had the younger man scurrying away like a frightened rabbit. Before the lady knew what had happened, her hand was tucked into the crook of Lucas’s elbow and he was leading her toward the Duchess of Bewle’s torch-lit terrace.
How to Dance With a Duke Page 5
