by Erica Ridley
But the only Brits willing to look down their noses long enough to speak to her were the fops so desperate for attention that even a gauche American would suffice, or the decrepit old libertines so entranced by pretty young flesh that they didn’t much care what her accent sounded like. After all, they didn’t plan to speak with her.
Even the lady’s maid her grandparents kept sending along as a chaperone consistently disappeared within seconds of arrival. If a paid servant had better things to do than be seen publicly in Grace’s orbit, what hope was there for finding a husband?
At this point, what she mostly could use was a friend. But even that was hopeless.
The most exalted of the English roses would have naught to do with her. Grace was not only a penniless American; her grandparents’ small dowry carried the filthy taint of trade. And worse.
Grace’s grandfather had invested in some sort of fabric processing plant during the American Revolution, and then purchased a handful of sword and bayonet armament factories just as Napoleon rose to power. The recent battle of Waterloo had put paid to Napoleon’s rule, but Grace’s grandparents had become rich off the spilled blood of their countrymen. She shivered at the thought. No wonder she was a pariah.
“Cold, chérie?” A rich but toothless roué grinned down at her over the curve of his gold-plated cane, marriage—or rather, the marriage bed—obviously on his mind. “A turn with me in one of the balconies might warm those bare shoulders, eh?”
Grace leaped to her feet and out from under his calculated stare. She’d thought herself invisible among the sea of spinsters and chaperones along the far wall, but the come-hither cut of her fashion-plate gown had undoubtedly given her away. Three weeks of seasickness had whittled the plumpness from her body, giving her a wasp waist and actual cheekbones for the first time in her life.
Such a diet was not one Grace could recommend. Especially since it seemed to go hand in glove with attracting the lecherous eye of men older than her grandfather.
“Sorry,” she blurted in a tone that indicated she was anything but. “This set is already promised.”
She all but flew out of his palsied grasp, sidestepping the matrons to squeeze against the shadowed wainscoting at the opposite end of the ballroom.
This corner was too close to the orchestra to hear oneself think, too far from the food and drink to engender even idle conversation. The icy draft from a second-floor balcony kept away anyone whose blood was still circulating, and the wax spitting from the last taper in the chandelier overhead marked this square yard as uninhabitable.
She crossed her goose-pimpled arms over her ruched bodice, mindless of the thick moulding digging into the small of her back or the clumps of wax sticking to her silk slippers. Her gaze darted about the ballroom. Elegant couples began a lively country-dance. Grace hugged herself tighter. She had never felt less like dancing.
Not that she’d been asked.
Her teeth clenched. She hadn’t any idea how to accomplish any of her goals. Without her grandparents’ money, she couldn’t return to her homeland. Without a husband, she couldn’t get her grandparents’ money. Without a noble birth and a British accent, she couldn’t attract a man interested in something other than her dowry or her virginity. She ground her teeth.
Back home in Pennsylvania, she’d had friends of both sexes, who loved her for herself and not for something they might take from her. Back home in Pennsylvania, they would’ve had a right belly laugh to see Gracie Halton trussed up in finery and mincing about a suffocating ballroom. Back home in Pennsylvania, her mother— her mother—
Grace’s breath caught and her eyes blurred. Oh, who knew what was going on back home in Pennsylvania? She’d written her mother and her neighbors every day since she’d stepped off the boat, and had yet to receive a single word of response.
Fear gripped her. Was her mother still in the threadbare bed Grace had last seen her in? Was she even still alive? Was there still time? Or had Grace flung herself headlong into a fool’s mission that only ensured she would not be present in her mother’s last hours, when she needed her daughter most?
Blindly, Grace pushed away from the velvet-lined wall…
Right into the path of a giant as tall and as hard as an oak.
A firm hand caught her about the waist as strong fingers captured her wrists. She blinked the sting of unshed tears from her eyes to find herself entangled not with an oak, but with a man possessed of dark brown hair and dangerous golden brown eyes. A wry smile curved his lips as the orchestra began the opening strains of a waltz.
The hot muscles beneath her palms were hard and firm—no need for a tailor’s touch to improve this sculpted body. He was impossibly tall and uncomfortably close. But unlike the other trussed turkeys sweltering inside the breezeless room, his clothes didn’t reek of day-old perfume. His eyes weren’t bloodshot or blasé, but rather clear and warm and drinking her in as if he were two seconds away from yanking her close enough to claim her mouth. Her heart thundered.
Everything about him was raw heat and restrained power. The exact opposite of what she was looking for. If a man like this took a wife, he would never let her slip away.
She forced her starving lungs to breathe. She was making a cake of herself. She’d almost mown down this exquisite hulk of a man, like the unsophisticated American they all believed her to be. He was simply protecting the herd by putting himself in the path of the rampaging bull.
Heat flooded her cheeks as she broke eye contact. She’d never felt so foolish and uncultured in her life.
Her breath hitched, but she forced herself to meet his eyes again. Someone this gorgeous definitely had somewhere better to be. She tugged at her wrists, signaling he was free to go. Only a fool would try to keep him.
He dropped one of his hands, but did not immediately hurry away, as she had anticipated. He seemed even larger than before.
His free hand tightened at her waist. “Shall we dance?”
Just like that, her legs could barely hold her steady. She tilted into his touch, conscious that he must be able to feel her body tremble beneath his fingers. Why would he wish to dance with her? He was too young to be a roué, too gentlemanly to be a rake, too well-heeled to be desperate for money, too smolderingly attractive to be in want of female companionship.
But it couldn’t hurt to make certain.
She straightened her spine and forced her mind back on her mission. She needed a husband with money. “Are your pockets to let?”
He blinked at her in confusion. “What? No!”
“Are you in the market for a wife?”
“Hell no!” His sculpted cheekbones flushed a subtle pink as he belatedly recalled he was speaking to a lady. “That is to say, at some point, it is my duty to take a wife.”
“Close enough.” Grace slid her wrist from his fingers and placed her hand in his. “This dance is yours.”
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