Captivated by a Lady's Charm

by Christi Caldwell

  “I’m f—”

  “Splendid! Then, about the introduction to Lady Danvers.”

  He sighed. When his mother wrapped her mind around a particular thought, she did not shake it free. Thankfully, those moments were few and far between. “No introduction is necessary, Mother.”

  His mother continued to worry her lower lip and looked out among their crush of guests. “I can think of several other young ladies who would make you an exceptional marchioness.”

  With her misplaced faith in him through the years, the likelihood was that nearly all the names upon her unspoken list were deserving of more than Christian, the Marquess of St. Cyr. “I do believe I see Lady Maxwell motioning to you across the room,” he lied. After all, what was one more minor sin in the scheme of his life?

  A widening smile on her lips, his mother straightened. “Is she?” She glanced about for Maxwell’s mother. Their families had been unfailingly close through the years. Though with Lady Maxwell’s stiff, coolly proper demeanor and his own mother’s flightiness, it was a pairing he’d never understand.

  “She is,” he said. “Toward the front of the staircase.” And yet another lie to pile on to the mountain of his sins.

  “You are a dear boy,” his mother said, patting him on the sleeve. “Always taking care of me and your sister as you do. You will make some young lady a splendid husband.”

  He forced a smile. All the while, her words ravaged his conscience. There was nothing dear about him; least of all his failed attempts at caring for his mother and Lucinda, as she credited.

  Leaning up on tiptoe, she pressed a kiss to his cheek, and then went in search of Lady Maxwell.

  Free of his mother’s decidedly poor matchmaking efforts, Christian surveyed his crowded ballroom. He skimmed his gaze over the dance floor, past the wide-eyed debutantes staring at him, and those scandalous widows beckoning him with their come-hither stares.

  …We are a scandalous lot…

  How very matter-of-fact Lady Prudence Tidemore had been in her admission. Odd she should be so very candid about her circumstances when he should be so guarded about his own. She truly believed she was a scandal. He sipped from his glass. Only, the lady didn’t know the meaning of the word. Scandal was misfiring in a moment of panic and destroying another man’s life—a friend’s life. Scandal was returning from that same shameful moment, erroneously and mistakenly lauded as a hero. Scandal was inheriting a debt-ridden marquisate, only to be forced into the role of fortune hunter to secure his sister’s and his mother’s happiness. That was a scandal. Not a lady who, through no fault of her own, had been cast into that role for decisions made by two of her siblings.

  That sobering truth should redirect him to his purpose in being here tonight. The sole reason he’d come to town at this godforsaken time of year was to find a wife, so he might then carry on with the roguish, purposeless existence he’d known these past five years. It was far better to forget in perfumed arms than remember his reality.

  The orchestra concluded the quadrille and couples neatly filed off the floor. Christian took in those young women on the arms of honorable, respectable gentlemen. If he were the diligent and dedicated marquess, he’d have signed his blasted name to any number of those dance cards. Yet, standing here, as he’d been for the past hour, he’d not so much as brushed past one of those bright-eyed innocents. Instead, his gaze kept wandering to the front of the ballroom, in search of one particular lady slated to attend. He’d not given thought to who’d accepted an invite to his mother’s lavish ball—beyond Lady Prudence.

  For his friend’s urgings that he pursue Prudence and make a match with the romantic young lady, he had a trace of honor left in his miserable being. Despite years of putting women into the same category as Lynette, his soul would have to be rotted black to fail to see Prudence was unlike that practiced whore. No, he’d not bind himself to an innocent debutante who spoke of hope and clearly dreamed of love. Such a woman deserved far more than a fortune hunter for a husband.

  Christian directed his attention to his glass a moment, swirling the crystal flute in a smooth circle. No, the woman who would serve best in the role of his marchioness would be a title grasper. A woman who didn’t give a jot the man she’d wed had committed mistakes that had cost men their lives and irrevocably changed the lives of others. That ideal candidate would see a marquess and not the miserable rotter he truly was; for to that woman, he wouldn’t matter beyond his title.

  With that cool logic restored, and his whole blasted reason for being in town, he downed the contents of his glass and sought out a servant. One of his liveried footmen, a former Waterloo soldier named Quinn, caught his eye and limped over. He accepted Christian’s empty flute and balanced the tray in his hands. “My lord.” Quinn winced.

  The young man’s ashen cheeks and slowed gait hinted at the strain of the evening’s festivities. Christian frowned. He’d not have any one of his servants overtax themselves, not even to secure a fortune and a future for his family. “Quinn, you are relieved of your duties for the evening.”

  Quinn opened his mouth to protest.

  “As always, you’ve seen to your responsibilities admirably.” The fact Quinn would continue working despite his pain, spoke to a loyalty Christian did not deserve. “I would have you rest, now.”

  The proud man hesitated. “Thank you, my lord.”

  Christian stared after the young soldier as he hobbled off, and then returned his gaze to the sea of ladies all in the market for a husband.

  Prudence was trying not to stare. After all, that was how the better part of the lords and ladies spent their evening—gawking and gaping at those around them. And yet, she could not remove her gaze from where Christian stood on the fringe of the ballroom. Lounging against the massive pillar, there was a smooth elegance to the gentleman that deserved a place in a true artist’s sketchbook.

  The marquess’ mother ushered over a perfectly proper, blushing lady to meet Christian. Prudence fisted her hands at her sides. Even not knowing the young woman’s identity, she could be certain it was not a lady with scandal and gossip attached to her name. No genteel mother would dare seek an arrangement between her beloved son and one from her shocking family. A dull pressure throbbed in her chest. From where she stood alongside Sin and Juliet, she discreetly rubbed at the area to try and diffuse the odd aching there. To no avail. Then he bent over the lady’s hand. Kissed it in the same slow, roguish manner in which he’d first taken Prudence’s hand in Lord and Lady Drake’s ballroom. Envy knotted her insides, momentarily sucking the breath from her.

  From the corner of her eye, Sin and Juliet exchanged a look. Prudence bit the inside of her cheek, detesting she was the recipient of their silent, pitying exchange.

  “Will you fetch us a glass of punch?” Juliet’s gentle request to Sin was met with a slight frown.

  Unbidden, her gaze wandered back to the gloriously splendid pair Christian made with the young woman; he blond and broadly powerful, the lady voluptuous and darkly exotic in a way that no proper lady had a right to be. “I do not want punch,” she said to her brother, unable to keep the bitterness from creeping into her tone. She bit her lower lip, hard. “I am not thirsty.” No, she wanted nothing more than to return home and seek out the privacy of her own chambers.

  “Yes, you are,” Juliet said, catching her eye and holding it.

  Sin looked back and forth between them.

  Then, understanding dawned. Freedom from Sin. “On second thought, I do,” Prudence blurted. “A drink. A refreshment. I am parched. Punch would be splendid.” Champagne would be far more splendid.

  Sin narrowed his eyes on his wife and then wordlessly folded his arms at his chest.

  At her brother’s skeptical look, Prudence feigned a cough.

  Her sister-in-law looked torn between throwing her hands up in despair and laughing. Juliet took one of her husband’s hands and gave it a squeeze. “Two glasses of punch.” She coughed into her other hand. “
I am afraid with the crush, I, too, am parched.”

  Her brother lowered his head close to Juliet’s. “Are you trying to be rid of me, love?”

  “Perhaps, but just for now.” A soft smile played on her lips, and the look that passed between them was full of such potent emotion Prudence dipped her gaze away from that terribly intimate moment, feeling like the very worst sort of interloper.

  Jealousy snaked through Prudence once more; a longing to know even just a hint of that connection to another. Unbidden, her gaze wandered back to where the marquess remained still locked in conversation with the lovely young woman.

  “Your brother,” Juliet said, calling Prudence’s attention back. “He’ll return shortly because he’ll fear we’re scheming.”

  Unless Juliet could formulate a plan to extricate Christian from the unfairly lovely dark-haired lady, then there really wasn’t a scheme she cared to discuss.

  “You are sad,” Juliet quietly observed. And accurately.

  Prudence let her silence serve as her answer.

  Then, her sister-in-law, since she’d entered their family as a governess, had been uncannily wise in so very many matters. She saw all it would seem. Juliet looked across the ballroom to where Prudence’s attention remained locked. “So the man whose captured your regard is the very same gentleman Sin warned you away from?”

  If she were a true coward, she could pretend she’d failed to hear that whisper. For the scandal that had come in her wedding Sin and her undeserved sense of guilt for Patrina’s failed elopement with her brother, Juliet was now nearly as devoted to avoiding all hint of scandal as Prudence’s mother.

  Mustering a smile, Prudence ripped her gaze away from the marquess and said, “And knowing how undaunted you are by my brother, you know all the details pertaining to Chri…that is, that gentleman.”

  Juliet worried the flesh of her lower lip as she periodically stole glances across the ballroom. “I do not want to see you hurt.”

  Except, she had already been hurt. Through decisions that hadn’t been her own. For scandals that had occurred when she’d been just a girl. And for that, Prudence stood on the sidelines while couples waltzed, and the occasional rake leered, and the peers gossiped.

  “I am so very sorry,” Juliet whispered.

  …I am not one who would hold another’s missteps against you. Nor would I fault you for any you yourself might have made…

  “Do not be,” Prudence said, shoving aside her self-pity. She found Christian briefly again in the crowd, still conversing for an endless time with that young lady. Blast, why could he not have sneered and jeered the way she’d come to expect from all members of the ton? Then, she’d not feel this viselike pressure squeezing her chest at the mere sight of him speaking to another. “What have you to feel sorry for? For a decision made by your brother? How could I hold you to blame for your brother’s actions, while condemning Society for holding me guilty in a like manner? I would not do that,” she said with an emphatic shake of her head. Then in an attempt to drive back the self-recrimination and regret she still saw in Juliet’s expressive eyes, Prudence waggled her eyebrows. “Perhaps my younger, more miserable self would be so very contrary and rude. But not the woman I’ve become.”

  “Oh, Pru, you have grown up,” Juliet murmured softly. There was a wistfulness to her expression.

  From over her sister-in-law’s shoulder, she spied Sin, taller than most gentlemen present, cutting a path through the crush of guests. “Now, if you would only remind my brother of that detail.” It was deuced hard to live one’s life with a meddling, overprotective brother about.

  A bark of laughter escaped Juliet, earning censorious stares from those nearby. Alas, they’d long become accustomed to those unkind gawkers.

  Sin came to a stop before them and frowned. “What is it?”

  Prudence inclined her head. “It is your wife. She wishes to dance.” For didn’t all young ladies wish to dance? Especially with a gentleman so hopelessly in love as her brother was with his wife. She rescued the two cups of punch from his hands. “Now, go dance. I will be fine,” she said with a stern frown when they remained rooted to the floor eying her as though she were a child they were about to abandon at a London orphanage. “Go,” she demanded again. “I will enjoy my punch.” Or in this case her two glasses of punch. She held up one in display.

  Her brother hesitated a long moment, but as the strains of the waltz spilled through the ballroom, he held out his elbow and escorted Juliet to the dance floor.

  Prudence sighed, grateful when an attentive servant hurried over to relieve her of the punch. She placed both untouched glasses upon the liveried servant’s tray and gave him a smile. Prudence detected her mother scanning her intent gaze over the crowd from where she stood in conversation with the hostess, no doubt in search of the daughter she sought to protect from scandal at all costs.

  A black curse she’d heard Sin utter on more scores than she could count slipped through her mind. She ducked behind the nearest column. The only aspect worse than being a gossiped-about, lonely wallflower, was being a gossiped-about as a lonely wallflower who only had her mother for company at these infernal affairs. Prudence pressed her back to the wall and slipped through the ballroom. As she moved past column after column, the twirling dancers would shift within her focus and then disappear as the next column hid the fortunate ones who at least had the pleasure of dancing at a ball. She made to duck behind another column.

  “Lady Prudence.” A deep baritone she now recognized in her sleeping and waking moments froze her mid-step. “Never tell me you are escaping the evening’s entertainments.”

  The tip of her slipper hovered in the air. Until she reminded herself to complete that step. Her heart thudded wildly. “You are here,” she blurted.

  He tipped his head. “Should I be somewhere else other than my own ball?”

  “Not here, but here,” she corrected and then embarrassed heat immediately blazed over her body. As in he was no longer kissing the hand of that proper, likely scandal-free young lady. “What I intended to say was good evening, Chri—Lord St. Cyr,” she swiftly amended.

  The ghost of a smile hovered on his hard lips.

  Prudence told her brain to tell her lips to move. “I was slipping away,” she confided with a shocking truthfulness that would have had her mother tossing her hands in the air in despair over her indirect acknowledgement to their host that she found the event tedious.

  The marquess studied her a moment the way he might take in an exhibit of a never before seen treasure. “I have not met a woman as forthright as you,” he said, bemused.

  She absently skimmed her fingers along the tall, white column. “My mother says too much honesty is not a good thing.” Her mother’s disapproving visage flashed to mind. “Particularly in matters of courtship,” she mumbled under her breath. Why, the dowager countess would suffer an apoplexy if she discovered anything about this particular exchange.

  Something dark and tortured glinted in Christian’s eyes. “Your mother is wrong.” The harsh adamancy of that protestation gave her pause, chasing away worries over her mother.

  Unnerved by the turbulent emotion reflected in his gaze, she resumed her distracted movement. “I am—”

  “You are spirited,” he put in. Pleasure stirred within her. He continued in a gruff voice. “Society admires colorless, emotionless creatures. That is not you…” Christian’s words trailed off as he shifted his gaze to her distracted movements.

  Prudence looked about in search of what had driven him to silence. She followed his stare where it lingered upon that back and forth pattern she traced over the pillar. All the breath left her lungs at the desire in his eyes. Her mother, brother, and sisters might see her as the innocent child who’d brought havoc to the Tidemore household but she was a woman, and even with the lack of worldly experience, she knew by the narrow-eyed gaze he trained upon her every moment, that this man desired her. It was a heady sensation.

&nbs
p; “Dance with me?” His gruff words contained a commanding strength.

  Emotion stuck in her throat. He was a man who did not care about the gossip or what Society said or saw, or believed they saw in a person. Prudence placed her fingertips upon his outstretched arm and allowed him to escort her to the dance floor, guiding her past the rabid stares, and positioning them along the outer perimeter of the ballroom so they’d not interfere with the other waltzers mid-set. A smile hovered on her lips as he guided her through the one-two-three steps.

  “You enjoy dancing,” he commented, adjusting his hold on her waist when she tripped.

  “I do.” A little sigh escaped her as they turned in dizzying circles.

  “And sketching.”

  Christian spoke as though he collected details of her, intending to keep those shared intimate pieces someplace safe. “And sketching,” she needlessly confirmed. “What of you, my lord? You know so much of me and yet I know nothing of you.” Prudence missed a step and he quickly righted her.

  “I enjoy reading.”

  An image came to mind of him closeted away in his library with a roaring fire in the hearth on a winter’s night, with her curled up at his side. Warmth unfurled inside her; a hungering so strong for that moment to be more than a mere wisp of a dream. “Do you?” How long had she dreamed of knowing that closeness with a man who loved her?

  “Are you surprised?” The right corner of his lip quirked up.

  “No,” she confessed and she wasn’t. A man who could see beyond the artifice of the glittering world in which he lived was surely a good deal more clever than all those lords and ladies who cared more for the cut of their fabric than anything of real import. “What are you reading now?” Horribly impolite and improper, there was still a hungering need to know more of him.

  He winged an eyebrow upward. “Now? I am not reading. I am dancing.”

  His teasing words pulled a startled laugh from her, attracting more stares. She ignored the notice directed their way. “Oh, hush,” she scolded. “You know what I meant.” What were a few additional gawking looks? “When your festivities end this evening,” his lips twitched at the slight emphasis she placed on that particular word, “what book awaits you?” She took him for one who read those Greek classics of bold, powerful warriors.