A Ballroom Temptation

by Kimberly Bell

  “Thank you.” He exchanged money with the man and turned to go, only to find Miss Bailey staring up at him.

  “Your mother is ill?”

  “Stepmother. It’s nothing.”

  “And you came yourself to find her a remedy?”

  For God’s sake. He was hardly parting the Red Sea. “It was on my way.”

  Miss Bailey smiled at him like he’d just rescued a child from a runaway carriage.

  He had to get out of the shop—immediately. Adam took a step forward, which sent Miss Bailey abruptly back. The shelf behind her lurched. He caught it, steadying the shelf above her head, and she went a few shades paler than she already was.

  “I’m sorry, I—”

  “If you’ll just stop moving, I—”

  A back-and-forth dance ensued, resulting in two bottles coming crashing to the ground. Adam let out a frustrated sigh. “Hold this.”

  He didn’t wait for her to answer—he just shoved the paper packet at her and put his hands around her waist. He ignored her surprise gasp and lifted her, pivoting her around until she was between him and the counter, leaving his path out of the shop unobstructed.

  Wide blue eyes stared up at him. Unsteady breaths pressed the smooth swells of her breasts against his jacket. Her lips parted provocatively.

  “We were going to be stuck in here all day.” He definitely had to leave. Miss Bailey was exactly the sort of woman he wanted nothing to do with.

  She nodded.

  He needed to let go of her. She was probably outraged that he was wrinkling her skirts or bending her hoops by standing so close to her . . .

  She didn’t look outraged.

  His palm tightened reflexively, and she flinched backward. Fear? Adam looked behind him, but there was nothing. Nothing except himself. He dropped his hands away and stepped back as far as the space allowed. “I’m sorry.”

  Miss Bailey shook her head. “No, no. It was faster. You’re absolutely right.”

  She smiled at him, but it didn’t meet her eyes. Of course. He was crude and terrifying. Not at all the silk-swaddled fop she’d be used to. Whatever he thought her interest might have been, he’d clearly been wrong. And he didn’t want it, even if he’d been correct. The Miss Baileys of the world were not for Adam.

  The brown paper crinkled in her hands. She held it out to him. “Your remedy.”

  Their hands touched when he took it from her. Did she brush her thumb against his palm? He was losing his bloody mind. Adam started sidling his way back toward the door.

  From behind him, her voice sang out. “Have a pleasant evening, Lord Wesley.”

  He sighed. “And you, Miss Bailey.”

  • • •

  They were going to cart her off to Bedlam. Any minute someone was going to burst through the door, shouting accusations. Jane Seraphina Bailey! We hereby accuse you of molesting the palm of one Lord Wesley, peer of the realm. And then they would just take her away, because she was a miserable liar and she’d have no choice but to confess.

  It was the flinch. He’d been looking at her like . . . like . . . Lord Rhone looked at Hannah. Like her father looked at her mother. He’d looked at her the way a man looks at a woman he wants. And then she’d started, ruining everything. She’d just wanted to do something that would make him look at her that way again.

  He was gone now, and that was for the best. She wouldn’t accidentally subject him to any more of her strange perversions. And she couldn’t very well ask about flowers for his arrangement while he was standing right next to her. It was more important than ever that she find the monkshood. He truly was a knight-errant—caring for his stepmother’s illness himself! She couldn’t remember Charlie ever doing something like that for their mother or Aunt Mathilda.

  “My lady? May I help you?”

  Jane jumped, clutching her hand to her chest. The apothecary. She’d forgotten all about him. She turned back to the counter. “Yes. I am looking for monkshood. I was told you might have it.”

  “Monkshood.”

  “Yes.”

  His blink was slow and deliberate. “My lady, perhaps—”

  “Miss. I’m just a miss.” She should have corrected him the first time. People would think she was pretending to be something more than she was.

  “My apologies, miss. Could you perhaps tell me what you need—”

  Oh no. No, no, no. “I’m not poisoning anyone,” she blurted out.

  “That’s very comforting.”

  This was a disaster. “I need it for an arrangement. Of flowers. It represents knight-errantry.”

  He subjected her to that long blink again.

  Someday, Lady Mary’s language of flowers was going to be all the rage, and then Jane could finally have a reprieve from everyone looking at her like she had gone completely mad. “Never mind. I’m sorry I’ve wasted your time.”

  She started the sideways trek back through the shelves.

  “I have a supplier who carries it,” he called as she was leaving. “Fresh cut, not dried.”

  Jane turned. “That’s what I need! How soon can you have it?”

  “If you leave your direction, I can have him deliver it directly day after tomorrow.”

  Day after tomorrow. If she replaced all of the flowers she already had and remade the arrangement, she could deliver it to him then. It wasn’t ideal. It would be days late. But a perfect arrangement that was delayed was better than an imperfect thank-you on time—wasn’t it? Jane took a deep breath. She couldn’t send an imperfect arrangement. She just couldn’t. “Number Fourteen, St. James’s Square. Please tell him not to be late.”

  “Of course, miss.”

  Jane beamed, picking her way through the overstuffed shelves in high spirits. Her search was a success. Soon she would have the perfect thank you gift for Adam—Lord Wesley—and soon he would forget all about her broken carriage and her strange behavior with the package. Then she could relax and focus on the business of being invisible for the season.

  She skipped up the stairs to where she’d left her maid, Mary—and straight into a nightmare.

  “Jane Bailey?” the speaker gasped in mock horror.

  It couldn’t be real. She was imagining it.

  Jane turned. She was not imagining it. The impeccably dressed brunette and her companions were not a figment of Jane’s nightmares. They were real. “Drusilla. What a surprise.”

  “I didn’t think you came to London anymore. Unless . . .” Drusilla pressed her gloved fingertips to her lips. “I heard a rumor you took a position. Are you working?”

  The women standing with Drusilla broke into tittering laughs.

  Jane didn’t know them—nor, it seemed, did she want to. This was what she’d hoped to avoid by staying out of society. She was happy with her life. She was happy being Hannah’s companion and Fiona’s informal governess. She liked her life. But the moment Drusilla gasped and looked down on her, she felt ashamed. You have nothing to be ashamed of.

  “How are you?” Jane asked, ignoring the slight. “It’s been so long.”

  “It has. Longer, I think, than you realize.”

  What was that supposed to mean? Unfortunately, Jane knew Drusilla well enough to know she wouldn’t have to wonder for long. They’d been very close once, before the scandal.

  One of the women Jane didn’t know spoke up. “Drusilla is engaged.”

  “Oh. That’s lovely. Congra—”

  “To Lord Geoffrey,” the other added.

  The sounds of the city fell away. All of the air left Jane’s lungs, and the light took on a surreal crispness. Lord Geoffrey. Geoffrey Pembroke. No matter how hard she tried, Jane couldn’t breathe. She gulped futilely as a wave of light-headedness hit her.

  Mary rushed in, holding her upright. “Miss? Are you all right, miss?”

 
The murmur of voices drifted in as daylight disappeared. How sad. Probably still in love with him. Jealous. Pathetic.

  It was so much worse than a broken carriage wheel. Jane gave in and let the blackness take her.

  Chapter 3

  The solicitor’s office was quiet. Even the man’s secretary, who kept promising Adam the solicitor would see him any moment, appeared to just be sifting the same stack of papers over and over again.

  Adam shifted in his chair again.

  “It will just be a few moments longer, Lord Wesley,” the secretary said for the fifth time.

  It was a lie. Adam had been sitting in the too-small chair for over an hour. No one had come in, and no one had gone out. The apothecary’s package weighed a little heavier with every tick of the clock. The visit should only have taken minutes. He hadn’t even been asked why he was there yet.

  “Did you tell him I was here on behalf of my father, Lord Clairborne?”

  “I did, my lord.”

  No one left a marquess’s envoy moldering in the lobby—especially not the Marquess of Clairborne, which meant . . . Adam stood up.

  The secretary failed to hide his relief. “Would you like to leave a message for him, my lord?”

  “No.” Adam strode to the door of the office behind the secretary’s desk.

  “My lord, you can’t—”

  He flung it open, startling his father’s solicitor, who was carefully stacking books in a very accurate re-creation of Westminster Abbey, including the new towers that were only partially completed. “Mr. Plunkett.”

  The “abbey” collapsed and scattered across the desk. “Lord Wesley, I am—”

  “Avoiding me. On my father’s orders, I assume. Unfortunately, I am not in the mood to be ignored.”

  “I don’t know what you’re—”

  “Who did he sell the Carolina territory to, Plunkett?”

  The solicitor sighed. “I can’t tell you that, and even if I did, it wouldn’t help you. You won’t get it back.”

  “Everyone has a price.”

  “Not this buyer.” The solicitor gestured to a chair and poured two drinks from the decanter on the side table. He handed one to Adam. “I’m sorry.”

  Adam wasn’t prepared to give up, but shouting wasn’t going to get him anywhere. “How could you help him do it, Jerome?”

  “It’s my job.”

  “Did you at least try to talk him out of it?”

  The solicitor laughed. “Many times. It was a good investment and getting better every year. But he was already set on it, and then the political pressure started . . .”

  Political pressure. No. “He didn’t. Tell me he didn’t.”

  The solicitor didn’t say anything, but his chagrin spoke volumes.

  Adam swore. He downed his drink and stood up.

  “You have to let it go, Lord Wesley.”

  Oh, Adam would let it go. Along with his fist into that coldhearted prick’s chin. He’d always known his father was cruel, but this . . . “I wish I could say it’s been a pleasure.”

  “I understand. Have a pleasant evening, Lord Wesley.”

  Adam nodded. He left the office, calling for the carriage to head home. He and his father would finally have the discussion they should have had ten years ago.

  • • •

  “The crown?” Adam shouted. “You sold the land to the crown?”

  Lord Clairborne sat behind his desk, unimpressed. “Yes, I did.”

  He would never get it back. The crown had been trying to recover land in the colonies for years. “Have you completely lost your mind?”

  “Watch your tone. Selling was inevitable.” His father barely looked up from his papers. “Only Granville was still holding out, and it wasn’t worth the loss of influence in other areas.”

  Adam paced the office. “We could have held that land indefinitely. While they bought out everyone else, we could have negotiated extremely favorable deals—”

  “Don’t pretend you care about any of that.”

  He didn’t. He cared about Davidson and Porter and Thatcher, and fifty other men who worked the land beside him. He cared about their families. And damn it, he cared about himself. Waking up and having a purpose—heading out to do honest work . . . Adam had felt more alive than ever before. Now what did he have? “Granville is making a killing as the last one in.”

  “Let him. I, in turn, have had my name put up for Lord President of the Council.”

  A vanity title. Adam’s livelihood had been traded away for a vanity title. “You are—”

  “Enough,” his father shouted. “I have done as I have done. Move past it.”

  “I will never forgive you for this.”

  “We’ll add it to the list. It’s hardly the first time you’ve threatened me with that.”

  The reminder stung. He hadn’t wanted to be shipped to the colonies at eighteen. Adam had sworn he would never forgive his father for that. There had been no way to know how much it would suit him. He took a strange comfort in knowing that his father had also been surprised when he’d thrived. It was meant to be a punishment.

  “Now that you know, you can stop this nonsense about going back. You’re the future Marquess of Clairborne. Find a wife. Create an heir.”

  Create an . . . “I will not.”

  “You don’t have a choice. You will attend the season, and you will entertain the eligible young ladies of London.”

  “I have a choice.”

  “Do you? The title you received from your mother didn’t come with an estate. You’ve spent what little inheritance she left you. What choice do you have if I decide I’m done putting up with your nonsense?”

  The inheritance had been spent on seed and new farming equipment after a hurricane had destroyed a year’s worth of effort. After Lord Clairborne had refused to replace it with the estate funds.

  “Blackmailing me into marriage didn’t work the first time. What makes you think it will work now?”

  His father’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “I made the mistake of continuing to support you after your first outburst. I will not make it again.”

  Adam wanted to hit something. Instead, he took a deep breath. “I’m going to see my stepmother.”

  Lord Clairborne returned his attention to his papers without comment.

  Adam did have a choice. If he had to, he would live in a gutter. He would not be beholden to his father for his livelihood. He would not be blackmailed into marriage. Not then and not now.

  • • •

  “Jane, dear . . . Wake up, Jane.”

  She didn’t want to. It would be so much nicer if she could just drift back into blissful oblivion.

  “Your corset is unlaced in public, Jane. People are beginning to stare.”

  Jane eyes flew open, and she struggled to sit up . . . In the middle of her bed. In her room. Where only Mathilda was in attendance. “You lied to me.”

  “Welcome back.”

  “You lied to me.”

  “You fainted on the street and scared me half to death,” Mathilda said, patting her cheek. “Extreme cases call for extreme methods.”

  Oh no. Drusilla and those awful girls saw the whole thing. “How did I—”

  “Mary flagged down the coachman. They managed to get you inside and bring you home.”

  That, at least, was a blessing. What if they had actually cut her corset laces there in the middle of the street? She would have had to throw herself into the Thames. Instead, she would just have to leave England.

  “What happened?” Mathilda asked. “Was it . . .”

  One of your fits. That was what they called them. No one understood, not even her family. “I ran into Drusilla Lyndon.”

  “Literally?”

  They always thought she was overreacting. They
didn’t see how important order was, or how dangerous not adhering to it could be. “She’s engaged to Geoffrey.”

  Mathilda’s fingertips flew to her mouth. “Oh, that poor girl. I never liked her, but no one deserves that.”

  “I don’t know what got into me. All of a sudden I just couldn’t breathe.”

  “It’s perfectly understandable.”

  Jane straightened the half-rolled cuff of her aunt’s sleeve. Mathilda was giving her that look again—the one that infuriated Jane with its pity and its sadness. She was perfectly fine. Sometimes things overwhelmed her, but that was hardly unusual for women in her station. She was just a nervous person. At least she didn’t run around dreadfully disheveled all the time like Mathilda. There was value in order.

  “You don’t have to do this, Jane. I can talk to Charlie, and we can be on our way back to Scotland tomorrow morning.”

  “No.” She would not give up. Charlie was so excited, and she would not give them one more reason to look down on her. Poor, sad Jane. The season was just too much for her. She could do this. She would do this. “It must have just been the air in the apothecary’s shop. It was very stuffy, and it smelled odd.”

  “Jane—”

  “I’m fine, Aunt Matty. Thank you for your concern, but I’m perfectly all right.”

  It was obvious Mathilda did not believe her, but as long as she didn’t speak with Charlie about it, everything would be fine. Things had been so hard for him since their father lost the family fortune. Jane refused to do anything to tarnish what her brother had accomplished. If that meant she had to make a few sacrifices, so be it. He’d certainly made plenty for her.

  • • •

  Lady Clairborne was resting when Adam finally made it up to see her. He tried to set the tea tray down without waking her, but the rattle of the china gave him away.

  “Adam.” She smiled.

  “Are you feeling better, Lady Clairborne?”

  She frowned. “Adam.”

  “Are you feeling better, Regina?” How easily ten years fell away. She’d always insisted they use Christian names when his father wasn’t there to object.