Oliver’s lip curled in disgust. Ballrooms were treacherous indeed. This jackanapes had an innocent American in his sights. One who didn’t even seem to have a duenna, much less friends to keep away wolves like Mapleton.
His temples began to throb as he forced his fists to unclench. This was a different type of combat, he reminded himself. The worst thing to do would be to make a scene with Mapleton. The scandal would be horrific.
Yet he couldn’t walk away. Not when the wallflower needed rescuing. His goddamn Achilles’ heel, no matter how disastrous the outcome tended to be. He wished his heroics would work out for once.
He kept his eyes trained on the pretty black-haired American, every muscle tensed for action. An eternity ticked by. No one approached her. She had no one to dance with, to talk to. She looked… lost. Hauntingly lonely. Frightened and defiant all at the same time.
’Twould be better for them both if he turned around right now. Never met her eye. Never exchanged a single word. Left her to her fate and him to his.
It was already too late.
Chapter 2
The plan had seemed so simple when Grace Halton’s mother had first proposed it. Sail from Pennsylvania to England, meet her long-lost grandparents, and use their modest dowry to attract a husband able and willing to provide for both Grace and her ailing mother.
Three simple steps. Three exercises in futility and failure.
First catastrophe: the ocean. Grace had spent the entire transatlantic journey with her face in her chamber pot, more than willing to trade the endless waves and deadening horizon for the flimsy, landlocked shack she’d shared with her mother.
Second disaster: her grandparents. They’d been aghast at Grace’s uncanny resemblance to their black-haired, green-eyed daughter. The one who had fled in scandal and never returned.
Almost every word out of their mouths since had been a criticism of Grace’s bearing or person or upbringing or education. Or reiterating that her dowry money hinged upon her finding a groom of whom they approved.
All of which made step three—Operation Husband—that much more difficult. She didn’t just need a beau. Attracting a suitor was a brainless, simple goal every debutante in this ballroom expected to accomplish by the end of the Season.
Grace didn’t have that long. Not with her mother so sick. She needed someone who could be brought to scratch—and to the altar—in a matter of days.
But the invitations her grandparents’ money attracted weren’t for venues like Almack’s. These were smaller soirées, in private homes. The “Marriage Mart” was quite out of Grace’s reach. What she had were a handful of hostesses for whom the novelty of an American guest was worth an invitation to dinner. If she made a good impression on the right people, there might be more invitations to occasional dinner parties in her future.
But she didn’t have a future. She had right now. And time was running out.
Grace shook off her despondency and straightened her shoulders. There was only one path forward. She needed a wealthy, controllable, kindhearted, grandparent-approved, banns-read-and-bells-rung husband, and she needed him Right. Now. If she didn’t return in the next few weeks with enough coin to save her mother and their home, there wouldn’t be a mother or a home to come back to.
It seemed insurmountable. If a gentleman was remotely moneyed and kindhearted and marriage-minded, he’d been snapped up long before Grace’s spindly legs had trembled ashore.
Her accent had taken care of the rest.
She’d set sail believing in her mother’s bedtime tales of glittering ballrooms and bejeweled gowns befitting a princess, promising Grace she’d be likely to have the ton at her feet and her hand on the altar before the first week was through.
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.”
Chapter 3
It wasn’t until the dark-haired vixen was already in his arms that Oliver realized just how badly he’d bollocksed the rescue mission. He’d swept the incomparable wallflower into a waltz before all and sundry, and he didn’t even know her name. His shoulders tensed. He certainly put the err in knight errant.
Perhaps in America, Yankees could twirl comely strangers about a ballroom, but here in England, proper decorum dictated that gentlemen not even address an unknown maiden until they had been properly introduced, lest he publicly embarrass them both.
Yet it was already done. The slender fingers of her right hand nestled in his left, and his right palm was pressed flush against the delicate silk covering her equally delicate back. Her lips were even more tempting now that they were close enough to taste. She smelled like honey and jasmine. He tried not to notice.
“What’s your name?” he whispered urgently. Soft black eyelashes framed captivatingly green eyes. He couldn’t look away.
She lifted a brow. “What do the others call me?”
The arch look on her face indicated she already knew the answer. He grimaced. Certainly she could not expect him to repeat the horrible appellation aloud.
She stared back at him without blinking. The seconds ticked closer to minutes.
“Macaroni,” he admitted.
“That’ll be Miss Macaroni to you.” Her eyes laughed up at him.
He pulled her a little closer. And realized that, whether she laughed or not, hearing those words on someone’s lips had to hurt. His mouth tightened. He would not contribute to such rumors.
“We must pretend to already know each other,” he explained as they twirled in time with the music.
She frowned. “Why?”
He blinked. What did she mean, why? They were waltzing together without even having been presented. “For your reputation, of course.”
“My reputation is a piece of pasta. What more could you need to know?”
“Smith? Jones?” he pled desperately. Did she not understand the peril to young ladies who broke proscribed rules? “Certainly you have some other name, unrelated to foodstuffs.”
Her lips curved. “Since you’re the first to inquire, I’ll let you in on the secret. I am Miss Halton.”
He smiled back at her. Miss Halton. He liked how it sounded on her lips. Her accent made it all the more mysterious.
Before he could share his own name, her eyes narrowed. “Why are you dancing with me?”
The practiced words floated from his lips without thinking. “Who wouldn’t wish to dance with a young lady as beautiful as you?”
“Everyone,” she answered flatly. “This is the first I’ve been asked since arriving in England.” She lifted her lips closer to his ear. “The stink of trade keeps the smarter suitors away.”
He choked behind the pointed edges of his cravat. “Who would say such a thing to you?”
She raised her brows. “Nobody. Absolutely no one speaks to me. I’m left to assume the stink of trade is self-evident.”
He caught himself lowering his face closer to the shining black curls piled atop her head. Quickly, he straightened his spine afore any onlookers might notice the gaffe.
She noticed, of course. Her light green eyes twinkled.
“You smell of jasmine,” he said, after clearing his throat. “It’s quite a lovely scent.”
“It’s bath soap. I’ll have to write a note of appreciation to the manufacturer.”
So would he. He took another sniff. His pulse raced as he fought the urge to twirl her right out of the ballroom. Either the scent or the woman—or likely a combination of both—had infiltrated his brain with images he really ought not to be having about Miss Halton in nothing but warm water and a few jasmine-scented bubbles. His throat convulsed.
He needed to steer this conversation back to safety. Such as completing the bloody introductions. Unless she hadn’t asked because his title had already preceded him?
“If you didn’t know,” he said, “I am the Earl of Carlisle.”
“I…did…not,” she replied. “How splendid for you.”
“Is it? I much preferred being Mr. Oliver York,” he found himself admitting. He nearly stumbled as his words sank in. Why on earth would he say something that heretical to a total stranger, when he wouldn’t confess it to his best friends?
Perhaps because Miss Halton was a total stranger, he realized. An ostracized American who not only held little interest in English propriety, but also had an utter lack of ears to gossip to, should the inclination ever cross her mind.
“I should have preferred that as well,” she said, much to his surprise. “Pity.”
He blinked in shock. She might not care about British nobility, but there was nothing abhorrent about being an earl, for shite’s sake. Before he could reply, her rosebud lips were once again parting.
“It could be worse. At least you’re not out hunting dowries.”
“How gratifying you’ve found something to recommend me,” he said between closed teeth. Why was she even here, if she held such disdain for his compatriots?
“Oh, I wouldn’t recommend you.”
He stared at her twinkling eyes for a second and then found himself biting back a grin. Had she really just set him in his place? The corners of his mouth twitched. He seemed far more in need of r
escuing than the sharp-tongued Miss Halton. Being titled certainly hadn’t impressed her. For someone cast into the lot of social pariah for nothing more than an accident of geography, she seemed to delight in acting the role of termagant.
He was appalled to find it a bit… refreshing.
After escaping the dark cloud around his usual companions, it was a relief to converse with a disinterested third party. Someone who didn’t want something he could never give. Someone who had never seen the ravages of war. Someone with whom he did not share a past.
Someone with knowing eyes and pouting lips and a slender waist.
He forced himself to loosen his grip. “What shall we say when people ask us how we met? It needs to be something respectable. And believable.”
“There’s nothing more believable than the truth. We’ll simply say I was strolling about, minding my own business, when you appeared out of nowhere and dragged me bodily to the dance floor.”
He nodded once. “I’ve a better idea. Let’s make up something completely untruthful.”
The corners of her mouth twitched. “Aha. We’ll say I was in my nightrail, brushing my hair in peaceful solitude, when you climbed up to my balcony and—”
“Do you even have a balcony?”
She sniffed. “You’re not invited upon it, regardless.”
He gave her a slow, naughty smile. “No one’s ever invited to scale a balcony.”
“Some women might be convinced to let you try.” Her teasing gaze heated his skin.
“Let’s start over,” he suggested, rather than consider what the fictional Oliver might do after climbing up her balcony. Answer: everything.
The Dukes of War: Complete Collection Page 8
