Ariel nudged her elbow lightly into Charlotte’s side.
“I’m so sorry.” Charlotte placed her hand on Lady Hargrove’s gloved forearm as she returned her focus to those she stood with. “What was it you asked?”
She really was allocating too many of her thoughts to the marquess. She should not be the one wholly consumed by him. It should be the other way around if she was to convince him to aid her in her ruin.
“Dearest, you are rather distracted this evening.” Concern weighed heavily on the older woman’s brows. “Perhaps your laces are drawn too tightly.”
Charlotte glanced down at her dress with a sigh; it was senseless to argue with Ariel’s mother. The fashion this year was to cinch one’s waist to but a handspan. She’d succeeded in doing just that and had gone to great trouble to pick a perfectly demure yet sophisticated blush-rose silk gown that swept off her shoulders and belled out around her elbows. It was ruched over the front bodice with a fine lace overlay. Extra material gathered at both her hips and draped behind her in a train that hit the floor and flourished outward.
This was no simple evening dress by any means, but one meant to entice and to present the wearer in such a way as to appear larger than life. She would not chance Castleigh looking at any other woman present.
Charlotte clasped her folded fan tightly. Lady Hargrove was exactly the type of mother you cringed at the thought of being your own. She treated everyone as inferior, including her own daughter, and often said things that demeaned another’s character. But her husband was well connected, even if they weren’t as well set financially as some of the other members of the ton.
Because Ariel was her best friend—they’d attended the same boarding school for young ladies—Charlotte allowed the countess to address her as if she were a second daughter under her tutelage, with no sense of how to move in society without the older woman’s intrusive guidance.
Charlotte offered a smile. “I must apologize for my inattentiveness. Rest assured I will take advantage of the ladies’ resting room once dinner has concluded.”
And when she knew whether or not Castleigh attended this evening. Because if he did join the dinner party, the only place she planned to hie off to was somewhere secluded to better acquaint herself with him. She had come to a decision last night when she’d gone to bed: she wouldn’t simply deceive the marquess—he didn’t seem easy to fool—she would make an ally of him.
“Excellent, dear, I wouldn’t want you feeling faint.”
Ariel’s lips twitched; she was used to her mother’s caustic remarks.
Charlotte had to look away from her friend, lest she laugh at the absurdity of the conversation.
Lady Hargrove then asked, “What do you know of Lord Barrington?”
Charlotte’s head whipped in the countess’s direction. Goodness, word traveled fast. The earl had run into them while they were on their shopping excursion earlier in the day.
“He greeted us at the jeweler’s. He seemed most agreeable.”
And he hadn’t even tried to hide his interest in her cousin Genny. She’d never tell Lady Hargrove that bit of information.
“It was all about Town this afternoon,” Ariel said, filling her in, “that he purchased your cousin a hair comb!”
More ladies joined them, suddenly eager for any gossip that might be stirring.
“No, no.” Charlotte waved their assumptions away. While she might not mind her reputation suffering for encouraging the attentions of a rogue, she did not want the same for her cousin. “You should call her over and let her explain.” Because she didn’t really know what to say and didn’t want to dig a hole her cousin couldn’t easily step out of.
* * *
Tristan watched the women converse in the center of the room. Barrington had already joined the tittering crowd of ladies at the hostess’s insistence. On entering the house, Tristan stood with Lord Carleton to discuss business matters, but it didn’t appear as though Carleton had business in mind and instead nattered on about everyone at the dinner tonight.
It shouldn’t surprise Tristan that the first woman he noticed was Lady Charlotte. She was a vision in pink, with her hair curled and cascaded in spirals down her bared shoulders and upper back. The cinch of her waist only further emphasized the becoming width of her hips. Fripperies and fashions aside, it was her impish smile that drew his attention. And that laugh she had that was like a siren drawing in a flock of hapless seamen …
He was going to have to start calling her trouble. Did she not realize she was biting off far more than she could chew where he was concerned?
Carleton cleared his throat, not unoblivious to where his gaze was affixed. “My wife gets it in her head to match-make a few chosen members of the ton every season.”
“Is that so,” he said.
Did the countess plan to set him up with someone? Or was she more interested in seeing Leo settled into a nice marriage? Marriages were a typical result of the Carletons’ infamous summer parties, but they were always mired in some sort of scandal. He would be quite happy to escape any of her machinations.
Lord Carleton rubbed his hand over his short-cropped gray beard and gave the ladies in attendance an assessing look. “I would never have guessed that she would include you with this lot of women.”
That was what Tristan had been thinking. There were three debutantes, four widows with daughters in their midtwenties and nearly close to being unmarriageable spinsters, chaperones of varying ages and forms, and two henpecking mothers. Aside from Lady Charlotte, Tristan really wanted nothing to do with the lot of women attending the Carleton dinner party tonight.
“Perhaps the match is for Leo?” he suggested. “Lady Carleton was a close friend of Leo’s stepmother. She’d want to see him well settled and all that rubbish.”
Carleton slapped him on the shoulder and gave it a fatherly squeeze. “True enough, but you are a son to her, too.”
True, since Lady Carleton had never had children of her own she had in a sense taken him under her wing. She’d been a strong female presence in his youth, right up until his parents had died in a terrible storm at sea when he was sixteen. After that, he’d tried desperately to find his own way in life and had distanced himself from the Carletons in his youthful anger. He’d eventually come around. But there had been a strain in their relationship after he’d grown up and become the man he now was.
The Carletons had been close friends with both Tristan’s and Leo’s parents. They all owned sugar plantations that occupied a large portion of Barbados—three adjoining properties that made many men envious. The three older men had fought hard together to make sure slavery had been stamped out and abolished in the West Indies in their heyday. It was a legacy that had been hard to live up to. Tristan had never made any significant contribution to society other than to sire a bastard, which the world had far too many of already. Thank God for girls because Ronnie could never be heir to his title. The boy, Rowan, he’d adopted as his own, not that anyone knew the child wasn’t his.
Regardless, he would always be a shadow of the man his father was, so he focused on what he loved most aside from Ronnie and Rowan: women.
And that brought him right back to Lady Charlotte. He grinned at her from where he stood. He saw that she took notice of him because her color rose and her fan flicked open to waft cool air on her pink cheeks.
The dinner bell rang, breaking the spell that had ensnared them. Hopefully they would be sitting next to each other. If not, he’d steal a moment of her time afterward. The doors between the parlor and the dining room slid open and everyone filed into the room to find their names on the table. One didn’t sit by rank in the Carleton household; that would be utterly boring and predictable.
He shouldn’t be surprised to find his place card next to Miss Camden’s, but he was nevertheless disappointed not to be seated next to the woman he’d finagled an invitation to see again.
Miss Camden seemed amused by the seating arrangement,
for she said: “Lady Luck is on my side this evening. Lord Castleigh to my left, as he should be,” then more quietly added, “Though it would be equally satisfying to put you in that position, Lord Barrington.”
Tristan smiled and could barely contain the chuckle building in his chest. When Leo didn’t take her bait, Tristan did. “I’d enjoy playing your devil anytime, Miss Camden.”
And because he knew Lady Charlotte was watching their exchange from across the table—where she sat with an elderly man that looked as though he’d fall over at any moment—Tristan gave her a wink and motioned disappointedly to the seat next to him that was still empty.
Sitting next to Miss Camden afforded him the opportunity to learn a few things about Lady Charlotte; things she might not otherwise share with him since she seemed bent on luring him into her little game of seduction. Lady Charlotte glanced at him, then at her cousin as the soup dishes were set out in front of them.
He didn’t let his eyes stray from hers too often as he conversed with the dinner guests on either side of him. He talked about nothing of importance, at least not anything remarkable enough to remember as he stared across the table at the one woman he was more than eager to learn all about.
By the third course, Lady Charlotte seemed flustered by his constant attention. And so the dance between them began.
Chapter 4
None other than Mr. T____ has spent an inordinate amount of time with Lady H____ and her daughter. Could there be two weddings imminent this season with the inseparable Ladies C____ and A____?
—The Mayfair Chronicles, May 1846
It was just Charlotte’s luck to be sitting next to Lord Chester—a man who couldn’t be a day under eighty—a man she wasn’t sure could even chew his food properly. Perhaps he had to gum it to death just to get it down. The worst part about having to sit next to him was that she had to shout so he could hear her over the conversation going on around them.
Lord Chester was a kind old man, and he could tell a good war tale better than any of her father’s friends, but he tended to talk with food in his mouth and his bad eye was very eerie with the way it saw her but didn’t really see her. She was sure it was glass, but she would not ask such a vulgar question to prove her guess true or false.
Because Lady Hargrove sat on the other side of Lord Chester, Charlotte pretended great interest in her dinner and let the other woman do most of the talking.
It was difficult to eat, however, with the marquess watching her so closely from across the table. A shame they hadn’t been able to sit closer; she would have liked to talk to him instead of being forced to stare at him like a lovesick puppy. Not that she was infatuated with him, but it must look like that to the other guests since her gaze so obviously kept straying in his direction.
He hadn’t said a word to her since his arrival. True, he’d appeared only fifteen minutes before dinner was served and had been discussing something privately with Lord Carleton, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t offer up a “Good day.”
It was unsettling the way he stared at her, however, as though she were the only woman in the room. She took a sip of her water, hoping it would clear the nervous lump in her throat. It didn’t.
What gave him the right to unnerve her from across the dinner table? If he didn’t approach her after the last course and explain why he’d come to the Carleton party but hadn’t bothered to seek her out, she would have to corner him and find out for herself.
The spark of mischief in his eyes told her that he was clearly up to something. What the something was, she couldn’t guess. But it was a look she often wore when she’d decided upon a specific goal. And wasn’t that the crux of her unsettlement right there? He was using a tactic she had perfected when she wanted something from someone. She didn’t like the tables turned in this instance. She wanted complete control in the game she was to play with the marquess.
Thank goodness she’d decided to just explain what she wanted from him. Which was more than necessary considering that what they were doing now felt oddly like courting … No, that was too innocent a word for the tension building between them. She knew very well that she was in the midst of her very first seduction. So who was the seducer? She or the marquess?
“What’s that, deary?” Lord Chester practically shouted; his one catlike hazel eye focused on her.
She hadn’t even been the one to say anything, but she answered him regardless, a bit too loudly. “I’ve never had a better mint sauce on lamb.”
The whole table heard her for they looked in her direction. There were a few sympathetic glances offered her way. Charlotte gave a weak smile and ducked her head. Dinner couldn’t end fast enough. They were already on the third course. How many more were to be served?
“You don’t like steamed clams, eh? Good that we’re a bit far from the coast to make it a regularity with the meal.”
Charlotte barely held back her laughter. Tears burned the back of her eyes as she turned away from Lord Chester with a smile on her face. She didn’t have the heart to correct him.
“So true, my lord.” She cut into her lamb.
When she glanced across the table, the marquess’s gaze snared hers. He returned her smile, but there was an intense desire burning so close to the surface that it had her breath catching in her lungs and her fork stilling halfway to her mouth.
She realized right then that she needn’t worry about finding the marquess after dinner. He would be the one to seek her company, judging by the way he was staring at her. She licked a bit of mint sauce from her lips, then dabbed at her mouth with her napkin.
The marquess’s gaze seemed darker and so much more dangerous than before, as if he were a great tiger stalking closer to his prey. Only she didn’t feel hunted, she felt empowered by that all-consuming gaze because she had a leg up in the game she had devised.
She put her fork down, quite sated with food, and leaned back against her chair. She ran her fingers over the pearls about her neck and pretended not to notice the marquess’s gaze fixed upon her.
* * *
She was a she-devil, and she had no inkling that she was playing with fire. Tristan liked this new side to the Ponsley chit. Had he ever met a debutante so sure of herself? He’d certainly never been acquainted with anyone quite like Lady Charlotte. She was bold and daring, willing to toss her hand in and let the odds fall to her favor because she was so self-confident. Those were some of Jez’s traits, and part of the reason they got on so famously. Only, he wasn’t as intrigued by Jez as he was by Lady Charlotte …
“Miss Camden,” he said, helping his companion slide out of her chair as dinner concluded. “It’s been a great pleasure chatting with you over dinner.” He leaned in close. “Do leash that braggart on the other side of you. He gets away with far too much as it is.”
Miss Camden gave him a measuring look and quirked her brow. “I can’t say for sure if our conversation has been enlightening or frightening.”
“A little of both, I daresay.” With a parting wink, he turned in search of his quarry, knowing the men would not stay at the table but adjourn to the study after finger desserts were served in the parlor with the ladies.
Lady Charlotte found him before he made it three steps from the dinner parlor. The friend she was always with was in tow; he was positive she was the daughter of the gossip, Lady Hargrove. She was pretty, he supposed, with her cherub-round face and loose blonde curls that highlighted the porcelain tone of her skin. Her eyes were blue and bright, her brows and lashes an unfortunate shade of white on her fair skin.
“Allow me to introduce you both,” Lady Charlotte said.
His attention was immediately riveted to Lady Charlotte’s wry smile as she turned her focus on her friend.
“Ariel, this is the Marquess of Castleigh, not that you hadn’t figured it out.” She turned to him, her smile still devilish. “Lord Castleigh, this is my dearest friend, Miss Ariel Evans.”
“The pleasure is all mine,” he said with a b
ow to both ladies. “Did you find dinner as satisfying as I did?” The question was directed to Lady Charlotte but he looked at Ariel, including her in their conversation.
“It wasn’t quite fulfilling and left me hungry for more.”
The spark of trouble in Lady Charlotte’s eyes unsettled him. What kind of more did she refer to?
“Can I interest you in a game of chess?” Charlotte suggested.
“Why don’t I accompany you?” Lady Ariel said far too innocently.
He wasn’t given a choice in the matter as Lady Ariel practically ushered them away from the parlor and toward the doors to another room far removed from everyone else’s company. The room was rather private and would allow them to talk freely.
The Carletons’ house was grander than any other in the row of houses this side of Mayfair. Perhaps because it was a corner house much like Hayden’s at the opposite end of the street. The parlor they’d been in earlier was the first room off the foyer. The marble floors they traversed met a rich oak hardwood floor that led a path to the other rooms on the main floor. He was intimate with the layout since he’d been here many times as a child.
There were five rooms on the main level. The parlor and dining room, the library and study, and an intimate sitting room that couldn’t house more than half a dozen people. That was where Lady Carleton took her tea in the morning since the windows faced both the street and the back garden. And that seemed to be where Lady Charlotte was leading their small party. He followed without comment.
Lady Charlotte was the first to enter the sitting room; she made herself comfortable on a damask chair. Tristan motioned inside the room, allowing Ariel to precede him. The young lady busied herself with the bookshelf recessed into the wall, browsing over the spines with her forefinger. Tristan shut the door behind them and found himself a seat across from Lady Charlotte.
Midnight Temptations With a Forbidden Lord Page 4
