by Erica Ridley
Ratafia. Lawrence despised the sickly-sweet cordial almost as much as tea.
Miss Wynchester shook her head. “I don’t want ratafia, Aunt.”
“It’s not for you.” Another harrumph.
Lawrence jerked back in alarm. “I don’t require ratafia, either, madam.”
“I’m afraid it’s not for you, either,” Miss Wynchester murmured as her great-aunt doddered away without a backward glance. “I wish you better first impressions next time.”
He could not help but recall Lord Rosbotham’s commentary. Baron Vanderbean was just important enough to be considered part of the beau monde, but Miss Wynchester would have had to fight for every scrap.
“You look like you belong,” he offered, unsure if he was damning her with faint praise or if she would take the remark in the complimentary spirit in which he had meant it. “You’re even prettier in light green than you were in lavender.”
A touch of pink flushed her cheeks, and she glanced away. “You have a gaggle of admirers awaiting your attention.”
He followed her gaze and wished he hadn’t. A half dozen debutantes tittered back at him from behind painted fans.
This was one of many reasons he rarely attended society functions. First, accepting an invitation implied reciprocity, and he lacked the funds for more than a single annual gathering. Second, any unwed gentleman was presumed on the hunt for a wife. An unwed lord, on the other hand, was attacked on all sides by hopeful young ladies and social-climbing mamas alike.
Now that he was here, however, he might as well make the most of it. For his own sake—specifically, his pursuit of Miss Philippa York—his interests were not best served by idling about with Miss Chloe Wynchester.
Yet he might have done so all evening had Lord Bussington not chosen that moment to whisk him away.
“You must save me,” young Bussington whispered to Lawrence, his tone urgent. “The next set is a country-dance, at which I’m obliged to stand up with my sister’s nettlesome friend. But that means there’s no one left for my sister. If I must suffer, so must you.”
Lawrence tossed a helpless look at Miss Wynchester, but her blank gaze slid elsewhere, as if she’d already grown bored with the entire concept of a ball. Or had she simply failed to cause a stir and was salvaging her pride however she could?
“Good Lord,” Bussington chided him as soon as they were out of earshot. “What’s come over you, Faircliffe? My sister isn’t here, and you’re lucky for it. Mrs. York has been staring daggers at you for visiting wallflowers before greeting her daughter.”
Miss York. How had Lawrence forgotten to dance attendance on Miss York?
“You aren’t the sole unwed lord in England,” Bussington continued. “If the rumors are true and you’re after a wife, then fish in the best pond. To a man trying to swim upstream, even the best Wynchester is nothing more than an anchor.”
12
Chloe was still gazing after the Duke of Faircliffe’s attractive backside when her sister returned from the refreshment table.
“I see what you mean.” Tommy handed her a glass of orgeat. “That overbearing lord absolutely reeks of arrogance. The awful way His Disdainfulness sensed your presence like a haughty bloodhound, plowing through his peers to contemptuously inform you that nothing disgusts him more than your pretty eyes—”
“That’s not what he said,” Chloe mumbled. “Besides, you weren’t here. I thought you went after ratafia.”
“The queue was too long. This is better.”
Chloe wrinkled her nose. “Insipid orgeat is better than ratafia?”
“Previously insipid.” Tommy lowered her voice. “I may have given ours a splash of gin.”
Chloe gasped as if scandalized. “Great-Aunt Wynchester, you crafty old bird!”
Tommy’s eyes crinkled all the way to her temples, thanks to tonight’s extra wrinkles. “What else are chaperones for?”
“I feel like there is something else. Something important.” Chloe tapped her cheek as if in deep thought. “I can’t put my finger on it.”
“Now, now, dear. It is I who can’t remember things. You concentrate on your duke.” Tommy’s temporarily liver-spotted hand clinked her glass of orgeat and gin against Chloe’s. “I deduce that’s no hardship?”
“He’s vexingly handsome,” Chloe admitted.
As the musicians prepared to play the next set, she could not help but watch him. The sharp angles of his jaw and cheekbones were stern and rigid, much like the man himself, but his lips were quick and mobile, giving the impression that kissing them would not be stiff and cold at all but rather a tender onslaught of wicked sensations.
Faircliffe’s tall figure and raw power drew her like pollen attracted bees. Her blood buzzed with the yearning to rend his buttons from his well-tailored clothes and splay her fingers against the hot flesh beneath.
Her pulse jumped at every glimpse of him, as though recklessly leaping toward him despite her protective layers of silk and shift and stays. Her body’s attraction was instinctual, and no amount of silent inner lectures could stop her from holding in a tiny little breath every time she glimpsed him through the crowd.
His eyes met hers as if he sensed her watching him. Although his expression did not change, the temperature in the ballroom increased from the intensity of his gaze. Her lungs caught. Every breath attuned to him and the tension crackling between them.
But when the music resumed, he turned and extended his arm to Philippa York.
Chloe tried not to feel the loss. She was not there for him. Who cared who he danced with? Yet she could not help but wish her sister Marjorie were present to read their lips.
Then again, perhaps it was better not to know what flirtatious compliments or words of love Faircliffe might murmur to Philippa. After all, she was the one he intended to make his bride.
The thought soured Chloe’s stomach.
“Do you think he’s courting her for her large…dowry?” Chloe tracked their progress about the dance floor. She wished she could like Philippa less.
After Chloe had sent a note of apology for the “misunderstanding” about her name, she was pleasantly surprised to receive forgiveness as well as a renewed invitation in return. Then again, perhaps Philippa’s graciousness had more to do with Chloe’s connection to Faircliffe than any desire to be friends.
Tommy shook her head, her gaze locked on Philippa. “Her dowry is far from the only attraction. Besides being kind and clever, she’s always the loveliest young lady in the room.”
“She dresses like a doll.”
Tommy’s voice was soft. “A beautiful doll with sky-blue eyes and soft, womanly curves…”
“I will dump this orgeat on your head,” Chloe warned.
“You would never mistreat gin,” Tommy countered. “Or your great-aunt Wynchester.”
Chloe sniffed. “I don’t care whom he dances with, or whether it’s because of looks or money.”
“Or both,” Tommy added helpfully. “In Miss York’s case.”
Chloe bared her clenched teeth.
Tommy sipped her orgeat, unrepentant. “Good thing you’re not interested.”
“I’m not.” Whom Faircliffe courted, or married, or danced with, had nothing at all to do with Chloe.
Yet she could not help but wish she were whirling in his arms, if only for a moment. Whether as Jane Brown or as herself, Chloe was relegated to the periphery, tucked so far away that even her fellow wallflowers failed to notice her.
That was her role, she reminded herself. Her responsibility. Melting into the background was how she contributed to her family. Was she really complaining because she had the talent to perform her position well?
“So many ostrich feathers.” Tommy gazed out over the rim of her glass of orgeat at the dance floor. “It’s like a chicken coop in a hurricane.”
Chloe owned almost as many feathers as were present in this ballroom. Hers rarely left their hatboxes. How she longed to attend such an event swath
ed in her finest fripperies!
Instead, she was a pigeon amongst peacocks. Overshadowed even by Great-Aunt Wynchester.
“I love you, you know,” she said to her sister.
Tommy was invisible in her own way. Even when she was the most flamboyant person in the room, it was always as someone else and never as herself.
“Don’t be mawkish,” Tommy scolded, but did not meet Chloe’s eyes. “I only follow you around in the hopes that you will get your hands on another one of those halfpenny pies.”
Chloe grinned to herself. Along with mittens, as a skinny child of eight or nine, pies were amongst the first things she’d spent her pickpocketing riches on. And Tommy, whose bed was the next cot over, was the first person she’d shared her bounty with.
“You always looked after me.” Tommy smiled. “I dreamed of being as strong as you.”
Chloe blinked in surprise. “As me?”
“You always had the answers or could find the way to get them. You saved so many of us. You found Bean.” Tommy gave her a pointed look. “Why else do you suppose you’re the leader?”
“Me?” Chloe squeaked. “You were the one who gave me a place to sleep when I lost mine.”
“And you had a new plan by morning. You always did. I followed you and learned from you. Bean was brilliant, generous, and impossible, but you somehow managed him. You can manage Faircliffe, too”—Tommy wrinkled her nose—“even if your eyelashes aren’t as long and pretty as Miss York’s.”
“For the love of…” Chloe buried her face in her hands. “Why did I share my pies?”
“You knew you’d need me one day. This is my time to shine. Great-Aunt Wynchester, eater of pies and drinker of gin, summa cum laude in World’s Worst Chaperone.” Tommy snickered. “Faircliffe hasn’t got a chance.”
Chloe narrowed her eyes. “You mean with our painting. We steal it back, he won’t know the difference, and we never speak to him again.”
“Yes, yes, that’s what I meant. How absurd would it be for him to become overset with baser passions and throw himself at your feet? I won’t know, because I’ll be too busy being a terrible chaperone somewhere else. You must fill me in afterward.” Tommy thought it over. “And no replacing his spoons with twigs.”
Chloe pressed a hand to her bosom. “I’ve no idea how that keeps happening at the breakfast table.”
Tommy gave a very Great-Aunt Wynchester harrumph.
“We don’t see you do it,” she said with a wink, “but we know it’s you.”
Chloe’s cheeks heated. That was why she did it. Traded a spoon for a twig or a button for a fig. To make sure her siblings noticed her. That at home, at least, she wouldn’t be invisible.
But Tommy was saying that Chloe had never been invisible. Even when they didn’t see her, they knew she was there. They looked up to her. Chloe’s throat pricked with emotion.
She wouldn’t let them down.
“Tomorrow,” she told Tommy. “We arrive at his door as Clueless Chloe and Great-Aunt Wynchester and start the search for our painting.”
Tommy nodded. “I’m ready. You distract His Royal Aloofness and I’ll totter forgetfully from room to room. If Puck & Family is in that town house, we’ll find it well before the gala.”
Chloe’s gaze darted back to Faircliffe. He was not looking at her but Philippa. They made a striking couple. Elegance incarnate.
Yet it was not Philippa’s pretty looks that Chloe envied but Philippa’s hand in Faircliffe’s.
Philippa knew what it felt like to dance close enough to feel the warmth of his body. She knew the weight of his fingers against the curve of her back. She knew what it was like to move with him rather than against him. To let him lead her not just around the ballroom but straight to the altar.
Faircliffe could tell by looking that Philippa was the woman he wanted.
No one ever looked at Chloe and entertained such a thought. They rarely looked at her at all.
The music ended. Faircliffe handed Philippa back to her mother. Now he was murmuring something that Mrs. York found gay and amusing. “Ha-ha, ho-ho”—such peals of laughter. The Duke of Faircliffe was the wittiest lord in the room. What’s this, a waltz? And him standing right there? Surely this was a sign from the heavens that he was meant to whisk Beautiful Philippa back onto the dance floor.
Chloe didn’t stay at the party to find out.
She drained the last of her orgeat and turned to her sister. “Meat pies?”
13
You look delightfully decrepit,” Chloe whispered to Tommy late the following afternoon as their carriage pulled to a stop before the Faircliffe residence.
“You look adorably forgettable,” Tommy whispered back.
Only a sister could find Chloe’s calculated tepidness adorable.
It was relentless, foolhardy optimism that had caused her to tuck a few extra items into her usual basket of tricks. She had never worn fashionable accessories outside of her dressing room—and certainly wouldn’t do so at tonight’s party—but knowing they were there comforted her. Other people needn’t see inside her basket for its contents to bring her joy.
“Faircliffe thinks Wynchesters are embarrassing,” she reminded her sister. “Don’t let him down.”
Tommy grinned back at her. “My pleasure.”
Chloe rapped the knocker.
Mr. Hastings swept open the door, his pale face impassive.
Before Chloe could give him a winning smile, Tommy hobbled over the threshold, darting the butler myopic, suspicious glances.
“Are you certain this pile belongs to the Duke of Faircliffe?” she queried tremulously.
“Great-Aunt Wynchester, wait!” Chloe called, and slipped past the startled Mr. Hastings and into the grand hall.
“Halt right there,” Mr. Hastings demanded, but he was obliged to lock the door before giving chase.
Tommy wandered into the adjoining room that Faircliffe had brought Chloe to the first time she’d appeared, uninvited.
“I’ll wait here,” Tommy announced, in full Great-Aunt Wynchester belligerence. “Go tell your duke there’s an old lady in his parlor because her niece insists Faircliffe is the rare man who can be made useful.”
“Now, Aunt,” Chloe chided, “I never claimed anything of the sort. Oh, Mr. Hastings, there you are!” She pretended surprise at finding him red-faced in the doorway. “We are Miss and Mrs. Wynchester, here to see His Grace.”
He reddened in consternation, likely torn between throwing her out on her ear and demanding to know how, precisely, she’d characterized his esteemed employer to her great-aunt.
“If the ladies Wynchester would please wait here.” Mr. Hastings turned and stalked down the corridor.
“Was he handsome?” Tommy’s trembling nasal voice was loud enough to be heard in the kitchens. “I love a handsome butler. Even more so than matched footmen. Did I tell you about the time—”
“Yes, Aunt,” Chloe assured her, trying to disguise her laughter. “Many times. I fear it’s for the best that your eyes aren’t what they used to be. A man as important as His Grace must have very fine footmen.”
“May I help you?” came a low, droll voice from the doorway.
“Yes,” she said brightly. “That is, I hope so.”
With a final pat on Great-Aunt Wynchester’s supposedly frail shoulder, Chloe turned to face the duke. His striking blue gaze was aimed right at her.
The duke’s dark hair looked as though he’d recently raked his fingers through it, and his chest moved as though he was still catching his breath.
The poor man must have sprinted from wherever he’d been occupied. Chloe and her “aunt” had been left alone less than five minutes.
She wanted to touch her fingertips to his lapels, to feel the rise and fall of his strong chest as he caught his breath. Perhaps then she could find her own. And her wits, which seemed to have scattered.
His lips curved in a smile so faint, it was easily missed, yet she was certain it h
ad been meant for her alone.
Chloe was standing still, yet her heart thudded against her chest, pressing her bodice toward him with every heartbeat. He stood laughably far from her, but neither of them dared close the distance. Anything could happen if they were close enough to touch.
“Mrs. Wynchester, Miss Wynchester.” He arched a brow. “How may I be of service?”
Chloe opened her mouth.
“You likely cannot,” Tommy barked, then shook a scolding finger at Chloe. “My niece was raised by wolves.”
“I will keep that in mind and do my best,” Faircliffe said wryly. “Once I have any idea what we’re talking about.”
“Social ruin for this chit.” Tommy waved a hand. “If she shows her face at the Apeworth parade.”
“Ainsworth party, Aunt,” Chloe corrected gently. “Please let me tell it.” She looked up at Faircliffe and affected an expression of deep distress. “I’ve been invited to a society supper tonight, followed by dancing. It’s a wonderful opportunity to meet my future husband…if I don’t embarrass myself with all those spoons and forks and who sits where.”
“Ainsworth party?” Faircliffe’s forehead lined. “Tonight?”
“I won’t take more than half an hour of your time,” she said in a rush, “if you’re able to part with that much. It’s just…Wynchesters have never been given proper instruction in anything”—Bean had filled the house with tutors and drilled them on everything—“and if I make a poor showing tonight, there might be no further invitations until your end-of-season gala.”
“You intend your comportment to be indistinguishable from that of a highborn lady in…half an hour?” Faircliffe glanced at the clock atop the mantel, then frowned at her. “The dinner won’t start for hours.”
“Waste of everyone’s time,” Tommy blustered with an exasperated shake of her head. “You’re a lost cause, girl.”
The duke let out a defeated sigh. “One hour. That’s all I can give you.”
“Thank you,” Chloe gushed, doing her best to keep the laughter out of her voice. “Tonight I might meet my future intended.”
