Winning the Wallflower

  Olivia turned around and poked her. “You sound like a wilting violet. You must put him out of your head, Lucy. Out! He’s not worthy of you.”

  “He said that my height didn’t matter to him in the least.” That was a bit of a non sequitur, but Lucy couldn’t help reliving the details of her tête-à-tête with Cyrus.

  “One doesn’t marry a man because he manages to squeak out a backhanded compliment like that! Pull yourself together, Lucy. Your height won’t matter to any of the men who are taller than you, as Ravensthorpe is.”

  “True,” Lucy said, straightening her backbone. “It wasn’t much of a compliment, was it?”

  Olivia didn’t even bother to agree. “Let yourself shine instead of trying to hunch and make yourself shorter,” she scolded. “The right kind of men will flock to your side.”

  Lucy thought about the way Cyrus had responded to her once she forced him to really “look” at her—to see her. There was something to Olivia’s advice. Maybe she had made it all worse, because she herself was so mortified by her height. She nodded. “You may well be right.”

  “I think I saw your mother filling out your dance card earlier this evening,” Olivia said, tucking her hand under Lucy’s arm. They had reached the door to the ballroom.

  “Yes, she did fill it out.”

  “Then it’s all to the better that you lost it. Now you have no idea with whom you are supposed to dance. Make your own choices.”

  Lucy came to a sudden realization and drew Olivia to a halt. “Do you know, this evening has offered a quite good lesson?”

  Olivia groaned. “Not along the lines of the lessons my mother recites from The Maggoty Mirror? In short, advice about being a lady?”

  “Yes, actually,” Lucy said, lowering her voice. “You see, Cyrus—Mr. Ravensthorpe—kissed me very passionately.”

  “Oh, he did, did he?” Olivia said with a tone of distinct rancor. Cyrus had made a definite enemy in Miss Olivia Lytton.

  “But that didn’t make the slightest bit of difference when I broke off our engagement. He didn’t even try to persuade me to change my mind. He merely agreed, as if I had said that I didn’t feel like taking a ride in the park.”

  “I see what you’re saying,” Olivia sighed. “I’m afraid this is something with which The Maggoty Mirror would definitely concur. Men are not moved by desire to behave in the ways a woman would wish them to, that is, honorably and with respect.”

  “You see, your mother’s bible is good for something.”

  “I’ll try to keep it in mind if I’m ever in a situation to adjudicate a case of male lust. I rather think it would mean I was contemplating adultery, though, and my mother would expire at the thought.”

  Lucy frowned at her. “This is the third time you’ve mentioned your betrothal, Olivia. Are you quite certain that you wish to marry Rupert? No one can force you to do it against your will.”

  Olivia squeezed her arm. “I don’t mean to bleat about it; forgive me. I am fond of Rupert, and things could be much worse. Just wait until I’m a duchess. I’ll lord over you so much that you’ll hardly believe you ever knew me.”

  Lucy broke into a peal of laughter. It was very hard to imagine Olivia a duchess. For all she adored her—and she did—Olivia resembled no duchess she could imagine.

  They turned in to the door of the ballroom and paused. “Goodness me,” Olivia said. “Look at all those people craning to look at us, Lucy. I would guess that the news of your broken betrothal has spread, and the ton has found a new idol to worship. Men seem to find gold so irresistible.”

  Lucy threw back her shoulders, choked back the wish that Cyrus thought of her as an idol, and put a warm smile on her lips.

  Rather to Lucy’s surprise, Olivia was right. Suspected fortune hunters asked her to dance, but so did men who, she knew quite well, had substantial estates of their own.

  Announcing that she had lost her dance card, she chose her partners on purely idiosyncratic grounds. She smiled coolly at men who were shorter than she and pleaded a filled dance card, even though no such card was in evidence. She was friendly to those of her own height, but declined to dance with them. She accepted only men who could be depended not to characterize her as a tower, a haystack, or a tall drink of water.

  Except for the Duke of Pole. Had she turned down a duke’s request for a dance, her mother would have had a cataclysmic fit.

  So when this short, pompous duke bowed before her, with all the air of a man bestowing the utmost favor, she smiled down at him prettily enough. He straightened, which put her eyes level with the wave of his hair. It was thick, and styled up from his forehead, rather like a unicorn horn. Only one as uncharitable as she would think he did it to make himself appear taller. In fact, Pole was fairly handsome, if one ignored the tight look around his eyes and the way his nose sharpened to a slight point.

  While they made their way down the set, Lucy did her best to look enthralled by his subject of conversation: to wit, the abomination known as a purple waistcoat.

  “I had not considered that the color of a man’s waistcoat reveals anything particular about him,” she said, when Pole finally paused for breath and looked for an answer.

  He barked a laugh and launched deeper into his sartorial diatribe. It seemed that the color purple used to be reserved for royalty, and only the truly ill bred wouldn’t have a thorough knowledge of that.

  Glancing around her, Lucy saw various shades of purple on all sides, including in her own gown. She could only assume that Pole hadn’t noticed that she, to his way of thinking, was risking an insult to the Crown.

  “Lavender,” Pole said, in a mincing voice that was clearly supposed to be crushing mockery. “Violet!” He shuddered. It seemed that purple-waistcoat wearers harbored delusions about their ability to mingle with those of high blood, and wore a royal color in order to hide their plebeian origins.

  When the dance ended, Lady Summers announced a light supper. At this, the duke escorted her to a small table in the library crowded with his cronies. The duke didn’t ignore her once they were seated, either. He handed her tidbits to eat, leaned close to share a few choice jokes about the appearance of those at the next table, and summoned a footman to refill her champagne glass.

  Lucy found it an excruciating experience, especially when he glanced sideways at her with a lurking harshness in his eyes that promised that if she were an oak tree, he would have chopped her to a suitable height. So when a friend of one of her brothers, Lord Rathbone, happened by, she treated his casual smile as an invitation and sprang from her seat to greet him.

  When she glanced back at Pole, he was regarding her with barely restrained irritation. She treated him to a casual farewell, and returned to the ballroom to dance with Lord Rathbone—who was tall enough, golden-haired, and effortlessly charming.

  Normally her mother would have called for their carriage an hour ago, but she had been so thrilled by the sight of her daughter eating with the Duke of Pole that she retired to a comfortable sofa in Lady Summers’s sitting room and instructed Lucy not to call her under any circumstances until the duke left the premises.

  Rathbone made her laugh so hard with stories of his misdeeds at Cambridge that she danced with him a second time, and later accompanied him to the refreshment tables in the library for a midnight snack. Over plum tartlets they discovered to their pleasure that they were both enormously fond of Byron’s verse.

  “The obvious poem to quote to you is ‘She walks in beauty like the night,’ ” Rathbone said, his eyes lingering on her hair. “But do you know, I am more fond of those poems in which he’s not quite so confident. The one in which he prays to be able to love, though he can’t be loved. Well, it’s something like that.”

  “Byron is certainly beloved,” Lucy said, giving Rathbone a lavish smile because she had just realized that Cyrus was in the library as well. He was piling a plate with delicacies for the pretty Miss Edger. Cyrus had danced with her twice. Lucy forced her mind back to
the subject. “He plays a romantic role in many young ladies’ imaginations. Though,” she added, thinking of Cyrus’s scorn, “Byron does seem rather self-indulgent at times.”

  Rathbone grinned. “It’s very hard for the rest of us mere mortals,” he said. “My valet wants me to grow my hair and wear it in a romantic flop over my eyes, but I’m afraid I wouldn’t be able to see clearly.”

  He had a delightful grin. His face wasn’t at all closed, the way Cyrus’s was. She could tell exactly what he was feeling at this very moment. His eyes were sparkling, and she would have bet her entire new fortune that he was marveling at the fact that he’d never really paid attention to his friend Gordon’s sister.

  She had been only a wallflower.

  And now she wasn’t. At least, in his case and to his credit, it didn’t have much to do with her fortune, if at all. He had no need for money.

  “I think Byron runs the risk of turning into a conceited caricature of himself,” she went on. “That poem about parting from his beloved, for example . . . the lament about the dew of the morning sinking into his brow was utterly absurd.”

  Rathbone laughed again. “I should be terrified to show you one of my own poems.”

  “You write?” she asked, genuinely delighted.

  He nodded. “Sonnets.”

  She liked the way he said it, without defensiveness or boasting. “Are you better than Byron?”

  “No.”

  She liked the way he said that too.

  “But I could write a sonnet about you,” he said, his voice deepening a little. “Maybe I’ve just lacked for material.”

  “You do me too much honor,” she said, rising. Cyrus and Miss Edger were still sitting together, talking over a plate of sugared grapes. He would never offer to write a poem. He wouldn’t even know what a sonnet was.

  Rathbone leapt to his feet with gratifying eagerness. There was something awed and sweet in his eyes, as if he were thinking of marriage for the first time.

  She smiled back as if she were feeling the same, and slid her hand under his arm. Muscles rippled under her fingers.

  “Do you ride?” she asked, giving him a soulful smile. She could feel Cyrus’s eyes on her shoulder blades.

  Olivia was right. It was a pleasure to flaunt the fact that Cyrus could no longer have her, not after he valued her at such a poor rate.

  Her smile almost slipped at the truth of that . . . the notion that she was for sale to the highest bidder. But Rathbone was drawing her back to the ballroom, talking of Byron and horses, so she looked up at him and thought about informing her parents that she intended to become Lady Rathbone. Somehow the idea wasn’t disturbing at all.

  Pole finally left with an entourage of fellow gamblers, which meant Lucy could rouse her mother. She had just collected her reticule when there was a touch on her elbow.

  Her heart bounded like a foolish rabbit frightened from a hedge. “Oh, hello,” she said, managing a casual smile by some miracle.

  “It’s you.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  “You look a bit tired,” Cyrus remarked. They were standing to one side of the ballroom; the musicians played on, but many guests were drifting toward the entryway. “Surely Lady Towerton has not returned home without you?”

  “My mother is napping. The excitement of having one of her daughters touched by King Midas led to a slight overindulgence in champagne.”

  A thread of amusement crept into his eyes. “I did sense a rather unholy excitement in the crowds that surrounded you; perhaps it infected your mother.”

  “My friend Olivia compared me to a golden idol,” Lucy said with a laugh.

  “Idols are cold,” Cyrus said. He stood with his back to the room, so no one could see him run his fingers down her bare arm. “You are rather warm, Miss Towerton.”

  She shivered at his touch—and then she frowned. “Mr. Ravensthorpe, you missed the chance to dally when we were betrothed. I believe because you were uninterested.”

  Cyrus’s eyes darkened, and she raised her chin defiantly. She refused to be reduced to a silent fool merely because he had green eyes. Or long eyelashes. Or all those other delectable parts. The only thing that mattered was that he hadn’t wanted her enough to fight for her.

  Fight for her? He hadn’t offered a single word in opposition.

  “Lucy.” He said it quietly, but his fingers suddenly circled her wrist. “Surely you are tired of wearing gloves?”

  “It’s my feet that are tired. If you’ll excuse me, Mr. Ravensthorpe, I must fetch my mother.”

  “One moment.” He took her hands, and before she realized it, she was again seated behind the three potted palm trees where her evening with Olivia had started so many hours earlier, hidden from the slowly emptying ballroom. And he was kneeling before her, gloved hands drawing off one of her slippers.

  “You mustn’t!” she gasped. But it was too late.

  Perhaps champagne had gone to her head as well.

  But it did feel nice to sit down. “You really mustn’t,” she repeated, with absolutely no force in her voice. And then she sat back and rearranged her skirts so that her ankle was clearly visible. It was a nice ankle, a trim, rather delicate ankle for one as tall as she.

  Cyrus looked up at her, and she suddenly realized that if a woman could flirt from under her eyelashes, so could a man. And Cyrus’s eyelashes were thick and dark. “Poor tired little feet,” he said, rubbing his thumb slowly across her instep. It felt so good that she gave an involuntary moan.

  “My feet are anything but little,” she pointed out.

  He raised an eyebrow. “They look very small to me.” Lucy had always thought her feet absurdly large, despite being proportionate to her large frame. But his hand was so large that her foot was delicate in comparison.

  The look in his eyes should be outlawed, she thought. Or at least bottled and sold to forlorn maidens.

  “Did you know that it’s begun to rain?” he asked. He drew off her other slipper.

  “No,” she said, allowing her head to loll back on the chair. “That feels so good.” Another little moan escaped her lips.

  “I could not allow my erstwhile fiancée to be in such discomfort.”

  “Erstwhile?”

  “Former fiancée has an unpleasant alliteration,” he said, sliding her slippers back on. “Let’s peek at the rain, and then you must wake your mother.”

  They managed to slip through the doors leading to the gardens without attracting notice from the cluster of people bidding farewell to Lady Summers.

  Just beyond the marble terrace the rain was falling like a silver sheet. It bounced off the marble balustrade, forming little fountains that caught the lamplight shining from over their shoulders.

  “Lovely,” she breathed.

  “Yes,” he said, and she turned to find that he was looking at her, rather than at the rain.

  “Don’t,” she said, but without heat. “I’ve been dealt more extravagant compliments in the last few hours than I’ve had in my entire life. At least you did me the courtesy of being honest.”

  “Your eyes are the same color as the rain,” he pointed out. “That’s not a compliment; it’s merely an observation.” He reached out and took a lock of her hair between his fingers. “A bit like your hair too. Except there are strands of honey here, like honey and moonlight and rain all mixed together.”

  She did not look at him. Rain pattered on leaves in an unhurried, syncopated rhythm; she leaned back against the cool stone of the house to listen.

  “I am curious; did you enjoy dancing with my cousin?”

  Lucy turned her head to look at him. All of a sudden she realized that Cyrus was wearing a purple waistcoat, which made Pole’s diatribe on the subject more understandable. “I think I shall like being a duchess,” she said, mendaciously. “My closest friend is betrothed to one as well. It seems to be an agreeable state.”

  He didn’t react, which meant that perhaps she hadn’t struck the right note.
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  “I love thick, unruly hair like His Grace’s,” she said, ladling more conviction into her voice.

  She was wrong to think he wasn’t affected. The look in his eyes was pure rage, unadulterated, ruthless jealousy.

  The truth dawned on her rather slowly; she had never been very good at unpicking emotional puzzles. Humiliation socked her in the stomach, followed quickly by a blaze of pure anger. “I now gather you have drawn me out here because I danced with your cousin. Can you truly be that competitive—and with a family member?”

  “We are not competitive,” he stated. “We loathe each other. There’s a difference.”

  Lucy sighed. When he appeared at her side and then escorted her first behind the palms and then to the terrace, she’d thought . . . she’d thought something foolish. She straightened and took one more greedy, quick look at him.

  Then she met his eyes squarely and said, “You shouldn’t toy with people like this, Cyrus. It doesn’t reflect well on you.”

  A frown flickered through his eyes.

  “You asked me to marry you, knowing little of me, and caring nothing. So when I sent you away earlier tonight, you did not protest, or try to change my mind. But now, after your cousin has made his interest clear—which I assumed was due to my fortune, but I now see the fact that you and I were once betrothed also played a part—you return, you rub my feet, you take me to see the rain, you wax eloquent about my hair.”

  His mouth opened and she raised her hand, stopping whatever weak protest he was about to make.

  “I am a person, with feelings and emotions, not a game piece to move about a board in which you are playing against an entirely different opponent: your cousin, the Duke of Pole.”

  He was scowling now, and he didn’t look so beautiful, rather to Lucy’s satisfaction. But he did look as if he was listening to her.

  “Treat your next fiancée like a human being,” she told him, and turned to go.