“Oh.” He’d been so angry he hadn’t thought about witnesses.
“But who cares about Towsett? I collected on that too, and the minute you step into that ballroom, I’ll be so delightfully plump in the pocket I won’t know what to do with myself—the odds against you coming tonight were stupendous!” He danced up the last couple of steps and practically shoved Hart through the wide double doors leading into the ballroom.
The ball was well underway and the receiving line had disbanded. A dance was in progress. The Rutherfords’ butler announced them in a ringing voice: “The Duke of Everingham! The Honorable John Sinclair.”
At the announcement there was an audible hush. Heads turned in their direction. Hart ignored them. Then the Countess of Ashendon, lush with child and draped in a green dress that seemed to emphasize rather than disguise the fact, moved serenely across the room to greet them. At the same time, Lady Salter, thin and elegant in shades of smoky gray, cut across toward them from the other side of the ballroom, a thin smile of triumph on her face.
The buzz of conversation resumed, louder than before.
Lady Georgiana was dancing with an elegant young sprig and laughing as if she hadn’t a care in the world. Hart knew she’d heard him announced, for she’d turned her head in surprise. As their eyes met, her smile faded to a scowl.
So be it. He bowed over Lady Ashendon’s hand.
***
“What’shedoing here?” George muttered to Lily, indicating the duke. He stood looking around the ballroom as if he owned it, darkly elegant in black, those cold eyes of his half closed as if he were bored to death already.
“But it’s agoodthing he came,” Lily said. “Isn’t that why Rose invited him? To show everyone that there were no hard feelings?”
“Yes.” But there were hard feelings, George knew. He just hid them under a veneer of boredom and ice. And superiority.
Curse him. She’d anticipated a night of unalloyed pleasure, enhanced by the last-minute apology sent by Lord Towsett to Emm, claiming something had come up preventing him from attending. Which was an unexpected joy and a relief.
But now the duke was here, and she knew, she just knew that he was going to spoil everything.
That look in his eye as he met her gaze... She didn’t trust it. He’d come to make trouble.
Her partner arrived for the next dance and George tried to forget the duke and to enjoy the ball. All her friends were here, and now that nobody was pestering her to marry him, she could relax and simply have fun.
Except that she could feel the duke’s gaze, like a cold and sinister weight on the back of her neck, following her around the room.
He had a score to settle with her—the opera, no matter what he’d claimed before, her words had to have rankled. And as for what she’d said to him in the conservatory—he hadn’t liked that at all.
Too bad. She’d meant every word. But if he tried to spoil Rose and Thomas’s ball, the one that Emm and everyone had worked so hard to organize, when really, all Emm should be thinking about was the coming baby—well, George would make the duke sorry he ever crossed her path.
She mightn’t have been part of this family for long, butshe was devoted to each and every member. And would protect them with her life.
Oh, stop being melodramatic, she told herself. Yes, he was focused on George for some reason—every time she looked at him, he was watching her—but he was probably only getting ready to pester her again about selling Sultan. These men who thought they only had to snap their fingers and everyone would rush to please them...
The next time she glanced at the duke—for some reason she felt impelled to keep an eye on him—Emm glided across the floor to welcome him, and a moment later Rose joined her. George tensed, bracing herself to hurry across the dance floor and intervene if necessary. Though what she would do, she wasn’t quite sure.
She watched anxiously, but the conversation between them seemed a little stiff but quite civilized. At the end of a short exchange, the duke bowed, and then he and his friend strolled toward the card room.
George breathed again. Perhaps it would be all right after all. Maybe the duke was not planning to revenge himself on Rose and Thomas.
Her own partner arrived and they joined a set made up of friends, jolly and young and carefree. One of the young men decided to play the fool, pretending to have forgotten the steps, and there was much laughter and silliness as they steered him through the movements of the dance.
When George had first come to London she hadn’t expected to enjoy any of the social whirl, tied down as it was by endless rules, spoken and unspoken—very few dos and hundreds of do nots. She hated most of the do nots.
As well, she’d never danced in her life and had dreaded having to perform in public, fearing to make a complete fool of herself. Rose and Lily and Emm and Cal had taught her, as well as a little Frenchman who made his living teaching the latest dances to all the best people.
To her surprise, once she stopped feeling like a clumsy oaf, George loved to dance and was even quite good at it, if her partners’ compliments were to be believed.
After the dance, still smiling with remembered laughter, George sat sipping a lemonade her partner had fetched for her. Next up was the supper dance. She was looking forward to that—and to the supper afterward; she was starving, and glorious scents had been coming from the kitchen all day. She looked around for her partner but saw instead Aunt Agatha sailing toward her like the ship of doom, grim purpose in her eye.
“Georgiana, come with me.” Aunt Agatha didn’t ask, she commanded.
“But it’s the supper dance, and Sir Matthew Carmichael has—”
