Page 21 of The Dangerous Lord

Sara hesitated, as if debating what to say. Then she set down her tea cup. “Yes, he was. But I have it on good authority that he isn’t any longer.”

Elation swept through Felicity. Her article had worked! Katherine was free of him! “Has Miss Hastings broken with him, then? I can’t blame her, you know—there seemed to be no deep affection between them.”

“I think you’re right. His reasons for seeking a wife—the usual ones of needing an heir and perhaps some companionship—didn’t require deep affection. I suppose he thought Miss Hastings would fill the position well enough.”

“Not well enough if he’s keeping a mistress,” Felicity mumbled without thinking.

Sara shot her an interested look. “Ah, so you did read that article in the Gazette. You pretended otherwise at lunch.”

This time Felicity’s embarrassment was genuine. At a loss for words to explain why she’d taunted Lord St. Clair, she hesitated.

Thankfully, Sara didn’t wait for an explanation. “I understand your feelings. It did seem rather blatant of him to flaunt a mistress while he courted someone. But Ian explained the situation to all of us today.” She smiled sheepishly. “We wouldn’t stop teasing him about his newfound fame, so he finally told us the entire story. I suppose I shouldn’t discuss it, but I hate to see Ian unfairly accused.”

Felicity’s ears pricked up. “Unfairly?”

“Yes. You see, the situation isn’t at all as that newspaper person said. Ian was simply helping a friend of the family.” She tapped her chin thoughtfully. “I believe he said the woman was the wife of a compatriot during the war. Or was it the man’s sister?” She shook her head. “In any case, after Ian’s friend died, the poor woman fell on hard times, and Ian stepped in to help. Ian’s like that. A very generous man.”

Felicity had to stifle a snort. Lord St. Clair’s friends were as gullible as they were loyal if they believed the story he’d tried to pass off on her. “I would never have guessed that Lord St. Clair had served during the war. He doesn’t seem the type.”

“It did take us by surprise.” Sara hastened to add, “Not that he would fight; he’s not a coward or anything. We were merely surprised he never told us about it.”

“I dare say he’s modest about his accomplishments,” Felicity remarked dryly. It was easy to be modest about nonexistent accomplishments.

“Ian is indeed modest. And it upset me to hear how he’d been misrepresented in the paper.” She sighed. “I don’t think it did him any harm, however. If anything, it might have saved him from making a terrible mistake. Apparently, his prospective fiancée had her own side interests.”

“What do you mean?”

“You haven’t heard? Everyone in London was talking of it this morning—or so said Emily, my sister-in-law. Emily and my brother Jordan live close by here, you see. They came in from town this morning and stopped by on their way home. Emily and I talked privately, and she told me the most astonishing news.” Sara leaned forward with a conspiratorial air. “According to her ...”

Chapter Six

Beware, my friends, the traps of romantic entanglement: vanity, unchecked urges, the arrogance of believing that the subject of your affections must needs return them. Nothing is so tragic as a woman—or a man—who mistakes a friendly smile for courtship.

Lord X, The Evening Gazette, December 9, 1820

Ian scanned the Worthing’s crowded ballroom with an expert eye. How he tired of this pointless endeavor. Only one thing kept him playing the wife-hunting game—the knowledge that if he didn’t, he’d be handing his father’s legacy to a man with the character of a snake.

He spotted an insipid woman bedecked in virginal white lace and couldn’t repress a shudder. To think he’d come to this—surveying eligible women at a Christmas ball. He should never have delayed the search so long. After Father’s death, when he’d first heard the terms of the will, he’d wasted precious months searching for a legal means to overturn it. The laws of entail should have protected him. But his grandfather’s untimely death when his father was a child had prevented the man from carrying on the entail to Ian, leaving his father in a position to do as he liked. And in his usual manipulative fashion, Father had done exactly that, leaving a most abominable will. Ian’s realization that he couldn’t break it had fallen heavily upon him.

Reluctantly, angrily, he’d sought a wife who could give him the heir he needed to fulfill the will’s terms. To his surprise, he’d found he was a very ineligible bachelor, thank to all the absurd rumors. Too many people had speculated viciously about his abrupt departure from England. Too many others had whispered that he’d spied for the French.

Refuting so many longstanding rumors was impossible, especially when he had no wish to talk about what he’d actually done all those years. Besides, discussion of his activities on the Continent might provoke discussion of why he’d fled England, and that was unacceptable.

Thankfully, his unfailing attempts to behave like the perfect gentleman in the past year had softened public opinion toward him, though many people still distrusted him with their daughters. Many agreed with Miss Taylor’s belief that all smoke signaled fire. Some probably saw past his façade into the howling blackness beneath.

And now two of his choices had run off with other men. Two others had refused him after his damned uncle paid their parents a visit.

No doubt Uncle Edgar had thought Ian wouldn’t hear of his cowardly attempts to undermine Ian’s search for a wife. But Uncle Edgar didn’t know how much his nephew had changed in the past years. Ian was no longer the hotheaded nineteen-year-old who’d run off out of pride and stubbornness. This time he would stay and fight.

He wouldn’t let that bastard drag Chesterley into the ground the way he’d done his own estate. If Ian couldn’t find a wife in time, he’d publicly reveal the truth about the man, even if it meant destroying himself in the process. He’d send himself to hell if that’s what it took to put Edgar Lennard there, too.

Unfortunately, he now had another troublesome person to contend with. His gaze fixed on a laughing figure across the ballroom. Miss Taylor. Dressed in a modest gown more suited to a simpering virgin than a firebrand spinster, she stood with society’s most accomplished rumor-mongers. Lady Brumley. Lord Jameson. The March sisters.

Miss Taylor was the only one among them with any sparkle or style. Given her attire at their first meeting, that surprised him. Tonight, she’d taken every care with her appearance. Her pearl-encrusted slippers were most certainly costly, her jewels tasteful and elegant, and her hair swept up by a pearl pin much more sophisticated than the two pencils she’d sported yesterday. Candlelight heightened the glow of good health on her cheeks, glancing off the creamy satin that sheathed a body even a courtesan would envy.

Bloody hell. He was thinking of her in those terms again. What dangerous idiocy. Witness the way he’d missed half his shots after luncheon today, caught up in thoughts of nonsensical things like the sudden sunrise of her smile when Sara praised her father’s designs. Or the impish gleam in her eye when she’d pretended not to have read gossip she’d written about him.

Damn the bloody woman for being so adept at invading his thoughts. And why must he feel this cursed attraction to her? It made no sense. She was a plague upon society and all good sense, a woman who traded on her father’s reputation to plunder the lives of anyone so foolish as to speak to her.