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“Everyone is so predictable,” said Marchmont.
“Indeed we are. And now she’s turned the tables, and we’re all falling all over ourselves trying to meet her standards.”
That would be me, Marchmont thought. I’m the standard. Because she hadn’t met other men.
He had the unpleasant suspicion that he’d set the standard too low.
“It’s a great bore for you, I know,” said Adderwood. “As silly as watching everyone chase after Harriette Wilson a few years ago. No, sillier, because this time it’s a lady and we must be on our good behavior. Poor Marchmont, what a martyr you are. I don’t blame you for wanting another bottle—or another dozen. But I know you well, and I can see you’re rapidly approaching the point where you start quoting Shakespeare and falling into the fire. Either you must begin drinking tea or we must make our excuses.”
“Tea?” Marchmont said. “I’d rather hang. I do not spout Shakespeare when I’m in my cups.”
“Always,” said Adderwood. “Henry IV, usually.”
“Oh, that. ‘I know you all, and will awhile uphold the unyoked humor—’”
“Uphold yourself for a bit, there’s a good fellow,” said Adderwood. “It’ll be over soon. She’ll be off your hands in no time, and wed before the Season ends.”
Marchmont’s gaze went across the room, to where Zoe sat with Amelia Adderwood and the indigent cousin, the three of them giggling.
“If she takes—as it appears she’ll do—I wager she’ll have her pick of suitors,” Adderwood said.
“Suitors, undoubtedly,” said Marchmont. “Whether any succeed is another matter entirely.”
She wouldn’t. Not so soon.
I was married from the time I was twelve years old, and it seemed a very long time, and I would rather not be married again straightaway.
“She’s a woman,” said Adderwood. “They all want to rule their own households.”
“I shouldn’t count on that in her case, if I were you,” Marchmont said. “Certainly I shouldn’t be so foolish as to wager on it.”
Adderwood’s eyebrows went up. “Marchmont advising a fellow against a wager. Now I’ve heard everything.”
“I tell you because you’re my friend and I deem it unfair to let you throw money away in that cause,” Marchmont said. “Miss Lexham has told me she doesn’t want to be married straightaway. This shouldn’t surprise you. Having read her story, you must understand her wishing to enjoy her freedom for a time.”
“Women change their minds,” said Adderwood. “They’re famous for it.”
“Do you fancy you can change hers?”
“Perhaps. If I can’t, somebody will. Once she’s going about in Society, once she begins meeting Englishmen and finds herself endlessly wooed and pursued, I think she’ll change her mind. How do you know what ‘straightaway’ means to her? It could mean tomorrow. Next week.”
“You don’t know Zoe.”
“And you don’t know everything,” said Adderwood.
No one knows her better than I do, Marchmont thought.
“A thousand pounds,” he said. “A thousand says she finishes the Season as Miss Lexham.”
“Done,” said Adderwood.
Zoe, as always, was aware of everything going on about her. She was most palpably aware of Marchmont prowling the room like one of Yusri Pasha’s caged tigers.
She was aware, too, that her plan wasn’t working.
Papa had shaken his head over Marchmont’s list and muttered something about “old men” and scratched off most of the names. Even so, even though he’d kept the two youngest ones and added Lord Winterton, and even though these younger men had seemed disposed to admire her—well, at least Adderwood and Alvanley seemed to do so; Winterton seemed merely to find her amusing—even so, she found herself as unmoved in their company as she had been with Karim.
Alvanley was not handsome but very witty. She felt nothing.
Adderwood was not only handsome but charming and witty. She felt no heat, no thrill.
Winterton was as handsome as Marchmont, and others might view him as more romantic, with his dark hair and eyes, but she felt no excitement of any kind in his company, either. He was the man who’d rescued her, and she would always be grateful. But she couldn’t feel more than gratitude.
None of them had succeeded in blotting Marchmont from her mind.
Still, that was only three eligible men, she told herself. When she was finally moving freely in Society, she’d meet many, many more. The odds were in her favor.
In the meantime, she must do something about Marchmont. He’d had a great deal to drink. He must have an unusually strong head for liquor. Any other man, she thought, would have been carried out to his carriage by now.
She knew he was uneasy about this dinner. She knew he thought it a bad idea. Otherwise he wouldn’t have put a lot of elderly bachelors and widowers on his list of “eligibles.” He was worried she’d misbehave and spoil everything.
Too, he was jealous.
It was very difficult to enjoy the company and concentrate on other people when he was prowling about, cross and bored and wanting to fight somebody.
Men, she knew, would fight over women merely to prove who was the bigger and stronger male. It didn’t matter whether they really wanted the woman or not.
She drifted from one group of guests to the next until she saw him talking to Alvanley, near the windows. Then she approached. “I should like a word with His Grace,” she said.
Alvanley gracefully made himself scarce, as she’d known he would. He was not as competitive with Marchmont as Lord Adderwood was.
“What word is that?” Marchmont said when his friend had moved out of earshot.
“I lied,” she said, lowering her voice. “I have bushels of words. But first—I’m sorry you’re so bored. I know this isn’t the group you chose. But for some reason Papa seemed to think your list was a joke.”
“The Earl of Mount Edgcumbe,” he said. “That’s what did it, probably. An agreeable fellow—but his eldest daughter is three years older than you. I know what you’re thinking.”
She was thinking he was a man, and possessive. About her. She knew this signified nothing. It was merely competition with other men. But her body, which noticed no other men, was aroused by this one, a snake drawn to the heat.
“You were trying to protect me,” she said. “You thought I’d be safer with more mature gentlemen.”
“Is that what you’re thinking?”
“I’m thinking, too, of how grateful I am,” she said. “Your friends Lord Adderwood and Lord Alvanley are amusing. And your cousin Miss Sinclair is very clever.”
Miss Emma Sinclair had proved to be not only clever but informative. She thought the world of her cousin Marchmont and didn’t hesitate to say so. Tonight Zoe had learned that the duke supported this lady, along with numerous other relatives. Though a woman of high rank, Miss Sinclair, like too many other spinsters, had no income; and, like them, she had no respectable means of earning a living or even any idea or training in how to go about earning one.
Marchmont, who made such a show of caring about nothing and nobody, obviously cared about Miss Sinclair. He supported her. Generously. And that was only part of the story. Miss Sinclair had told Zoe that he not only supported his mad aunt Sophronia but let her live in grand style in a magnificent old house he owned, a few miles from London. These, Zoe had learned, were by no means the only relatives to whom he was generous.
She knew it was a gentleman’s obligation to look after his dependents. She knew a duke had a great many dependents. All the same, the discovery had made her heart ache. In so many ways he’d changed, and not for the better. But in other ways he was Lucien still, impossibly annoying at times—as he’d always been—yet kind, deep down, in the heart he kept so well hidden.
“I’m glad they amuse and entertain you,” he said. “You needn’t worry about my being bored. I am not so dangerous as you are when that happens.?
??
He was a great deal more dangerous than she. His mood hung over the drawing room like a storm cloud. She wasn’t sure others felt it—or recognized what it was if they did feel it—but she did, and it was wearing on her nerves.
She smiled up at him. “But I’m not dangerous tonight. I can be proper when it’s absolutely necessary.”
“You’ve done well,” he said. “Everyone’s in love with you.”
But not she with them.
“Maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned the harem,” she said. “You seemed displeased.”
He waved this away, the slightest gesture of his hand. “It didn’t signify.”
“And you shouldn’t worry when men stare at my breasts,” she said.
She caught the flicker of surprise before he hid his eyes again. “There they were—are,” he said, and she felt, rather than saw, his green gaze drift downward. “Unavoidable.”
“But that’s the purpose of evening dress,” she said. “To display.”
“You have undoubtedly achieved the purpose,” he said.
“You’re very protective,” she said.
