“I’ll consider it,” she said pertly.
To her eternal vexation, shewasconsidering it, damn him. It was impossible not to. Sex in a cravat, the swan had said.If you get your chance, take it.
Unity could do no such thing, no matter how her quickening body felt about the sensual proposal. She needed to keep her post all season to learn everything while she still could. She could not risk being cast aside in disinterest after a ten-minute tup.
Er... thirty-minutes? An hour? How much timewoulda man like Lambley take? Would he consider his time so valuable that not a single item of clothing would be removed? Or did he treat each new conquest with the same slow, deliberate exploration that he gave everything else he touched?
He didn’t care, the swan had warned. Heart of stone, incapable of love.
That was good, Unity reminded herself. She, too, was incapable of love—or at least, not permitted to indulge in such flighty nonsense until after she gained her independence. If she lay with a man, it would be because she chose him, not because she needed his money or the security he could provide her. Unity could provide those things for herself. Or would be able to. Soon.
If she could stop staring hungrily at her employer’s mouth, wondering what it would be like if he kissed her.
“Perhaps after the ball,” she said, “we could—”
“Everyone leaves at dawn,” he said firmly. “Even you, Lady X. In fact, we should discuss your arrival time. In the future, you should not attempt early ingress. My rules are meant to be followed.”
Ah, there it was. Her place.
Perhaps hehadbeen serious when he offered to take her upstairs to one of the bedchambers, but his interest did not extend beyond that. She dipped an ironic curtsey. Just business, then.
Luckily, she didn’t want anything more from him than that.
Chapter 8
Julian prowled through his crowded ballroom. He had not seen Miss Thorne since last Saturday—which was good; it meant following instructions, he hadtoldher she was not allowed to arrive early, no exceptions.
Except it was now half past eleven and she wasn’t here at all.
He had expected her to present herself to the night butler at five minutes to ten. Not early enough to be objectionable, but early enough to be the first through the door when the clock struck the hour.
The first through the door were a Lord and Lady X who could not be mistaken for Miss Thorne under any circumstances.
Next was a Lord X, and then another Lord and Lady X. Try as Julian might to keep half his attention on the constantly opening door, he had never given only half of his attention to his duties as host. He was needed here for this, and there for that, and the next thing he knew, his ballroom was as full as a bucket of sand, and about as easy to walk through.
Perhaps he’d frightened Miss Thorne off.
That was good, wasn’t it? Julian did nottryto be frightening, though he knew he could have that effect on certain temperaments. He would not have thought Miss Thorne to be of the swooning sort, but truly he should not be thinking of her at all. He had a party to oversee, a kingdom over which to reign, a plan underway.
The reason his ballroom was stuffed as full as the Royal Ascot with Prinny in attendance, was because his call to arms had worked. The mantel in the lavender parlor overflowed with invitations from the mothers of hopeful debutantes, each one the perfect picture of propriety.
As for Julian’s ballroom... Half of the guests were people who wanted to squeeze every bit of fun out of the parties before they came to an end. The other half included significantly less respectable hopefuls convinced the Duke of Lambley would never give up his masquerades for a wife—and that they were the perfect candidate for the position.
Now that Miss Thorne had put into Julian’s head that he could find a woman who was outwardly virtuous and secretly a vixen, he could settle for nothing less. Indeed, he had spent the past week carefully contemplating each of his past female guests.
First, he struck the married ones from his mental list, leaving him with half the original quantity of names. Next to go were all the women who weren’t ladies. He liked them just as well, but he wasn’t choosing a bride to suit himself. He was selecting the perfect duchess.
Whichcouldbe done. He had created the perfect masquerade, had he not?
Yes, it had taken several seasons to refine and refine again, until every glittering evening was a masterpiece. But a wife was not nearly so complicated. Besides, young ladies of the ton had trained for such roles from the moment they left the nursery.
And that was another thing to consider. Young ladies. Julian wasn’t young, and had no particular interest in leg-shackling himself to some chit barely out of the schoolroom. No debutantes, then. Better yet—no one who had debuted in the past two years. Which struck several dozen more names from the list.
He could not settle for a spinster, of course. Not because of her age—the more years of life a person lived, the more interesting he or she became.
Spinsters were not to be touched for two different reasons. First, if a lady truly were perfect duchess material, some other lord would have snapped her up before she was in any danger of moldering forgotten on the shelf. And second, a perfect duchess by definition could not be some luckless unwanted wallflower, even if the loss truly was Julian’s.
And third, his future heirs. He needed someone with plenty of childbearing years yet.
