Page 52 of How to Start a Scandal

‘She does mean you and you’re driving her mad with your inability to approach her.’ Seth tried to keep his tone tolerant.

Rawley was a good man. A shy one, but a good one, none the less. It was on the edge of Seth’s tongue to tell the Viscount the lengths he’d forced Caroline to go to in seeking lessons from Lottie.

In the end, Seth swallowed the words down and patted his friend on the shoulder. ‘Out of consideration for my sanity and the number of times I must endure your name being brought to my attention, please speak to her when next you see her.’

Rawley grinned at Seth. ‘Truly?’

‘Truly.’ Seth grimaced. ‘I don’t know how much more I can stomach hearing about Lord Rawley.’ He put the back of his hand to his brow in mockery of a feminine swoon.

‘Now you’re just being rude,’ Rawley accused despite the twinkle in his eyes.

‘I wish that was indeed the way of it,’ Seth muttered.

A woman with dark hair in a lovely white-silk gown with blue ribbons came into Seth’s peripheral vision. Violet. His pulse tripped.

He’d been home scarcely a fortnight and already he couldn’t take the tedium of so many balls and dinner parties and soirées. On and on they came in an endless stream. The time they took to prepare for, especially with a valet like Bennet, the polite facade Seth had to plaster on to his face, the idle conversations that required too little of his brain and too much of his patience.

But then there was Violet. The only reason he was in attendance at all.

Truly. He had a note prepared to beg off from the soirée, complaining of an ailment he presumed would serve as a valid excuse.

Lady Hollingston saw him and practically dragged Violet in his direction. The woman gave him a sharp-toothed smile. ‘Lord Dalton, what a lovely surprise.’

But it wasn’t the Countess who drew his attention, not when Violet stood before him with a smile on her full lips and amusement sparkling in her eyes.

‘Would you mind if I took a turn about the room with your daughter?’ he asked Lady Hollingston.

‘Not at all,’ she replied, her demeanour overly gracious.

Seth offered his arm to Violet, who slid her hand into the crook of his elbow, bringing with her that wonderful, sweet, powdery scent of violets. She didn’t speak until they were out of earshot of her mother.

‘I hope you’re aware of how happy you’ve made my mother,’ Violet said.

Seth recalled how Lady Dalton had ordered Violet’s debut gown in a smaller size and suddenly found he didn’t much care about what pleased the Countess.

‘It isn’t her happiness that concerns me.’ He smiled down at Violet. ‘You look beautiful this evening.’

Colour touched her cheeks and she thanked him.

The soirée was decidedly less crowded than the balls he had attended to date. And thank God for it. He might be able to actually make it through an evening. Especially with Violet at his side.

‘I appreciate you taking the time from Lottie’s to be here with me,’ he teased suggestively in a low voice meant only for her.

‘You must promise to keep my secret,’ she whispered.

The lilting music grew louder as they approached the musicians and then softer as they passed around them.

‘I assure you,’ he said. ‘I shall guard all of your secrets to my dying breath. Might I ask a question, though?’

Violet’s slender arm on his tensed slightly. ‘Yes.’

In truth, Seth had a string of questions he had wanted to ask her, but settled on the one most pressing. ‘Why are you afraid of marriage?’

She laughed, an unexpected sound tense with apparent nerves. ‘It’s a tedious story.’

He’d made her uncomfortable. While he hadn’t intended to put her off, he didn’t want to abandon the question. As an earl, his duty was to wed. He couldn’t see himself marrying some insipid debutante. He wanted Violet, with life brimming over from her bright smiles and lovely blue eyes, with her sharp wit and confidence. The woman he didn’t deserve.

There was something about her that settled him. All the anxiety usually roiling through him seemed to calm when she was around. He liked the relaxed ease he could enjoy while speaking with her. As though Waterloo had never happened, as if his mind wasn’t terribly broken.