Page 38 of The Earl’s Hoyden

In the end, it was the hope of seeing her that lured him back into the ballroom with its gilded candlelight and far too many single women. But it was to his great disappointment that he realized that Hannah was nowhere to be found.

She had left the ball.

8

A blank sheet of paper sat before Hannah, her quill at the ready in an inkwell her father had given her on her twentieth birthday.

The dinner party at her house would be that evening with Lord and Lady Whimbly, Lord and Lady Hasselton, and, of course, Lord Brightstone.

Lucien.

He had not responded to the invite until two days’ ago, citing the envelope had been misplaced. Hannah did not have to guess who the cause of the lost post might be.

She could far too easily recall the look on his mother’s face that night of the ball at Elizabeth’s home, as surely as she could remember the kiss she’d shared with Lucien.

A shuddered exhale escaped her lips and made the paper flutter lightly on the table’s polished surface.

All at once, she was drawn back on the terrace beneath a starlit sky with Lord Brightstone standing close to her, the rumble of his voice in his chest seeming to vibrate against the back of her arm. His voice was a rich timbre in her ear as he regaled her with the stories of the constellations and pointed out their locations.

It had all been fascinating and somehow strangely intimate.

And exceedingly romantic.

Heavens, now she sounded like her mother. But truly, it had been.

She loved that he knew the names of the stars and the stories behind them. Whatever he had assumed to be stodgy, she had discovered to be incredibly interesting.

Like him.

His recurrent protests of not getting on well with the opposite sex were unsupported. Every interaction they’d shared had been enjoyable and entertaining. Certainly, he had not lacked female companionship at the Langford ball. Most likely, he’d continued to be popular, though she had managed to excuse herself from the last three social events.

Citing a terrible headache, she’d been allowed to retire to bed early each night rather than attend the balls she could not summon the spirit to attend. Only it wasn’t her head that ached. No, the true source was slightly lower—in her chest.

Lying in bed with the lights snuffed out was where she fully allowed herself to live in the moment of that kiss with the heat of Lucien’s mouth on hers, the tease of his tongue surprising and thrilling against her lips.

She shouldn’t have liked it so much, and yet how could she not?

It wasn’t her first kiss. There had been one other, not long after she’d come out, a man who apparently sampled but never settled. She was fortunate to have only lost a kiss. Rumor had it, another debutante that year had lost her reputation.

Lucien’s kiss had been far more decadent than Lord Soothton’s. But she still recalled how the simple kiss with Soothton had settled in her heart and blossomed into a powerful infatuation for the man. She also recollected how painful that fledgling bloom was to uproot when he ceased being interested the following day.

Every man she had ever thought to consider for a husband had hurt her, using her for one reason or another. At least Lucien was honest in what he wanted from her. Advice and direction in obtaining a wife.

That was exactly what she had agreed to give him, and she would. Which was why she was compiling this list, empty though it might be at present. But she intended to fill it with eligible young ladies who would be ideal for Lucien to marry.

Once he was bundled off to another woman, she could liberate her heart of this strange heaviness and move on with her life. She only hoped not everyone felt the way Amy did about the vow they had made at Lady Finch’s and that Hannah could at least still anticipate a future in the country with some of her closest friends.

Hannah hissed an aggravated sigh and took up her quill. Lady Alison had appeared interested in him. Too much so, considering how much she fluttered her lashes at him—one would think there was a bit of lint perpetually in her eye.

She was such a wretched woman, though. To subject Lucien to her seemed unfair. But then, she was well off and from a good family.

A drop of ink dripped from the quill and landed in a black splatter on the page.

Heavens, but this was harder than writing the letter to him when she’d gifted him the first volume of Pride and Prejudice. She set the quill in the inkwell with a plink.

And to even think about him kissing Lady Alison—his warm lips on hers, soft and gentle—was enough to make Hannah want to fling the inkwell across the room. The clean scent of his shaving soap that would embrace her as it had Hannah that night under the stars.

Hannah crumpled the note, tossed it forcefully into the small bin by her desk and then took out a fresh page. This time, she wrote Lady Alison’s name at the top, followed by Miss Closewell and several others. Each name Hannah wrote swiftly and without thought, before she allowed herself to acknowledge the myriad reasons to strike them off.