Page 58 of The Seduction of an English Scoundrel

“He looks rather intense.”

“Intense is the word. I heard he tried to kill himself last year when Portia Hunt left him for his brother. Are you coming or not?”

“In a minute.”

Grayson narrowed his gaze. Jane was staring the brooding young baron in the eye, nodding gravely at whatever he had said. Suddenly her focus shifted, and she met Grayson’s stony regard as if she sensed his disapproval.

She sent him an uncertain smile. He did not smile back. God knew the baron was probably considered a catch, but a cheerful spirit like Jane didn’t need an emotionally unstable suitor to add to her woes. Considering how well she had accepted Nigel’s desertion, Grayson had to commend her inner fortitude.

He gave her a firm, admonishing shake of his head. She could do better. Yet who, he mused, would be a worthy man for Jane?

He was at a loss. This was odd. He and Jane had come closer to making love on a garden bench than he would have dreamed, and still he lingered, guilt-ridden and lurking in the shadows, while she danced and did her best to ignore him. Was this an act to show the world she would survive Nigel’s desertion? Well, he couldn’t fault her for taking his advice.

“Abandoned by your latest conquest already, Sedgecroft?” a woman’s cool voice said at his shoulder.

He recognized the provocative French accent as Helene’s, the voice of the woman he had briefly considered taking as his next lover. In recent weeks her charms had taken on a decided tarnish, and he turned reluctantly to face her. “I don’t see Buckley at your side. Loosened his chain, have we?”

“He’s fetching me a drink.” She studied his handsome profile in silence, experienced enough to know that his ardor had cooled. “Actually, he’s afraid of you.”

“Why?”

“Because you and I . . .”

He smiled at her with the polite disinterest of a stranger. He wasn’t a cruel man, but he did wish she would disappear. “Yes?”

She flushed at his dismissive coolness. “Your conquest is having quite a conversation with Brentford, isn’t she?”

He glanced back at Jane, his face dark with irony. “Well, you know what they say, Helene. ‘While the cat’s away, the mice play.’ And speaking of rodents, isn’t that Buckley hiding behind that potted fern in the corner?”

He chuckled at the obscenity she muttered in French before she excused herself to rejoin her new protector. Grayson bore her no ill feeling; in fact, he was grateful that he hadn’t gotten deeply involved with her before realizing how incompatible they were. Of course, in the past, before his father died, he would have plunged in head first and damned the consequences.

Which did not mean he had foresworn wicked fun forever. Only until the clan was back in control, and this mess with the unlucky Jane had been tidied up to everyone’s satisfaction.

Now, where had she gone? Her morose baron had also disappeared.

“Excuse me, Lord Sedgecroft. May I have a word with you?”

Grayson glanced around into the sharp assessing gaze of Baron Brentford. In the background he caught a glimpse of Jane standing with her two sisters, neither of whom lacked their share of admirers. “This concerns Lady Jane, I assume?”

Brentford nodded his dark head. “Is she spoken for?”

“That depends,” Grayson said guardedly.

“On what, my lord?”

“On what you have in mind—and whether Nigel . . .” He faltered. He and Jane hadn’t thought this far ahead. What the blazes was he supposed to say? Half the ton believed that he and Jane would marry. Perhaps it was to her advantage to encourage this illusion. “Isn’t this a question you should be asking her father or brother?”

“The viscount directed me to you, my lord. He was involved in a political debate.”

“I hardly know you well enough to speak of my personal affairs,” he said at last.

“I see.”

They stood in silence, each trying unsuccessfully not to look at Jane. Grayson had felt comfortable with her from the start, as if she’d been an old friend, but after tonight, he was afraid there might be more to it than that. What he could not guess. The baron was the first to speak again.

“I understand the pain of unrequited love,” he said unexpectedly. “I know the humiliation of betrayal that she has suffered.”

Grayson stared. Had he suddenly become someone’s maiden aunt who dispensed advice to the lovelorn?