Page 4 of The Ruin of Miss Amelia Burrowes

Chapter 2

Nathan Locke, Viscount Ainsley, stared at the couple in dismay and cursed beneath his breath. He’d come in search of his sister, Katherine, who’d managed to avoid him for most of the evening. He’d collected the wager he’d won with her, forcing her to dance with his friend, Lord Haversham, whom she disliked severely. Now, instead of finding his recalcitrant charge, he’d stumbled onto some ill-conceived tryst.

The gentleman looked intolerably smug, a veritable cat who’d eaten a very tasty canary. Nathan could see why with one look at his fetching partner. An unusually tall woman in a becoming gown of deep violet, with prettily curled chestnut hair that gleamed in the candles’ glow. A handsome face, round with a generous mouth that the gentleman appeared to have been taking advantage of, to judge by the deepening pink of the lady’s cheeks.

Common sense told him he’d interrupted a sweet interlude between an affectionate couple, though something in the back of his mind niggled at him. Still, it truly was none of his affair.

“If you will pardon us, my lord.” The gentleman stepped toward the lady and tried to take her arm, though she shrugged him off. “You’ve interrupted us at a tender moment. The lady has just consented to be my wife.”

Definitely bad timing on Nathan’s part. “Your pardon then, Mr…?”

“Burke, my lord. Mr. Lawrence Burke of Derbyshire.”

“Mr. Burke.” Nathan bowed solemnly. “My felicitations to you and Miss—”

The sight of the lady’s wide eyes and a slight shake of her head gave him a new meaning for the scene. In Nathan’s experience, young ladies sometimes sought to entrap a gentleman into marriage by being discovered in a compromising position with the man in question. From the lady’s subtle hints, he might be persuaded that, in this case, the gentleman was compromising her for the same reason.

“Miss Burrowes, my lord.” Mr. Burke smiled broadly while the lady in question glanced about as though searching for a hole to drop into.

The name brought Nathan up short, and he peered more closely at the woman. “Miss Amelia Burrowes?”

Her head came up and their gazes met. She swallowed hard. “Lord Ainsley?”

“Yes. I wonder you remember me. It has been ten years, hasn’t it?” A shadow from his past rippled over Ainsley’s soul, calling to mind a moonlit garden and a lingering kiss long ago.

“Eleven, my lord. We met at Lady Somerville’s my first Season out.” She’d taken her hands from in front of her face and now twisted them before her.

“Just so.” He remembered that introduction to the most beautiful woman of the Season distinctly. Then he frowned. “Is it not Lady Carrington? I had heard—”

“No, my lord. I never married him.” She shook her head, her face stark white.

Nathan blinked. She’d never married?

“Miss Burrowes and I were about to announce—” Burke reached for the lady’s arm, but she stepped quickly toward Nathan instead.

“May I beg an old acquaintance to return me to my mother?” Her blue eyes pled eloquently for him to agree to the request. “With so much excitement, being here at a ball after all these years, I seem to have a sudden headache.”

Burke jumped toward her. “I will be happy to escort you, Am—”

“Of course, my dear.” Nathan smoothly slid her arm into the crook of his, cutting Burke off before he could call the woman by her first name, thus imposing a claim of intimacy with her. The idea that Miss Burrowes hadn’t yet bestowed that privilege on Mr. Burke surfaced rather quickly. “I would be delighted.” Glaring directly at Burke, whose pop eyes made him seem ready to have a fit of apoplexy, Nathan steered her toward the door. “I am completely at your service.”

Paying the other gentleman no mind, Nathan escorted Miss Burrowes from the library, her arm trembling beneath his hand.

Burke followed them, glowering.

“Do you indeed wish to go to your mother?” he asked her in hushed tones.

“No, I do not,” she whispered back. “But neither do I wish to continue in Mr. Burke’s company.”

That was an easy request to manage. “Mr. Burke.” Nathan put on his most concerned face, brows lowered, jaw set. “Miss Burrowes feels a bit faint. I will take her outside for a breath of air. Please find a footman and get a glass of lemonade brought to wherever Mrs. Burrowes is currently. We will meet you there.”

Before the man could make a protest, Nathan steered his charge down the corridor toward a veranda that overlooked the rear garden. “I believe that will give us a few moments at least before he returns to search for us.” He opened the French windows, and the lady shot outside, breathing deeply, as though she’d been holding her breath. Indeed, she looked incredibly pale in the moonlight. “Miss Burrowes, are you quite well?”

She paused then composed herself. “Yes, I am well. It’s only that I haven’t been out in Society for such a long time, I am quite overwhelmed by it all.” Another long pause in which she seemed to be contemplating the wisdom of saying more. “Especially by Mr. Burke’s attentions.”

“Are you indeed betrothed to him?” Something in Nathan froze, hanging on her next words as if nothing else in the world mattered.

“Not exactly, no.”