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Thank heavens Sapphira had such overweening confidence in her own appeal that, since Rob resisted her, she’d not be able to conceive of him admiring any other woman. For if she ever discovered Allegra’s secret hope, she’d make life even more miserable for her.
But possessing the Antinori fierceness, Allegra wasn’t about to give up yet. Somehow she would find more opportunities to be with him—and make the most of the ones she had, like tonight.
Cheered by that resolution, she gave Rob her most glittering smile when at last, his instructions to the footman complete, he returned to offer each of them an arm.
“Are the loveliest ladies at the party ready to greet their hostess?”
“With you beside me, I’m ready for anything,” Allegra said, and put her hand firmly on his arm. Together they mounted the stairs to Lady Ormsby’s ballroom.
IN THE RECEIVING LINE upstairs, after smiling and bowing through a long round of introductions, Will led Lucilla toward the ballroom, doing his best to look as if he were interested in the proceedings. To his greetings, he’d received mostly blushing monosyllables from the younger maidens, speculative looks under veiled lashes from the older ones—and boldly inviting glances from two well-endowed widows.
“Perhaps my wicked reputation has preceded me,” Will told his cousin. “I seem to terrify the infants.”
“They will find you charming enough once they converse with you. But upon first meeting, you tend to wear a stern, rather intimidating look. Please remember that the young ladies you are greeting are not rival pugilists you are about to confront in the ring! Smile, speak only of something unexceptional and you will put them at ease.”
“I have confined myself to the unexceptional!” Will protested. “‘Miss Westerly, what a charming gown. The blue quite lights up your eyes.’ I daresay I’ve never uttered so much treacle in a single evening. Now, several of the matrons seemed much more…rewarding of my efforts.” He sighed and looked at Lucilla, a twinkle in his eyes. “Having bowed before innocence all evening, I find myself thirsting for a taste of plain, straightforward sin.”
While Lucilla batted him on the arm and called him “incorrigible,” Will scanned the room, looking for the two widows who’d given him come-hither glances. Once he’d danced with Lucilla, he might seek out their company. He deserved some amusement after enduring an entire dinner with Miss Benton-Wythe.
As Will paused at the entrance to the ballroom, his gaze drifted to a trio of guests who had just ascended from the entry below. He was about to turn away when the image before his eyes registered in his brain and he froze in midstep.
Outlined against the black-garbed older lady leading the group was a much younger woman in a diaphanous gown of pale gold. The burnished glow of the material set off the faintly olive hue of the skin perceptible above her gloves and the modest décolletage of her dress. Staring now with avid appreciation, Will noted the lovely line of shoulder and neck—and the voluptuous curve of bosom concealed beneath the gown.
Throat drying and fingers curling in his gloves, he spent another instant regretting the neckline hadn’t been cut lower, allowing bystanders a better look at that tempting lushness. All his senses humming, he forced his eyes upward.
Her face, with its high cheekbones, narrow nose and wide forehead, was the same exotic tint as her chest and shoulders. If she’d not deigned to try to mask her unfashionable coloring with rice power, very likely she’d employed no artifice to thicken the luxuriant lashes that framed those large dark eyes. Whether or not the ripe apricot hue of her full lips stemmed from nature or artifice did not affect his immediate, powerful desire to kiss them. His body tightened at the thought.
Who was she and what was she doing here? he wondered. Looking like an exotic Eastern princess, she seemed as out of place among this crop of pink-and-white-gowned debutantes as if one of the glasshouse orchids his classics professor used to grow had suddenly sprouted in a field of demure English daisies.
A jerk at his arm pulled him from his rapt contemplation of the newcomer.
“Will, what is wrong?” Lucilla asked.
“That girl in the saffron gown.” Will angled his chin toward the doorway. “Who is she?”
His cousin looked in the direction he’d indicated. “The one walking with the woman in widow’s black?” When he nodded impatiently, she continued, “Miss Allegra Antinori. Despite the foreign name, she’s from the Montesgue family—Viscount Conwyn is her grandfather. She’s the ward of a distant connection of her mother, Lord Lynton—” Lucilla indicated the blond gentleman escorting the two ladies “—whose cousin, Mrs. Randall, is her chaperone.”
“Allegra,” Will repeated, the music of her name lingering on his tongue. “And she’s unmarried?” If unwed and possessed of an entrée to this gathering, she must definitely be on the Marriage Mart. Lucilla’s idea of beguiling a well-bred maid suddenly seemed much more appealing.
Lucilla glanced at his face, no doubt perceiving the avid interest in his eyes. Thankfully she didn’t cast her glance lower, or she might have discerned rather pointed evidence of the strength of that interest.
“Yes, she’s unmarried and eligible—I suppose. Though I don’t know if the dowry left her by the late Lord Lynton would be adequate to your needs.”
Ignoring for the moment the matter of wealth, the hesitation in Lucilla’s voice prompted him to ask, “You ‘suppose’ she is eligible?”
Lucilla sighed. “’Tis a rather old scandal. Her mother, Lady Grace, Viscount Conwyn’s youngest daughter, ruined herself by running off with a foreigner. After her parents’ deaths, the girl returned to live with the Lyntons, who were the only of her mother’s relations who did not shun the connection after her mother’s misalliance. But for that one blot upon the family escutcheon, Miss Antinori’s breeding is unexceptional—though the highest sticklers would probably not agree. Still, if her fortune is sufficient, she has a chance of making an acceptable match. At least I hope so, not being one for holding the sins of the parent against the child.”
“You never did so in the past,” Will murmured, feeling another level of connection to the alluring Miss Antinori.
Just then, the girl looked up and caught him staring at her. As her dark eyes locked on his, Will’s nerves tingled and a warmth swept through him, as if he’d suddenly stepped from shadow into sunlight.
Despite the information Lucilla had just given him indicating Miss Antinori’s reception by society might be uncertain, at discovering herself to be the object of scrutiny, the girl neither blushed nor looked away. For a long moment, she held his gaze coolly. Will felt the charged force of the link between them, like the tension on the lead between a trainer and the green colt he is trying to master.
Then, lifting her chin and squaring her shoulders, she turned her face away, took Lord Lynton’s arm and walked with him into the crowd of guests.
Shaken by that wordless encounter, Will turned back to Lucilla. It seemed there was not enough air in the room, for he had to catch his breath before he could speak. “Despite a childhood spent banished from society,” he said at last, “the girl seems poised enough. Where did Lady Grace and her daughter end up?”
“Her father was a musician, I’m told, so—”
“Don’t tell me she’s the daughter of Emilio Antinori!” Will interrupted, the vague flicker of recognition in his brain suddenly flaming into focus.
“Why, yes. You’ve heard of him? Well, of course you would have,” Lucilla concluded, “as interested in music as you’ve always been. He was good, I take it?”
Will laughed, his gaze following the girl as she made her way through the room on her escort’s arm. “‘Good’ is hardly adequate to describe the work of Emilio Antinori. The man was a genius, not just the most talented violinist since Haydn, but also a composer whose works rival in depth and complexity those of Bach and Beethoven. I once had the privilege of watching him play. Amazing.”
Though he’d attended the concert more than ten years ago, Will could still hear the high, pure vibrato notes, see the flying fingers that made the intricate progression of arpeggios seem effortless while the intensity of melody held him mesmerized. If he’d had a fraction of the talent of the great Antinori, he would have turned his back on his heritage and become a professional musician.
With an ache of regret that the world had lost such a talent, Will came back to the present to find Lucilla watching him, a faint smile on her lips. “Do I get my dance now?” she asked. “Or, given that look in your eye, must there be introductions first?”
“You can present me to Miss Antinori?” he asked eagerly.
“I met her while paying afternoon calls. She seems nice enough. Her cousin and sponsor, Robert Lynton, the new Lord Lynton, was a classmate of Domcaster’s at Oxford.”
“Rob Lynton? Yes, I remember him from school. Present me then, if you please.”
Lucilla’s smile faded. “There’s one other complication you should know about. With Lynton sponsoring Miss Antinori, one would expect Lady Lynton to be her chaperone, but apparently the two do not get on. I don’t know Robert’s stepmother—she made her bow after Domcaster and I retired to the country. I’m told that after several years as society’s reigning Diamond, she married the late Lord Lynton only last year.”
