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Emily had been so deep in her thoughts that when her brother’s teasing voice pierced into her ears, she jumped a little, flushing bright red when she saw Benedict. With him was his best friend, the new Duke of Gilleton, Daniel Bolt.
“We were wondering if we would ever catch a moment with you, my dear sister,” Benedict teased her in that horrid way all older brothers were wont to do to their sisters. “Poor Lord Caney never stood a chance. Indeed, it would seem that your ploy to sabotage yourself on purpose worked brilliantly.”
On any other occasion, she might have been able to tolerate his teasing, but tonight, she found herself unable to withstand any more of his jokes.
“If you are here to make fun of me,” Emily sighed, “then I am afraid, I am not quite up to it.”
At her words, her brother sobered up, and his handsome features creased into a frown. “Emily, is something amiss?” he asked her.
“Nothing,” she replied listlessly. “I just…I am feeling out of sorts at the moment.”
There was a pause between them as her gaze drifted longingly back to the dance floor. The quadrille had ended, and the musicians were striking up another tune.
“Perhaps a bit of refreshment is in order,” the Duke of Gilleton suggested in a smooth baritone.
“Quite, quite,” Benedict agreed. “Why don’t you join us, Emily?”
“I would rather stay here.”
Her brother shared a quick glance with his friend before the Duke nodded imperceptibly, “You go on ahead, Hardy. I shall keep Emily company.”
“Keep an eye on my sister, Gilleton,” Benedict warned him.
“Of course,” Daniel replied easily, his deep blue eyes drifting to the troubled young lady beside him. With Emily Montgomery’s failure fortwosuccessive seasons, it was hardly a challenging task.
In fact, it would be far more challenging to turn this quiet wallflower into a vivid blossom that could entice the foppish bees of this ballroom.
CHAPTER2
Daniel Bolt, the fourteenth Duke of Gilleton, glanced at the despondent girl beside him. Although he had been friends with her brother for years, he hardly paid any attention to Emily Rutbridge, filing her away in his mind as his friend’s painfully shy younger sister—in other words, she was off-limits to his rakish appetites.
Tonight, he and Benedict had watched her futile attempts to engage a young lord in conversation, and as he had expected, it was a complete and utter failure mostly because heknewthat the young men in this room were not after conversation of any sort.
At least not that kind that she was hoping for.
“What is wrong with me?” she sighed, her brown eyes longingly watching couples flit in and out of the dance floor, their voices chattering cheerfully in the crowded ballroom. “How is it that in an entire ballroom, nobody wants to even be with me?”
His blue gaze dropped down from the coils of flaming red hair, to her delicately rounded face, the lips pressed into the beginnings of a pout, down to her lush breasts that peeked invitingly from beyond the lacy edge of her gown. Immediately, he retracted his gaze with a frown.
Emily Montgomery, he decided, was possessed of all the charms that were required in the art of seduction—it was only that she had absolutelyno ideahow to use them.
I suppose the blame can be laid on her family’s door for failing to educate her sufficiently,he thought to himself in derision. He had a vague idea of how the Montgomery family was, based on his years of friendship with Benedict Montgomery—a father who cluelessly doted onbothof his daughters, a stepmother who was mainly focused ononedaughter, a vain half-sister, amostlyclueless older brother, and Emily Rutbridge, the neglected little girl in the midst of all this.
It was hardly a wonder that she was socially awkward. Combined with a failure to expose her to her own peers, Emily was practically left on her own to flounder in a sea of people she had scarcely associated with before her first season.
“You have been watching them for two years, and you still do not have the faintest idea, do you?” he teased her, his blue eyes glinting. He was hardly a charitable soul, but he could not resist the longing and frustration in those brown eyes of hers. He offered her his arm with a smile. “Shall we take a walk, then?”
“In this crush?” she asked him timidly.
“Yes,” he replied, brooking no argument. “Perhaps I can enlighten you a little on how to go about these things.”
She looked at him before her gaze dropped to the arm he had just offered to her. Gingerly, she wrapped her gloved fingers in the crook of his arm, and he patted her hand with a smile before they started to walk around the edges of the ballroom.
“What do you mean I have been watching them and still do not have the faintest idea?” she asked him again, frustration creeping into the edge of her tone.
“You will see,” he replied mysteriously. A burst of feminine laughter drew their attention to the right where Miss Charlton chatted gaily with Lord Severin. Almost immediately, he saw his companion’s eyes cloud up with misery, most probably as she recalled her failed attempts to engage the Viscount in conversation earlier.
That should do quite well as an example, Daniel smiled to himself.
