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“I am tired of waiting! No more talking. I’ve been patient with you, my girl, but it’s past time you married and provided me with grandsons.” Then Papa had concluded with a definitive statement: “When you come back from the Prince Regent’s party, you will be engaged.”
“Or?”
“Or you need not bother coming back at all.”
Once more unto the breach, Arabella thought, and melted into the crowd before Sculthorpe could see her. A juggler, hands a blur, winked at her as she slipped past. She felt like a juggler herself, juggling potential husbands. Of course she had a plan to avoid marrying Sculthorpe—Arabella always had a plan—but it would take months to come to fruition, and with Papa stubbornly issuing ultimatums, she needed to buy time. Her resolve hardened. If her only way to avoid losing everything was to get engaged tonight, then get engaged she would.
For which she must find Guy.
* * *
How wasArabella to identify Guy Roth, Marquess of Hardbury, in a crowd this size, after an absence of nearly eight years, with everyone in costumes?
Easy: Look for the cloud of sycophants buzzing like gnats around a useless, self-satisfied dandy.
He would be preening at their flattery, no doubt, failing to see, as always, that he would be nothing if not for his money and name. As children, on those all-too-frequent occasions when their families had gathered at the same country house, Arabella would watch, amazed, as the other boys let Guy win whatever game they played, and he was too conceited to realize it. Arabella was the exception, of course; she never let anyone win.
To be fair, Guy had been a gracious winner. He never boasted, but he never needed to: There were always toadies eager to do the boasting for him. Neither was he a sore loser when Arabella defeated him. Publicly, he would congratulate her and laugh off jibes about being beaten by a girl, especially the one he was meant to marry, but they both knew. Privately, he would say, “I’ll defeat you next time,Arabella,” to which she would retort, “You’ll never defeat me,Guy,” and they’d exchange glares and not speak again.
He was dazzling society years before Arabella made her come-out, and she had to suffer through glowing reports of how he had won this footrace and that debate, how he danced so elegantly and wore the latest fashions to perfection. Then the final reports, of course: that he had fallen in love with a lady who spurned him, and so, when he didn’t get his own way for the first time in his life, he had run away from England for an eight-year sulk.
Yet it was one thing for him to go missing for years; it was quite another—and vexingly inconvenient—to go missing at the party held to celebrate his return. Arabella worked her way through the crowd, exchanging nods and gliding on, inspecting and dismissing a man dressed as a bear, a knight, a hangman. Then an acrobat back-flipped across her path; Arabella swerved just as a fire-eater blew flames into the air.
When her vision cleared, she found herself blinking at a tall man dressed as Caesar, with a red cape thrown over a leather breastplate and knee-length skirt. A small space surrounded him, for even in this crowd his imperial presence kept others at a respectful distance, save for the middle-aged man chattering at his side. Arabella let her eyes drift over Caesar’s bare arms, and was absently examining the pteruges that ended inches above his boots when she remembered herself and pivoted away.
Mid-turn, her legs stopped; a heartbeat later, her mind caught up.
No. Surely not.
And yet…
Twisting, Arabella looked over her shoulder. Then turned her whole body. And blinked again.
For while the man dressed as Caesar was definitely Guy, he was not Guy as she knew him.
This version of Guy seemed… Well… He had… Guy was…
Good grief.
Guy had grown up.
He was bigger than she remembered, broader, more solid. He had always been athletic, but only in relation to gentlemanly pursuits; if this man were a stranger, she would not take him for a gentleman, let alone a lord. Perhaps it was the way he was weathered, as no English lord ought to be, with the ends of his thick hair turned nearly gold by the sun and his complexion unfashionably tanned. His narrow nose bore a bump; perhaps that imperfection was what unsettled her. Once upon a time, no person in England would dare break that lordling’s nose. Indeed, nothing about his features was smooth. The hollows in his cheeks provided a counterpoint to the sharp definition of his jaw, and he had a furrow in his brow, as though the world posed too much of a conundrum to give him a moment’s peace.
But it was something more that arrested her, something about the way he held himself. As a youth, Guy had strutted unseeingly through the world, secure in the belief that no harm would come to him. Now, an alertness thrummed beneath his confident ease, as if he anticipated an attack.
Where have you been, Guy?Arabella wondered.What have you been doing, to make you like that?
Yet despite his watchfulness, he had not seen her, and she let her eyes travel over him again. More pteruges hung over his shoulders, the leather strips caressing the muscular lines of his bare upper arms. His forearms, too, were bare, the tanned skin stretched over corded muscles and veins.
Really, Guy.Arabella’s gaze lingered on his forearms.What have you been doing, to make you likethat?
The way his eyes roamed, it was only a matter of time before he saw her. Arabella felt unusually ill prepared. The Guy of the past would have been easy to manage, but this man… This man was someone new.
As she watched, his eyes drifted over a trio of young gentlemen who loitered nearby. Their attitudes sharpened, their smiles beckoned—but his eyes kept traveling as if they were not there. Had he made eye contact, that would have been the cut. As it was, it barely skated over politeness. The gentlemen knew it too, for they stiffened and launched into an animated discussion as if they had never sought Guy’s attention.
Arabella slipped back into the crowd. If Guy did that to her—and given their history of mutual antagonism, there was a good chance he would—others would be sure to notice. The humiliating gossip would never end. Curse him. He could too easily dismiss her without even hearing her proposition, while she stood like a petitioner begging an audience with a king. How society would snicker at her, for Arabella was prideful and outspoken, and everyone loved to mock a woman who thought too much of herself.
Then she must find a way to approach him without risking her pride. If her plan failed, her pride would be all that remained.
