Oh, very well, not that. She wasn’t an idiot, and she did value her reputation. But she might have imagined it, which she’d certainly never bothered to do before.
And then, because she had no idea when she might feel so reckless again, she smiled up at her future husband and said, “But you should dance, if you wish it. I’m sure there are many ladies who would be happy to partner you.”
“But I wish to dance with you,” he ground out.
“Perhaps another time,” Amelia said. She gave him her sunniest smile. “Ta!”
And she walked away.
She walked away.
She wanted to skip. In fact, she did. But only once she’d turned the corner.
Thomas Cavendish liked to think himself a reasonable man, especially since his lofty position as the seventh Duke of Wyndham would have allowed him any number of unreasonable demands. He could have gone stark raving mad, dressed all in pink, and declared the world a triangle, and the ton would still have bowed and scraped and hung on his every word.
His own father, the sixth Duke of Wyndham, had not gone stark raving mad, nor had he dressed all in pink or declared the world a triangle, but he had certainly been a most unreasonable man. It was for that reason that Thomas most prided himself upon the evenness of his temper, the sanctity of his word, and, although he did not choose to reveal this side of his personality to many, his ability to find humor in the absurd.
And this was definitely absurd.
But as news of Lady Amelia’s departure from the assembly spread through the hall, and head after head swiveled in his direction, Thomas began to realize that the line between humor and fury was not so very much more substantial than the edge of a knife.
And twice as sharp.
Lady Elizabeth was gazing upon him with a fair dose of horror, as if he might turn into an ogre and tear someone from limb to limb. And Grace—drat the little minx—looked as if she might burst out laughing at any moment.
“Don’t,” he warned her.
She complied, but barely, so he turned to Lady Elizabeth and asked, “Shall I fetch her?”
She stared at him mutely.
“Your sister,” he clarified.
Still nothing. Good Lord, were they even educating females these days?
“The Lady Amelia,” he said, with extra enunciation. “My affianced bride. The one who just gave me the cut direct.”
“I wouldn’t call it direct,” Elizabeth finally choked out.
He stared at her for a moment longer than was comfortable (for her; he was perfectly at ease with it), then turned to Grace, who was, he had long since realized, one of the only people in the world upon whom he might rely for complete honesty.
“Shall I fetch her?”
“Oh, yes,” she said, her eyes shining with mischief. “Do.”
His brows rose a fraction of an inch as he pondered where the dratted female might have gone off to. She couldn’t actually leave the assembly; the front doors spilled right onto the main street in Stamford—certainly not an appropriate spot for an unescorted female. In the back there was a small garden. Thomas had never had occasion to inspect it personally, but he was told that many a marriage had been proposed in its leafy confines.
Proposed being something of a euphemism. Most proposals occurred in a rather more complete state of attire than those that came about in the back garden of the Lincolnshire Dance and Assembly Hall.
But Thomas didn’t much worry about being caught alone with Lady Amelia Willoughby. He was already shackled to the chit, wasn’t he? And he could not put off the wedding very much longer. He had informed her parents that they would wait until she was one-and-twenty, and surely she had to reach that age soon.
If she hadn’t already.
“My options appear to be thus,” he murmured. “I could fetch my lovely betrothed, drag her back for a dance, and demonstrate to the assembled multitudes that I have her clearly under my thumb.”
Grace stared at him with amusement. Elizabeth looked somewhat green.
“But then it would look as if I cared,” he continued.
“Don’t you?” Grace asked.
He thought about this. His pride was pricked, that was true, but more than anything he was amused. “Not so very much,” he answered, and then, because Elizabeth was her sister, he added, “Pardon.”
She nodded weakly.
“On the other hand,” he said, “I could simply remain here. Refuse to make a scene.”
“Oh, I think the scene was already made,” Grace murmured, giving him an arch look.
Which he returned in kind. “You’re lucky that you’re the only thing that makes my grandmother tolerable.”
Grace turned to Elizabeth. “I am apparently unsackable.”
“Much as I’ve been tempted,” Thomas added.
Which they both knew was untrue. Thomas would have laid himself prostrate at her feet if necessary, just to get her to remain in his grandmother’s employ. Luckily for him, Grace showed no inclination to leave.
Still, he would have done it. And tripled her salary at the same time. Every minute Grace spent in his grandmother’s company was a minute he didn’t have to, and truly, one could not put a price on something such as that.
But that was not the matter at hand. His grandmother was safely ensconced in the next room with her band of cronies, and he had every intention of being in and out of the assembly without their having to share a single word of conversation.
His fiancée, however, was another story entirely.
“I do believe I shall allow her her moment of triumph,” he said, coming to this decision as the words crossed his lips. He felt no need to demonstrate his authority—really, could there be any question of it?—and he did not particularly relish the idea that the good people of Lincolnshire might imagine he was besotted with his fiancée.
Thomas did not do infatuation.
“That’s very generous of you, I must say,” Grace remarked, her smile most irritating.
He shrugged. Barely. “I’m a generous sort of man.”
Elizabeth’s eyes widened, and he thought he heard her breathe, but other than that, she remained mute.
A wordless female. Maybe he should marry that one.
“Do you depart, then?” Grace asked.
“Are you trying to be rid of me?”
“Not at all. You know I always delight in your presence.”
He would have returned her sarcasm in kind, but before he could do so, he spied a head—or rather, a part of a head—peeking out from behind the curtain that separated the assembly hall and the side corridor.
Lady Amelia. She had not gone so far afield after all.
“I came to dance,” he announced.
“You loathe dancing,” Grace said.
“Not true. I loathe being required to dance. It is a very different endeavor.”
“I can find my sister,” Elizabeth said quickly.
“Don’t be silly. She obviously loathes being required to dance, too. Grace shall be my partner.”
“Me?” Grace looked surprised.
Thomas signaled to the small band of musicians at the front of the room. They immediately lifted their instruments.
“You,” he said. “You don’t imagine I would dance with anyone else here?”
“There is Elizabeth,” she said as he led her to the center of the floor.
“Surely you jest,” he murmured. Lady Elizabeth Willoughby’s skin had not recovered any of the color that had drained from it when her sister turned her back and left the room. The exertions from dancing would probably lead her to swoon.
Besides, Elizabeth would not suit his purposes.
He glanced up at Amelia. To his surprise, she did not dart immediately behind the curtain.
He smiled. Just a little.
And then—it was most satisfying—he saw her gasp.
She ducked behind the curtain after that, but he was not concerned. She’d be watching the dance. Every la
st step of it.
Chapter 2
Amelia knew what he was trying to do. It was clear as crystal to her, and she was quite aware that she was being manipulated, and yet, drat the man, there she was, hiding behind the curtain, watching him dance with Grace.
He was an excellent dancer. Amelia knew as much. She’d danced with him many times—quadrille, country dance, waltz—they’d done them all during her two seasons in London. Duty dances, every one of them.
And yet sometimes—sometimes—they had been lovely. Amelia was not immune to the thoughts of others. It was splendid to place one’s hand on the arm of London’s most eligible bachelor, especially when one was in possession of a binding contract declaring said bachelor hers and hers alone.
Everything about him was somehow bigger and better than other men. He was rich! He was titled! He made the silly girls swoon!
And the ones of sturdier constitution—well, they swooned, too.
Amelia was quite certain that Thomas Cavendish would have been the catch of the decade even if he’d been born with a hunched back and two noses. Unmarried dukes were not thick on the ground, and it was well known that the Wyndhams owned enough land and money to rival most European principalities.
But his grace’s back was not hunched, and his nose (of which, happily, he possessed but one), was straight and fine and rather splendidly in proportion with the rest of his face. His hair was dark and thick, his eyes riveting blue, and unless he was hiding a few spaces in the back, he had all of his teeth. Objectively speaking, it would have been quite impossible to describe his appearance as anything but handsome.
But while not unaffected by his charms, she was not blinded by them either. And despite their engagement, Amelia considered herself to be a most objective judge of him. She must have been, because she was quite able to articulate his flaws, and had on occasion entertained herself by jotting them down. Revising, to be sure, every few months.
It seemed only fair. And considering the trouble she would find herself in should anyone stumble upon the list, it really ought to be as au courant as possible.
Amelia did prize accuracy in all things. It was, in her estimation, a sadly underrated virtue.
But the problem with her fiancé, and, she supposed, most of humanity, was that he was so difficult to quantify. How, for example, to explain that indefinable air he had about him, as if there was something quite…more to him than the rest of society. Dukes weren’t supposed to look quite so capable. They were meant to be thin and wiry, or if not, then rotund, and their voices were unpleasing and their intellect shallow, and, well…she had caught sight of Wyndham’s hands once. He usually wore gloves when they met, but one time, she couldn’t remember why, but he’d taken them off, and she’d found herself mesmerized by his hands.
His hands, for heaven’s sake.
It was mad, and it was fanciful, but as she’d stood there, unspeaking and probably slack-jawed to boot, she could not help but think that those hands had done things. Mended a fence. Gripped a shovel.
If he’d been born five hundred years earlier, he would have surely been a fiercesome knight, brandishing a sword into battle (when he wasn’t tenderly carrying his gentle lady off into the sunset).
And yes, she was aware that she had perhaps spent a bit more time pondering the finer points of her fiancé’s personality than he had hers.
But even so, when all was said and done, she didn’t know very much about him. Titled, rich, handsome—that didn’t say much, really. She didn’t think it was so very unreasonable for her to wish to know something more of him. And what she truly wanted—not that she could have explained precisely why—was for him to know something of her.
Or for him to want to know something of her.
To inquire.
To ask a question.
To listen to the answer, rather than nodding as he watched someone else across the room.
Since Amelia had begun keeping track of such things, her fiancé had asked her precisely eight questions. Seven pertained to her enjoyment of the evening’s entertainment. The other had been about the weather.
She did not expect him to love her—she was not so fanciful as that. But she thought that a man of at least average intelligence would wish to know something of the woman he planned to marry.
But no, Thomas Adolphus Horatio Cavendish, the most esteemed Duke of Wyndham, Earl of Kesteven, Stowe, and Stamford, Baron Grenville de Staine, not to mention a host of other honorifics she had (blessedly) not been required to memorize, did not seem to care that his future wife fancied strawberries but could not tolerate peas. He did not know that she never sang in public, nor was he aware that she was, when she put her mind to it, a superior watercolorist.
He did not know that she had always wished to visit Amsterdam.
He did not know that she hated when her mother described her as of adequate intelligence.
He did not know that she was going to miss her sister desperately when Elizabeth married the Earl of Rothsey, who lived on the other end of the country, four days’ ride away.
And he did not know that if he would simply inquire after her one day, nothing but a simple question, really, pondering her opinion on something other than the temperature of the air, her opinion of him would rise immeasurably.
But that seemed to assume he cared about her opinion of him, which she was quite certain he did not. In fact, his lack of worry over her good judgment might very well be the only thing of substance she did know about him.
Except…
She peered carefully out from behind the red velvet curtain currently acting as her shield, perfectly aware that he knew she was there.
She watched his face.
She watched the way he was looking at Grace.
The way he was smiling at Grace.
The way he was—good heavens, was he laughing? She had never heard him laugh, never even seen him do so from across a room.
Her lips parted with shock and perhaps just a touch of dismay. It seemed she did know something of substance about her fiancé.
He was in love with Grace Eversleigh.
Oh, wonderful.
There was no waltzing at the Lincolnshire Dance and Assembly—it was still considered “fast” by the matrons who organized the quarterly gathering. Thomas thought this a pity. He had no interest in the seductive nature of the dance—he never had occasion to waltz with anyone he intended to seduce. But waltzing did afford the opportunity to converse with one’s partner. Which would have been a damned sight easier than a word here and a sentence there as he and Grace went through the convoluted motions of the country dance.
“Are you trying to make her jealous?” Grace asked, smiling in a manner that he might have considered flirtatious if he did not know her so well.
“Don’t be absurd.”
Except that by then she was crossing arms with a local squire. Thomas bit back an aggravated grunt and waited until she returned to his side. “Don’t be absurd,” he said again.
Grace cocked her head to the side. “You’ve never danced with me before.”
This time he waited an appropriate moment before replying, “When have I had occasion to dance with you?”
Grace stepped back and bobbed, as required by the dance, but he did see her nod her head in acknowledgment. He rarely attended the local assembly, and although Grace did accompany his grandmother when she traveled to London, she was only rarely included in evening outings. Even then, she sat at the side, with the chaperones and companions.
They moved to the head of the line, he took her hand for their olevette, and they walked down the center aisle, the gentlemen to their right, the ladies to their left.
“You’re angry,” Grace said.
“Not at all.”
“Pricked pride.”
“Just for a moment,” he admitted.
“And now?”
He did not respond. He did not have to. They had reached the end of the line and had to take their pla
ces at opposite sides of the aisle. But when they came together for a brief clap, Grace said, “You did not answer my question.”
They stepped back, then together, and he leaned down and murmured, “I like to be in charge.”
She looked as if she might like to laugh at that.
He gave her a lazy grin, and when he had the opportunity to speak again, asked, “Are you so very surprised?”
He bowed, she twirled, and then she said, her eyes flashing mischievously, “You never surprise me.”
Thomas laughed at that, and when they met once again for a bow and twirl, he leaned in and replied, “I never try to.”
Which only made Grace roll her eyes.
She was a good sport, Grace was. Thomas doubted that his grandmother had been looking for anything more than a warm body that knew how to say “Yes, ma’am” and “Of course, ma’am” when she’d hired her companion, but she had chosen well all the same. It was a bonus, too, that Grace was a daughter of the district, orphaned several years earlier when her parents had caught a fever. Her father had been a country squire, and both he and his wife were well-liked. As a result, Grace was already familiar with all of the local families, and indeed friendly with most. Which had to be an advantage in her current position.
Or at least Thomas assumed so. Most of the time he tried to stay out of his grandmother’s way.
The music trickled to a close, and he allowed himself a glance at the red curtain. Either his fiancée had departed or she’d become a bit more skilled in the art of concealment.
“You should be nicer to her,” Grace said as she accepted his escort from the dance floor.
“She cut me,” he reminded her.
Grace merely shrugged. “You should be nicer to her,” she said again. She curtsied then, and departed, leaving Thomas on his own, never an attractive prospect at a gathering such as this.
He was an affianced gentleman, and, more to the point, this was a local assembly and his intended bride was well known to all. Which should have meant that those who might envision their daughters (or sisters or nieces) as his duchess would leave well enough alone. But alas, Lady Amelia did not provide complete protection from his neighbors. As well as she was liked (and as best as he could tell, she was, quite), no self-respecting mama could neglect to entertain the notion that something might go awry with the engagement, and the duke might find himself unattached, and he might need to find himself a bride.