Lady Rosabella's Ruse - By Ann Lethbridge Page 0,2
She raised a brow. ‘Surely that is your motto, Forever?’
Forever was a nickname he’d earned years before. He ground his teeth. It was not his motto, though others here would claim it. Hapton, for example. Or Bannerby.
Damn Penelope. The girl was as bad as the rest of these women, but he couldn’t let it go. Pretend it was of no consequence. Damn it all.
In hindsight, his earlier boredom was a hell of a lot more inviting than the prospect of persuading a recalcitrant wife to go home.
Certainly not a role he’d ever played before.
He glanced back at the mysterious Mrs Travenor and caught her frowning gaze and his blood rose to the challenge.
Fiend seize it. Two women under one roof, likely to give him nothing but trouble.
Outwardly composed, inside, Rosabella Cavendish trembled like an aspen. For the first time in her life, she didn’t know what to think. One glance from those dark, coolly insolent eyes and her heart had drummed so hard and so loud her body shook. Why? He was no different from the rest of Lady Keswick’s male guests. Rakish. Confident. Handsome. All right, perhaps he was more handsome than the rest, with his lean athletic body and saturnine aristocratic features. His smile when he bent over the dog had been heart-stoppingly sweet.
None of that was what had sent her blood pounding in her veins, though. It was the way he had looked at her. Really looked at her. Most of them presumed her a poor widow forced to earn a living as a paid companion and their gazes moved on. He’d looked at her as if he saw her innermost secrets. She had the feeling that for the price of his smile, she’d tell him anything he wanted to know. Clearly the man was downright dangerous.
‘Striking-looking devil, ain’t he?’ Lady Keswick said, watching him shake hands with the men and greet the ladies to their obvious pleasure.
‘I hadn’t noticed,’ Rosa said, breathing deeply to settle her heart into its proper rhythm.
‘Don’t look at me with those innocent brown eyes, my dear. You’d have to be dead not to notice Stanford. Be warned, though, he’s an out-and-out rogue. Never settles on one woman when two will do.’
Facing Lady Smythe and Mrs Mallow, his spare elegant form in a dark coat and buff unmentionables a foil for their pastel gowns and fluttering ribbons, she sensed a wildness about him, a hard edge. Rosa’s insides fluttered with what could only be fear.
Sensible terror.
It certainly was not envy of the two beautiful ladies so obviously entranced by his company.
Beside the fashionable lush-figured Mrs Mallow in primrose, Lady Smythe looked ethereal in a gown of pale leaf green, the scalloped hem finely embroidered with flowering vines and her face framed within a leghorn bonnet adorned with a profusion of roses at the crown. The ruffled lace at her throat gave her an air of modesty out of place among Lady Keswick’s flashy company. A pearl among diamonds who, according to Lady Keswick, had been snapped up in her first Season by a man destined for political greatness. Every man at the house had been paying her attention from the moment she had arrived this morning. A woman who already had a husband, too.
A stab of something sharp in her chest stopped her breath. Surely she didn’t envy the young woman her attentive male court? A bunch of rakes and Stanford the worst of them?
The grande dame narrowed her eyes. ‘He seems to have got Lady Smythe all of a fluster. I won’t have him upsetting my guests.’
Lady Smythe did indeed look a little panicked, the colour in her cheeks a bright flag. Perhaps she wasn’t so charmed by the rake after all.
Despite the gossip, Lady Keswick ensured nothing happened under her roof that both parties didn’t want. It was a point of honour with the hostess to the wickeder element of the ton. As she’d earlier explained, a woman needed some freedom in her life. Freedom without consequences for widows and women who had married for convenience. Women like Lady Smythe, Rosa assumed.
Her heart ached for the delicate-looking lady. A marriage without love was no marriage at all, her mother had always said.
‘Bah!’ Lady Keswick pronounced. ‘Stanford’s trouble. Has been since he arrived on the town. No girl, decent or otherwise, is safe once he has her in his sights. Take my advice, Rose, keep well clear of him. You are far too innocent for a man of his ilk.’