Pursuing Lord Pascal (2 page)

Morwenna paled, and her animation faded.
“It’s different for me.”

“No, it’s not,” Amy said, justifying her
reputation for blundering in where angels feared to tread, but
unable to stay quiet. “I loved my brother, but you’ve mourned him
for three years. He wouldn’t want you moping around for the rest of
your life. Why don’t you go to London with Sally?”

As Morwenna frowned over what she clearly
considered an outlandish suggestion, Sally clapped her hands
together with enthusiasm. “Why don’t you? I’d love a friend to go
about with. Meg is a capable, sensible girl and won’t need me
hovering.”

Morwenna glared at Amy. “And what about
you?”

“Me?”

“Yes, you. You spend so much time stomping
through your muddy fields that turnips are practically growing out
of your hair—which, by the way, could do with some attention. As
could your wardrobe.”

Amy backed away until her hips bumped into
the windowsill. “We’re not talking about me.”

“Yes, we are.” Morwenna turned to Sally. “Amy
could be really pretty if she made an effort and wore something
apart from rags a beggar woman would disdain to put on her
back.”

“That’s unfair,” Amy protested, even as she
reluctantly admitted that her dress today might deserve the
criticism.

“Is it?” Morwenna’s glance was scornful. “Did
you find today’s monstrosity in the back of a cupboard? Or did you
steal it from the housemaids before they could use it as a
duster?”

Amy flushed and shot Morwenna an annoyed
look. “I think I prefer you cowed and miserable.”

“You could come to London, too, Amy,” Sally
said calmly. “I’d love to introduce you to my modiste and show you
off at some parties. Morwenna’s right. You’re a pretty girl.”

Amy was already shaking her head. “I won’t
fit into society.”

“How do you know?” Morwenna said.

“I had a season, and I didn’t take.” Amy
decided to go on the attack. “Anyway, why should I break out of my
comfortable little rut when you won’t?”

Morwenna’s chin set in unexpected
stubbornness. “I didn’t say I wouldn’t.”

Sally looked startled, then pleased. “So
you’ll come?”

“Only if Amy does.”

Sally’s expression turned thoughtful. “I was
talking to Fenella and Helena last night. They told me that once
they came out of mourning for their first husbands, they formed a
club called the Dashing Widows and set out to turn London on its
ear.”

Amy had long been familiar with the story.
Eight years ago, her sister Helena, her sister-in-law Caroline, and
their dear friend Fenella had cast aside old sorrows and danced and
flirted their way into happy marriages. “It wasn’t a club. It was
more a…a pact.”

“Can’t we make such a pact?” Sally spread her
hands. “I’m sure we three can be Dashing Widows, too, if we put our
minds to it.”

“I’m not particularly dashing, and I’ve got
nothing to wear,” Amy said, amazed at her spurt of disappointment.
Perhaps her mood this morning hinted at a malaise deeper than
temporary restlessness.

Sally stood in front of her and subjected her
to a thorough and dispassionate examination. “You know, with the
right clothes, and a bit more confidence, you could really
shine.”

A painful blush heated Amy’s cheeks, and she
shifted from one foot to the other. With her mop of tawny hair and
dominating Nash nose, not to mention the fact that she’d always
been far more interested in cattle than flirting, she’d never felt
comfortable in society. She looked like her brother Silas, but
unfortunately the quirky features that made him a draw for the
ladies only turned her into an oddity. “I made a complete shambles
of my season.”

Morwenna came to stand beside Sally and
conducted her own inspection, just as comprehensive. “That was
years ago, and you didn’t have Sally to help you.”

“And you,” Sally said.

Morwenna smiled. “And me.”

Morwenna looked more alive than she had since
receiving the news of Robert’s death. Amy dearly loved her
sister-in-law and couldn’t bear to think of her languishing in a
dark pit of grief all her life. Amy had never been in love—although
when she was fourteen, she’d harbored a violent fit of puppy love
for Lord Pascal, widely considered London’s handsomest man. Which
made her adolescent interest a complete joke, given the graceless
ragamuffin she’d been.

But she knew about love. It surrounded
her—Silas and Caro, Helena and Vernon, her parents who had died
together ten years ago in a carriage accident outside Naples. She
didn’t discount love’s power to create joy.

Morwenna had suffered enough. Now she
deserved new happiness. If that meant that Amy had to hang up her
farm boots and put on her dancing slippers, she’d do it.

“You’ll have your work cut out for you,” she
said drily.

Sally frowned. “No more of that talk. By the
time I’ve finished with you, you’re going to dazzle the ton. We’ll
tame that wild mane of hair and dress you in something bright that
shows off your splendid figure. By heaven, you’ll be the toast of
Mayfair.”

How extraordinary. Within minutes, she and
Sally had gone from acquaintances to co-conspirators. At Warrington
Grange, Amy inhabited a largely masculine world. She wasn’t used to
cozy chats with other women. Especially cozy chats about fripperies
like clothes and hair.

“So we’re doing this?” She looked past Sally
to Morwenna.

Amy was afraid of facing those critical
crowds again, but also strangely excited. This felt like a new
challenge, and she realized she badly needed one.

Morwenna straightened and met her eyes. Amy
was used to seeing endless grief there. Now she caught a glimpse of
something that looked like hope. If so, she didn’t care if the
fashionable multitudes shunned her.

Anything was worth it, if Morwenna came back
to life.

“Yes,” Morwenna said unhesitatingly.

Sally caught Amy and Morwenna’s hands and
laughed. “Then I hereby declare the return of the Dashing Widows.
Watch out, London. We’re on our way.”

Raynor House, Mayfair, March 1829

Sometimes it was no fun to be London’s
handsomest man.

Gervaise Dacre, Earl Pascal, glanced across
at the pretty blonde chit beside him in the line and struggled to
hide his impatience for the dance to finish.

“It’s quite a crush tonight,” he said. He’d
already flung usually reliable topics like the weather and last
night’s ball into the conversational impasse. They now lay bleeding
and silent on the floor.

There was a long pause—not the first
one—while the girl’s blush turned an alarming shade of red. Then
without meeting his eyes, she managed to say, “Yes,” so softly that
he had to lean closer to hear.

Miss Veivers was an heiress and accounted one
of the diamonds of the season, but clearly the honor of sharing a
contredanse with that magnificent personage Lord Pascal had
rendered her incoherent. She was his third partner tonight, and he
hadn’t succeeded in coaxing more than a monosyllable out of any of
them.

For a man in search of a wife, it was a
depressing state of affairs. Last January’s storm had left his
estate in ruins. He needed cash and he needed it quickly. He’d come
up to Town, vowing he’d do anything to restore his fortune.

But surely there must be better alternatives
than Miss Veivers and her pretty little airheaded friends.

Did London this season contain no women of
sense? Clearly none had attended this extravagant ball to launch
Lord and Lady Raynor’s youngest daughter. When he’d waltzed with
the overexcited Raynor girl, she’d nearly giggled him to death.

Bored, he glanced over the top of his
partner’s ridiculous coiffure. Why did females torture their hair
into such God awful monstrosities? Half of Kew Gardens sprouted
from the girl’s elaborate brown curls. Across the room, he noticed
a party of late arrivals.

Four pretty women in the first stare of
fashion. He immediately recognized the tall blonde as Sally Cowan,
who bore enough resemblance to the young miss in white to suggest a
relationship. Probably aunt and niece. Beside them was a graceful
brunette in buttercup yellow.

Last to step into the ballroom was a tall
woman with tawny hair arranged with an elegant simplicity that set
off her striking features. Her rich purple gown clung to her
Junoesque figure with breathtaking precision. She reminded him of
someone, although Pascal would swear they’d never met.

His heart crashed against his ribs, and he
only just stopped himself stumbling. He who was lauded as a perfect
dancer. In a room full of fluttering, cooing doves, this woman had
the presence and power of a swan floating across a moonlit
lake.

How could he concentrate on half-baked girls
when that luscious banquet of a woman wandered into sight? Damn it,
he had to find out who she was.

“L-Lord Pascal?” the chit in his arms
stammered, the chit whose name he’d already forgotten. “Are you
going to the Bartletts’ ball tomorrow night? Mamma is most eager
that we at…attend.”

“I’m sure I’ll be there.” He was hardly aware
what he said, as he took her hand to lead her up the line. He
couldn’t take his eyes off the superb creature standing beside
Sally. Who the devil was she? He wasn’t looking for a mistress, and
the state of his finances meant he couldn’t veer from his purpose.
But by God, even across the crowded room, he wanted her.

“Oh,” the chit said breathlessly. “Oh,
doubtless we’ll see you there.”

“Doubtless.” He wondered idly what he’d
agreed to. But he didn’t wonder much. Most of his mind remained
fixed on the tall woman, who had joined Lord and Lady Kenwick near
the French doors, closed against the chilly night.

Brutal necessity insisted he pay court to one
of the wellborn virgins brought to London to shine on the marriage
mart. Every masculine impulse insisted he engage the attention of
the woman in imperial purple.

The battle was brief, its outcome sure, even
before it began.

He returned Miss Veivers—at last he
remembered her name—to her parents and set off in pursuit of much
more interesting prey.

* * *

“Stop picking at your gown,” Sally hissed out
of the corner of her mouth as they stood in a laughing group with
Anthony and Fenella Townsend, and Fenella’s handsome son Brandon
Deerham.

Guiltily Amy forced her trembling hand down
from where she’d been hauling at the low bodice. “It’s too tight.
And I feel half naked.”

“For pity’s sake, you look wonderful—and the
dress is quite modest by London standards.”

“Not by Leicestershire standards. And it’s so
bright.”

“It is,” Sally said. “And don’t start
fiddling with your hair instead. You said you liked it when my maid
put it up like that.”

“I do.” She liked the dress, too, although
she felt painfully self-conscious in the flashy color. “But it
doesn’t look like everyone else’s hair.”

Around her, she saw women whose hair was
arranged into elaborate ringlets and knots. Hers was almost austere
in its simplicity.

“No, and all the better for it. You’ve got a
classical beauty. Make the most of it.”

“I don’t think I’ve got any beauty at all,”
she muttered under her breath, hoping Sally wouldn’t hear. Over the
last bustling week of modistes and milliners and maids poking and
prodding at her, she’d learned that Sally had no tolerance for
self-doubt. Given self-doubt was Amy’s default position, she was
surprised that their friendship survived. Even prospered.

“Of course you do,” Morwenna said, proving
she’d been eavesdropping. Last November’s woebegone widow was
impossible to recognize in the slender woman in spangled yellow
sarsenet, who faced this glittering crowd with unexpected
assurance. “You mightn’t see it, but everyone else does, even when
you’re wearing faded chintz and farm boots, and you have mud on
your face. You just need to believe you’re beautiful.”

“Thank you,” Amy said, still unconvinced.
Morwenna didn’t understand what it was like to grow up as the only
plain member of a good-looking family. Silas and Robert were both
handsome men, and Helena, while unconventional in looks, was
nonetheless striking. Whereas Amy had always felt like a cabbage
set in the middle of a bouquet of roses. “I’ll say one good thing
for cattle and sheep—they don’t care what you look like.”

“You can’t spend your life in a barn, Amy,”
Morwenna said. This week, she’d been as bossy as Sally. Amy didn’t
mind. It was wonderful to see her venturing back into life again,
even if it meant sisterly nagging.

“Yes, I can.”

“Nonsense,” Fenella said, proving she’d been
listening while her fine blue eyes scanned the ballroom. “You’re a
lovely girl, Amy, and it’s about time you crept out from under your
rock and showed the world your mettle.”

Amy went back to plucking at her bodice,
until a scowl from Sally made her drop her hand. “But
people—men—keep staring. I feel like a fright.”

“They’re staring because you’re a new
face—and you look good enough to eat in that dress,” Anthony
Townsend, Lord Kenwick, said, proving he, too, lent an ear to Amy’s
cowardly havering. “In fact, may I have this dance, Amy? Otherwise,
I doubt I’ll have another chance all night.”

“Really?”

“Trust us,” Sally said with a sigh. “As if
we’d let you make a fool of yourself.”

“No, I can do that all by myself.”

“Amy,” Morwenna said sternly. “Hold your head
up and dance with Anthony. And when gentlemen line up to dance with
you, act as if you expected nothing else.”

“Since when have you been such an expert on
the ton?”

Morwenna had met Robert in Cornwall, and
they’d married after a whirlwind courtship. He’d left for the South
Atlantic before he had a chance to introduce his wife to London
society. “I’ll have you know that I was the belle of the Truro
assemblies. This is just a larger, better dressed version. I can
already see you’re going to make a sensation. Enjoy it.”