The Luckiest Lady In London (3 page)

All at once she lifted her gaze—she might as well get it over with. She was presented with a head of thick black hair and an aristocratic profile. Then, as if sensing her attention, he turned to her.

A pox on everyone who had ever told her that The Ideal Gentleman was handsome. He was not handsome—he was extravagantly gorgeous. One look into his serene yet hypnotic green eyes, and all the romantic yearnings she had never before experienced struck her at once, like a bullet to the heart.

“Miss Cantwell,” said Mr. Drummond, “allow me to present my esteemed friend the Marquess of Wrenworth.”

Lord Wrenworth bowed slightly, his motion fluid, his manners commendable—an open amiability with no arrogance or condescension. “Enchanted, Miss Cantwell.”

The not-quite-smile of his lips threatened to turn her into a gelatinous mass, like a clump of beached sea nettles. How could she defend against such perfection? How could anyone defend against such perfection?

She must. She had a task here in London. She could not trail Lord Wrenworth all about town in the wretched hope that he would notice her. She had no doubt he would, perceptive man that he must be, and he would treat her lunacy with great kindness, sparing her any embarrassment if at all he
could, while gently steering her toward less unobtainable gentlemen, thoughtfully reminding her that much depended upon a judicious marriage on her part.

But how could she continue? She was only mildly fraudulent, not profligately so. She could not pursue Lord Firth or Mr. Pitt while her heart burned for someone else, while she compared them to the peerless Lord Wrenworth and found them woefully inadequate at every turn.

“My lord Wrenworth,” she croaked, sinking into a curtsy.

As she straightened, their eyes met again. She managed a few meaningless words of small talk—
Yes, I am enjoying my first Season. Alas, my family cannot be here with me. No, I do not find London’s air more noxious than I have been told to expect
—heroically holding herself upright, while her spine liquefied vertebra by vertebra.

It was difficult to draw breath. Her heart palpitated in both pleasure and panic. And she flushed furiously, too much heat pulsing through her veins for her to control or disguise.

A heartbeat later, however, she was cold.

She could not say how she knew it, Lord Wrenworth having been nothing but flawlessly courteous. All the same, she was suddenly dead certain that on the inside, he found her patently ridiculous, perhaps even laughable.

Introductions completed, Mr. Drummond began to talk about himself again. Lord Wrenworth appeared content to let his friend garner all the limelight and was soon engaged in conversation with Lady Tenwhestle, Lady Balfour’s daughter and Louisa’s chaperone for the evening.

So civil, so gracious, so gentlemanly—yet Louisa could not shake off the pins-and-needles sensation of his secret, if slight and casual, contempt, as if he viewed her as a toad trying to kiss a prince. And not the sort of toad who was in fact a cursed princess, but just a plain, warty amphibian who didn’t know any better.

She had no idea it was possible to be this mortified when there was no public humiliation involved. Or that it was possible to be this crushed when she ought to be thrilled that she would not, in the end, abandon her fortune hunting to stalk Lord Wrenworth all over London.

So much for her long-delayed romantic awakening, such a starburst of emotions and such a lot of nothing.

She fluttered her fan, if rather too vigorously, and pretended to listen to Mr. Drummond.

Lord Wrenworth did not speak to her again and barely looked in her direction. But as the minutes wore on, she grew more and more acutely aware of his observation, of everyone about her and of herself in particular.

Had she realized this earlier, she would have been in a state of ferment, turning herself inside out with dizzying conjectures of his possible interest. But now she understood that his scrutiny was wholly clinical; he was not curious at all about her, except perhaps as an exercise to keep his mind sharp.

And by this impersonal inspection, he made her feel as if she wore her bust improver on the outside of her bodice for the world to witness. As if he had already seen through her entire facade, from her lack of true beauty to her fundamentally scheming ways.

Had she gone mad? It had to be madness on her part to have fabricated this hysterical response to a cordial greeting followed by little else. No one else seemed to share her disquiet. The gentlemen, Mr. Pitt included, were delighted with Lord Wrenworth in their midst. Lady Tenwhestle positively glowed.

Whereas Louisa felt only unsettled, as if he’d seen her reach into someone’s pocket and she had no choice but to wait to see what he’d do with that incriminating knowledge.

Lord Wrenworth didn’t stay long—no more than ten
minutes, given that Mr. Drummond had yet to finish bragging about the chances of
one
of his horses at the races. When his lordship politely excused himself, saying he was expected elsewhere, she breathed for what seemed like the first time in years.

Mr. Drummond also took to fleeing soon thereafter, upon the arrival of his former mistress, from whom he had severed relations in a most acrimonious manner, according to all reports.

Louisa forced herself to rally, to not waste a moment of her precious London time. Even though she made very little headway with Miss Jane Edwards, Lord Firth’s sister, who sent her poisonous looks, she danced twice with Lord Firth and sat down to supper with him. She was even more gratified when she at last managed to get Mr. Pitt to speak in detail about the hygrometer that he’d commissioned, based on the latest Italian designs.

It was not, however, how others perceived her accomplishments that evening.

“Oh, but I’m excited for you, Louisa,” Lady Tenwhestle said as soon as the carriage door closed behind them. “To have made Wrenworth’s acquaintance. We should have a toast to that.”

His very name tasted acrid.

“That would be premature, wouldn’t it, ma’am? Lord Wrenworth is hardly about to look to me for a wife,” Louisa said, trying to make sure she sounded pragmatic, rather than bitter. “Besides, he expressed no interest in my person.”

“Well, I should think less of him if he did. Considering who he is and how much he is worth, he would be a fool to go around expressing interest. It would cause a stampede,” said Lady Tenwhestle. “He spent ten minutes in your company. That should make Mother quite happy when I tell her.”

“But he spent that time in
your
company, ma’am, not mine.”

“Commendable discretion, that; the man has the most beautiful sensitivity to etiquette.” Lady Tenwhestle nodded approvingly. “It would only make your hand more desirable if it is perceived that Lord Wrenworth himself might be interested.”

The queen would abandon her widowhood before Lord Wrenworth proposed to Louisa, for whom he felt nothing but a blasé disdain. Therefore any
perception
of his interest would serve only to set her cause back. How would poor Mr. Pitt react if he were to be told, erroneously, that one of the most eligible gentlemen in the land now numbered among her admirers? It was the last thing she wanted.

Or was it?

She could not deny that as Lady Tenwhestle bent Lord Wrenworth’s action to fit her own interpretation, she had felt a tremor of hope. Perhaps she truly had been out of her mind. Perhaps Lady Tenwhestle’s explanation, however convenient and sanguine, was the correct one. Perhaps despite his less than kind opinion of her, he did find her appealing in some way.

Listen to yourself
, came the stern voice of her inner taskmaster.
Lady Tenwhestle is overly optimistic and you know it. Do not fictionalize Lord Wrenworth’s sentiments: He has none—none for you, in any case. Now concentrate on the achievable
.

She stood for a long time before the small window of her room, gazing up at a thoroughly overcast sky, going over her plans, and praying for a proposal from Mr. Pitt. But just before she left the window, a single star appeared high overhead, and she was suddenly thinking of Lord Wrenworth, a flare of incandescence in her heart.

F
elix stood before the much larger window of his bedroom, examining the same dark clouds, thinking of Miss Cantwell.

Savoring, almost, this unanticipated interest on his part.

Eleven years ago, such a flicker of curiosity would have alarmed him. But eleven years ago he was still a child, his wounds fresh, and his confidence largely a thing of smoke and mirrors.

But now he was The Ideal Gentleman, admired by men and desired by women, his opinions ardently sought, his style eagerly copied.

And it intrigued him that she had turned away from him. Somebody should, but he hadn’t expected it of a woman as insignificant as she—hardly the most impressive debutante he’d met in his life, or even in the course of the current Season.

Granted, she had fine eyes and a good bosom, but the best one could say of her was that she was pleasant. She possessed no remarkable beauty and no particular wit. Nor did she emanate that sometimes mysterious power of the fairer sex, the dark, potent allure that struck a man directly in the groin.

Over the years, he had met a few clever girls who thought they could better intrigue him with a cooler reception. Miss Cantwell was acting, too, of course, a young lady of no wealth and no consequence carrying on as if she had no ulterior motives for being in London. She wasn’t so good an actor that he couldn’t see through her pretense at fifty paces. She was, however, good enough that he’d been slightly surprised at the transparency of her infatuation. When their gaze had met for the first time, he had almost heard the wedding bells ringing in her ears.

Then it dissipated into thin air—not just the look, but the infatuation itself.

And
that
had firmly caught his attention.

He enjoyed being The Ideal Gentleman—he would go on enjoying it for the remainder of his natural life, he was sure. But there were times when he found himself restless and vaguely dissatisfied. Was it really so easy to fool the entire world? Could no one see the cynicism and amorality underneath? And would anyone ever have the audacity to tell him that he was hardly a gentleman, let alone an example to which others should aspire?

Miss Cantwell would probably prove to be a mirage, just another young lady who couldn’t see an inch beneath his surface.

But he would give her a few chances to prove otherwise.

W
e must find out to which places he has been invited, my dear. Or, more usefully, which invitations he has accepted. The man is always drowning in requests for his company and he is very good about not spreading himself too thin,” Lady Balfour said authoritatively, as she and Louisa drove in the park.

Louisa fidgeted. It had been three days, but the subject of Lord Wrenworth would not go away. It did not help her resolution to put him behind her, once and for all. Nor did it help matters on the practical front—a proposal from him was a far-fetched notion that didn’t merit any in-depth discussion, let alone motivated efforts. It would be so much more productive if she could convince Lady Balfour to invite Mr. Pitt to one of her dinners.

“Wouldn’t Lord Wrenworth prefer to marry a lady with a loftier pedigree or a greater fortune?” Louisa tried one more time.

Lady Balfour snorted. “So he would. But that’s what a magnificent catch is all about: gaining the hand of a man who
should
make a more ruthless choice.”

Had her moonier sentiments concerning The Ideal Gentleman continued unabated, Louisa probably still would have protested, hoping someone would bring her back to her senses, but at the same time, she’d have been secretly thrilled that she had her sponsor’s backing to go boldly after the man of her dreams.

But she no longer wanted to be anywhere near him, a man who made her feel transparently greedy and social-climbing.

“Speak of the devil!” Lady Balfour whispered urgently.

Lord Wrenworth emerged from a bend in Rotten Row, the very image of a dashing gentleman charioteer in his nimble calèche. And in spite of Louisa’s wariness, her heart skipped a beat. There was no arguing with beauty of such magnitude.

“I thought bachelors didn’t come for these afternoon drives,” she muttered, annoyed with herself.

“So they don’t.” Lady Balfour spoke out of the corner of her mouth, busy nodding at Wrenworth. After all, he couldn’t approach a phaeton driven by ladies unless his presence had first been acknowledged.

To Louisa’s surprise, he didn’t merely nod and move on, but pulled up against their vehicle.

“Good afternoon, Lady Balfour. Good afternoon, Miss Cantwell. Enjoying a drive out before the rain comes again?”

Try as Louisa did, she could not detect any special inflection in the pronunciation of her name. But as soon as his gaze landed on her, she felt as if she were being peeled like an onion, layer by layer—an experience not the least erotic, but clinical, something done with gloves and forceps.

“But of course. And you, young man, what brought you here?” Lady Balfour inquired.

“A wild whim.” He smiled.

A man who could smile charmingly at toads
, Louisa thought unhappily.

He drove abreast of them for no more than a minute. Perfectly appropriate, not a hint of impingement on their time.
As soon as he left, Lady Balfour began to berate herself for not asking after his itinerary while she had him at her disposal. But even she did not suggest that the meeting was anything other than coincidental.

Louisa, however, felt a certain prickling at the base of her spine.

L
ady Balfour would not have agonized over her missed opportunity had she known that Felix had already bestirred himself to seek them out. He had a good view of Miss Cantwell across a crowded drawing room at Mrs. Conrad’s house. Miss Cantwell pointedly—or so it felt—did not look at all in his direction.

He saw her again toward the end of the week, in the midst of a rowing sortie on the river. He wasn’t part of their merrymaking party, of course. Rather, he glided by on a yacht with a company of his own. She frolicked and laughed until she became aware of him. The mirth on her face slipped away, replaced by wariness.

So it was no fluke.

She truly saw something the matter with him.

He was oddly pleased—and stumped. What was one to do in such a situation? Certainly he could not walk up to her and say,
Brava, old girl, for having the sense to be wary of me
.

He put down the book on Asiatic travels he had been browsing. It was nearly four o’clock. He’d be expected at his club, his opinions eagerly anticipated on the day’s occurrences. As he exited the bookshop located a little way from Piccadilly Circus, however, he almost bumped into the subject of his preoccupation.

Miss Cantwell.

He ceased flicking book dust from his otherwise immaculate gloves.

She had just alighted from a Balfour victoria, clad in a green velvet walking gown. “I’ll be but a second picking up her ladyship’s order,” she said sweetly to the footman and the driver.

She turned around, and stilled in shock as she saw him, as if she had the misfortune of finding herself directly in the path of a sharp-fanged wolf.

Half a second passed before she recovered her composure. She smiled at him, a smile that radiated no warmth. “My lord Wrenworth, how do you do?”

“Very well, thank you. And you, Miss Cantwell?”

He took off his glove and offered his hand. She shook it uncertainly.

Then it happened. Her face colored. “Very well, too. I’m running some errands for Lady Balfour. Please do not let me keep you.”

It dawned on him as she disappeared into the dim interior of the bookshop that she wasn’t wholly unaffected by him, as he had assumed. Quite to the contrary. Somewhere deep inside her, the infatuation that he’d thought short-lived still simmered. And at this close range, she had been flustered by his presence.

It was an entirely new experience for him, to be physically appealing to a woman who otherwise did not care for him.

Until this moment, Miss Cantwell had been an intellectual, almost impersonal riddle. Now for the first time he became sexually aware of her.

And a rather ferocious awareness at that.

M
y dear Louisa,” cried Lady Balfour, “you will not believe what good fortune has just befallen us.”

Louisa, who had a curling iron in her hair, wielded by Lady Balfour’s maid, did not dare move. “Yes, ma’am?”

“Tenwhestle was at his club this afternoon. And guess who
should come to him full of regret and apologies? Mr. Pitt. He must leave London immediately.”

“Oh, no. Is everything all right?”

Louisa had been looking forward to sitting next to Mr. Pitt for hours on end. Lady Balfour still thought him too homely, but Lady Tenwhestle was sympathetic to Louisa’s cause and had gone ahead and invited him to dinner, so that Louisa could deepen their acquaintance and, she hoped, hasten the arrival of his proposal.

“Nothing serious—something to do with the family estate,” said Lady Balfour. “That put Tenwhestle in a quandary—with Mr. Pitt’s absence, we’d be thirteen at the table. So Tenwhestle turned to the gentleman next to him and asked whether he happened to be free this evening.”

Such delight Lady Balfour’s reflection in the mirror radiated—an unhappy suspicion began to coalesce in Louisa’s head. “Which gentleman?”

Lady Balfour ignored her question. “The gentleman answered in the affirmative. And he was so amiable as to tell Tenwhestle that there was no need for the lady wife, at this late hour, to rearrange seating to suit his superior rank. He would, literally, take Mr. Pitt’s place at the table.”

“I see.”

“Do you, my dear?” Lady Balfour all but twirled. “You are going to sit down to dinner with Lord
Wrenworth
. I can’t tell you how many mamas have tried to arrange the same for their daughters—to think this should just fall into your lap. You must be the luckiest lady in all of London.”

More unnerving words Louisa had seldom heard.

Lady Balfour went to fetch her fan, leaving Louisa to stare at her reflection in dismay. Her entire toilette had been oriented toward making herself look as fetching as possible, with an ingenious bust improver that cantilevered her small breasts to the point of spilling over the cusp of her décolletage.

And it was too late to change into a different dress. Or a less excessive bust improver.

The moment Lord Wrenworth’s gaze met hers across Lady Tenwhestle’s drawing room, before the ladies and the gentlemen had even been paired for their procession to the dining table, Louisa already felt the heat of her utter mortification.

He knew.

He knew that she’d dressed and coiffed herself for Mr. Pitt—the blinding white silk of the dinner gown, the flirty curls in her hair, and the blasted décolletage that made her chest look like the twin cheeks of a baby’s upturned bottom. He knew that she’d meant to appear girlish and pure, while leading Mr. Pitt toward resolutely impure thoughts. And he even knew how exasperated she was for all that detailed effort to have gone to waste.

All this—and a hundred more vexed thoughts—washed through her before he’d even said, “Good evening, Miss Cantwell.”

What was it about this man that made her lose her mind?

And then lose her mind a little more when she had to walk beside him, her hand on his arm. Because he smelled delicious—like that first lungful of fresh air after a good summer shower. Because though her fingers barely touched his sleeve, she could still feel the shape and strength of his forearm. Because when he leaned toward her and murmured, “You look lovely tonight, Miss Cantwell,” she sprouted goose bumps everywhere.

“Do you come to London often, Miss Cantwell?” he asked halfway through the first course.

She watched as he broke a piece of the bread passed around by the servant, his fingers strong and elegant. “No, sir. I visit quite infrequently.”

“And where is home, if I may ask?” He spoke without glancing in her direction, busying himself with his butter knife.

“I live in the Cotswold, not far from Cirencester.”

“The Earl of Wyden’s seat is somewhere in the vicinity, is it not?”

“Yes, the estate is about ten miles away.”

When he didn’t say anything else, she felt obliged to add, “But we do not know the earl’s family very well.”

The impoverished relations of a mere baronet’s wife did not call upon Lord Wyden at will.

Others had asked similar questions when she’d related her place of origin, and she’d cheerfully admitted to a lack of intimacy with whichever family they’d inquired about. But it was difficult to do anything cheerfully before Lord Wrenworth: He had seen how dazzled she was by him.

Her besottedness had meant nothing to him, she was sure. But she was not one to share her sentiments. She didn’t mind letting it be known that she liked the neighbor’s new puppy or that she thought three weeks of continuous rain verged on bothersome. But anything strong enough to be labeled an emotion—fear for Matilda’s future, fear of a failed London Season, fear of another inexplicable bout of romantic idiocy—those she could bear only by keeping them locked away, far from prying eyes.

But there was no concealing anything from his ridiculously beautiful prying eyes.

She felt cornered.

“A shame,” he replied softly. “I know the earl’s sons very well. We’d have met much sooner had you been acquainted with them.”

She was staring down into her plate, but at his tone, which made her feel strange things, she could not help turning her face, looking into his eyes for the first time since she saw him across the drawing room, before the start of dinner.

Instantly a fierce heat swept over her. Had she thought that there was nothing erotic in the attention he directed her way?
That must have been a different lifetime altogether. For this gaze of his made her think of . . . skin. Flesh. And, God help her, unnatural acts.

When she had assessed herself for her chances on the marriage mart, it had been immediately apparent that her décolletage needed help. A great deal of help. But did bust improvers, in this regard, constitute flagrant cheating? She’d agonized over that seemingly minor decision.

Then she had overheard Lady Balfour gossiping to Mrs. Cantwell about her black-sheep brother-in-law’s new mistress.
A flat-chested little thing, and not even that pretty—but I hear she is willing to take part in the most unnatural acts in the bedroom
.

Growing up, Louisa had occasionally been allowed to visit her paternal great-aunts, two sisters who lived in a charming little cottage in Bournemouth, on a bluff overlooking the sea. And by the time Louisa was thirteen, she’d come to the realization that those “maiden” aunts had once practiced the oldest profession in the world—as a team, no less. The elderly women would spy on the gentlemen’s bathing section—where the bathing suit was one’s own skin and nothing else—with a field glass, and cackle gleefully between themselves. Their reminiscences, when they believed Louisa otherwise occupied, had taught her a great many things that Mrs. Cantwell would have considered grossly indelicate.

The existence of unnatural acts in the bedroom, for example. And the fact that a woman could outlast such acts with her good humor perfectly intact.

So should Louisa’s future husband find out that she had far less chest than he’d been led to believe, she could redeem herself by being lax in her standards in the bedroom—and not be particularly worse off, if her great-aunts’ examples were anything to go by.

She had immediately set out to study every bust improver
in the house, speculating on just how much more they could be padded without making her look ludicrous. Unnatural acts she’d never thought of again—until now.

There was nothing openly lascivious in Lord Wrenworth’s contemplation—Lady Balfour, glancing approvingly their way, clearly saw only an appropriate interest. But Louisa read in those same eyes a disastrous knowledge.

He had perceived that she was not as indifferent to him as she’d like to be—if only they hadn’t run into each other outside the bookshop! But now, instead of regarding her as utterly beneath his notice, he enjoyed making her betray herself.

“Would you like me to introduce them to you?” he asked.

She could see both of his hands, exactly where they ought to be. Yet somehow it felt as if he had touched her, before all the other dinner guests.

“Introduce . . . whom to me?”