Мэри Бэлоу: Someone to Romance

She was of average height, slender, graceful, elegant, beautiful. Not pretty, but beautiful . She was definitely not a girl. Neither was she clad in virginal white but in that rich rose he had noticed first about her. It was a low-cut gown, short sleeved, high waisted, the Grecian lines of the skirt hugging her hips and slim legs and yet flowing about her at the same time. It was undeniably the handiwork of a skilled—and expensive—dressmaker. Her dark hair was piled high and arranged in intricate curls on her head, with a few tendrils of ringlets over her temples and along her neck. She was fanning her face slowly with a lacy fan, looking half amused, half bored.

Lady Jessica Archer.

She was every bit as exquisite as he remembered her. More so, in fact. And every bit as haughty too. She was doing nothing deliberately to attract the men clustered about her. There was no sign in her manner of flirtation or teasing. There were no provocative glances or enticing smiles. Yet she was doing nothing to discourage them either. It was as though she considered herself entitled as by right to their adulation. She would condescend to stand there and listen, her manner seemed to say, but she would not favor any one of them with particular attention. She would certainly not display any need to attract them. Yet she must be several years older than all the pretty, eager, anxious girls in white. Did she feel no urgency to attract an eligible husband? Apparently not.

But why should she? She was a duke’s daughter.

She was aristocratic hauteur itself.

She was perfect.

Gabriel propped his shoulder against a pillar that was conveniently next to him and settled in to watch her for a while. The dancing had not yet begun, Bertie had still not arrived, and he knew almost no one else, though Lady Parley had smiled upon him with particular graciousness as he passed along the receiving line earlier. Another eligible bachelor, her look had said. It was what her ball was all about, after all. She had a daughter to marry off.

He wondered how many of those men were seriously courting Lady Jessica Archer. If any of them held out any hope of landing her, they were fools. She obviously cared not a toss for any of them. Although she looked amiably enough at each in turn while they talked, she did not show any obvious partiality or any heightened awareness of any one of them. He wondered if they realized it. If they did, why did they remain? Did they not understand that they were making idiots of themselves? Or were most of them not serious about her and gathered about the lovely sister of the Duke of Netherby merely because it was the fashionable thing to do?

What fools.

And then, while she was smiling over something one of those men had said and fanning her face, she turned her head to look toward the receiving line, and in doing so saw him . Her eyes paused on him and held. She was assessing him. There was no sign of recognition on her face, a notsurprising fact, perhaps, as he had only very recently stepped off the boat the last time she saw him and had not yet subjected himself to the untender mercies of an expensive London tailor and boot maker and haberdasher and barber. Not to mention the tyrannical ministrations of a superior valet. Gabriel had hardly recognized himself by the time they were all done with him.

Perhaps he ought to have looked away. It would probably have been the polite thing to do. One did not stare at strangers. But he was interested to note that she did not look away from him or blush or appear in any way flustered. Indeed, she responded to his continued gaze exactly as he would have expected and rather as she had behaved at that inn. She lifted first her eyebrows and then her chin as though to ask him how he dared be so bold as to raise his eyes to Lady Jessica Archer.

He was the first to look away. Bertie Vickers had arrived and had come to gather Gabriel into the fold of his particular group of male friends. Though not for long.

“Come along, Gabe,” he said, slapping a hand on his shoulder after the flurry of greetings had ended. “There is a young lady I want you to meet.” He shrugged and pulled a face when his friends made jeering noises. “M’mother presented me with a list this morning—the names of daughters and nieces and granddaughters and whatnot of all her acquaintances. She made me promise to present Gabe to any of them who are here tonight. Don’t look at me like that, Kerson—there’s a good fellow. Gabe is in search of a leg shackle but he don’t know anyone. He just came from America.”

Kerson winced. “I’ll say a prayer for you, Thorne, next time I go to church,” he said.

“Next Christmas, will that be, Kerson?” someone else said. “It will be too late for Thorne by then. He will be caught right and tight in parson’s mousetrap, and he will have Bertie to blame. I mean, to thank.”

“I shall keep it in mind,” Gabriel said with a grin. “Who is this young lady you want me to meet, Bertie?”

But someone else had joined the group of young men, and Bertie, distracted, was shaking him by the hand and exclaiming that he had not seen him in an age and a half, and where the devil had he been keeping himself?

Gabriel was not particularly interested in dancing, even though that was why he had come here. None of the young girls he had set eyes upon thus far attracted him. The only woman who did was surrounded by an army of devoted followers and did not need another idiot making a fool of himself over her.

He glanced across the room toward her while he waited for Bertie to finish slapping his long-lost friend’s back and having his own back slapped in return. Ah. It looked as though after all there might be room for another admirer in Lady Jessica Archer’s orbit. A man was being presented to her by an older lady of regal bearing, clad in royal blue. He had gone there to pay homage and was making her an elegant bow he must have practiced for hours before a looking glass. Someone ought to advise him to change his tailor or his valet or both. His gold evening coat, excellently cut and of a perfect fit, was a touch on the flamboyant side but might have passed muster if it had been worn with the right accompaniments. A waistcoat that was so covered with glittering gold sequins that it might have stood up on its own if set on the floor was not the right accompaniment. He had a thick head of dark red hair carefully shaped into the very Brutus style Gabriel himself had recently rejected.

Lady Jessica Archer, Gabriel was interested to notice, responded to his deep obeisance with a haughty inclination of her head, just as she had responded to him at that inn. A queen honoring a lowly subject.

Bertie had finished with all the back slapping. “Lady Jessica Archer,” he said, noticing the direction of Gabriel’s gaze. “Netherby’s sister. The Duke of, that is. There is no point in wasting your time on her, Gabe. She will have no man, though if she does not change that attitude soon, she will be so long in the tooth no one will want her any longer.”

“Who is that with her?” Gabriel asked.

“That is a trick question, right?” Bertie said with a guffaw of a laugh. “Half the male guests here tonight are with her, as they almost always are. Or do you mean the woman in blue? Her mother, the Dowager Duchess of Netherby?”

“The man in gold,” Gabriel said.

“Don’t know.” Bertie shook his head, but one of his friends provided the answer.

“He is Lyndale’s heir,” he said. “The Earl of Lyndale, that is. Or soon-to-be earl. The ladies cannot get enough of him. They think him a handsome devil.”

“Ah,” Bertie said, “so that is Rochford, is it? I have been hearing his praises being sung all week. Mr. Perfection. Mr. Charming Perfection. One would think someone would change the subject once in a while.”