room where the company was gathering before dinner, her voice low as she imparted the news. ‘Italian royalty have arrived. I’ll have them vetted of course. I’ll make enquiries immediately.’
‘I don’t like surprises.’ He’d had enough of those this week to last a lifetime.
His mother shot him a sharp look. ‘You wouldn’t be surprised if you’d been here to greet them.’ He’d spent the afternoon in the dairy and the stables, pointedly avoiding the company converging on Hartswood until the very last minute, which was fast approaching. At the stroke of seven it would all begin—the countdown to his wedding.
‘Why are they here? Does the Principessa want to try her luck?’ Sutton joked drily with a nod towards the drawing room. How odd to think his future bride was in that room right now and he had no idea who she would be. The thought was enough to unnerve him.
‘Hardly. They assure me they are here to experience an English house party. They saw the announcement in The Times.’
‘How intriguing. Guests who aren’t interested in the fortune.’ Sutton held out his arm to his mother. ‘Shall we? I can’t put it off any longer.’
He halted at the doorway, taking in the scene before him, the drawing room so full of guests it might have been a ball. There was no question of the dining room accommodating everyone. Dinner would be served in the ballroom tonight at round tables of eight. His popularity had outstripped the capacity of traditional dining arrangements. He patted his mother’s hand. ‘You’ve done well. I think every eligible girl in London is here.’
She smiled up at him. ‘And then some. The footmen have already evicted six ineligible candidates whose family trees weren’t quite as strong as they purported them to be.’ She shook her head. ‘Granddaughters of earls simply won’t hold up to scrutiny if your cousin contests the will or your marriage. We need the daughter of a titled father, a very clean, direct, connection. That’s trouble we don’t need.’ She grimaced. ‘Speaking of trouble, has there been any word from Baxter yet?’
‘No.’ But Sutton feared Baxter had eyes and ears at this party and that his cousin was merely waiting for him to single out a bride before he made his move. ‘But we’ll see him before this is done. He won’t let the money go without a fight.’ Sutton surveyed the room, taking in all the girls, all of them looking frightfully young and frightfully alike. ‘Which one is she, do you think?’
‘Your wife?’ His mother laughed.
‘No, the Italian Principessa.’ He paused, his eyes lighting on the woman by the long window; blonde hair done up in artfully braided loops, her posture straight, her gaze fixed on a point beyond the room as she looked out into the gardens, and that dress, red—startlingly so—against the backdrop of the room’s virginal palette. There was something about her that made his heart pound, as if she, too, were somehow apart from this world he was forced to inhabit and he knew. ‘It’s her. That’s the Principessa.’
‘Yes, and she’s not for you, my son. Come, let me introduce you to the others.’
* * *
Sutton spent the next half-hour of drinks in the drawing room, smiling and bowing to all the darling daughters. There were plump ones, thin ones, blondes, brunettes, redheads; girls with curls, with straight, silky tresses; girls with blue eyes, brown eyes, pink dresses, yellow dresses, satins and silks. The array was dazzling, overwhelming. His drawing room was crammed with girls waiting to meet him and his fortune. Not one of the girls held his attention. His attention was free to wander about the room at will. And it did, stopping frequently on the slender, blonde woman by the window, who stood alone sipping sherry in that stunning red dress.
By the time the butler summoned them for dinner, he’d come to a disappointing conclusion: as different as they were in appearance, the girls all shared two things in common—they giggled at everything he said even when it wasn’t particularly witty and they all wanted his money.
‘Give them time, Sutton,’ his mother cajoled, reading his mind as he took her into the ballroom for supper. They’d decided beforehand that it would be an unfair advantage for him to take a girl into dinner the first night. ‘The girls are young. The stakes are high for them. Their parents are watching their every move.’
‘Once I see them in their natural habitats, playing the pianoforte or games, or picnicking, they’ll start to act more like their true selves? Is that it?’ The words came out more cynically than he intended.
‘Dear lord, Sutton, “their natural habitats”? Really? You make this sound like a zoo.’
‘Tell me I’m wrong.’ He was starting to think his fabulous idea of a house party was a mistake and now his ballroom was full of dinner tables and moon-eyed girls. He’d never wanted to be back down in his stables so badly.
She tapped his sleeve with her fan as he walked her to her place. ‘Cream will rise to the top, dear boy, just wait and see.’ Sutton hoped there was enough time. In his experience at the dairy, cream took a while to separate. He wasn’t sure he had that much time.
Sutton made his way to his table, disappointed to find himself boxed in by Miss Lila Partridge on his left and Miss Imogen Bettancourt on his right, their beaming parents beside them ensuring his attention remained fixed on their daughters. A quick glance around the ballroom revealed even more disappointing news. The elusive lady in red was seated at a table near the door, lucky her. She could escape. He watched as she smiled to her tablemates, laughing as she leaned close to the gentleman beside her. She might be having the best time of anyone present and she was clearly not interested in him, not in the least, which suddenly made her, without doubt, the most intriguing woman in the room.
The first thing Elidh noticed about Sutton Keynes was that he wasn’t interested: in dinner, in the women around him, or in any of the proceedings. He most decidedly didn’t want to be here and, unlike her, he was doing nothing to hide his displeasure over the situation. He was not the showman she’d anticipated. While she laughed and flirted and interspersed her comments with a handful of Italian exclamations, pretending to enjoy herself, he sat woodenly at his table, surrounded by pretty dolls who catered to his slightest indicator of interest.
He might as well have been a doll himself for all the responsiveness he showed. A very handsome doll, though. He had his mother’s dark honey hair, thick with a hint of a wave that saved it from being straight. The candlelight in the ballroom picked up the honey hues, causing them to wink temptingly like veins of gold in a mine. And an open face. She liked that. The firm mouth, the strong nose, the eyes that expressed exactly how he felt at being here. Trapped. She couldn’t see the colour of his eyes at this distance, but she could see how they felt. They were restless, always scanning the room as if he were seeking a way out.
It was an outlandish thought that made no sense. Why would he be wanting to escape his own party? A party he’d planned for the express purpose of finding a wife? If it was not escape he sought, perhaps it was a particular woman he was looking for? His gaze quartered the room again and Elidh felt a little rill of awareness tremble down her spine, accompanied by the sensation that he was looking for her. It took all her bravado not to sink down in her chair, to keep her eyes and attentions fixed on the men at her table, all of whom might be candidates for her father’s play.
She’d felt his eyes on her in the drawing room, his gaze coming back to the window where she’d stood. She’d been careful not to turn around or to cultivate his attention just as she was careful now to be immersed here at her own table. Should he look in her direction, he would see a woman who was enjoying a good meal in a beautiful setting, and enjoying her popularity at her table, giving no thought to her wife-hunting host. But in both cases, it seemed her attempts to keep herself separate from the cluster of girls around him had created the opposite effect. Even now, she could feel his gaze stop on her table. She must put herself beyond his reach. Surely he would forget all about