of people out into the hall and then across to the withdrawing room. She had foolishly hoped to discover Lord Framlington hiding somewhere. He had not been hiding anywhere.
The rogue had known how she would feel, how she felt… You feel. You want, but you know I cannot come to you in a place like this, so if you want what I can give you, you will have to come to me… But how could she come to him if he was nowhere to be found!
She hated him.
He was playing with her.
She loved him too, though. No one she spoke to or danced with compared to him, they were all a mile beneath him.
He was beautiful, witty, charming… and poor… A fortune-hunter, and a rake.
Her heart thumped as she hurried back to the ballroom still looking for him. He was not there. She did not return to her mother, she sought her friends. Someone to talk to. Though she had not spoken to them of Lord Framlington, they would think her mad. Everyone would think her mad. She could not even explain to herself why she liked him so much. But she did.
Her heart pounded harder even at the thought of him.
“Mary!”
“Emily,” Miss Smithfield was one of Mary’s more recent, less confident, friends. She had looked lost one evening, sitting out a dance against the wall, and so Mary had befriended her.
“Mary. You poor soul, I saw you had to dance with Mr Makepeace.” Lady Bethany Pope kissed the air beside Mary’s cheek.
Mary made a face. Bethany and Emily laughed.
“Hasn’t he asked you to dance every night this week?”
“Good heavens, yes, but hopefully never again, I stood on his foot.”
“Deliberately…”
“Perhaps.” They all laughed but Mary heard the hollowness in hers. Her life no longer interested her. She was bored. She missed the sense of danger hovering across the ballroom when Lord Framlington watched her. He made her feel different from everyone else, special. Every other man she danced with, danced with a dozen other women, she was no exception to any of them, and yet she had never seen Lord Framlington dance with anyone since he’d danced with her. Nor did he stare at anyone but her…
Although he had talked to that blonde woman the other day…
She sighed.
Had she lost him, by not conceding? Had he given up on her?
“Miss Marlow.” Mr Gerard Heathcote bowed before her. “May I have the honour of this dance?”
She wished to scream. No! She had danced with him ten dozen times, he was nice, polite… Boring.
Oh, her father had never spanked her, but he would wish he had done if he knew how wrong-headed she had become.
She dropped a shallow curtsy and then gave Gerard her hand. “Of course.” In reality she wished to run from the ballroom and out into the dark garden. It was raining outside, she quite fancied a thorough soaking. Perhaps it would bring her to her senses.
On the twelfth night after her second kiss with Lord Framlington, when she returned home with her parents, she stopped at her bedchamber door, and refused to let her mother in. “Please, Mama, I can retire alone. You cannot treat me as a child forever.”
“Yet—“
“I know it is only out of love, but I wish to retire alone, Mama.”
As soon as she shut the door, the tears came. They had been hovering all night as she had looked for Lord Framlington almost constantly. When she’d waltzed her gaze had spun about the room searching every corner. Her dance partners must have thought her mad.
But she had come to the conclusion that it was over. He’d given up on her, and so she ought to listen to common-sense if the man was so fickle.
But her bitterness was washed away by tears. The maid in her room unbuttoned the back of Mary’s bodice, and then unlaced her stays. Mary looked at her, the stains of silent tears still damp pathways whispering their presence on her cheeks. “Pray tell no one that I have been upset. You may retire.”
“Are you certain, Ma’am.”
“Yes absolutely certain.”
When the maid left, Mary did not even bother to strip off her clothes or blow out the candles, but tumbled on to the bed and cried. Not only because she had not seen him, and may not see him ever again… but because she was a complete ninny for wanting to see him.
“Fool.” she breathed into the sheets.
Pride in his self-discipline burned in Drew’s chest as he strolled into the Wiltshires’ ballroom. He’d avoided Miss Mary Marlow for two weeks and now the moment to return was ripe.
Lord Wiltshire, The Duke of Arundel was her uncle. The girl would be feeling relaxed among her family and find it harder to be false and he hoped easier to establish a moment to escape as she’d done at the Jerseys’.
Looking down from the top of the entrance stairs, at the end of the Wiltshires’ ornate ballroom, he briefly scanned the crowd of heaving humanity, the ton, England’s elite, in all their shining glory.
If her uncle knew Drew’s intent he would never have received an invitation, but he ‘d kept away from Miss Marlow in public since last year and so, to her family, he was simply another name on a list to fill the room and enable every society hostess’s wish for a crush.
He saw Miss Marlow; she was not far from the foot of the stairs and when his name was called she looked up. He rarely entered a room without drawing the attention of women, he ignored the others and smiled at her, holding her gaze.
She had been looking for him, for two weeks, and she had missed him, he could see it in her eyes; they were sparkling bright with relief.
He smiled at her, and for the first time in nearly a year she gave him a little self-conscious, confused smile back.
Her eyes asked him questions as she kept looking. “Where have you been? Should I seek you out and ask?”
Yes, you should, Mary.
He let her gaze go and smiled at the room in general to avoid her family noticing the exchange. If they whisked her away to the country to avoid him, his game would be off entirely for this year.
Drew wasted his first hour in the card room. This early in the evening she would be too much in demand to risk slipping away.
The supper bell rang and the music died, then guests surged into the room set aside for refreshments. Drew sauntered in a little late, at the rear; a gentleman acquaintance with whom he’d been playing cards at his side, a friend he’d picked out for the sole purpose of gaining entry into Miss Marlow’s family group.
If he was going to tempt her he needed to throw her at least a little more bait. His companion was an old mutual friend of Drew’s and Pembroke’s, from their days in Paris, during their dissipated grand tour. Days the Duke of Pembroke preferred to forget. Like Pembroke, Roger Harris had turned prude, and therefore Harris was the perfect camouflage, he would be welcome even if Drew was not.
On cue Roger called, “Pembroke!”
The family group were sittting about several tables. Drew ought to be daunted, but daunted was not within him, what he felt was a swell of anticipation, exhilaration. This was a bold move. He was walking a line, willing Miss Marlow to notice him while he wished her relatives to spot nothing out of the ordinary.
His quarry sat amidst her uncles and aunts on her brother’s table.
“Roger! I did not know you were in town.”