but leaned a little closer than was proper, treating him to more of her delicious perfume, more alluring now that it was closer to her skin. ‘I am being launched into society tonight. Rather reluctantly as I am sure you can see.’
She looked nothing like the traditional debutante. For a start, she had at least five years on most of them and lacked the dewy-eyed innocence prevalent all around them which Jake found so distasteful. ‘This is your come-out?’ Laughter threatened at the preposterousness. She had to be well past the age of majority, but, age aside, she was too canny a woman. Too comfortable in her own skin and mind when all around her were awed and awkward girls.
‘I can see, sir, that you are as staggered by it as I am and are racking your brains for a polite way to say I am a bit too old to be coming out. Which I patently am.’
There was no point in denying it. ‘How come a matron of such advanced years is only just being launched into society?’ As he had hoped, she smiled at the sarcasm. He had no time for people who didn’t understand it. Irony and sarcasm were two of his very best friends.
‘I confess, I honestly have no idea. One minute I was happily enjoying my dotage in Keswick and then I was dragged here.’
Very north, then. The more she spoke the more he could hear it in the lilt of her voice. ‘How awful for you. Were you dragged from the bosom of Cumbria against your will?’
‘Not completely. When the invitation came, I’ll admit to being intrigued. London is an adventure, I suppose, and I was due one. And I was curious about the city I was born in, but have no memory of. I wanted to visit some of the sights I’ve only read about. The Tower of London, the British Museum, St James’s Palace...’ She sighed dramatically to amuse him. ‘But alas, my uncle expressly forbade any touring about until I was launched properly.’
Little flags raised in his mind. ‘Your uncle?’ Surely it was a coincidence?
‘Yes. My mother’s brother. I hardly know him really, but he wrote to me saying he had promised my mother he would give me a Season and, apparently, dear Uncle Crispin only remembered that solemn promise this year. Hence, I am undoubtedly the oldest debutante anyone has ever seen and feel much like an old trout, rather than a common or garden fish out of water.’
‘Hardly old.’ It was difficult to sound nonchalant when his mind was already reeling, both at his good luck at naturally meeting the woman he had been sent here to seduce and his relief at finding her a grown woman rather than a child. ‘What are you...three and twenty?’
‘Save your polite London charm, sir, it’s wasted on me. I am five and twenty and look it. And happy to be so. Although even when I was younger, I doubt I was ever quite as young as some of the girls I was presented with. They all seem so surprised and dazzled by everything. I’ve never met such a jittery crop of girls before in my life. Do they not let young ladies out here in the capital before they come out?’
There was an earthiness and healthy cynicism about her which felt familiar and made him oddly homesick. Jake had grown up around people who said what they thought without artifice. Here in London, the true meaning of a person’s words was often buried under layers of the polite façade they presented to the world. ‘Of course not. Gently bred young ladies are practically locked up and kept well out of polite society to avoid them being corrupted.’
‘Yet overprotecting them makes them all the riper for corruption.’ She frowned as she said this, and shook her head. ‘No wonder those girls all appear overwhelmed. They have lived such sheltered lives and then they are brought here. A place where its sole purpose, as far as I can ascertain, is for unattached young ladies to be tirelessly paraded around like farm stock on auction day in the hope someone will notice them, then deign to marry them. And they are grateful to be put up for the gavel. Listen to them all twittering like excited sparrows at the prospect.’
‘You sound as if you disapprove, Miss...?’ There was the slim chance there was more than one Uncle Crispin in town.
‘Blunt. Blunt by name and blunt by nature, I’m afraid.’ Thanking all his lucky stars she was the right woman, Jake was suddenly ridiculously grateful he had had his leave postponed. Of all the women to, quite literally, stumble into him he’d been blessed by Rowley’s niece. Rowley’s lovely, womanly and ripe-for-the-picking northern niece. Seducing this tart morsel wouldn’t feel like work at all. This he would do for pure pleasure. ‘I apologise if you find my frankness rude.’
‘I am delighted to make your acquaintance, Miss Blunt.’ He took her hand gently in his and kissed the back of it, confident she wouldn’t care when he failed to let go. ‘And I find your frankness refreshing. Like you I am from the north—deepest, darkest, dankest Nottinghamshire to be exact—my name is Jake Warriner and I loathe Almack’s, too.’
She leaned closer again, her pretty face tilted to one side and her palm heating his through the thin fabric of her evening gloves. Awareness. Chemistry. Mutual attraction. Jake knew the signs too well to mistake them for anything else. He had the urge to kiss her. An urge which had nothing to do with Crispin Rowley and everything to do with his bewitching niece. ‘Is it obvious I loathe it, Mr Warriner, only I have been trying exceedingly hard to appear as if I don’t?’
‘To me it is obvious, but then again, just like you I am loitering in the alcove and avoiding the sad crush. It hardly makes me a genius to have seen a kindred spirit.’
She gracefully disentangled his grip from hers. ‘When you put it like that, I suppose it doesn’t. Why do you loathe it?’
An easy question to answer with complete honesty for once. ‘This place, the stifling, petty rules and the callous way an elite few decide who is worthy to be allowed in, grates on me. I hate the power those few have over the others. If they take to you, you are guaranteed the best invitations of the Season. If they don’t, well...’ He left the implication to settle. ‘It all strikes me as grossly unfair.’
‘Those poor sparrows will be devastated by the cut. Some might never get over it.’
‘But I get the feeling you won’t be devastated?’ Jake had a talent for reading people. Each tiny nuance and expression told more truth than lips usually did and Miss Blunt did not look impressed with being here.
She sighed and shrugged again, something she did a great deal and which made his eyes want to wander down to where her neckline met flesh. Soft, perfumed, pert, female flesh. Jake resisted—but only just. ‘Is it terrible that I hope they thoroughly disapprove of me, then I will be spared the effort of coming here again? Or of receiving the best invitations of the Season. I fear my uncle has lined up a whole host of entertainments for me to attend, none of which I suspect I shall find entertaining in the slightest.’
‘Not every soirée is as dull and constrained as Almack’s.’
‘Perhaps. But being paraded around town like meat on the butcher’s board is not what I had in mind when I agreed to this visit.’
‘It’s just a visit, then?’ Clearly Miss Blunt was not aware of the fact Uncle Crispin was intent on marrying her off.
‘Yes. A month. Then I shall return to Cumbria where I belong. Perhaps two at the most, although after tonight I sincerely doubt I’ll manage two. It has been less than a week and I already find London society suffocating. I find I am fiercely wedded to my freedom, you see, while here it is stifled. At home, I can walk outdoors where and when I please, say what I think, do what I want.’ Clearly Fennimore’s intelligence was lacking, as Miss Blunt was even less of a convent miss than she was an eager debutante. ‘Here I have chaperons and all these rules I have to adhere to.’
‘Such as?’
‘Where to start? How to dress, how to walk. The correct way to curtsy to a duchess, which is I now know quite different from the way one curtsies to a countess or a queen. Who I should speak to, who I shouldn’t, how to behave when dancing.’ Another put-upon sigh. ‘I was promised I would have an adventure and so far it has been anything but. However, at least I was dragged here by my family and