Кейси Майклс - The Secrets of the Heart

“You quote so often, St. Clair,” Gabrielle shot back, inwardly seething. “It is so sad that you never have an original thought.”

“Oh, I am mortally wounded by your sharp tongue,” he responded theatrically, “and needs must retire the field at once.” He gave a subtle signal to the viscount, who had been hovering nearby, painfully conspicuous in his hopes for another moment’s notice from the popular baron, and that man hopped forward sprightly to take Miss Laurence off St. Clair’s hands.

“How exceedingly amicable of you, my lord,” St. Clair intoned, bowing slightly in thanks. “It is the true sign of a Christian to be willing to graciously take back a young lady who has just recently deserted him for the better man. Miss Laurence, I leave you in good company. If you will excuse me?”

Gabrielle’s smile beamed brighter than the chandelier hanging above their ballroom, the chandelier she secretly wished would slip its moorings to come crashing down on St. Clair’s arrogant head.

“Will we be seeing you at Richmond tomorrow, for her ladyship’s garden party?” she asked, praying for a drenching rain on the morrow so that the baron would not dare attend and chance ruining one of his exquisite ensembles. If the painted popinjay refused to ride because he considered hacking jackets too barbaric for words, he most certainly would not deign to appear at a picnic in anything less than his usual outlandish satins.

“Point du tout, Miss Laurence. I fear you all shall simply have to make do without me,” he replied, lifting the lace handkerchief to his lips. “I abhor picnics, and can think of nothing more uncivilized. If I wished to be crudely rustic I should never have fled the countryside for London in the first place, which I did the moment I realized there existed an entire lovely segment of the populace that did not believe the pinnacle of their existence to be an afternoon spent lying on their backs in the fields, chewing hay. Why, just think, Miss Laurence: Can you really imagine me pushed into a tent with the milling crowd, or forced to sit on a blanket spread on the grass?”

“And pray why not, my lord?” Gabrielle could not resist asking. “After all, I hear most idling, wastrel grasshoppers flit about in the grass quite happily without benefit of a blanket at all.”

St. Clair gave a small, trilling laugh just as the viscount winced, evidently convinced Miss Laurence had said something dreadful and wondering why he had thought being in her company would do his own reputation any good.

“C’est merveilleux! But you are so droll, my dear girl,” the baron continued, smiling broadly. “You almost make me believe you have some sort of sense for amusing repartee. I shall leave you now, my heart light that you have said something brilliant. Good evening all,” he said, bowing once again, this time lifting Gabrielle’s hand to his lips before turning to Lady Ariana and leading her onto the floor, at which time the musicians immediately halted in the midst of the Scottish air they were playing and broke into another waltz.

“Isn’t he magnificent, Miss Laurence?” the viscount gushed, his tone filled with awe, earning himself a speaking look from Gabrielle as she excused herself, wishing her skin didn’t still tingle from the touch of St. Clair’s lips, and, mumbling something about having a crushing headache, asked to be returned to her chaperone.

There was a general whisper, toss, and wriggle,

But etiquette forbade them all to giggle.

Lord Byron

LADY ARIANA TREDWAY DID her best to put a bright face on her position of Baron St. Clair’s second choice as he whirled her around the dance floor, listening to his inane but amusingly risque chatter concerning a certain peer recently winged in the buttocks by his pistol-waving wife, the silly man having been discovered in flagrante delicto in his own library with a certain fast matron.

St. Clair was such a fool, but a powerful fool, and Lady Ariana hated him for his slight defection from her side in this, her second Season, as greatly as she adored him for having deigned to speak with her at all.

It was silly to have such a brainless popinjay as the arbiter of every step Society took, every stitch they wore, as all of Society was silly, but it was the way of the world, and Lady Ariana accepted it as thoroughly as she accepted the fact that she was the most beautiful woman to grace Mayfair in decades.

And Lady Ariana was not entirely conceited in her determination of that beauty. Her hair was soft blond, a most necessary color for a young lady wishing to be thought of as a true English beauty, and her china-blue eyes were the envy of two Seasons of hopeful debutantes. Her petite form provided an added fillip, as did her softly rounded curves, straight white teeth, and a sulky mouth that owed none of its deep pink color to the paint pots many misses were forced to use.

She was known all through Mayfair as the young lady who had in the past year turned away the suits of no less than two marquises, a truly lovestruck earl, and one Honorable whose fortune was favorably compared with that of Golden Ball himself.

She was pampered and petted by her powerful Tory father, indulged by her rather plain mama who in these past twenty years had still not quite moved beyond her gratitude that the Fates had blessed her with such a comely daughter, and sought after by all who would be invited to the best parties.

Indeed, in the insular, almost incestuous twelve hundred or so souls that made up the crème de la crème of English Society, Lady Ariana Tredway had, just this past Season, shared the premier social pivot with only Baron Christian St. Clair.

Until this new Season, that is, when that same socially powerful Baron St. Clair had taken it into his silly head to champion Gabrielle Laurence. No wonder Lady Ariana despised the chit without having spoken more than a half dozen words to her.

“Christian?” Lady Ariana chirped, hoping to gain his full attention. She addressed the baron informally, as their acquaintance had progressed to that point, if no further—for everyone knew the young lady was hanging out for a duke and was written up in the betting book at White’s as being certain to snag one this Season.

Besides, as everyone also knew, Baron Christian St. Clair remained uninterested in females other than to squire them on the dance floor, and Lady Ariana Tredway was much too intrigued with herself and her ambitions to care overmuch for anyone else. “Must you persist in teasing that poor Laurence girl so horribly? You’ve been at it for nearly a fortnight, and it’s thoroughly embarrassing to watch.”

St. Clair raised one eloquent eyebrow and stared at her just as if he hasn’t understood her. “Teasing, Ariana? Sacrée tonnerre! Whatever do you mean?”

“Oh, stop it, Christian. You know very well what I mean,” she said, pulling away from him so that he had no choice but to follow her off the dance floor or remain standing there, abandoned. “You are only puffing her up in order to prick her soundly, deflating her consequence in an instant. I believe you to be very mean in this, which is not at all like you. Usually you are droll and amusing, not brutal.”

“Mon dieu, has it come to this?” St. Clair clucked his tongue as he stepped in front of her, halting her progress. “You’ve gone and had a thought, haven’t you, Ariana? How very bad of you. And it will cause lines in that lovely forehead if you are not careful. Can’t get a duke with wrinkles. Of course, as I understand the duke of Glynnon was seen waltzing with Miss Laurence earlier this evening, you might be worrying yourself needlessly, your hopes already dashed.”

“Don’t avoid my question, Christian,” Lady Ariana countered, bristling at the baron’s deliberate dig and pointedly looking past him, yet only vaguely noticing a commotion to her left, at the doorway to the ballroom. “You took one peep at that dowerless girl—her father gambles, or so Papa says—and immediately decided you could not like her. I agree she is presumptuous, believing she could sweep into Mayfair and conquer us all, but is it really necessary to humiliate her?”

“Au contraire, my dear. You couldn’t care less that I have the power to destroy the fair Laurence. What you are really asking, I fear, is when I will bring her down,” St. Clair responded amicably, lifting his handkerchief to the corner of his smiling mouth. “Leaving you, I presume, free to once more reign as the toast of London. I may be dim, but I can see where this conversation is heading and want no part of it. If you dislike Miss Laurence, cut her yourself, and see if your consequence is up to the challenge. But please, save me from these female machinations. I am only a simple man acting out of charity, totally devoid of intrigue, and I dislike your insinuations intensely. Why, if you two beautiful young ladies were to descend into a catfight I would doubtless be forced to cut you both and take up another cause, another delightful creature whom I would then instantly catapult to social success.”

Lady Ariana was stung into replying without first measuring her words. “I believe I might be better served to join forces with Miss Laurence and see if we couldn’t discover some way to put you out of favor, Christian.”

St. Clair’s shrug was entirely French, for if he was every drop the Englishman, he had spent the years following Waterloo enjoying Parisian society, obviously taking on some of their more eloquent mannerisms, even to the point of sprinkling his conversation with snippets of not necessarily germane French.

“If you must, my dear,” he returned affably. “I am naught but a momentary whim, like poor Brummell before me, and exist merely at the pleasure of Society. But, then, as I recall, it took both Prinny and a year’s long disastrous run at the tables to bring Beau down. Do you believe you and Miss Laurence to be capable of a similar feat?”

Lady Ariana looked closely into St. Clair’s now deeply blue eyes and wished herself out of this potentially dangerous conversation, which she had only entered into because she was upset at the man’s attention to the Laurence chit. She was within a heartbeat of going too far with the usually affable baron, and she decided to pull back.

“Forgive me, Christian,” she said, smiling apologetically. “I have barely eaten all day in order to be certain the line of my gown would be as you desire it. I am all out of sorts tonight, I suppose.”

Then she turned toward the doorway and the sound of raised voices that had momentarily ceased but had now begun again. “Christian? Do you think something is wrong?” she asked, gesturing toward the doorway with her fan.

St. Clair turned and lifted his stemmed quizzing glass to his eye. “How fatiguing. I’ve heard less ruckus in a fish market. Not that I’ve ever visited any such establishment, but I have heard stories, you understand. Comment—do you suppose the place has caught on fire? That is what will come of layering the place with bunting. Come, we will make our escape.”

St. Clair offered Lady Ariana his arm and they made their way toward the main doorway, becoming part of the throng of partygoers now congregating there. He stopped just beside the equally tall but darkly handsome Lord Anthony Buxley, who, Lady Ariana was depressed to see, had the opportunistic Miss Gabrielle Laurence hanging from his sober midnight-blue sleeve.

Almost immediately, seeing that the four purest diamonds of society were in their midst, several people politely gave way, until the quartet of exquisites had a clear view of what was transpiring in the hallway just outside the ballroom.