“Thank heavens, the cavalry.”
Tess was looking at her as if she’d never seen her before. “You look amazing. Did Kenneworth buy you that?”
Peaches suppressed the urge to squirm. “No,” she said slowly. “He didn’t.”
Tess frowned for a moment, the wheels obviously working overtime, then her mouth fell open.
“Stephen?”
Peaches managed a weak smile. “We haven’t talked in a while, have we?”
“No,” Tess said faintly, “but I think we need to.” She paused. “Two of his girlfriends are here, you know. And Irene Preston, sharpening her fangs. I’m not sure her cousin Andrea isn’t on the prowl as well.”
“Can’t blame them,” Peaches said, touching the diamonds at her throat. “He has excellent taste.”
“Yes,” Tess said with a smile, “he does. In both jewels and women.”
“Which we should discuss later,” John said in a low voice. “His Grace is approaching.”
Peaches allowed herself a heavy sigh before she pasted on her best company smile and turned to face David again. It was, she feared, going to be a very long evening.
The only thing that salvaged dinner was finding out, to her enormous surprise, that she was sitting not next to the Duke of Kenneworth, but Lady Chattam’s grandson. Her chair was held out for her, she was seated, then she spent the next few seconds trying to breathe normally.
“Like the seating arrangements?” Stephen murmured.
“Love them,” she murmured in return as her napkin was placed on her lap. She was even more grateful than usual for Aunt Edna’s insistence she learn which fork was which on the off chance she ever found herself to tea somewhere fancy.
Stephen picked up his water glass. “You look stunning,” he said, using it as cover.
“Thank you.”
“Is that lipstick temporary or permanent?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Why do you think I’m asking?”
She smiled in spite of herself and declined to answer. Fortunately supper began before she could truly get herself into any
trouble. The meal seemed interminable only because she was torn between being distracted by the deliciousness that was the Viscount Haulton in a tux and knowing that his grandmother was watching them both while pretending to be deeply interested in the conversations going on around her. It didn’t help at all that Stephen tried to hold her hand under the table.
“I believe, my lord Haulton,” she murmured, “that you are about to get yourself busted.”
“Granny won’t know,” he said under his breath.
“The footmen will.”
“They won’t blame me.”
“But your girlfriends might. One of them already has suspicions.” Peaches smiled politely at him. “The blonde has been glaring daggers at me all evening. And let’s not forget Irene Preston.”
“Shall I look at you superciliously to throw them all off the scent?”
“You could try that, but you might want to first stop looking at my mouth.”
He smiled gravely, that polite smile she’d seen so much of before she’d wound up in medieval England with him and her world had been turned completely upside down. Only now, she realized it didn’t mean what she thought it had.
It meant he loved her.
“A waltz later?” he asked.
“If you like.”
“Will I suit, do you think?” he asked, suddenly serious. “Aunt Edna, I mean.”
Peaches was taken aback by the question only because it seemed odd that he should worry about passing muster with an obscure woman of such little consequence in the world. That he should care said something about his character.
And his feelings for her.
“Does it matter to you?” she asked.
“Very much,” he said frankly.
“You know, you’re going to have to stop this kind of thing in public places,” she said, blinking a time or two in spite of herself. “You’re going to get us both in trouble. And if you really want to know, yes, I think she’ll approve.”
The smile he gave her made her very relieved she was already
seated. She suspected the only reason it hadn’t brought his granny to her feet was that she had missed it. Peaches made sure Lady Louise was still engaged in overseeing her guests, then succumbed to the conversational demands of a rather robust man on her left who turned out to be a very keen gardener. She managed to make polite conversation with him in spite of Stephen’s continually brushing her elbow with his, or pressing his foot against hers, or otherwise distracting her from ignoring him as she knew she should have.
There was mingling after supper, which was just as painful as she’d feared it might be. David kept her next to him the entire time, though she managed to avoid having his hands on all the various parts of her person that were polite to grab in public. She was rather relieved to hear the orchestra warming up, though she supposed she shouldn’t have been. David would probably try to monopolize her for the entire night—and not because he had any feelings for her, but for his own perverse reasons.
The only thing that saved her was that Lady Louise’s balls seemed to include only music for traditional dancing, which left David stumbling through several songs—something she hadn’t noticed at Kenneworth House—before he steered her over to the punch bowl and helped himself.
“I say,” drawled a voice suddenly in the poshest of tones from behind her, “Preston, old thing, don’t you feel it’s time to let someone else have a turn?”
Peaches turned to see none other than John de Piaget standing there, looking terrifyingly lethal in spite of his elegant evening clothes.
“Who?” David asked with a snort. “You?”
John lifted an eyebrow. “Family privilege and all that.”
“Your keep doesn’t even have a roof.”
“No, but my wife’s does and I’m happy to laze about as a kept man, so release my sister-in-law and go vex someone else with your troublesome self.”
“How dare you,” David said, drawing himself up and puffing importantly.
John took Peaches’s hand and tucked it under his arm. “Spare us the dramatics.”
“You won’t dare talk to me this way,” David said in a low but quite audible voice. “Not for long.”
Peaches wasn’t one to be unduly alarmed, but she couldn’t deny that the tone of his voice had made her very uncomfortable. She walked with John out into the middle of the ballroom, then stopped and looked at him.
“What do you think?” she asked him in the vintage French she was fairly sure the bulk of the company wouldn’t understand.
“I think I’m very happy my grandmother forced me to pay attention to a dancing master along with a master lutenist,” he said pleasantly. “And your accent is excellent, you know. You’ll make a certain lad who values that very happy over the course of his life.”
She pursed her lips as he swept her into a waltz. “I wasn’t asking that, though yes, you do dance divinely.”
“Better than my nephew?”
She laughed a little and was grateful for a brief distraction. “I believe on that subject I will remain discreetly silent. You will, I’m sure, be relieved to know that Stephen’s granny is watching you closely, but she isn’t scowling.”
“She’s still trying to work out why I look so much like her grandson.”
“What have you told her?”
“I haven’t come within ten paces of the old harridan,” John said with a mock shiver. “I don’t dare, of course. We’ll let her think what she wants for the time being.” He looked over her head for a moment, then back at her. “As for our good duke, I think he’s trouble. What kind, I don’t know yet. But I’m watching him.”
“I’m sure Stephen is enormously relieved.”
“Actually, he is, though he told me to leave my blades in the car.”
“And did you?”
He only smiled. Peaches smiled in return, because she had the feeling that John and Stephen were both prepared to wield more than their good looks if necessary.
“And there is the good Viscount Haulton, watching me with a frown whilst a number of his lesser cousins are looking at you with great interest. Where shall I deliver you first?”
“Cousins,” she said faintly. “I’m not tangling with granny quite yet. I’m definitely not going to put myself between his girlfriends and their prey.”
“I think that might be wise. I’ll turn you over to the Chattam lads, then, until Stephen’s tormentors tire of the chase.”
Peaches didn’t want to tell him that she suspected Stephen would give out long before his would-be brides would, but he had already deposited her with one of Lady Louise’s lesser grandsons, who was astonishingly handsome, an excellent dancer, and content to limit his conversation to her health and the weather.
She was fairly sure it was Stephen’s diamonds overwhelming him so.
I
t
was pushing midnight when she found herself standing with Tess and John, sipping punch. David had disappeared an hour earlier, which had pleased her. She’d had a remarkably lovely evening mostly dancing with Stephen’s cousins and once with his brother Gideon, who had treated her as if everything concerning her future as part of the family were already settled. She’d had a delightful conversation with Gideon’s wife, Megan, and spent enough time with Tess to help her keep her equilibrium. Life was, in spite of trying to pretend she had no feelings for Stephen, very good—
“Oh, my,” Tess said faintly.
Peaches would have asked her sister what the matter was, but she shut her mouth around the question she hadn’t managed to ask.
Stephen was walking toward her.
“Steady,” Tess murmured.
“Shut up,” Peaches suggested. “His grandmother isn’t going to like this.”
“I’m not sure he cares,” Tess said honestly. “Enjoy your fairy-tale midnight moment.”
“If he kisses me, I’ll kill him.”
Tess only laughed and allowed her husband to sweep her into his arms and out onto the floor. Peaches tried not to squirm as Stephen came to a stop in front of her, then made her a slight bow.
“My lady,” he said gravely.
“You’re mistaking me for my sister the countess.”
“I don’t think so,” he said, with a grave smile. He held out his hand. “Will you?”
She put her hand into his. “Are you sure?”
“Absolutely.”
“Your grandmother will have a fit.”
“She’ll recover.” He led her out onto the floor, then gathered her into his arms. He sighed happily. “I think this might be worth the misery of the rest of the evening.”
“Thank you,” she said with a smile. “Though I will admit your cousins were charming and very polite.”
“Transferring your affections to the other side of the family, love?”
She shook her head. “They don’t have calluses.”
He frowned slightly. “Calluses?”
She squeezed his right hand. “Calluses from swordplay. A girl has to have her standards.”
“You know,” he said, “I think no one would notice when the clock strikes midnight if I were to properly reward you for that comment.”
She laughed a little, because she was in his arms and at the moment, everything seemed perfect.
Then the clock began to strike midnight.
And things took a turn she hadn’t expected.
S
tephen
stood in his grandmother’s library at a quarter past midnight with Peaches at his side and felt something curling in his gut that certainly wasn’t fear but felt too damned close to it for his taste.
He supposed that was an improvement from the intense irritation he’d felt fifteen minutes earlier when he’d been interrupted in the very act of pulling Peaches into his arms for a midnight kiss by one of his grandmother’s footmen summoning him to the library. He’d arrived fully prepared to tell his grandmother to remember that he didn’t need her permission to wed where it suited him only to find that there was something going on that seemingly had nothing to do with his amorous adventures.
His grandmother had been there, standing in the middle of her library looking thoroughly peeved. His brother Gideon had been off to one side with Megan, both of them wearing identical looks of, well, nothing. Then again, they had both seen enough over the years to have mastered the art of hearing the most appalling things without reacting. Tess and John had rounded out the group. He had been rather relieved to see that John hadn’t brought his sword.
Though he half wished he had brought his own.
He now stood looking at the illustrious Duke of Kenneworth, who seemed to believe he was holding court, and folded his arms over his chest. “You’ve dragged us all away from a lovely party,” he said briskly, “and we’ve humored you because we have decent manners. Please do us the favor of enlightening us as to the nature of your business so we can return to our familial entertainments.”
David looked at him with a cold smile. “I was just waiting to make sure you in particular were here, Haulton, before I began. It’s a pity your mother and father couldn’t join us, but we’ll make do with what we have.”
“What in the hell are you talking about?” Stephen snapped. He didn’t often lose his temper, but he could safely say that David Preston was approximately ten words from seeing it in full. It was one thing to be tormented by the fool and his viper of a sister Irene in public; being irritated by them in a family home was just too much.
“Yes, I’m finding the drama a bit much as well,” Lady Louise said shortly. “Perhaps, young man, you forget who issued the invitation tonight and what bad behavior means for your social standing in the future.”
“I wouldn’t worry about me,” David said smoothly. “I would be more inclined to worry about you.”
Stephen watched his grandmother bristle. “Why should I worry about myself?”
“Because after you hear what I have to say,” David said coolly, “you’ll find you have quite a bit less sterling to use in splashing out for these affairs of yours.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Lady Louise said.
“I’m not sure David knows how to be anything but ridiculous, Grandmother,” Stephen said, “but perhaps he has some amusing anecdote with which to entertain us.” He shot David a look. “It had best be very entertaining to have interrupted such a lovely evening.”
David motioned toward the door. Stephen looked over his shoulder and realized that Irene and Andrea were standing there. They seemed, however, less eager to become part of the group than he would have thought them. He exchanged a look with John, who reached for Peaches and pulled her over to stand next
to him. John then stepped in front of his wife and his sister-in-law and folded his arms over his chest. Stephen didn’t suppose David Preston was intelligent enough to realize he’d just put himself in a room with men who wouldn’t actually think very long before they tore him to pieces. He turned back to the problem at hand.