Claire pulled open the top drawer of her desk and swept the Admiralty papers into it. There would be no more time for regular business today, if she was to contact Mr. Hutt and secure his services, then get herself suitably gowned and groomed for the Fortescues’ ball.
There was no help for it, though. Thwarting the aims of this fortune hunter might prove as vital to the continued prosperity of Brancasters as any navy contract. Besides, Claire felt a duty to protect Tessa from her own foolishness.
Dancing had already begun by the time Claire and her escort arrived at the Fortescues’ Grosvenor Square town house that evening.
“Miss Talbot, what a pleasant surprise.” Lady Fortescue did not look or sound pleased. “Lady Lydiard sent word that you might be able to come tonight, after all.”
“That was good of her.” Claire returned her hostess’s brittle, insincere smile with one of her own. “May I present my escort? Mr. Obadiah Hutt, a business associate of mine.”
Lady Fortescue gave a cool but gracious welcome to Mr. Hutt, who looked surprisingly distinguished in evening clothes. Claire wondered if their hostess would have been quite as hospitable if she’d known the precise nature of their
association.
Once they were out of earshot of Lady Fortescue, Mr. Hutt leaned toward Claire and murmured, “I’ll just go have a look ’round, and a listen, if that suits you, miss?”
“By all means.” Claire swept a quick glance around the ballroom, but saw no sign of Tessa or Lady Lydiard. “I always approve of people getting on with the job they’re being paid to do.”
Her agent cast a professional eye over the other guests. “If this fellow’s been showing up frequently in society the past week or two, someone’s bound to know something about him.”
The more information Mr. Hutt could uncover, the better, even if it was not especially incriminating, thought Claire as he slipped away to begin his work. Tessa was apt to be attracted by a mystery.
“Why, Miss Talbot!” A familiar, velvety masculine voice rang out behind her. “Is that truly you, or have I had too much to drink already?”
She turned to find Major Maxwell Hamilton-Smythe watching her. As always, he looked impeccably tailored in his dress uniform. And as always, he had a glass in his hand and a roguish gleam in his eye.
In spite of herself, Claire returned his smile. “Nobody who knows you would discount the latter possibility, my dear Max.”
The man was a snake. Claire had decided that long ago, when he’d pursued her so relentlessly. But he was the most handsome snake she’d ever set eyes on. There had been a time, when she was younger and not yet reconciled to a lifetime of spinsterhood, when Max Hamilton-Smythe had made her question whether buying a husband would be so terrible, provided she knew that’s what she was doing, and she got good value for her money.
“As a matter of fact,” she added with mock gravity, “I am a look-alike Miss Talbot has employed to stand in for her at dreary social gatherings she cannot otherwise avoid.”
The wry jest had barely left Claire’s lips when all thought of levity abruptly deserted her. What if Max was Tessa’s fortune hunter?
With a giddy surge of relief, she remembered that Tessa’s suitor was an American. Besides, Max had recently married some poor creature whose fortune exceeded both her beauty and her good sense.
Max bolted the last of his drink, then handed the empty glass to a passing footman. “Well, whoever you are, will you do me the honor of a dance?” He offered Claire his arm. “For old times’ sake?”
“I’m not certain old times merit it.” She took his arm just the same, and let him lead her to the dance floor. “Besides, shouldn’t you be squiring your wife this evening?”
“She’s not here.” Max gave a cheerful shrug, as though her absence did not trouble him vastly. “Indisposed, the poor darling.”
As Max whirled her around the ballroom, Claire tried to decide whether she pitied Mrs. Hamilton-Smythe her husband’s callous neglect more than she envied the woman for being with child.
After two waltzes and a further exchange of good-natured barbs, Claire took her leave of the major, more convinced than ever that she’d been wise to keep out of his attractive clutches.
“It’s been amusing to see you again, Max. But I mustn’t keep you from your mission to deplete Lord and Lady Fortescue’s wine cellar. Do tell your wife I hope she’s feeling better soon.”
“About my wife …” Max maneuvered Claire into a corner near the musicians’ dias and lowered his voice. “Just because I’m married now doesn’t mean you and I couldn’t—”
“It most certainly does, Max, you reptile.”
He gazed at her as if the word were some kind of endearment, and added in a coaxing murmur, “Barbara and I have an understanding.”
“Ah.” Claire fought the urge to slap his face. “Then perhaps you and I should have one, as well.”
Max’s sea-green eyes glittered with lust … or perhaps it was avarice. Claire had never succeeded in telling the two apart.
“I understand that you are as monstrous a cad as ever.” By the tone of her voice, anyone overhearing them might have thought she was paying him a compliment. “And you understand that I would not dally with you if you were the last man on earth.
Now,
do we understand one another?”
If she’d hoped to goad the major into losing his temper, Claire would have been disappointed.
Instead, he clucked his tongue at her while looking intolerably smug. “I promise, you don’t know what you’re missing. If you ever change your mind, you know where to find me.”
On the underside of a rock!
Claire turned away from Max, intending to toss the insult over her shoulder.
Instead, she found her slippers glued to the floor as she watched Tessa waltz past in the arms of a man.
Tessa’s partner was not quite as tall as the major, and most women might have deemed him not half so handsome. But Claire could not take her eyes off him, for he danced the way he walked, with a jaunty, athletic grace that made people turn and stare whenever he passed.
His hair, a rich dark brown, clung to his head in crisp, close-cropped locks. He had a high-bridged, aquiline nose and a wide, bowed mouth that managed to suggest both good humor and unswerving determination. Alert, roving gray eyes nestled beneath forceful dark brows. For the moment, they fastened on Tessa with an intensity that took Claire’s breath away.
“Miss Talbot?”
“Go away, Max!” she snapped. “I don’t want you for a lover any more than I wanted you for a husband.”
“Begging your pardon, Miss Talbot, it’s only me—Hutt.”
A searing blush suffused Claire’s face as she turned toward the agent. For an instant, she forgot about Tessa and her partner. “I’m sorry, Mr. Hutt! I thought you were … someone else.”
“No harm done, miss.” Not even the faintest suggestion of a smirk twitched at the corner of the agent’s thin lips.
Once again, Claire congratulated herself on having secured his services.
“My inquiries have yielded some information about the gentleman, Miss Talbot.” Though he’d succeeded in hiding his amusement over her gaffe, Mr. Hutt could not conceal his satisfaction over his own quick work. “I thought you’d want to know straightaway.”
Tessa’s fortune hunter!
Claire spun around again, her gaze combing the room in search of him.
Behind her, Obadiah Hutt began to rattle off his report in an eager voice. “I have discovered the gentleman’s name, miss. And I’ve discovered he is
not
an American, as Lady Lydiard supposed.”
Not an American. No.
From across the ballroom his voice drifted, mellow and musical, with the distinctive lilting burr of the Highland glens. Claire steeled herself to resist its enchantment, but failed.
When Mr. Hutt began to speak again, she held up her hand for silence.
“But, miss, don’t you want to hear the gentleman’s name?”
Across the ballroom, Ewan Geddes glanced up and caught her watching him. For an instant, puzzlement knit his full dark brows together.
Then it cleared.
His bow mouth stretched into a wide, devilish grin, and he winked at her.
“I
know
his name, Mr. Hutt.” The hand Claire had held aloft balled into a tight fist, as did the one by her side. “Furthermore, I know he is no gentleman.”
A good job he was at a ball with an orchestra playing, Ewan Geddes thought. It gave him an excuse for dancing around the room without looking like a daft fool!
For ten years he’d worked and struggled to get where he was now—with Miss Tessa Talbot in his arms and no man having the power to take her away from him. Surely Fate had wanted them together, no matter how unlikely a match they once might have seemed. Considering how far he’d risen in the world, Ewan knew nothing was impossible for a man who had faith in himself, and the boldness to act decisively when an opportunity arose.
The music stopped, but he continued to twirl Tessa around the floor, narrowly avoiding several other couples who had paused to wait for the orchestra to begin again.
“Ewan!” Tessa squealed. “What are you doing? We can’t dance without music!”
“Ah, but there’s music in my heart, lass.” As he gazed down into her enormous turquoise eyes, the years fell away and he was eighteen again—an ardent lad in love for the first and only time. “Can ye not hear it? It’s been playing a wild, sweet melody ever since I laid eyes on ye again.”
Tessa lowered her gaze demurely, catching her full lower lip between her teeth.
That look made Ewan ache to kiss her, but he would not do it until she had promised to be his wife. And she could not make that promise until she’d withdrawn from her present betrothal.
She glanced back up at him suddenly, her eyes brimming with a reflection of his own giddy delight. “Ever since I saw you again, I’ve found myself humming a little tune day and night.”
“Ye hum in yer sleep?” Ewan teased, holding her closer and slowing their music-less waltz until it was little more than an excuse to embrace in public.
“Of course not, silly!” Her laughter set the cluster of golden ringlets piled high on her head into a quivering dance of their own. “But the melody runs through my dreams.”
“I know what ye mean.” Ewan caressed her face with his gaze. “The sound of yer voice and yer laugh have run through my dreams for years.”
And the way she’d felt in his arms that last night.
Fortunately for Ewan, the dance music began again—a lush Strauss waltz that perfectly expressed the buoyant, heady feelings within him. Otherwise, he might have broken his promise to himself and caused a twittering scandal among London society, by kissing another man’s fiancée in the middle of the Fortescues’ ballroom.
Tessa gave a breathless sigh. “It’s so romantic that you thought of me all those years you were off in America, working so hard to make something of yourself.”
It hadn’t seemed very romantic when he’d first arrived in Pennsylvania, a lad of eighteen, raw from the Highlands, without a penny in his pocket. But he’d had a fire in his belly, stoked by injustice and true love denied. That fire had fueled his rapid rise in the world.
“It was all for ye, Tessa Talbot. To make myself worthy of yer notice and yer company.”
Well, almost all, Ewan insisted to his bothersome conscience. True, in those early years he’d been at least as eager to take some revenge against her father, who had sacked him without a character reference. In time, however, he’d come to enjoy the challenge of making his fortune for its own sake. Once he’d had the resources to carry out his original plan, he’d assumed Tessa must have been long since married to someone else.
Then a copy of the
London Times
had fallen into his hands. Ewan vowed to have that blessed paper gilded and mounted. For it had informed him that the Honorable Miss Tessa Talbot, daughter of Lady Lydiard and her late husband, was engaged to be married.
Only engaged!
All his old fallow feelings for her had burst back into bloom, and Ewan had booked passage on the fastest steamer that would get him across the Atlantic.
“Worthy? What nonsense!” Tessa gave him a token slap with the hand that rested on his shoulder. “You know I’ve always thought more of
real
people who work for a living than I ever have of useless aristocrats.”
Her fervent declaration should have pleased him no end, but for reasons that eluded Ewan, it made him strangely uneasy. He told himself not to be so foolish. He had everything he’d ever wanted within his grasp. Nothing and no one would stop him now. Least of all some vague foreboding he could not even put into words.
It was like the feeling he used to get when stalking game in the hills above Strathandrew. When he’d slowly turn, to discover a pair of wild, wary eyes fixed on him. Try as he might, Ewan could not shake it.
When the final notes of the waltz died away, he bowed to Tessa. “Shall we get something to drink, then find a quiet spot where we can sit and talk?”
While he waited for her answer, his gaze roved over the Fortescues’ ballroom.
There! Near the orchestra dais. A tall, elegant-looking woman was watching him.
The color of her hair, her willowy grace of figure and her long, delicate features all put him in mind of a doe. But the relentless intensity of her gaze better suited a wildcat defending her young.
Did he know the woman? Ewan reckoned he might. But from where?
Then it came to him.
The elder Miss Talbot. What was her name? Catherine? Charlotte?
Whatever she called herself, no wonder she was looking daggers at him. The lady had always twitted and found fault with him during the summers when Lord Lydiard had brought his family north to their Scottish hunting estate.
She’d especially disapproved of his obvious fancy for her half sister. Ewan wondered if she might have been the one who’d tattled to old Lord Lydiard about his midnight meeting with Tessa, on the Talbots’ last night in Scotland, ten years ago.
Well, she’d get her comeuppance when he made Tessa his bride!
Long ago, Ewan had discovered that nothing vexed the elder Miss Talbot so much as when he pretended her slights had no power to vex
him.
Now, he shot her a wide grin of friendly recognition, with the faintest suggestion of mockery twinkling in his eyes. He knew it was bound to send her into a sputter of indignation. After all these years, he still relished the prospect of getting a rise out of her.