Deadly Engagement: A Georgian Historical Mystery (Alec Halsey Crimance) (49 page)

He saw her from across the ballroom.

A striking beauty was staring straight at him.

Jonathon brought himself up short and stared back.

He couldn’t help himself.

He could count on three fingers the occasions he had crossed paths with exquisite feminine beauty that it stopped the breath in his throat; twice on the Indian subcontinent, once in the East Indies, and now here, this very minute, in this ballroom, on this green wet island. So it was only natural he should give himself the leisure to drink her in. His admiring gaze wandered from her honey-blonde hair that fell in heavy ringlets over one bare shoulder, to the porcelain skin of her décolletage glowing flawless against the bottomless black of her gown. He would not have been male had his gaze not lingered on her ample breasts, barely contained in a square cut bodice. He tried to find fault with her heart-shaped face, with the small straight nose and determined chin, and with her unusually oblique eyes, but what was there to fault?

Smiling to himself, he fancied everything he saw, and everything he could not he was sure was just as alluring.

He wondered at her age. Not that it mattered. It was a game he played to pass the time at social functions such as this. Dressed all in black and wearing no jewelry about her slender throat or wrists he supposed she was a widow, and thus not in the first flush of youth.

What was a widow doing here?

His fascination increased tenfold.

For all his limited experience of the London social scene, Jonathon knew well enough that widows did not attend social gatherings of this sort, particularly not such a renowned event at the height of the Season. Perhaps her mourning was almost at an end and she was chaperoning one of the young things here tonight? Surely, she was not old enough to have a daughter of marriageable age? Jonathon pulled a face. For some unfathomable reason he did not like the idea that she may have been a child-bride.

Why was she staring at him?

She stood so still, with her hands clasped in front of her, it was as if she was a statue carved of alabaster draped in black cloth; as much a fixture of the ballroom as a blazing chandelier or the enormous, richly woven tapestry hanging behind her. And so it seemed when dancers began pairing up and passed her as if she was indeed no more than part of the furniture. Why? Perhaps she was so well known in Society that her incredible beauty was taken for granted? In a ballroom awash with beautiful young things draped in silks of soft creams, pinks, and blues, she was a real head turner.

Jonathon found it impossible not to stare.

He watched as some of the guests even went so far as to go out of their way not to look at her, passing in a wide arc, eyes fixed forward or down to the polished floorboards. The one or two young ladies who did cast a curious, furtive glance in the beauty’s direction were instantly reprimanded in furious undertones by parents and guardians alike and quickly cast their gaze away, heads hung, as if in shame at having committed a grave transgression.

Why was she being deliberately avoided?

Why did no one acknowledge her?

Why did no one stop and talk to her?

Why was she being neglected?

It burned him up to see her alone and forsaken.

It was unlikely the beauty had a sordid past or lived openly as some lucky nobleman’s mistress for she wouldn’t have been invited amongst this august company. The Duke of Roxton was an incorruptible prude and devoted family man, a rare bird amongst his preening peers. The King couldn’t praise the Duke’s example highly enough; a compliment that was so much sniggered about in Society drawing rooms that even Jonathon, just six months in the capital, had heard it repeated often enough. Whatever the reason for her social ostracism, it was of supreme indifference to him. He was determined to make her acquaintance, curiosity and allure compelled him.

A burst of wild laughter close by brought him out of his reverie. Tommy would know the beauty’s identity and her story. He always had the latest gossip. Collecting social minutiae about Society that families desperately tried to suppress was Tommy Cavendish’s favorite pastime, second only to eating. And so with no regard for the two turbaned dowagers who were filling Lord Cavendish’s insatiable appetite for scandal with the latest wicked crumbs, Jonathon caught at the stiff skirts of the nobleman’s frockcoat and unceremoniously pulled him backwards to stand at his side.

“Tommy! Tommy, attend me!” he demanded without taking his gaze from the beauty. “She’s in widow’s drapery and she’s being ignored. Why? What is she doing here?”

“Good Lord, don’t tell me one of the fairer sex has finally piqued your interest? Bravo! Who, old dear?” asked his lordship, a wave of his lace handkerchief to the departing dowagers who flounced off in disgust at being so rudely interrupted by a tanned colossus of undetermined social consequence. He hurriedly plastered his quizzing glass to a watery eye and swept an eager roving stare out across the ballroom, the first minuet of the evening underway, before running his eye down to Jonathon’s large feet, then up to his head of thick, shoulder-length hair. “Are you truly six feet
four
inches?”

Jonathon pulled the quizzing glass out of Lord Cavendish’s chubby fingers and let it drop loose on its riband. “Have done with that silly affectation, Tommy. And that hideous black patch, if that’s what it is, is also beyond enough. A wart at best.”

“Brute,” Lord Cavendish responded without offence as he touched the corner of his mouth with a fat pinkie to assure himself the heart-shaped mouche remained in place. “Those of us who can’t be Samsons must attract Delilahs in other ways.”

“Patch and paint doesn’t do it for you, Tommy. Trust me. What would Kitty say?”

Lord Cavendish shrugged and patted his portly belly, very snug in its tight-fitting Chinoiserie silk waistcoat. “
M’wife
? Told me to wear a half-moon rather than a heart, and at the temple not the mouth. But what would dearest Kitty know about patches and paint? And, I’m not the one who needs a wife—”

“Tommy, don’t start.”

Lord Cavendish pretended ignorance and swept a silken arm out towards the crowd gathered on the edge of the dance floor. “Start? My dear friend, the bridal campaign started in earnest months back, if you hadn’t noticed. And where better to find a nice little wife than at this august gathering. Pick of the grapes, this bunch. No one with a relative below the rank of Viscount and it’s not as if you have to marry money. There’s a few dainty dishes with a pedigree as long as
your
arm and no funds to match. Kitty thinks—”

“No, Tommy!
No
.”

“—that there are at least five delicious puddings for you to choose from; all in their early twenties and in their second Season. Although, I wouldn’t discount the Porter-Lewisham pikelet, even if she is eighteen.”

“
Eighteen
?” Jonathon was revolted. His daughter was just nineteen years old. He turned his portly friend’s shoulder towards the dance floor. “Attend, Tommy! The beauty over there. Who is she?”

Lord Cavendish fumbled for his quizzing glass.

“Where is this vision of loveliness, this delectable éclair that has whet your manly appetite?”

“Not over
there
. Over
here
,” Jonathon said impatiently. “To my left. The tapestry. She’s staring straight at me.”

Lord Cavendish made another sweep of the ballroom with his magnified eye, careful not to linger on any particular pretty face for more than a few seconds, but if there was an eligible beauty amongst the press of silk petticoats and fluttering fans, he could not discover her; pretty, yes, but no female so striking as to cause his tall friend to get steamed up under his cravat, unless... No! His smile remained fixed but his brow furrowed. He glanced up at Jonathon and followed his unblinking gaze...
Oh God. No
. He mentally gulped and let drop the quizzing glass, mouth at half cock, and mumbled something unintelligible. It was a few moments before he found his voice, long enough for Jonathon to witness two dour faced creatures, both dressed in dove-grey silk and with all the charisma of strong-armed jailers, approach the beauty from behind to stand two paces back on either side of her. They reminded him of a couple of gargoyles. The almost imperceptible way in which the beauty squared her snowy white shoulders told him she was aware of their presence and that they were an unwarranted intrusion. But she did not speak, nor did she look at them.

His assessment of these women was justified when a gentleman carrying two glasses of champagne staggered out of the refreshment room, skirted the dance floor ringed with onlookers, and headed straight for the beauty. He lifted both glasses in the air as he twirled this way and that to avoid spilling a precious drop of bubbly, and came face to face with one of the humorless gargoyles who stepped forward and waylaid him before he could get within ten feet of their mistress. He was quietly taken in hand by two liveried footmen, who appeared from the crowd as if from thin air, and was marched away, the champagne soaking the front of his canary-yellow frockcoat.

“Well?” he demanded of Lord Cavendish as the Countess of Strathsay curtsied low before the beauty and then rose up to speak a few words. “Who is she that such a sanctimonious stickler for breeding and rank as the Lady Strathsay curtseys until her long nose scrapes the floorboards?”

Tommy Cavendish’s mouth was still forming words but then it fixed itself in a tight smile and he tapped Jonathon’s arm with the edge of his quizzing glass. “Strang! You cunning steak and kidney pie. For a moment you had me believing you. You can’t bamboozle me that easily.”

“I’m not. I’ve never seen her before tonight and I want to know who she is so I don’t make a fool of myself upon first introduction. Your contribution would be much appreciated but I will do without it if I must.”

Lord Cavendish’s usual bonhomie evaporated. He wished Kitty with him. His wife would know how to explain matters much better than he.

“Ah… Yes… Should’ve realized. She doesn’t go out in society any more. Damn shame, if you ask me. Damn waste of a beautiful woman.”

“Well?” Jonathon repeated rudely. He watched Lady Strathsay take her leave, shuffling backwards a few feet before turning and abandoning the beauty to the watchful eye of the two gargoyles. “Come on, Tommy. If she’s a recluse she could up and leave this claustrophobic social get-together at any moment. So out with it before I lose patience and take the plunge and ask her to dance without the benefit of your assistance.”

Lord Cavendish shook his powdered head.

“No, Strang. You do not want to go over there. It will be very bad for you if you do. Believe me, by going over there you’ll certainly make a fool of yourself. You’ll be boiled mutton for broth before you can be minced for steak tartar.” When Jonathon gave a huff of disbelief, his lordship sighed and dropped his quizzing glass to say without artifice, “Strang. Trust me in this. Deb Roxton has favored your dearest Sarah-Jane with her patronage. The Duchess doesn’t favor all her Cavendish relatives. Such noble benefaction is not to be scorned. If your daughter is to bag a baronet at the very least, you want to avoid incurring the Duke’s displeasure at all costs. Believe me, you, like the rest of us red-blooded males, must admire that divine beauty from afar.”

Jonathon was unimpressed. He stared out across the noble bewigged and powdered heads gathering in the vast ballroom and caught sight of the very nobleman whom they were discussing. He watched the Duke make his way through the crowd to come stand beside the beauty. She reached no higher than His Grace’s shoulder and, Jonathon suspected, this in heels. The Duke inclined his head, took out his snuffbox and said a few words to which the beauty did not respond. Finally, she turned and tilted her chin up at him, gave a response, and flicked open her fan of black feathers with a quick agitated movement. After an exchange that lasted a few minutes she dared to turn her bare shoulder on the Duke to look the other way. His Grace remained at her side, watching the dancers with an enigmatic smile, and by the inclination of his head he was continuing to talk to her under his breath despite being deliberately ignored. It was Jonathon’s opinion that one would have to be blind not to see the impenetrable wall of ice bricks that separated these two.

“If the man who offers for Sarah-Jane is spineless enough as to put his Grace of Roxton’s good opinion of him before his love for my daughter, then I do not wish Sarah-Jane to be so favored.”

Lord Cavendish threw up a lace-ruffled hand in defeat.

“You always were an unashamed romantic.” He sighed. “And the family had to wonder why Emily ran off with a penniless second son of a second son who worked for the India Company. Ha!”

“The name of the beauty at Roxton’s elbow, Tommy.”

“What about your quest to have the Strang-Leven inheritance returned? Put the Duke offside and you can throw the ancient ancestral pile and Sarah-Jane’s marriage prospects out with the bathwater!”

Jonathon gave a grunt, annoyed. He hadn’t spent twenty years sweating it out on the subcontinent making a fortune for his plans to slip out of from under him now before he’d had a chance to fully persuade the Duke of his moral obligations to return what rightfully belonged to the Strang-Levens. So he wasn’t about to tread lightly on the off chance he might offend the Duke and thus ruin his daughter’s chances of marrying into the nobility.