Royal Regard (4 page)

When he finally spotted his sister in the
crowd, he reconsidered approaching. He was not about to fight his
way through the gaggle of debutantes circling her, not when every
single one was vying to be promised the next set with him. There
had to be some other way to meet Allie’s ‘polite requests’ than
entertaining dozens of girls who would do anything to be a duchess.
Anyone’s duchess. He only wished there were more dukes from which
they could choose.

Tugging at his cravat, which seemed suddenly
tighter, he turned his back, hoping no one had seen him looking for
Allie, or they might believe he was sizing up his matrimonial
prospects.

The most engaging sight in the room, the
intriguing woman, was now fending off Lady Yarley and Lady
Lannadae, inveterate tattle-mongers and, presumably, the bravest
termagants seeking gossip. Her head turned frantically this way and
that, as if by doing so she might extricate herself from the
gossips and Lady Firthley’s grip on her elbow. Color rose across
her chest, and he wondered if it were caused by anger or fear. He
rather hoped for temper, so he might see Lady Lannadae taken down a
peg. Ah! A flash in her eyes. She was fuming.

Nick had taken no more than two steps toward
the group, intending to either watch the sparks fly or provide the
woman’s escape before his sister noticed, when jerked from his
tunnel vision by a tap on his shoulder.

“She set you on me early this evening,” he
observed without turning his head.

Allie’s husband, Thaddeus Findemoor, Viscount
Nockham, tried to appear stern, a difficult proposition five years
younger and two stone lighter than Nick. Under his voice and below
the buzz of conversation, he said, “I thought last time was the
last time.”

Nick raised a quizzical brow, pretending
relative innocence.

“The dreadful-looking girl who just stopped
your world turning,” Nockham said, even his freckles aligning
against her. “You told my wife you had finished with married women
a year ago. To say nothing of why you’d want such an ugly one.”

“Ugly is an overstatement.” He took in his
brother-in-law’s plain brown coat and unruly cinnamon-colored hair,
tidy only by the good graces of Nick’s sister. “Not as ugly as you,
at any rate.”

Nockham ignored the insult. “You are the only
man in London who would disagree. And she is married nonetheless.
Lady Holsworthy, if you hadn’t guessed.”

“Lady Holsworthy?” Nick repeated, like a
schoolboy who hadn’t studied his lesson. Whatever the object of his
attention had just said in conversation, Lady Yarley and Lady
Lannadae looked to be on the verge of a synchronized swoon.

Nockham rolled his eyes at Nick’s obvious
distraction. “Did you not meet her when she was in England?”

“I have never seen her before in my life.” If
he had, Nick would have bedded her long before now.

Nick didn’t take up with a man’s wife every
Season. On occasion, he engaged a paid companion or kept a mistress
in the demi-monde, but he seduced men’s spouses often enough to be
known for it. With no inclination toward marriage, logic dictated
he choose women who couldn’t ask it of him. His lovers were always
worldly, with plenty to lose and no intention of losing it. He
would rather remove his own feet with a penknife than dance with
anyone in the marriage mart.

The coterie of women circling his sister was
becoming unruly. Girls laughed aloud against their mother’s
whispered admonishments; dowagers made half-accurate pronouncements
about Nick’s lifetime of debauchery; the female chattering became
so noisy, Nick could almost hear the married women and widows
discussing the cut of his breeches. He was surprised none of the
hostesses had made her displeasure known, though Lady Sefton was
eying him with an unquestionable glower and the orchestra had
increased in volume.

Looking away from the melee, he saw Malbourne
bowing over Lady Holsworthy’s hand. He nearly upset a chair in his
haste to attend her before the ingratiating Frenchman danced with
her first. Unfortunately, Nockham grabbed his arm before he could
make his escape.

Forcing a laugh for the benefit of those
nearby, Nockham hissed, “You. Are. Staying. Here. If you refuse the
girls Allie has chosen so you can chase yet another man’s wife, you
will tell her the reason why.”

Nick wrenched his arm away and straightened
the offensive lace, asking caustically, “Wagered on my prospects,
have you?”

“I lost a monkey when Lady Cecily set her cap
for you last year, and have declined to enter into the continuing
fray. You are more stubborn than I credited, but at nearly fifty,
you should be married with ten children, like the rest of us poor
chaps.”

“I am but six-and-forty, and you have only
four children.”

When Baron Holsworthy appeared by his wife’s
side with the Marquess of Firthley, preceded by whispers throughout
the building, Nick remembered why he had wanted to meet her in the
first place, which had nothing to do with her fascinating face and
remarkable, sunrise-tinted hair.

Eight hours earlier, during extended
discussion among the king and a handful of other noblemen, Nick had
played a very small part in the baron’s probable elevation to earl
and Privy Councilor, inspiring him to further an acquaintance with
both man and wife. When asked, he had opined that the elevation was
only Holsworthy’s due, having made billions of pounds for two
monarchs and many members of Court in nearly a half-century of
service to the Crown. Not to mention many mysterious missions among
the heathens of the world as His Majesty’s ambassador and spy.

Lady Holsworthy’s chin jutted out, shoulders
straightened, and voice resonated across the ballroom, “I don’t
give a tuppenny damn for the way of things in London!”

Nick choked on his laugh and almost spilled
his champagne, interest growing by the minute. If not for His
Majesty openly pondering whether Lady Holsworthy should be made a
countess in her own right, she had just ruined herself utterly. An
assignation with Nick could hardly make things worse.

Someone in her foursome must have said
something amusing, for Lady Holsworthy’s distinctive laugh rang out
like a too-loud clock chime ringing just slightly earlier than the
hour, causing another ripple of turned heads and titters across the
ballroom.

Lines were forming for a
contredanse
,
but Lords Firthley and Holsworthy left their wives alone,
presumably to find the card room. Lady Holsworthy glanced longingly
toward the ladies’ retiring room, but as she took a step toward the
hall, Lady Firthley latched onto her wrist. Nick watched them
battle it out beneath feigned good humor.

“You must have been abroad when she had her
come-out,” Still at his elbow, Nockham imparted a tasty morsel. “I
heard
fifteen years ago
three times on the way across the
ballroom, so I assume it’s true.”

“Is that your standard?” Nick asked,
smirking. “I had wondered.” He thought for a moment, reminiscing.
“I think I was in… India? Perhaps Russia.” He had spent more than
ten years travelling extensively during his youth; the reason Lady
Holsworthy had piqued his interest even before he laid eyes on
her.

“Not a suitor to be found,” Nockham
continued, “but a few days after her presentation, the biggest
wallflower of the Season was betrothed to a newly minted baron with
an independent fortune larger than most peers. Soon after, they
left England on a ship provided by the Prince of Wales. Since then,
huge quarterly dividends and any number of settled treaties, but no
Holsworthys.”

“He will shortly be made a Privy Councillor
and styled Earl of Huntleigh.” Glancing around, Nick lowered his
voice. “Which is confidential. I doubt Holsworthy has yet been
informed, and I’ll not break the king’s confidence.”

“‘Tis a poor-kept secret. Now that Prinny can
grant peerages without Parliament, seven-to-one at White’s
Holsworthy will be the first.”

“His Majesty, King Prinny, to you, my boy,”
Nick quipped. “It will never do for a mere viscount to be so
familiar with the most recent King George.”

“She’ll be a dowager countess soon, and a
wealthy one at that. He’s come home to die, I heard.” Nockham
indicated Lord Holsworthy with nothing but a shrug of his shoulder,
continued disdain for a merchant, even a titled one.

“When His Majesty confers a title ‘for a
lifetime of service to the Crown,’ the recipient is likely to
expire before long. Had he stayed in England, this might have
happened years ago.” Of course, they both knew—everyone in London
knew—if Lord Holsworthy had stayed in England, he would never have
amassed such a fortune or so advanced the interests of England, so
there would be no earldom at all.

“If he had stayed, he would never have had
the money to buy his barony,” Nockham pronounced.

Nick refuted this with a snort. “Holsworthy’s
barony, with his appointment to the diplomatic service, was
conferred by the late king after he ‘liberated’ a huge tract of
South American timberland from under Spain’s nose.”

Nockham tilted his head, questioning any
facts he hadn’t made up himself, so Nick obliged. “A peaceful
treaty with some unheard-of heathen tribe.” Nick had listened to
the tale just that afternoon, punctuated with Prinny’s laughter and
pithy commentary about vanquished enemies of the Crown. “Eight
thousand tons of mahogany and rosewood stripped and shipped back to
England before the Spanish even knew it was there—at fifty pounds
sterling a ton, mind you—and he left the natives with enough guns
and powder to slaughter every Spaniard on the continent. So, Mister
Clewes became Baron Holsworthy, married the first girl he found
with a yen for travel, and sailed away with a brand-new ship and a
tea plantation in India as a royal wedding present.”

Nick paused while Nockham scoffed at the idea
any king would show so much preference to a
merchant
,
allowing Nockham to believe whatever he liked. Eventually, in a
low, gruff voice reserved for times when Nick was discussing ladies
with other men who were theoretically gentleman, he said, “The
baron is more than twice her age.”

Nockham knew the voice quite well, and his
raised eyebrows indicated what he thought of the innuendo
inherent.

“Back to the wealthy would-be widow. You are
becoming besotted.” Nockham looked down his nose. “And goodness
knows why. Her skin, that gown.” He shuddered dramatically. “No
wonder she never took. Of course, now she will have a title and her
husband’s fortune and the sponsorship of the king.”

Nockham was right. Lord Holsworthy looked
like a marionette held up by a puppeteer. The second his strings
were cut, his poor wife would find herself as beset with fortune
hunters as Nick. No, even more so, since Nick would keep control of
his money and add his wife’s much smaller dowry. All of hers,
rumored to be almost a quarter of a million pounds, would belong to
her second husband.

“She will be the toast of the
ton
,”
Nockham predicted. “And by toast, I mean burnt bread. Look at her.
Like a badger up a tree. I had heard she was a proper diplomatic
wife, setting aside the hyperbole about her barbaric travels, but
can you imagine
that
charming an ambassador?”

Nick looked across at Lady Holsworthy and
Lady Firthley bickering, the target of his interest hunched over,
admittedly rather badger-like, half-hidden behind her cousin,
peering furtively about, as though she might find a stalking wolf
around a corner. With Nick in the room, a bit more apt a
description than he would like to admit.

“During her season,” Nockham began, seemingly
bent on destroying any warm feeling Nick might be developing, “not
so much wall
flower
as wall
paper
. It’s a wonder
Holsworthy found her behind the potted plants. The very idea of
Miss Isabella Smithson—
Lady
Holsworthy—as a prize in the
marriage mart is absurd.” He used the honorific to emphasize the
slight. As though his continued affronts needed additional
emphasis.

“Her dowry will be a prize, to be sure.” Nick
watched Lady Firthley, whose grip was surely leaving a bruise, foil
the baroness’s attempted withdrawal behind a hideous screen painted
with poorly-drawn cherubs.

“Lady Firthley is pretty, is she not?” he
asked Nockham.

“I thought your interest was the
baroness.”

“Invite her to dance with you.”

“Why would I—” Nockham sighed. “So you can
sweep Lady Holsworthy onto the dance floor before anyone can tell
her she should give you the cut direct. Your sister would skin
me.”

“It would be ungallant to leave the lady
without a partner.”

“It is ungallant to dance with a man’s wife
without any sort of introduction, not that it has ever stopped
you.”

Nick shrugged one shoulder. “Since both men
deserted their wives in a ballroom without once dancing, their
ladies are fair game. I do have some honor.”

“Is that your standard?” Nockham mimicked, “I
had wondered.” He added, all but gnashing his teeth, “Leave her
alone. There is enough talk without your dubious intentions.” Nick
raised a brow at this sudden defense.

“Saving yourself being skinned?”

Ignoring him, Nockham leaned in, “Besides, I
am not going to help you.” Nick sighed as he pulled out his pocket
watch for the fiftieth time since he crossed the threshold.

“You may as well put that away. Allie has
arranged dozens of eligible dance partners, any of whom would make
you a beautiful, blushing bride.”

Nick’s jaw tightened as he glared at the gilt
trim on the nearest wall, rather than the knot of beautiful,
blushing would-be brides, now all peeking over their fans at him,
since the music was nearing its end and they all hoped to be the
one with whom he would choose to dance.