How To Beguile A Beauty Part 2

"My lady? Were you wanting something? I've finished pressing off your gown."

Lydia turned away from the mirror. "Oh, no, Sarah, I didn't want anything. I'm afraid you caught me out scolding myself." She got to her feet, smoothing down her silken undergarments. "And doesn't that gown look nice. You've done a wonderful job with the crimping iron."

Sarah curtsied. "Thank you, my lady, I do try. Only burned myself the once this time. Her Grace said to tell you that His Grace the Duke of Malvern is waiting on you downstairs in the drawing room. Such a well set up gentleman, my lady. I've always favored the blond ones. What a pair the two of you make, if you don't mind my saying so."

Lydia became at once uneasy. Had she somehow betrayed her feelings to her maid? And if she had, who else knew? She really had to be more careful. After all, the man was going to marry his cousin. "The duke is my friend, Sarah."

"Yes, miss, he certainly is. But mayhap he wants to be more than a friend? Not that it's my place to say so, but Maisie and I just happened to be looking out the front window from the attics as you went off with His Grace this afternoon, and he had quite the spring in his step, Maisie said, if you take m'meaning. Now if you'll just duck yourself down and lift up your arms, my lady, we'll have this gown on you without so much as mussing a hair on your head. Ah, that's the trick. And are you sure you wouldn't be wanting just a quick whisper of a touch from the rouge pot?"

Lydia emerged from the yards of palest blue watered silk, about to tell the maid that she would rather not color her cheeks. She would have liked to ask what Maisie had meant by Tanner having a spring in his step, but she was certain that wasn't a proper question.

"Ah, never mind, my lady," the maid said, motioning for Lydia to turn around so that she could do up the covered b.u.t.tons. "You've got lovely color now, all on your own. And why would that be, I wonder? There you are, all done. Now I'll just fetch your wrap whilst you tug on these gloves, and you'll be all nice and tight."

Lydia smiled weakly as Sarah skipped off to the dressing room, and then quickly returned to the dressing table, bending forward to check her reflection one more time. Goodness. Her cheeks were rather flushed, weren't they? And were her eyes brighter? All because Tanner supposedly had a spring in his step?

She leaned in closer, and suddenly realized that the neckline of her gown-lovely with its fluted and crimped flounce that ran completely around the neckline and the off-the-shoulder design-was rather lower than she'd remembered it the day of her final fitting in Bond Street. A good two inches lower, in fact.

How could the seamstress have made such a-but wait! Hadn't Nicole taken the woman to one side for a private chat that day? And then winked at her twin and told her that she was sure the watered silk would be quite the stunner?

"If I lean forward too far, it most certainly will be," Lydia said, holding her hand to her neckline as she leaned forward, stood back, leaned forward once more, this time without pressing a hand to her bodice. Her eyes went as wide as saucers. "Oh, dear Lord, I-Sarah? Sarah!"

The maid reappeared with a fringed ivory cashmere shawl threaded through with silver draped over her arm. "My lady?"

"Sarah, I need to change my gown. The bodice is all wrong. It doesn't fit."

Sarah tipped her head to one side, running her gaze up and down Lydia's length. "It doesn't? I'd say it fits you a treat, my lady. Besides, Lady Nicole made sure that all of your party gowns were-well, she's a good sister to you, my lady, and that's a fact."

The door to the hallway opened and Charlotte entered, carrying a dark blue velvet case. "Tanner's waiting, Lydia, but I just remembered that Nicole had asked me to be certain to please lend you my sapphires if you were to wear the-oh, my."

Sarah curtsied, beaming. "Yes, Your Grace. Just as I was telling her. Fits her a treat, don't it?"

"A treat? Yes, I can see where that word comes first to mind," Charlotte said rather tongue-in-cheek, approaching Lydia and then walking fully around her. "You may go, Sarah, thank you."

"Oh, but I want her to-"

"Lydia, let her go. You look beautiful. You are beautiful."

Would n.o.body listen to her? Couldn't they see what she saw? "I'm...I'm hanging out, just like Mama!"

Charlotte giggled. "Darling, your mama would sacrifice an entire herd of goats to look like you do tonight. But, yes, the resemblance is rather startling. And Helen Daughtry was, and still is, an extraordinarily beautiful woman. Your beauty, however, is more refined. Which doesn't mean that you should hide it."

"I don't think it means that I should flaunt-do you really think the gown is, well, proper?"

Charlotte opened the velvet case and withdrew a stunning diamond and sapphire necklace. "Proper is perhaps not the word I'd use. Not precisely, no. I would rather say the gown is stunning. Interesting. Even captivating. Everything that you are, Lydia, whether you wish to acknowledge that fact or not. Now, turn around and bend your knees, so I can clasp this piece around your neck. You won't feel half so naked once it's on."

Lydia did as she was bid, albeit reluctantly. She was just so used to doing what other people said. But then she rallied, and stood straight once more. "You said it, Charlotte. You said naked. And that's how I feel. And from what Sarah was grinning and mumbling about, I'm woefully certain Nicole has had all of my gowns altered this way. The mischief that lives in that girl's head!"

'I'm sure she had all the best of intentions."

Lydia very nearly snorted. "Yes, the best of intentions. That's what she said she had when we were seven, and she decided to save our shared maid the trouble of tr.i.m.m.i.n.g my bangs. Granted, I was silly enough to believe she knew what she was doing. I had to wear caps for a month. What is it about my sister and scissors?"

"I wouldn't know. Just bend your knees again, sweetheart, and let us see if the necklace makes you feel less-that is, more finished."

Lydia felt the weight of the necklace and looked down to see that the largest sapphire, completely surrounded by diamonds and fashioned as a drop, now slid rather interestingly between the cleavage exposed by the neckline of the gown. As if that could make up for that same, truly outrageous neckline.

Charlotte nudged her toward the full-length mirror that stood in one corner of the room. "There," she said rather smugly, "now how do you feel? Because you look wonderful. There are earrings as well, but I think they'd be too much for such a young, unmarried woman. Besides, look at your eyes, Lydia. They're so blue they look like twin ponds on a clear, sunlight day. Dazzling. When Rafe sees you I'll have to hold him back or else he'll confine you to your room, even though you're well within the bounds of propriety. Tanner, on the other hand, will be most appreciative, I'm sure."

Lydia opened her mouth to ask if Tanner would be appreciative because men were basically lecherous, but quickly decided that neither Charlotte nor Rafe would allow her within fifty yards of a lech...or fifty inches from Grosvenor Square if either of them thought the gown too outrageous.

"I do feel...rather nice," she admitted finally. "And more...confident, if that doesn't sound silly."

"It doesn't. Now come along, Tanner is waiting. Along with his cousin, who seems a very lovely young woman, if p.r.o.ne to talking so much I wouldn't be surprised to see that Rafe's ears have quite fallen off his head by the time we get down to the drawing room."

"She's pretty, isn't she? Jasmine Harburton, I mean. The cousin."

"I would say beautiful, but a man sees such things differently. I'll have to ask Rafe's opinion, once his ears stop ringing," Charlotte said with a smile. "Don't forget your gloves."

Lydia wanted to take one more peek at her reflection, as she still wasn't quite sure who she had been looking at, but tamped down the urge, for it seemed indulgent, and perhaps even vain. She picked up her elbow-length gloves, pulling them on as she followed Charlotte toward the stairs, working the soft white kid over each finger, wondering idly why fashion had decreed that a female's circulation be all but cut off in the pursuit of fashion.

She was just smoothing the kid over her left thumb when they reached the bottom of the stairs and she heard a sharp intake of breath and an awe-filled "Coo..." coming from one of the footmen.

Perhaps Nicole had been more right than Lydia would have guessed.

Buoyed by the footman's involuntary flattery, she entered the drawing room, her confident step carrying her along very well, thank you, until she saw the faintly incredulous expression come and go on Tanner's face as he stood at the mantelpiece, staring at her.

She resisted the urge to cross her hands over her bosom, and turned her attention to the dark-haired beauty just then getting to her feet so that she could curtsey to the newcomers.

Tanner stepped forward to make the introductions.

"I cannot tell you, Lady Lydia, how honored I am to make your acquaintance," Jasmine said the moment the introductions were completed. "How delightful it will be to have company once we are through that depressingly long line waiting for our hostess to vet us, and we're set loose into the ballroom like so many prisoners freed from the confines of their cells, only to find that they are now only in a larger prison, which is how I see ballrooms, and waiting to be rescued from the wallflowers by some gentleman who then a.s.sumes we are so flattered by his attention that, of course, we will want nothing more than to listen to him brag about himself and his prospects or even the cut of his waistcoat for the length of the dance. Don't you think?"

Lydia, her mouth falling open unbidden, looked to Charlotte, who was busily examining her fingernails, and then to Rafe, who appeared ready to rip off his cravat and stuff it in Miss Harburton's mouth.

"Um..." Lydia said at last, "yes, I agree?"

"Good, it's safer," Tanner whispered in her ear, as he'd somehow managed to be standing next to her. "Let me tell you now, Lydia, that you have never looked more beautiful. I say that because it's true, and because I doubt either of us will get another word in edgewise between here and Lady Chalfont's. Shall we go?"

Tanner's words proved prophetic, for Jasmine talked nonstop all the way to Portland Place, all the time they were stalled on the stairs leading up into the ballroom, and she continued to talk as they were at last inside the cavernous ballroom and heading for the inevitable lines of chairs stuck against the long walls.

"You must need something to drink, Jasmine," Tanner said once he had secured them seats, including one for the chaperone, Mrs. Shandy, a nearly stone deaf woman who had no idea how fortunate she was in her affliction. "Lydia?"

"Yes, please," she said, although not before wondering if she would be too obvious if she'd fallen to her knees and begged him not to leave her with this sweet but incessant chatterbox.

"Oh, good," Jasmine said with a heartfelt sigh once Tanner had gone off to find a servant with a tray of lemonade, and most probably something stronger for himself. "I'm so unconscionably nervous whenever Tanner is about. And then I prattle and prattle and my tongue runs on wheels, and I hear myself saying the most inane and silly things and I can't stop myself. You must think me a ninny."

"No, of course not," Lydia said, crossing her gloved fingers in her lap. "But Tanner is your cousin. Why would he make you nervous?"

Jasmine rolled her expressive emerald eyes-really, with her coal dark hair and those lovely eyes, she was quite the beauty. "It's Papa, of course. He keeps telling everyone and anyone that Tanner and I are to be married. It was his father's dying wish, you understand. Tanner's father, not mine. Oh, you'd know that, or otherwise Papa would be dead, wouldn't he? Oh, dear, I'm doing it again. Prattling. At any rate, Tanner is such an honorable man, which is really quite vexing."

"Why is that vexing?" Lydia asked, although she decided she might know the answer to that question. Wasn't Tanner in her life right now because he was an honorable man?

"Why, because he'll do what his father wished on his deathbed, of course. He'll marry me. Eventually. And I really wish he wouldn't."

Lydia's heart gave a distressingly revealing little flip inside her chest. "You do? I mean, you don't? That is..."

"Good evening, beautiful ladies. May I say, you present a veritable landscape of loveliness. One so dark, the other so fair, and both the epitome of everything that pleases. I am all but overcome."

Jasmine giggled nervously, snapping open the painted fan that hung from her wrist and frantically waving it in front of her face before turning to speak to her stone deaf chaperone, as if she knew she was not going to be necessary to the conversation between the gentleman and her new friend.

Lydia merely looked up to see Baron Justin Wilde executing a most elegant leg directly in front of her, and smiled. She doubted anyone could resist returning the man's smile, even if the timing of his arrival on the scene couldn't have been worse, what with Jasmine's news about her disinclination to wed Tanner. "Well done, my lord. Any woman would think she'd been just delivered a most fulsome compliment, when, in fact, you harbor a distrust of all women. Most especially those whom you might deem lovely."

He pressed his spread fingers against his immaculately white waistcoat. "Ah, I am cut to the quick. My friend Tanner has been whispering tales out of school since last we met, I presume?"

"Nothing too dire, sir. I do, however, remember your conversation of earlier today. Should I have been studying my Moliere in the interim? Are you going to quiz me yet again?"

"A thousand apologies for that, Lady Lydia. You and Tanner were the first people I dared approach since my return to the scene of my disgrace. No, I fib. I did happen to be stopped by a few others in the park, one to tell me Society never forgives a murderer, and the other to confide that her husband was in the country for the week and she hoped I'd remembered her direction. All in all, not the most auspicious of homecomings, I think you'd agree? I fear my emotions were much too close to the surface for me to be fit company."

"Your apology is accepted, sir, and there was really no need to explain. But I wonder, if you are so newly returned to England, how did you manage an invitation to this ball?"

He bent toward her, his remarkably green eyes twinkling with mischief. "Very simple, my dear. I remembered the lady's direction. A sacrifice on my part, to be sure, but worth it in order to see you again this evening."

Lydia felt hot color invading her cheeks, and was grateful she hadn't given in to Sarah's suggestion of the rouge pot, for otherwise she'd look like a painted doll at the moment. "You shouldn't say such things to me."

"Ah, but I always say such things. Being outrageous is a large part of my charm. Now tell me my sacrifice will not have been in vain, and that your dance card is not yet full."

"Far from full, my lord, as you can see," she told him, holding up the card she had been handed by one of the servants as she entered the ballroom.

"Is London peopled entirely with fools?" he asked her, s.n.a.t.c.hing the card from her hand and using the small, attached bit of pencil to scribble on it before returning both to her. "I'd dare more, but convention limits me to three or else people will expect the banns to be posted tomorrow. Miss Harburton?" he then asked, bowing to Jasmine. "It would be my honor to be added to your dance card, as well."

Jasmine looked to Lydia, who didn't understand the question in the other young woman's eyes. Was she actually turning to her for permission? But then she handed over her dance card and Justin signed it as well just as Tanner approached, carrying two gla.s.ses of lemonade.

"Ah, Tanner, here you are. I didn't presume stealing Lady Lydia away for the first dance, but do see you have her returned here in time for the second. I shouldn't wish to appear desperate by having to track the pair of you down on some balcony, would I? Now if you'll excuse me, I believe manners compel me to find a certain rather rapacious lady and haul her about the dance floor for the next ten minutes as a reward for allowing me to escort her this evening."

Justin then bowed to Lydia and Jasmine once more and turned on his heel, melting into the crowd that seemed to now border on a mult.i.tude in the large ballroom as the orchestra signaled with a rather rusty flourish of violins that the first waltz was to commence momentarily.

Tanner handed over the gla.s.ses of lemonade and then s.n.a.t.c.hed up Lydia's dance card, one corner of his mouth lifting as he read what Justin Wilde had written. "It would appear, Lydia, that you have acquired an admirer," he said, handing the card back to her. "You as well, Jasmine? I a.s.sume so, as Justin is always very careful with his manners."

"I don't even know who he is," Jasmine exclaimed, wide-eyed. "But he is pretty, isn't he? Oh, look, there's Lady Pendergast! She always wears so many feathers, doesn't she?" She poked Mrs. Shandy with her fan, directing her attention to the rather prodigiously obese woman in purple, sailing past them as if propelled by some errant wind catching at the trio of enormous white plumes in her hair.

Tanner smiled at Lydia, and spoke softly. "Lady Pendergast's feathers, a b.u.t.terfly on the wing, most anything shiny-whatever takes her fancy. My cousin is easily amused, and even more easily distracted. But the baron was being attentive to you, I think."

"The baron was only being outrageous, which I admit he does rather well," Lydia said, taking the card, but not opening it. "I think he's apprehensive about the evening, and how he'll be received."

"Justin? Apprehensive? I seriously doubt that."

They both looked in the direction the baron had taken, just in time to see him bow to an older gentleman who pretended not to see the gesture before pointedly turning his back on him.

"Oh, that's not good," Tanner said, shaking his head. "What one does, others may do, until the whole room turns its collective back on him. We managed to chase Byron out of England only a fortnight ago, and now it would seem we're about to do the same to Brummell, as well. That can't happen to Justin. I won't allow it. Excuse me, Lydia, while I follow him, make my own feelings known on the subject of his return and my friendship for him. After all, being a b.l.o.o.d.y duke has to count for something."

Lydia nodded her agreement and watched Tanner hurry off to stand by his friend. It was as Jasmine had said, as everyone who knew him said: the Duke of Malvern was an honorable man.

Jasmine was now speaking with a young woman dressed all in virginal white, her complexion as pale as her gown, and since Lydia didn't wish to interrupt, she busied herself by at last opening her dance card, to see what the baron had written that had brought such a strange smile to Tanner's face.

The baron had scribbled his name on the second line, the fifth, and the eighth. The three dances he had mentioned. But it was the way he had signed the card that now brought a smile to her face.

Wilde. Wilder. Wildest.

What a wicked, wickedly interesting man.

The captain had been gentle, almost respectful, their attraction to each other expressed only in longing looks, but never in word or action. He had been, she was realizing more and more, not only her first love, but also her beginning. Not her end.

Tanner was an honorable man and a good friend (who had a spring in his step, according to Sarah), and a rather bemused but interested look in his eyes when she'd come into the drawing room this evening. She'd known, even at first feared, that Tanner could mean more to her than to simply be her friend. But she hadn't considered that he might know that. Besides, Captain Fitzgerald stood between them, a bond and yet also a division.

Baron Justin Wilde, however, was a man totally outside her limited realm of experience, a man who well could be teasing her, or he could be using his teasing to cover something that was perhaps more than a casual interest.

Why, she was beginning to feel like the heroine in a Pennypress novel. All she needed now was a menacing stepfather, or a dark castle complete with a ghost.

It was good that Rafe was a duke, and could frank her correspondence for her, as Lydia already felt certain her letter to Nicole was going to run to two sheets, if not more. Which, for a quiet person who was accustomed to little excitement in her life, was rather extraordinary, indeed.

CHAPTER FOUR.

TANNER AND JUSTIN stood on the dark balcony outside the ballroom, companionably sipping from their gla.s.ses as they leaned against the railing, looking out over the gardens and the inviting paths lit periodically by flam-beaux.

It was good to have Justin Wilde back in his life, Tanner thought. They'd had grand times together in the past, young men fresh from school and the country, eager to explore the world and maybe make their own mark on it. They'd laughed together, traveled to the races and boxing mills together. Raced their curricles neck-or-nothing, drunk deep in disreputable taverns, even shared an opera dancer or two. They'd been young, so young, all of them, with their whole lives ahead of them.

Now those memories seemed to be of another world, another time, one before Justin's marriage, his flight to the continent after the duel, and then many long years of war.

So many friends had been lost to that war, good men all. Jonathan, Richard, Harry...Fitz. A man needed to hang on to those friends he still had, stand with them, stand by them.

"I'm not hiding out here, you understand," the baron said after a bit.

Tanner carefully kept his gaze on a married couple-but not married to each other-seemingly intent on finding a less well-lit area of the gardens. "Absolutely not. I would never think that of you."

"It's a mob of bodies in there. The woman must have invited all of London, and all of London came."

"Perhaps even some who were not invited," Tanner said, a small smile playing about his lips.

"I'll ignore that remark. b.a.l.l.s can be exceedingly boring, don't you think, when there's no card room?"

"Yes, without doubt. Boring. And the wine is warm. All in all, a distinctly disappointing entertainment. I can't imagine why any of us is here. Why are we here, Justin? And by here, I mean on this balcony."