A Rogue Walks into a Ball Read online

  He gave a silent cheer at the length of her speech.

  “Something odd would be refreshing, considering the sort of predictable conversation one usually hears among the ton. As to offensive,” he chuckled, trying to imagine this sweet young woman saying anything to offend the hardened ears of a ton gentleman, “I wouldn’t worry too much about that. I think you’ll find men are far more difficult to offend than ladies are, unless you are laughing at them. But laughing with men, and laughing at their jokes, will win you many admirers.”

  “Really?” she said in the awed tone of one who’d just been granted a secret password.

  “Really.”

  There was a pause, which he decided not to fill in case she felt moved to speak further.

  After a long moment she said, “Thank you for doing this, my lord, for helping me to feel at ease enough to talk.”

  “It’s all part of the service,” he said gamely. “And talking is necessary for our purpose today, because we can’t get to the clever compliment stage if we don’t have some conversation first. I can hardly say, ‘Hello, Miss Smith, how are you? You are the most gorgeous creature I have ever seen.’”

  A snort of laughter escaped her, and she clapped a hand over her mouth.

  “I mean,” he continued, “there are fellows who might be so bald about the complimenting business. But I think most ladies would be suspicious of such effusiveness from a near stranger. It’s the fellows who’ve gained your trust a bit and then start remarking on your specialness that you have to watch out for.”

  “Does that mean I should never trust a gentleman who gives me compliments?” she asked. She’d progressed to questions—by damn, but he was good at this.

  “That would be a sad state of affairs. But it’s been my observation that many young ladies are not accustomed to attention from men—perhaps their own fathers never spared them much either. And so they are easily taken in.”

  A pause. “I should never like to be easily taken in.”

  “Good for you, Miss Smith.”

  As Sarah and Lady Alice watched, Lord Jack guided Annabelle to a bench at the side of the path and sat down next to her. Sarah and Lady Alice stopped where they were, at a discreet distance and where they could not hear what was being said.

  “She’s talking to him, so that’s real progress,” Lady Alice said. “But this part... I hope it’s less awkward for her than it is for me watching it.”

  “I know,” Sarah admitted. “And yet, I can only think this must be helpful.”

  “I really hope so,” Lady Alice said. “I know of a few young ladies whose heads were turned by flatterers, and they ended up badly married.”

  “Exactly what Annabelle needs to avoid.”

  “I wish we could hear what they are saying,” Lady Alice said, prodding a pebble with the tip of her shoe.

  Sarah didn’t, and she didn’t want to examine why.

  They watched the pair on the bench talking, Annabelle listening with a bent head. Then abruptly, she lifted her head to look at him. After a few moments, she smiled, and then she laughed.

  “She’s laughing with him,” Lady Alice said with a degree of wonderment. “That is amazing, considering she could hardly even look at a gentleman before.”

  “I know,” Sarah said, relief washing through her as she dared to hope that this would be a turning point for Annabelle. She vowed then not to express any more negative opinions about men to her cousin, unless it was a life-or-death situation.

  Lady Alice leaned slightly forward on her toes. “I wonder what she’s laughing at. I do love to laugh.”

  Sarah supposed Lord Jack had said something witty. He was quite witty.

  And then Annabelle and Lord Jack got up and started walking back to the path, both of them smiling, though Sarah thought his smile held something of the relief of a person who’d just had a tooth pulled.

  “Lord Jack and I had a marvelous conversation,” Annabelle said when she and Lord Jack reached them, deftly leaving off any comment about what else they had been doing.

  “It was quite a good conversation, once I stopped talking,” Lord Jack said.

  Annabelle laughed. “Oh, you,” she said, and Sarah hid a smile. There was the lively Annabelle she knew and loved. “Now,” Annabelle continued, “the only thing I still am unsure about is, if I ever am in a situation where a man offers me a compliment, how will I be completely certain he is sincere?”

  “You can never be completely certain,” Lady Alice said. “I say trust your womanly instincts.”

  Lord Jack looked down his nose at his sister with all the haughtiness of a much older brother. “You get to know the man first,” he said pointedly to both the young ladies. “None of this running off to Gretna Green after a few days of giddy courting.”

  “Why, Jack,” Lady Alice said, “that’s downright staid of you.”

  He proposed a trip to Gunter’s.

  “Feeling in need of a reward?” Sarah asked him as they followed the young ladies who, predictably, were walking far ahead with their heads together, giggling.

  “Yes,” he said. “That was a diabolical experience, and I hope it does her some good, because I’m never doing anything like that again.”

  “Oh,” Sarah teased, “and just when I was going to suggest that you might offer yourself as a service to the mamas of the ton at large.”

  “Not another word!”

  She laughed. But then she said seriously, “She was talking and laughing with you, and she seemed completely at ease. You obviously were a great success. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.” He paused a moment, clearly expecting something from her. “And?” he prompted.

  “And you have completely redeemed yourself for what happened at the Hampshire ball two years ago. All is forgiven, once and for all.”

  “Ah, finally. And so now you no longer think I’m a useless rake?”

  She chuckled, enjoying herself. “Not useless, no.”

  “Ha,” he said, one eyebrow drifting lazily up. “But you still think I’m a rake?”

  “You’re handsome, charming, wealthy, and blessed by the gods in every possible way.”

  He grinned. “You think I’m handsome?”

  She ignored him. “How could you not enjoy profiting from all that by being one of the most popular gentlemen in the ton with the ladies?”

  “Why do you say popular as though it’s akin to diseased?”

  Having never been popular, she had always thought that being popular was akin to being diseased—diseased in the realm character.

  “Sometimes it is,” she pointed out. “People get swollen heads when everyone likes them, and then they don’t have to make any effort to be considerate or thoughtful.”

  Also, she acknowledged to herself, disliking people whom you suspected of not liking you took the sting out of the whole business. But it also became very easy to suspect everyone of not liking you and give yourself permission to dislike them all back.

  This was not a flattering realization.

  He gave her a dry look. “Nobody sensible likes people like that. Lavinia Thorpe-Herald is a beauty, but she’s mean, and she’s only popular with other mean people and men foolish enough to think her looks are enough. But most people over the age of twenty are popular with other people because they are actually likable.”

  Sarah almost tripped as she felt the universe tilt a little. There was truth in what he’d said, but how was it that Jack, who ought by rights to be the most shallow of all the handsome and beloved people in Society, had such sensible thoughts?

  “You... have a point.”

  His grin was enormous. “Why, Sarah Porter, did you just agree with me? I think I may swoon.”

  She was glad for his teasing tone, because she didn’t know what to do with the fact that she was finding Lord Jack Hallaway sensible and thoughtful, along with all his other appealing qualities. “As much as I like the idea of causing you to swoon, I feel confident that I won�
�t be agreeing with you again any time soon.”

  “Then all’s right in the world.”

  Chapter 11

  Mother Superior: Did you never dance with a man, my dear, before you came to the convent?

  Breaking the Habit, Act 2, Scene 2

  Sarah was never certain later how she and Annabelle were taken up by the Hallaways and made to feel as though they were practically part of the family, though a great deal of it had to do with the friendship between Alice (they were all on first-name terms now) and Annabelle. Alice, who never lacked for company at the dinners and parties where Society gathered, was as outgoing as Annabelle was reserved, but it seemed there was a special alchemy in the girls’ friendship, and it quickly became unthinkable to the young ladies that even half a day might pass without them seeing each other.

  Thus, as the Season marched on, Annabelle and Sarah were invited to tea so many days in a row that Alice insisted Annabelle and Sarah expect to be present on a daily basis.

  “Teatime is the best time for reviewing things,” Alice declared, which, while it sounded as though a campaign was afoot, simply meant that the two young ladies would repair to a window seat with cups of tea and plates of biscuits and discuss whatever social event had occurred the night before.

  And there often was a great deal for the young ladies to discuss, because ever since Annabelle’s “lesson” with Jack, she’d been much more relaxed around gentlemen and was now quite capable of talking to them.

  On the one hand, Sarah could only be happy about her cousin’s friendship with Alice, who was not only a very good sort but also offered Annabelle entrée among people she would likely not associate with otherwise.

  On the other hand, Sarah was now going to tea at Fiona’s house every day, and that meant that at least a couple times a week, she was taking tea with Jack, who frequently arrived at some point to join whoever was about for tea. And now Sarah could no longer hide from the truth: She liked him. A great deal.

  Somewhere between that dance at the Boxhaven ball and the genuinely good thing he’d done for Annabelle, Sarah had come to see that he was completely different than she’d judged him to be.

  And every day, she thought about him more, so that Jack had become like a constantly playing melody in her head. When she chose her gown each morning, she wondered if he would notice it later. Ever since she’d found out that, in an amazing coincidence, his town house was around the corner from Aunt Louise’s, she looked for him whenever she was about in the neighborhood. And of course, every day, she lived for the promise of teatime. When he was there, she perked up whenever he said anything, even completely inconsequential things, such as when he’d asked his mother if she’d had the front door repainted.

  The constant thinking about Jack was like a sickness that had come over her—and exactly not the sort of sensible behavior she’d exhibited her entire life. Considering that whenever she saw him out in Society, at dinners or musicales, he was invariably in the company of some beautiful woman—well, she was a fool.

  That they were all different women was a comfort to her, though she knew this was not a sane conclusion. But if he wasn’t drawn to any particular woman, she reasoned, that meant he was still available. And even though she knew he was not available to her, it was a little exquisite to know that such a thing wasn’t entirely impossible, according to the laws of a just society, just entirely unrealistic.

  She desperately wanted him to kiss her.

  She was pathetic.

  Had she learned nothing in life? she would demand of herself, while reminding herself that men as handsome as Jack didn’t marry women with profile-dominating noses that would look dreadful on a silhouette. Not that she’d ever been foolish enough to sit for a silhouette.

  But no amount of stern talking to herself could alter the fact that her stomach fluttered every time he strode into a room she was in. He always treated Sarah with the same gentlemanly consideration he reserved for his sisters, his mother, and Annabelle, and never once did his eyes linger on her nose. He was too well bred and, now that she knew him, too decent to draw attention to someone’s features.

  “Oh, thank the heavens you’re here,” Alice said one afternoon when Sarah and Annabelle arrived for tea, dashing to claim Annabelle almost as soon as the two ladies had entered the sitting room. “There’s so much to discuss.”

  This was especially true that day, since Annabelle had received not one but two bouquets that morning from gentlemen.

  Fiona was poking some flowers into an arrangement, and Kate was sitting in her customary place on the settee by one of the tall windows that gave onto the garden. Sarah told herself she had no business being disappointed that Jack wasn’t there. Besides, he usually showed up late into teatime, if he was coming.

  “You’d think utterly amazing things were happening every single night at dinner parties and musicales all over London,” Kate said, looking up from her book. Socrates, whom Sarah adored, was curled up next to her. “But I’ve been to those parties and musicales, and they never make me want to squeal.”

  Sarah had noticed the last few times she’d come to tea that Kate seemed more outgoing. She still often had a book in her hands, but she tended to join the conversation more. And once, when Jack’s friend Viscount Eastham had come to tea, she’d been quite lively. Which was interesting.

  Alice, who’d led Annabelle over to their favorite spot on a cozy window seat under the other large window in the room, paused in whatever she was saying to Annabelle to reply to her sister. “Utterly amazing things are happening, which you would know if you didn’t make up so many excuses for not going out.”

  Kate lofted her eyes toward the ceiling. “Being old, I have actually been to every kind of party, ball, musicale, and dinner party London has to offer.”

  “Kate, dear,” their mother said, indicating with a graceful sweep of her arm that Sarah should make herself comfortable on the settee in front of the table where the tea tray was always placed, “do stop announcing you’re old. You are twenty-four, not eighty. And the annual Merrywether ball is almost upon us.”

  Kate groaned. “Gad, like a runaway carriage.”

  The door to the sitting room opened at that moment, and Sarah knew it wouldn’t be the marquess or his wife—Lady Rosamund Boxhaven was increasing, and the couple had gone to their country estate to see to some renovations—but it might be a maid with the tea tray. She mustn’t expect that it was Jack, even though she had been thinking, Let him come, let him come, every moment since she’d entered the room.

  The suspense was momentary but exquisite, and—yes! Jack strode into the room. Sarah’s heart leaped giddily. She tried to make herself reflect on the theme of weakness in an effort to resist his appeal, but she had no spirit for the undertaking, as she knew it was useless.

  “What’s this about runaway carriages?” he asked, stepping aside to allow in a maid, who brought a tea tray and set it on the low table in front of Sarah.

  “Mama is hoping Kate will summon some enthusiasm for the Merrywether ball, but we’ve seen no sign of such as yet,” Alice reported.

  “Oh, Alice, really,” Fiona said, pouring a cup of tea for Sarah, who accepted it and added two lumps of sugar.

  “I just don’t know if a ball is really the best place for romance,” Kate said in a reasonable tone.

  “Don’t be silly, dear,” Fiona said. “What could be more romantic than a ball?”

  Jack sat next to Sarah on the settee, and she stifled the knowledge that had she been Annabelle’s age, she might have started keeping a journal just so she could document such exciting moments. When she’d been seventeen, if she had ever been in company with a gentleman like Jack (she hadn’t, but just for the sake of argument), she’d have felt so self-conscious about her nose that she wouldn’t have been able to think about anything but how she wanted to hide it.

  While she still didn’t love her big nose, she’d accepted it. Mostly. Just then, she might have traded quite a l
ot for a delicate little nose like Annabelle had, or Alice, Kate, or Fiona. Every single female she knew had a smaller nose than she did.

  Next to her, Jack tossed three biscuits in a row into his mouth. “These are quite tasty,” he said, reaching for another. “A new recipe?”

  Fiona nodded. “Cook is experimenting with putting herbs in the biscuits.”

  He nodded, his eyes half closing in apparent concentration as he chewed. “Rosemary?” he proposed.

  “Yes,” Fiona said as she moved across the room to the hearth, where she began rearranging the small collection of items on the mantel into a more artful display.

  “Interesting.” He tried another one. “I like it.”

  “Is the Merrywether ball unpleasant for some reason?” Sarah asked him. The ball was another masquerade, and she and Annabelle planned to attend.

  “Not any more so than any other Society ball,” Jack said, lowering his voice so that only Sarah could hear. “I think in Kate’s case, it’s to do with the quantity of balls she’s attended. Our mother is of the belief that all four of her children will find their perfect match at a ball. And since my brother actually did meet his wife at a ball,” one side of his mouth ticked up in a lopsided grin, “she’s willing to entirely consign her children to the mercies of fate, apparently.”

  “Oh,” Sarah said, rather surprised. She’d not heard this theory of Fiona’s before. “Well, I suppose a lot of people at balls are hoping to find a perfect match.”

  “Right, but not expecting,” Jack said. “My mother thinks a ball really will be the route to true love for each of us. I know it’s not terribly sensible of her. I mean, the balls are full of the same people that the musicales and dinners and every other ton event are. And by the time you have been through a few Seasons, well, there’s not much variation from year to year, give or take a few newcomers.”