A Rogue Walks into a Ball Read online

  Annabelle visibly swallowed. She was not so naïve as to believe that everyone behaved well all the time, but she tended to believe the best about people.

  “And,” Sarah continued, “you will definitely want to avoid Lord Jack Hallaway.”

  “The Marquess of Boxhaven’s brother?” Annabelle said. “Surely not.”

  “Oh, indeed, yes. He’s a terrible rake.”

  Annabelle’s eyebrows drew together with a little quiver. “What exactly do you think he’s done to be considered a terrible rake?”

  “The usual. You don’t want to know the details. Suffice it to say that he’s had many mistresses.”

  “Oh,” Annabelle breathed, the sound somewhere between horror and awe. “Do you suppose he’s very handsome?”

  “He’s handsome,” Sarah said, pushing back against a memory that wanted to assert itself. She’d met Lord Jack once, two years before, and from that encounter, she knew all she needed to know about him. He was completely unworthy of Annabelle.

  “But a rake is all he is,” Sarah continued. “A practiced seducer. You don’t want an empty-headed charmer for a husband, do you?”

  “No, of course not,” Annabelle said. “I really think I would be most happy with a nice vicar who has a country living, or a gentleman who likes to study. Do you think there are many of those here?” She glanced around discreetly, as though she might find such examples nearby. But with every gentleman wearing ball attire, they might as well have been in uniform, for all one could tell about preferences for books and quiet walks on village paths.

  The ball, the ladies’ first social event since arriving in London two days before in the company of Mr. Smith, was being held at the home of the Marquess of Boxhaven. The event was a crush, which was not surprising, since the marquess and his family not only moved among the highest circles in Society, but were well liked.

  “If there are any such gentlemen here,” Sarah said, “we shall do our best to discover them.”

  “And we must keep our eyes open for you as well,” Annabelle said. “I know you said you are not eager to marry, but perhaps there will be a gentleman here tonight who would suit you perfectly.”

  Sarah, who knew that the only gentlemen who might solicit a dance with her would be either visually impaired or ancient, just smiled. “Perhaps,” she said, because Annabelle thought marriage was the key to her future happiness, and she didn’t see why Sarah shouldn’t as well. Sarah, who had a very generous allowance from her wealthy stepfather, did not see that the advantages of having a husband would outweigh being able to do pretty much as she liked.

  They’d been at the ball for two hours, and Annabelle had yet to be invited to dance, though there had been two times when Sarah had thought it might happen. The first chance had been soon after they arrived, near the lemonade table, where Sarah and Annabelle had encountered a young man who’d attempted to engage Annabelle in conversation. But all she’d managed to do was blink, and he’d walked away with a puzzled look.

  Sarah had ascribed the encounter to beginner’s nervousness, but the next encounter went no better. A gentleman standing in a group near them had turned and found Annabelle right in front of him. Annabelle was dressed to advantage in her cream gown trimmed with pink rosebuds that complemented her fair coloring and softly feminine beauty, and Sarah wasn’t surprised by the light of appreciation in the man’s eyes. But that encounter had ended in mute blinking as well, and the gentleman had walked away with an irritated expression.

  “I really don’t mind not dancing,” Annabelle said as another set came to an end. “Just being here is already so lovely. And... maybe I’m not ready to dance.”

  “You can’t tell me you don’t enjoy dancing,” Sarah said gently, “because I’ve watched your dancing lessons at home, and you’re always smiling.”

  “But I’ve only ever danced with the dancing master, and he’s so kind and grandfatherly.”

  “Yes, but I’m sure there are kind men here tonight that are young.”

  “I... just hadn’t realized a London ball would be so daunting,” Annabelle said in a small voice. “Perhaps we ought to leave and try again another night.”

  “Nonsense, it’s much too early to leave. Perhaps I should lead you out for a dance,” Sarah said mischievously. “You are such a graceful dancer, I’m certain you would distinguish yourself from the crowds of other ladies.”

  “You really are terribly shocking,” Annabelle said affectionately.

  It was at that moment that a young woman in a pink dress who was trying to work her way through the crowd near Sarah and Annabelle lurched backward, sending a large splash of lemonade behind her.

  Annabelle yelped as the lemonade landed on her.

  The young lady in pink whirled around, a horrified look on her face.

  “Oh! I’m so terribly sorry. I’ve completely doused you. What a disaster! Did I say how sorry I am?”

  All these words were said kindly, but at a speed that suggested the speaker had a great deal to say. When the barrage of words finally ceased, Annabelle said, “Please don’t distress yourself, it was only a little.”

  “But I’ve soaked your lovely gown,” the young lady in pink said, frowning. She looked to be about the same age as Annabelle, who was seventeen, and she had brown hair and attractive features, but what Sarah noticed particularly about her was the intelligence in her blue eyes.

  “No, no, it’s nothing,” Annabelle insisted.

  “Goodness,” the young lady said, smiling, “you are a kind person. But the plain fact is that that is lemonade.” She poked at a cascade of droplets leading away from Annabelle’s waist. “I don’t think I could be so lucky that someone else has also spilled lemonade on you.”

  Annabelle blinked. “I’m not quite certain how to respond to that,” she said tentatively.

  The girl in pink burst into laughter, and then Annabelle was laughing too as Sarah looked on in amusement.

  “Alice, what have you done this time, I hesitate to ask?” came a man’s voice from behind Sarah. She turned around.

  Recognition dawned almost immediately, and she sucked in a quick breath. His brown hair still fell in careless but perfect waves, and his eyes were still a beautiful shade of clear blue, shadowed by dark lashes that had been unfairly bestowed on a man. His tall, well-formed physique indicated that the Fates had been no less kind in other realms. A golden man, blessed with good looks, wealth, and position. A man, Sarah knew, for whom every door in life was open.

  Lord Jack Hallaway.

  Chapter 3

  Mrs. Carter, a sensible matron: Young ladies rarely know what they want.

  Jane: I should like to be happy.

  Mrs. Carter: Happy is not a goal. Mr. Trevillion is a goal.

  She Knew She Was Right, Act 1, Scene 4

  Sarah had known Lord Jack would likely be present at the ball since his brother, the marquess, was their host. But with the size of the gathering and the crowd, she’d supposed the likelihood of their meeting was low. And the likelihood of him remembering her if they did meet almost nonexistent.

  About that, at least, she seemed to have been right, because his expression betrayed no hint of recognition.

  The young lady in pink, apparently Lady Alice, had hair of a similar golden-brown hue to Lord Jack, and the more Sarah looked, the more she saw the resemblance in their features. She knew he had two sisters, but then, she also knew that his brother the marquess had married the year before. The Hallaway family was one of the first families of Society, and they were, quite simply, known.

  Lady Alice gave a final hiccupping snort. “I’ve drenched this poor young lady’s gown with lemonade.”

  Lord Jack looked as though he had numerous things to say. “Alice, you really must stop rushing about everywhere you go.”

  “Oh,” Annabelle said in a quiet voice. (She barely had a loud one, and Sarah had, in fact, forced her to practice screaming in case a time ever came when she would need to do so.) She
had turned to address Lady Alice, though her brother had been the one to speak. “It was really nothing. I think my gown has dried a bit already, and it will surely be just as it was in a few more minutes.”

  “Nonsense,” said Lord Jack in a voice that Sarah, loath though she was to give him even the smallest bit of credit, had to admit sounded kind. “If nothing else, you will be sticky.”

  Annabelle turned to Lord Jack, but all she managed in response was a choked sound and a flurry of blinking. Sarah was going to have to have a word with her cousin about the blinking.

  Lady Alice, either oblivious to Annabelle’s awkwardness or unbothered by it, said, “Exactly, which was why I was hoping I could spirit her away upstairs and convince her to borrow one of my gowns.” She smiled encouragingly at Annabelle and introduced herself and her brother.

  Annabelle’s cheeks turned crimson as Lord Jack was presented to her, and keeping her eyes on his sister, she managed to choke out her own name and also present Sarah.

  Lord Jack showed no sign that Sarah’s name meant anything to him, but there was no reason it should have since they’d not been introduced on the brief occasion they’d met two years before.

  “Even though I don’t live here at Boxhaven House,” Lady Alice said, “I have my own room and a stash of clothes here. So it would be the easiest thing in the world to lend you a fresh gown.”

  “That is very kind of you,” Annabelle said, keeping her eyes on Lady Alice, apparently having decided that if she ignored Lord Jack completely, she would be able to converse, “but it’s really not necessary.”

  “Of course it is,” Lady Alice insisted.

  “I have to agree,” Lord Jack said. His eyes flicked toward the people surrounding them, and he lowered his voice slightly. “I’m afraid you two are becoming something of a spectacle.”

  Annabelle and Alice glanced around, perceived the gazes of several disapproving matrons, and began giggling. Annabelle seemed to have made a friend, and Sarah could only be happy to see her smiling, however unfortunate her new acquaintance’s connection to Lord Jack Hallaway.

  “Now, Miss Smith,” Lady Alice said, “I insist that you allow me to lend you a gown. I’ll be in an agony of remorse otherwise. Besides, Mama would be cross with me if she knew my clumsiness had affected one of the guests. And she would know, because nothing escapes her notice. Her omniscience really is the eighth wonder of the world, right after those Hanging Gardens of Babylon things.”

  Annabelle, who possessed a dry sense of humor that tended to emerge only when she felt comfortable with someone, said, “Are you certain her omniscience would come after the hanging gardens? Omniscience seems far more wondrous to me than a bunch of dangling plants.”

  “It does, doesn’t it?” Lady Alice said, linking her arm through Annabelle’s. “Now, dress?”

  Annabelle smiled, and with remarkable speed and agility for two gently bred young ladies, they cut a path through the crowd toward the grand staircase leading to the second floor of Boxhaven House.

  Which left Sarah standing with Lord Jack.

  His eyes lingered on her. “It’s funny, but you look familiar. Have we met before?”

  There was no reason to hide it. “Yes,” she said. “Two years ago at a ball in Hampshire.”

  “I see,” he said, though his puzzled tone suggested he did not actually see and that he was waiting for her to supply more information. When she didn’t, he said, “Why don’t I remember you from the ball if you remember me?”

  She smiled a little, enjoying the idea that she had the power, at least for a moment, to trouble the perfection standing before her. He’d certainly troubled her that night, and for a few days afterward, as she’d burned with the memory of her embarrassment. Sarah had consoled herself at the time with the knowledge that people who were very attractive rarely had to exert themselves much in other aspects of their lives and thus were generally not very smart.

  “Perhaps because you announced that you’d rather have your legs sawed off than dance with me?” she said brightly.

  “What?”

  Jack racked his brain for a memory of Miss Porter. She was slim and tallish, though still several inches shorter than he, and she had what might be called handsome features, with honey-blond hair and hazel eyes. Her gown of sage-green satin did not place her among the debutantes, with their white and pastel dresses, and she looked closer to twenty-five than twenty. He couldn’t think why he would ever have uttered such an appalling thing to her or any woman.

  “I surely never said—” he began, and she smirked, turning her head to the side, as if enjoying some private mirth, so that she was in profile.

  He remembered. Her profile was distinctive because of her nose, which could not be called petite and had a prominent bridge. A hawkish nose. A distinctive nose, and it made her look distinctive. He rather thought her face wouldn’t have looked out of place carved on the prow of a ship, advancing confidently onward.

  “Ah,” he said slowly, wincing inwardly as memory served. He’d had rather a lot of punch at that ball. “You were standing with some people as I passed by with a friend. I made a remark that surely sounded unforgivable. But as I tried to explain at the time, it was a general remark expressing fatigue and not directed at anyone in particular.”

  She hadn’t believed him then, and he could see that she didn’t believe him now. In fact, he’d had the sense on that night two years before that she’d almost expected him to offend her, which made no sense, since he’d never seen her before.

  He hadn’t wanted to go to that ball to begin with, but he’d been there with Viscount Eastham, whose family seat was nearby, and Eastham had insisted they go since it had been the only thing going on. The ball had been short of gentlemen, and Jack and Andrew had been pressed into dancing with what had felt like the entire female population of Hampshire. While this was not exactly a hardship, several assertive mamas had been angling for second dances, and it had been impossible not to hear them whispering about the Marquess of Boxhaven’s brother. Jack had felt keenly aware of being hunted simply because of his brother, a not infrequent occurrence that, while he loved his brother, Jack did not appreciate.

  Some local fellow, accompanied by an eager-looking matron, had introduced himself and said he wished to present Miss So-and-So, with whom surely Jack would wish to share the next dance.

  Exasperated by the proposal of yet another dancing partner, and not any particular partner, Jack had uttered the careless words, unaware that the lady in question was standing behind the matron. The matron had shifted, and Jack had caught sight of a young woman. Her eyes had glittered meaningfully at him, and she’d smirked and turned away, giving him that view of her profile.

  He’d tried to explain that he hadn’t been speaking of dancing with her specifically, just that he didn’t wish to dance anymore, but he’d seen from her stony look that she hadn’t believed him. She’d said, “There’s no need for explanations, sir. You don’t wish to dance, and neither do I. Please don’t think I asked Mr. Maynes to approach you on my behalf.” And she’d walked away.

  Now, here she was before him, and decidedly with the moral high ground.

  “I’d danced far more than I’d wanted to dance already that night,” he explained anew.

  “Poor you.”

  He chuckled. “That did sound bad, didn’t it? But I’m not so conceited as to think all those ladies really wanted to dance with me. The younger brother of the Marquess of Boxhaven would attract attention even if he were bald, paunchy, and reeking.”

  One of the dark dashes above her eyes slanted skeptically, and though her expression was chilly, he found himself noticing the way her sage-colored gown seemed to bring out the flecks of green in her hazel eyes.

  “You are truly unfortunate to be so cursed as to have the marquess for your brother.”

  “That wasn’t what I meant.”

  “What did you mean, then?”

  “All I wanted to do was apologize prope
rly, Miss Porter.”

  “And you did, the night of the ball.”

  “But not very successfully, I think.”

  She gave a long-suffering sigh. “I don’t need you to be nice to me, my lord. I haven’t been waiting around in injured despair for the last two years.”

  He had no doubt—for one thing, she seemed too decisive to wait around for anything. “I am relieved to hear it.”

  “Now, if you will excuse me?”

  Speaking with her had hardly been a pleasure—she’d made it no secret that she was barely tolerating him—but for some reason, he didn’t want her to go yet. Perhaps it was the challenge of the intelligent look in her eyes, but he was aware of wanting to make her smile, aware that this ball, which he’d regarded as a necessary chore, suddenly now held a glimmer of interest.

  Though he adored his mother and knew she believed in the power of a ball and dancing to bring people together in eternal ways, having been through quite a few London Seasons, he was fairly certain he’d now danced with every single unmarried lady in the ton. And the plain fact was, he knew his mother was wrong. He was not going to find love at a ball, and he was entirely unbothered by that fact. But he wouldn’t for anything have shattered his mother’s dreams that one of these nights he would, so he dutifully came to every ball she asked him to attend.

  Nevertheless, evenings spent sharing predictable chat and dancing with each debutante had become, well, predictable and boring. Miss Porter was lending interest to an evening that would otherwise be tedious, and as he still had to stay for at least another hour or two for good form, he was not willing to let her disappear just yet.

  “But we were talking,” he said.

  “You were talking,” she said. “I was just standing here.”

  “Are you and Miss Smith recently arrived in Town?”

  Her eyes narrowed with suspicion. “Miss Smith is none of your concern.”

  “Oh?” Jack had never heard of Annabelle Smith before tonight, and he didn’t know what connection had brought her an invitation to the Boxhaven ball. Though his mother, who couldn’t bear for anyone to feel left out, tended to invite every young woman on the Marriage Mart to every ball, even though she constantly fretted over the possibility of an event turning into a crush and their guests being uncomfortably crowded.