Duty Before Desire (28 page)

Mr. and Mrs. Dewhurst, who were also particular friends of Sheri's, greeted her very kindly. Mrs. Dewhurst clung tightly to her husband's sleeve as they moved down the line, and Arcadia wondered if that elfin lady might not also be daunted by the grand gathering.

A giant appeared, wearing dark blue breeches and a matching coat, with a slapdash knot tied in his cravat. “A pleasure to see you again, Miss Parks.” He sketched a bow.

He certainly looked familiar, and she wouldn't think she'd forget meeting a man of such memorable stature, but she couldn't place a name to his face. “Have we met, sir?”

“Not formally,” Sheri said. “Mr. Wynford-Scott was with me that day in Hyde Park.”

“Oh, yes,” she said, as her memory supplied the vague outline of a hulking shadow, the fear of which had caused her to cringe against Sheri for protection. “Thank you for your assistance, Mr. Wynford-Scott. It means a great deal that you came to the aid of a stranger.”

The tips of his ears pinkened. “My pleasure, ma'am.”

Too soon, the receiving line broke up. Sheri escorted Arcadia into the ballroom and, for the first time, she began to understand the full scope of a London ball. Around her were women draped in expensive silks and satins and glittering jewels, but all Arcadia could see were breasts, everywhere creamy, fluffy mounds of flesh popping out of bodices like cotton bolls. Men wore breeches every bit as tight as Signore Bonelli's. Their fine frock coats were cut away, drawing attention to their uniquely masculine attributes. Cloaked as it might be with refined manners and luxurious trappings, there was no concealing the true purpose of the ball: it was a mating ritual, plain and simple. Why else would all in attendance so shamelessly advertise their private areas? The air was rife with sexual potential.

And Arcadia was on the arm of the most flagrantly virile male of the lot. Lord Nothing, she had once called him, but now she saw his domain for what it truly was. Female eyes followed their slow progress. Lips pouted and parted. Fans tapped bared collarbones. A collective sigh of
Chère
rose from the female portion of the throng like a hot wind sighing through the
mofussil
hills in the dry season. There was no lady Sheri did not know. He seemed to have a word to drop in every pearl-adorned ear. In a realm of fleshly desires, Lord Sheridan Zouche was king.

From these women, Arcadia expected to meet with unkindness spurred by jealousy. After all, she had claim to the man they all wanted. Instead, she was most frequently greeted and dismissed while the ladies went right on throwing themselves at Sheri. There were a few smirks, and one or two sympathetic smiles from the older women, but that was all. No claws. No hair-pulling. Some innate feminine knowledge inside Arcadia recognized that she was not perceived as a threat. Even at her betrothal ball, no one believed Arcadia had won Sheri's heart.

She very much feared that his attentive courtship had managed to bamboozle only one person: her.

As previously decided, he brought her to the ornate sofa that had been placed on a raised dais centered against the far wall. Since the marchioness would not dance, either, Arcadia and Deborah were given a joint throne from which to oversee the ball.

“Here we are, my love,” Sheri said grandly, kissing her hand before relinquishing it. He pivoted and bowed. “Miss Poorvaja, would you favor me with the opening set?”

Arcadia's mouth popped open in surprise. Taking to heart Sheri's claim that she might do anything she wished, she had asked Poorvaja to attend the ball. Her aunt would have a fit of the vapors over a servant attending the ball as a guest, but Arcadia didn't care. Poorvaja was more family than anyone else. In answer to her young mistress's grand gesture of sentiment and flouting of convention, Poorvaja had flatly refused. Jalanili was free to make a public disgrace if she wished, but she would not take part in the orgy.

Swiveling about, Arcadia witnessed the astonishing sight of her ayah in a ballroom. True, she sat in a chair pressed to the wall with her knitting in her lap, but there she was. As she'd arranged Arcadia's hair and prognosticated her charge's moral bankruptcy earlier in the evening, Poorvaja had given no hint that she had changed her mind about attending herself. She'd even added a lace collar to her plain, gray woolen dress.

At first, Poorvaja did not respond directly to Sheri's invitation. But her needles flew faster, and her face turned a dusky rose. “You're a bad man,” she finally pronounced without raising her eyes. “I should skewer your heart and feed it to a dog.”

Several guests gasped, but Sheri only grinned. “As you say, madam.” He winked at Arcadia before dashing off to secure another partner. In moments, he was leading a beanpole of a miss with an overbite and spots away from the wall to join other couples in one of several square formations.

The opening notes of the dance rang through the ballroom. Partners bowed and curtsied. Arcadia's pulse leaped in her throat. The women truly
were
going to dance in public, Arcadia realized in a daze, and she had agreed to do the same for the supper waltz.

In horrified fascination, Arcadia watched the dancers extend their arms into the centers of the squares and begin rotating the shapes with intricate little skips and hops. Her eyes tracked the movements of one group, then the next. She spotted Claudia and Mr. De Vere, but Arcadia's friends danced with other people, not each other. Mr. De Vere being in the company of another woman did not faze her, but the sight of Claudia in the arms of the towering Mr. Wynford-Scott made Arcadia flinch.

This is how things are done in England
, she reminded herself.
Claudia is not doing anything immoral.
As she spun, Claudia kicked back her head and laughed, carefree and having a wonderful time. Despite her own misgivings, Arcadia smiled at her friend's enjoyment.

Inevitably, her wandering gaze arrested on Sheri. He carried himself with a noble bearing she had only seen in one other man: Suri Shah, the Mughal prince. Not even Lord Lothgard matched his younger brother's air of self-assurance.

He danced with the fluid grace of a man perfectly at ease in his own skin. His emerald coat defined the slope of his broad, muscled shoulders and accentuated the lines of his torso all the way to his slender waist. White breeches clung audaciously to his thighs, allowing Arcadia to watch his muscles play with every perfectly executed maneuver of the dance, a marble statue in motion.

His attention was fixed on his dancing partner, as though the wallflower were the only woman in existence. His sinful lips, turned up just slightly at the corner, bestowed the woman with a private smile Arcadia knew all too well.

Unwelcome jealousy crept through her bones. But then she saw the wallflower's brilliant smile, how utterly delighted she was to dance with handsome Lord Sheridan. After her, he chose a heavy-set matron of middling years for his next partner, and then he sat out a set to pay court to a white-haired crone who had been nodding off in the corner. He flirted outrageously with the old woman and her friends. The sound of their scandalized laughter carried over the room.

“Lest you think he's doing this for your benefit”—Deborah leaned over to touch Arcadia's arm—“you should know he's always like this. The beauties who flock around him, they haven't a chance. Not in a ballroom. Sheri always chooses the girls who are overlooked, the matrons who've been left behind.”

Chère
, they called him. Their dear.
He likes to make women happy,
Claudia had told Arcadia once. She saw the truth of those words in action. While gentleman after gentleman slipped away to the card room, Sheri spent each set with a woman who would otherwise have remained unnoticed. For most of those ladies, their set with Sheri was the only one they danced all night.

Rather than a burden, it became a pleasure to watch Sheri pay attendance to these other women. And yet she couldn't help but feel a bit of moroseness on her own behalf. While Sheri brought genuine pleasure to these other ladies, the compliments he paid Arcadia were meant to impress others, not her. How lovely it must be to have Sheridan Zouche want nothing more than to make one smile for one's benefit alone, instead of for the benefit of an audience.

She remembered the way he'd kissed her that day in the alley, so wild and deep and free, how every stroke of his tongue and rub of his thigh against her secret flesh had seemed focused on giving her the greatest possible pleasure in the least time possible. It had been reckless and overwhelming. Even now, her breasts tingled at the memory. She shifted her legs against a faint aching between her thighs. Yet even then, there had been potential onlookers on the nearby sidewalk. Their first kiss, too, had had an audience. What would Sheri do when it was just the two of them on their wedding night? Would he lose ardor with a lack of witnesses, or would the privacy free him to truly unleash his passions?

There were but two weeks remaining before that fateful night, when Arcadia's questions would be answered.

“Do you not dance at your own celebration, Miss Parks?” Sir Godwin stood at the edge of the dais, dressed all in black but for his usual red cravat. In deference to the formality of the occasion, perhaps, his neckcloth was scarlet satin, the fabric shining slick against his throat, like a ghastly wound.

“No, sir, I do not,” she replied. “It is Lady Lothgard's special night, as well, and as you see, she and I have committed ourselves to an evening of sedentary leisure.”

“Might you make an exception for one who can claim your friendship earlier than any other knave present?”

Giggling, Arcadia shook her head. “I'm afraid not, Sir Godwin.”

“Alas,” he sighed, “you wound me. Fair goddesses, remain upon your plinth, and I shall worship and venerate from afar.” Bowing, he took a seat beside Poorvaja. The two did not converse. He simply watched her knitting needles as if he were in a stupor.

Finally, the moment Arcadia had been dreading arrived. Walking shoulder to shoulder, Sheri and Lord Lothgard approached the dais. The marquess was a little taller than Sheri and a bit thicker through the middle, and his years wore well on his face. But Sheri was in no way the lesser man. Sheri … Well, Sheri swaggered. Leaving stately consequence to the marquess, the younger Zouche trained slumberous eyes on Arcadia, his mouth kicking up on one side in an insolent smile.

Arcadia's heart stuttered in her chest. Her underarms went clammy, and the inside of her mouth became a desert.

The men stopped and bowed to Arcadia and Deborah like courtiers before their queens. In unison, they stepped onto the dais and helped the ladies to their feet.

The marquess raised his hand for silence, but an expectant hush already blanketed the room.

“Friends,” his voice easily carried over the assembly, “I thank you for honoring us with your presence tonight for this, the annual commemoration of my lovely wife's birthday.” Cheers and applause swept the room. He raised Deborah's hand to his lips. The marchioness shyly ducked her head against Lothgard's shoulder.

Turning once more to the crowd, Lothgard said, “We've another cause for celebration tonight. It is my great honor to announce the betrothal of my brother, Lord Sheridan Zouche, to Miss Arcadia Parks. On behalf of our family, I extend my welcome and familial affection to Miss Parks.”

The marquess shook Sheri's hand, then bussed Arcadia on the cheek, while Deborah hugged and kissed both of them. Arcadia's aunt and uncle stood beside the dais. And so did Poorvaja. The dowager held herself apart from Arcadia's family, but it didn't matter. The sight of Poorvaja bravely facing down a ballroom full of half-naked Englishpersons had Arcadia's heart near to bursting.

Sheri came to her side and offered his arm. “Shall we, my dear?” His eyes conveyed another layer of question.
Are you sure?

Not at all. But she nodded anyway and stepped off the dais. She'd agreed to do this. She
could
do this.

In the center of the brightly illuminated ballroom, with hundreds of eyes looking on, Arcadia stepped into Sheri's arms, not just to participate in an activity anathema to her upbringing, but to lead the way.

“Breathe, peahen,” Sheri reminded her. “And smile. You're happy, remember?”

Beating back the herd of elephants stampeding through her stomach, Arcadia jerked her lips up. “
You're
happy,” she corrected, tilting her head and batting her eyelashes as other women had. “I, on the other hand, would rather be on fire.”

A crease appeared in his cheek just as his hand slipped around her waist and the music began. He twirled her into the opening steps of the waltz.

Almost immediately, she faltered; Sheri's arm held firm, and he performed a graceful turn. Arcadia's eyes darted to the onlookers, but no one else seemed to have detected the misstep. Claudia caught her notice and waved.

“Don't look at them, Arcadia, look at me.”

He wasn't nervous in the least, drat the man. Years of dancing with hopeless partners had trained him for this very moment. Sheri hummed along with the tune, genuine enjoyment shining in his eyes.

“
One
two three,
one
two three,” he encouraged beneath his breath. “That's it; you're doing marvelously. No one will suspect you didn't know how to dance before last week, and they'll never guess how many toes were sacrificed to the cause.”

Arcadia's lips tugged in amusement. “Don't make me laugh,” she warned. “I'll lose track of my feet and land us both in a heap.”

One finger curled lightly against her back, a teasing touch no one else would notice. “I might not mind landing in a heap with you, peahen. Shall we give it a try and see what happens?”

Her cheeks heated, and his insolent grin deepened. “That's a remarkably fetching shade of pink. I should like to see you wearing nothing but that. Do you know I think you're the most intrepid lady of my acquaintance?”