Lady Whistledown Strikes Back (17 page)

“I was just taking the woman’s role when faced with two stubborn males,” she said lightly.

Lord Roxbury blinked.

Lord Roxbury was cute when he was flustered. Though she was sure no one else in society would ever think of cute and Lord Roxbury in the same sentence, it was true.

Even now, he was trying very hard to look angry and pompous, and it was not working in the least. She had realized the day she’d first met him that he was probably one of the nicest men she knew.

She really did like that about him.

“Now then, my lord, did you want to see the Japanese display? It is exquisite, and I must tell you I am actually very glad that I have had this opportunity to study the Japanese. I have learned much about another culture and am thoroughly enjoying myself.”

Roxbury just stood there staring at her as if she were a ghost. Or a woman.

Obviously, he had never met one who’d actually spoken to him, either that or he’d never listened to any of the women he’d met. Bella bit her bottom lip to keep from laughing. “My lord?” she asked. “Would you like to see the display?

Or would you rather keep arguing over something that has already been done?”

Later on Bella realized that she had become so smug by this point in the conversation that she had probably started to sound like a know-it-all, boring schoolteacher. She probably deserved to be taken down a peg, but, really, she did not expect what came next at all… though she thoroughly enjoyed it.

Has anyone noticed that Lord Roxbury seems rather more serious of late?

After all that kissing of hands at the Hargreaves’ Ball, he’s become a veritable monk.

Not a single party attended all week. How very unlike him.

One can only wonder whether his father is rejoicing or sobbing with despair. The lack of merriment might indicate a certain willingness to settle down, but on the other hand, one can’t meet an eligible young miss if one never leaves one’s house, can one?

LADY WHISTLEDOWN’S SOCIETY PAPERS,
7 JUNE 1816

Anthony was
very
out of sorts when he sought out Miss Martin. He had been informed by Lady Neeley that her companion was at the museum sketching.

That had bothered him on top of everything else.

The lady did not care in the least that her young and terribly lovely companion was alone at the museum. Miss Martin needed a chaperone.

As he rode his horse toward the museum, Anthony became even more agitated. He had spent the weekend in a mood that could only be called black.

And, as most everyone that knew him understood, Anthony was never anything but happy and easygoing. The last weekend had proved beyond a doubt

that he was his father’s son.

For he had started sounding just like the man: barking orders to poor Herman and sitting hunched over

his desk, his eyes shooting daggers at anyone who’d disturbed him. And, the strangest thing of all, Anthony had not been with a woman since Wednesday.

He’d spent the entire weekend without even the desire to see a woman, much less speak to one or, dread the thought, touch one. Of course, Miss Martin had pervaded his thoughts most unnervingly, and the desire to touch her had almost overwhelmed him.

What on earth was wrong with him?

When he’d found out that his father had received an invitation, Anthony had been immensely relieved because now he could be angry with Miss Martin.

That seemed a safer emotion than whatever he’d felt for her before.

But then he saw her walking with some boy whom he did feel the need to throttle, of all things. She was such a slight thing, slender, with her pixielike hair curled about her head. She wore a plain gray gown that would have looked really horrible on anyone else, but she had added a soft blue sash that accentuated her waist and made her eyes seem like mist. She had also pinned a little bunch of flowers to her collar, and when he stood close, their fragrance went straight to his head.

In truth, every thought in his brain was like those of a besotted schoolboy. And then she laughed at him and spoke to him in that forthright, intelligent manner she had, and Anthony did feel the need to kiss her soundly.

And so he did, finally.

Afterwards, he wasn’t really sure what exactly had made him do it, but he did remember feeling like he was either going to hit her or kiss her in that moment, and he would never hit a woman, so he grabbed her arm, pulled her close, and took her mouth.

And then she kissed him back, and he really did lose himself as he had never done before.

He was harsh at first, but she immediately opened to him: Her arms went around his neck, her body molded against his, and her mouth was soft.

He was hard with wanting within seconds, definitely a besotted schoolboy. He curved an arm around

her back and leaned over her, kissing her as he had never kissed a woman.

He kissed her with an

urgency that was beyond physical.

When he finally came to his senses and realized that they were in a very public place, and that he could ruin her completely in that very second if only one person were to see them, he pulled away from her.

He held her arm for a moment to make sure that she had her balance, but then he let go of her

completely and even took a few steps away from her.

She just stared at him, and he really did wish she wouldn’t. He was not himself. He could not figure out who he was, or what he was feeling, but it was not normal, that much he knew.

“Do you do that to all the women who aggravate you?” she asked finally.

“No,” he said.

“I can now say that I have been kissed, though. Can’t I?”

He shook his head, confused.

“You seemed to think it funny that I thought I had been kissed when you kissed my neck. This, though…” She waved her hand between them. “This was definitely a kiss, was it not?”

He closed his eyes for a moment. She had no idea how much of a kiss it was.

“Yes,” he said.

“This was a kiss.”

She grinned. “Well, that’s good then. Now, did you want to see that display?”

she asked.

Display? Anthony truly could not remember what she was talking about. He was having a hard enough time remembering where they were or who he was. Truly, he had meant to shock the woman in front of him, and instead he’d put himself into a stupor. “Uh,” he said.

“Come along then,” she said, turning and walking off down the hall.

Lovely, he was forever changed by one kiss, and the woman who had inspired it could care less.

Anthony stood for a moment staring at the ceiling. Surely this was God’s perverse way of getting back

at him for his debauchery in days past.

With a shake of his head, Anthony followed the little nymph that was Miss Isabella Martin.

“Isn’t this lovely?” she asked when he reached her. She gestured toward the wall with her hand.

Anthony tried to see the display, but instead his gaze stuck on Miss Martin’s hand. It was such a lovely hand, slender with perfectly rounded nails.

Probably sometime this evening he would sit down and write a bleeding sonnet to Miss Martin’s hands. He was that far gone.

Or maybe he just needed to lose himself in another woman? Perhaps that would break this strange spell.

“Miss Martin,” he said. “How on earth did you get a name like Isabella?” Just one of the many things that he’d wondered about as he had sat hunched behind his desk over the weekend.

She shook her head, obviously confused by the change of subject, but then smiled. “Ah, it was my mother. I received my imagination from her. She was constantly telling me stories about Spanish princesses and English princes.

She named me Isabella after the Spanish Queen.”

See,
Anthony thought,
nothing so extravagant that it should be pondered to death over an entire weekend.

“My parents were older when they had me, and they knew they would die when I was relatively young, so they made sure that I had a place to go and someone to take care of me.”

“Lady Neeley?” he asked.

“Yes, Lady Neeley offered to take me on as her companion. But my mother always insisted that

anything could happen. That I should dream of all sorts of wild and wonderful things, because you

never knew, it could happen.”

Miss Martin sighed, and her large gray eyes looked sad for the first time since Anthony had known her.

“I kept that thought through the years, but it does seem that this is the end.”

“Excuse me?” Anthony asked, a bit alarmed.

“I mean, I will be thirty next week. I don’t think an English prince rides off with a Spanish princess who is thirty years old.”

“But you are not a Spanish princess.”

Miss Martin laughed. “Obviously, you don’t have much of an imagination, my lord.”

That was debatable. He could, in fact, at this very moment, imagine Miss Martin stark naked on his bed.

“All I am saying, Miss Martin, is that a thirty-year-old English miss, perhaps, has more hope than a thirty-year-old Spanish princess.” Miss Martin laughed softly.

He thought, in that moment, that he would not mind hearing that sound every day for the rest of his life,

it made him feel that good.

She glanced over at him; her head was at an angle so that her eyes peeked at him from under her long, dark lashes. Oh yes, his imagination was just fine, thank you very much. He could definitely imagine kissing his way down the curve of Miss Martin’s neck.

Anthony forced himself to look away from the enticing person beside him and stare at the display of Japanese artifacts. They were lovely—he had always enjoyed the colors and look of Japanese art. It is why he had used so many Japanese pieces when he’d decorated his town house.

He had been thrilled, actually, when he had seen the invitations Miss Martin had made. They were perfect. He had also received the menu and a sample of every food he would be feeding his guests, and they had been exquisite.

Miss Martin was doing a magnificent job so far. He could not see this party being anything but a complete success.

He turned toward her suddenly. “Why on earth are you not getting paid for this?” he asked.

She glanced around, and then returned to him. “Excuse me?”

“You are doing an incredible job, and you are working very hard. Why aren’t I paying you?”

“Because I am doing it as a favor to your father.”

“No one should do my father favors, he has enough money to pay everyone to do everything.” Miss Martin giggled, which made him smile. “Miss Martin,” he said. “You really do have quite a talent for this. Your organizational skills are impeccable, but you also have a wonderful imagination that gives

each party you do just that much of a different quality. Guests remember them and enjoy them. Why

on earth aren’t you doing this for pay? You could be making quite a lot of money, I promise you.”

Miss Martin looked rather dumbstruck. She stared at him for a moment, and then turned to stare at the kimono in front of them. “Could I do this?” she asked. But he could tell that she was not asking him.

She turned toward him again, a smile spreading across her face that was the most beautiful thing

Anthony had seen in all of his thirty-seven years on the earth.

“You, my lord, have just saved me. You are my English prince, and you have changed my life. It just didn’t happen like I thought it would.” She clapped her hands together and then grabbed his shoulders, came up on her tiptoes, and gave him a kiss on his cheek. “Thank you!” she said.

Anthony was not exactly sure what was going on, and he was still trying to recover from the feel of her soft lips against his cheek. Since he had had women touch him in ways that made a kiss on the cheek look like child’s play, it did strike him as extremely odd that Miss Martin’s kiss should paralyze him so.

Be that as it may, he was not able to say anything as the girl grabbed up her sketchpad and pencils, fluttered her fingers at him, and took her leave.

All of a sudden, Anthony realized he was alone, and terribly bewildered. Not to mention the fact that he was feeling as randy as a goat, mostly fueled by a kiss on the cheek. Probably he was delusional from that fever that never seemed to show itself.

Old Barney was sitting atop Lady Neeley’s sleek coach, waiting for Bella as he always did, and so she clambered aboard. But she could not continue sitting for the entire trip; her heart was beating much too fast to let her body stay still.

So she asked Barney to let her off at Mayfair, and she walked home. Charles, one of Lady Neeley’s footmen, came running at top speed when Bella had only walked a block.

“Barney sent me,” he said as greeting and took up a position about two steps behind her. Usually Bella hated that, and, when Lady Neeley wasn’t with her, she cajoled the boys to walk next to her, but today she was happy for the time alone.

Her mind was going at such a fast clip that she was rather sure her mouth would not be able to follow. Here it was: the way her life was going to change.

She knew that she would do it. She knew that she could do it. And she was thrilled.

Goodness! Bella’s feet ate up the pavement as she nearly ran the rest of the way home. She threw off

her coat and hat as she pushed through the front door of Lady Neeley’s home.

“Is she home?” she asked Mrs. Trotter, who stood waiting for Bella’s outer clothing. “In the back parlor, Miss Martin, but—” Bella didn’t wait. After thirty years of waiting for something to happen, Bella couldn’t take even another minute to make her new life a reality.

“Lady Neeley,” she said as she nearly ran through the already open doors to the back parlor.

Lady Neeley glanced up, a teacup halfway to her lips, and Lord Roxbury’s father, Lord Waverly, sat opposite her, his mouth crammed full of one of Christophe’s pastries.

“Miss Martin,” Lady Neeley said. “You are back from the museum earlier than I thought you would be.”

“Yes,” she said and hesitated. She desperately wanted to speak with Lady Neeley about this immediately. Lord Waverly tended to stay forever when he came to take tea with Lady Neeley.