Stolen Kisses (4 page)

“I see,” Antonia said to his back as he headed for the door. “And does this point of interest have anything to do with a certain Ice Queen?”

Jack stopped. Given that Ernest Landon knew of his game, most of the more disreputable
ton
no doubt had
a fair idea what he was up to. Jack wished, though, that Antonia wasn’t quite so astute. “And where might you have heard that, my dear?”

She rose to join him in the doorway. “Simply because you have stopped seeing Camilla doesn’t mean I have.” Antonia smiled and ran a finger along the line of his jaw. “You are very angry at this girl, yes?”

“No. I am…irritated.” And after seeing her again yesterday, even more intent on getting Lilith Benton into his bed. Ice Queen or not, she was stunning. But he had no intention of letting Antonia know that his lusts ran toward that vein. “But I am taking steps to remedy the emotion.”

“I have no doubt you are.” She smiled again. “Poor girl, I don’t know whether to pity her or envy her. She hasn’t a chance.”

“That’s the idea.”

Antonia followed him as he collected his hat and greatcoat. “I have learned one thing about Miss Benton which you might find of interest, my dear,” she offered.

Jack shrugged into his caped overcoat, wishing the damned weather would warm up before it came time for winter again. “And what might that be?”

“Her suitors.”

Ah, the vultures
. “Yes, there are several dozen, I believe.”

“Did you know one of them is the Duke of Wenford?”

The marquis faced her again, myriad new possibilities and plots coming to his mind in rapid succession. He’d had no idea even the Ice Queen was that chilled. In an odd, unexpected sense, he was disappointed in her. “Oh, really?”

Antonia chuckled. “With your gift of young William, you many consider us even, Jack.”

“Thank you, Toni. I shall.” He tipped his hat jauntily. “I’ll see you tonight. Late, I think. I’ve several things to take care of first.”

“I thought you might.”

The Countess of Felton liked to consider herself progressive, so she had requested four waltzes from the substantial orchestra she had hired for the evening’s festivities. While the older guests were quick to declaim the large number of scandalous dances, the younger set in attendance voiced no complaints at all.

Lilith wasn’t pleased, though. Not one bit. She nervously ground her palms into one another while Penelope pretended to admire a vase of sad-looking spring flowers. The poor things were likely the only ones from the countess’s garden to have survived the late frost.

“What’s he doing now?” Lilith whispered, pressing closer against the wall and wishing she’d chosen something more drab to wear so she could escape the duke’s notice.

“Still talking with your father,” Pen muttered out of the side of her mouth, peering through the flowers at the crowded ballroom.

“Oh, Pen, what am I to do? Why couldn’t Lady Felton have scheduled two waltzes? Then they would have been over with before he arrived.”

“Perhaps you could claim tired feet and leave early?”

Lilith shook her head. “Father would be furious.” She sighed and braced her shoulders. “I shall simply have to do it. It’s only one dance, after all.”

When her father had told her to leave the fourth waltz open for a likely peer, she hadn’t expected the Duke of Wenford to make an appearance. Or that he would ask her for a waltz, of all things. She hadn’t even been aware that he could waltz, had never imagined he would have
wanted to learn the steps to something so obviously modern.

“Oh, Lilith, I’m certain it’s not as bad as you believe. Perhaps you are only overset by…well, you know, the Marquis of Dansbury.”

“I am not overset by Dansbury,” Lilith stated firmly. “I am annoyed by him and wish he would go away.” She emerged from her hiding place. “At least he isn’t here tonight.”

“I still think his appearance at Lady Josephine’s recital must have been a coincidence,” Pen stated. She had been skeptical at Lilith’s suggestion that Dansbury was hunting her in revenge.

Lilith shrugged. “I hope you’re right. It hardly seems fair, with everything else I must tend to this Season.” For nearly two months she had been dancing with, speaking with, and smiling at the most well-bred peers in London. Although she had heard the rumors that she was some sort of ice princess, she had tried to ignore them. If someone could point out a better way for her to make a match with an appropriate man, she would gladly try it.

“Miss Benton.”

Oh, dear
. Lilith locked eyes with Pen, then swallowed and turned around. “Your Grace.” She smiled. “How wonderful that you decided to attend tonight.”

The Duke of Wenford looked back at her, no expression on his angular, bony face. His gray eyes, sunken behind high cheekbones and severe slate gray eyebrows, assessed her, and she again felt like some sort of farm animal. For a fleeting moment she wanted to whinny at him.

“It is time for our waltz.”

“Yes, Your Grace.”

Her earlier encounters with Geoffrey Remdale had
been blessedly brief, requiring little conversation from her except for a few
Yes, Your Graces
and
No, Your Graces
. As they turned about the floor now, he again made no effort to engage her in conversation. Wenford danced adequately, though he moved with little emotion, as though he had simply memorized the steps. At least the Earl of Nance, while he tended to step on her toes, seemed to enjoy himself. The duke might have been reading dunning notices from his creditors, for all the enthusiasm he showed.

“You look well,” he finally said.

“Thank you, Your Grace.”

“You draw people’s eyes,” he elaborated. “You plan for your family’s meals, your father says.”

Lilith didn’t like where this conversation appeared to be headed. “Yes, Your Grace, I do. But with just the four of us—”

“Have you ever planned for large occasions?” he interrupted in the same bored, gravelly tone. “Balls, dinner parties?”

“No, Your Grace. I have not.” She was abruptly grateful that her father had kept them in virtual seclusion in Northamptonshire.

“I’ll have someone teach you. If you’re too stupid to learn, I’ll hire someone. No matter. You look the part.”

Lilith’s heart and her feet faltered. The duke’s lips tightened in annoyance as she stumbled, and she quickly gathered herself. “Your…Your Grace, I’m afraid I don’t understand,” she stammered. This was a nightmare. It simply couldn’t be happening—it couldn’t!

“No need. Your father and I have a few more points to settle, but I’ve little necessity for whatever pittance of a dowry you’ll bring me. I doubt there will be any other complications.”

Feeling abandoned by her wits, Lilith wished she was
one of those silly girls who could simply faint. “You—you take me by surprise, Your Grace. You must know that I cannot give my ans—”

“As I said,” he interrupted impatiently, “it will be a few days before everything is settled. Until then, you are not to say anything about it.” He frowned, the glowering expression the most natural she had yet seen on his face. “No need to stir up trouble with the damned wags.”

The set ended. “Yes, Your Grace,” she whispered through the applause. He returned her to the edge of the floor, then without a backward glance made his way over to join the group of older peers who had commandeered the warmest area in the room, before the fireplace.

“Well, at least that’s over with,” Penelope grinned, prancing up beside her. “Was it awful?”

Lilith was shaking. She kept trying to turn what Wenford had said, so that his words wouldn’t mean what she knew they did. “He’s going to marry me.”

“What?” Pen exclaimed, then covered her mouth with one hand. Her eyes wide, she looked in the duke’s direction. “He said so?”

“My pittance of a dowry doesn’t concern him. He thinks I’d look an adequate duchess.” Hysteria pulled at the edge of her mind, and she concentrated on breathing evenly.

“But Lil, surely your father won’t make you. He’s so strange and…awful!”

“Who’s awful?”

“William!” Lilith jumped, and turned to see her brother standing beside her, two glasses of punch clasped in his hands. “Shh.”

“All right, but who’s awful?” he whispered, handing her and Pen the punch. Lilith took a long swallow, but it didn’t help.

“The Duke of Wenford is,” Penelope answered, when Lilith didn’t.

“Old Hatchet Face?” William followed her gaze. “He’d send Beelzebub running. Why?”

“He’s going to marry Lil.” Penelope looked sorrowfully at her friend.

“What?” William lifted both eyebrows. “You’re bamming me.”

“I’m not. Really,” Pen returned, blushing.

“Pen, hush,” Lilith said urgently, hoping her father was nowhere near. “It’s to be a secret until it’s arranged.”

“Perhaps I should pretend I didn’t hear anything, then,” a deep, musical voice said from behind her.

Lilith froze. Deliberately, she took another swallow of punch to steady her nerves and her wits before she turned around. The Marquis of Dansbury stood gazing down at her, his dark eyes dusky and cynical. His lips pursed in a faint grin, he handed William a glass of punch, keeping another for himself. Again his dress was plain, dark gray and blue, leavened only by an exquisite diamond pin on his cravat. He was truly handsome as the devil, and apparently at least as tenacious.

“I believe I made my feelings about speaking to you quite clear,” she said stiffly. Remembering her aunt’s warning about staring, she turned away.

“Seems you’ve little time for me, anyway,” he said smoothly, “now that you have five proposals to sift through. A record at this early stage of the Season, I believe, though I’ll have to check the wagering books at White’s to be certain. Madeleine, the Marchioness of Telgore, may have had as many as seven before she finally settled on Wallace, but that was over the course of an entire Season.”

Lilith sent him a disdainful look. “My state of mat
rimony need not concern you, my lord. And do stop following me everywhere.”

“Following you?” Far from slinking away, as he should have, the marquis took a step closer. “Following you,” he mused again, rubbing his chin as though trying to decide what she meant. “Oh, of course. The opera. And Lady Josephine’s recital, I suppose. Lovely girl, don’t you think? Quite talented, though she seemed a bit nervous.”

“You are…evil!” Lilith blurted out, flushing.

“Lilith!” Pen exclaimed, wide-eyed.

“Oh, dear me, that does put my plans into some disarray.”

“What plans, Jack?” William asked unhelpfully.

Lilith clenched her jaw, determined to say nothing else to the scoundrel.

His gaze remained on her. “I had intended to throw my hat in, and become your sister’s sixth suitor.”

That was too much. “You?” she scoffed. “You would be wasting your headgear.”

“Better you should tread on my hat than on my heart,” he replied, looking at her from beneath dark lashes.

“You haven’t one,” she retorted promptly.

A wicked, twinkling amusement touched his eyes. “Only because you’ve broken it.”

It was amazing that someone hadn’t disposed of him in a duel long ago. “Would that the destruction of it had killed you.”

“But then we wouldn’t be having this conversation. You know, I thought you weren’t speaking to me. I do wish you would make up your mind.” He chuckled. “Perhaps I should have offered to throw down my gauntlet, instead of my hat.”

His laugh was as musical as his voice, and his
smile…“Lilith caught herself staring at him yet again, and shook herself. There was no excuse for her to be ogling this villain, however physically attractive he might be—or for her to forget either her temper or her manners.

“At least one of us is amused at your cleverness,” she said coolly. “And it is not me, my lor—”

“Lilith,” Penelope hissed, clutching her friend’s arm, “he’s coming back.”

Indeed, Wenford had left his companions and was strolling in their direction. To speak with him again tonight would be more than she could bear. She needed time to discuss the situation with her father, to make her feelings of revulsion toward Wenford clear to him before it was too late.

“Oh, dear,” she murmured.

The marquis had followed her gaze. “I suppose I should tender him my congratulations.” He stepped around her.

“Don’t you dare,” Lilith gasped, paling. Wenford would think her a complete gossip, and her father would be furious.

Dansbury paused, grinning at her over his shoulder. “If we were speaking, I might be convinced to listen to you.” He strolled toward the duke.

“William,” Lilith commanded frantically, jabbing a finger in the marquis’s direction, “stop him!”

“Ah, Lil, he’s just looking for a bit of fun with Old Hatchet Face. It’ll put him in a jolly mood, and I want him to take me to the Society tonight.”

“William, he must not—”

“Wenford,” the Marquis of Dansbury called in a carrying voice, “I hear that congratulations are due.”

Cold gray eyes flicked in her direction before they turned to the marquis. “I’m afraid I don’t know what
you’re talking about, Dansbury. As usual, you seem to be acting a complete fool.”

The acid in the duke’s tone surprised Lilith. Realizing that His Grace had as little liking for the marquis as she did was hardly a comfort, though. In fact, it almost made her look more kindly upon Dansbury. Beside her, Penelope watched the exchange in astonishment while William grinned in admiration of his mentor.

“Not as foolish as some,” Dansbury replied, glancing down and brushing an imaginary speck of dust from the lapel of his blue coat. The motion brought the duke’s, and their audience’s, attention to the exquisite diamond in his cravat.

The Duke of Wenford flushed furiously. “You are a thief, boy!” he snarled, striding forward.

Dansbury gracefully sidestepped. “Now I’m afraid it is my turn to be baffled,” he returned apologetically. “I thought the larcenist was you.”

“That pin belongs to the Remdale family, and you know it, you blackguard!” Wenford shouted.

The orchestra raggedly halted, and the dancers on the ballroom floor turned two by two to watch the proceedings. The Countess of Felton stood by the refreshment table looking positively elated. Thanks to Wenford and Dansbury, her ball had just become the event of the Season.