mushrooms, my dear,” he answered smoothly, sweeping her into another graceful turn, “usually do dislike their betters. Tell me, please—as I am all agog to know—do you lie awake nights, Miss Laurence, planning sundry vile terminations to my existence?”
“I wouldn’t care to waste my precious time thinking of you in any way at all, my lord,” Gabrielle countered, nodding a greeting to a female passerby, who was looking at her in undisguised envy for having snagged St. Clair yet again for his first waltz of the evening.
“Too true, Miss Laurence, too true,” St. Clair said, his hand on her waist gripping just a hair tighter than it had before, causing another unwelcome, disturbing frisson of awareness to sing through her blood. “You are much too occupied in forwarding yourself to think of others. Fame is fleeting, dear girl, and you are clever to enjoy the pinnacle of popularity upon which I have placed you while you can. Consider this: I may deign to cut you tomorrow, and all your fine success would come crashing down around your ears. Wouldn’t that be dreadful? Perhaps you should encourage our fuzzy-cheeked viscount to offer for you while you still bask in the sunshine of my approval.”
“I am visiting this fair city only to enjoy the Season, my lord. I am not on the hunt for a wealthy husband, not in the least,” Gabrielle bit out from between clenched teeth, still maintaining her smile, but with an effort, for she knew she was lying. Lying, and desperate, not that she could ever allow St. Clair to know.
“You don’t wish to marry? Gad, there’s a shocker! Feel free to perceive me as astonished!” St. Clair countered. “Then I was wrong to take one look at your meticulously constructed facade of gentility and see an empty-headed, fortune-mad beauty out to snare a deep-in-the-pockets title? Forgive me, Miss Laurence. I should have realized that you are in hopes of setting up an intellectual salon, or perhaps intent upon conquering Society in order to gain their cooperation with some private agenda you have yet to reveal—a series of good words, perhaps?”
Gabrielle opened her mouth to argue with him, but he cut her off.
“But, no. That isn’t it. Why, do you know what I think? I think you loathe and detest men. Don’t you, Miss Laurence? You hate us and wish to have us all fall in love with your beauty so that you might, one by one, grind our broken hearts in the dust. Why didn’t I see it before? How deep you are, Miss Laurence. How very deep.”
“Oh, cut line, St. Clair!” Gabrielle declared hotly as, the waltz over, he took hold of her elbow and guided her toward the balcony. “I may as well admit it, for it is obvious to me that you will keep mouthing inanities until I do. Yes, like every other unattached young lady here this evening, I am on the hunt for a rich, titled husband. The deeper his pockets and the loftier his title the better. I am mercenary, hardheaded, strong-willed, and so depraved by my ambition as to be capable of debasing myself by being polite to you in order to advance my standing in Society. Fortunately for my plans, in general I enjoy the company of gentlemen. It is only you I despise. There! Are you happy now?”
“Ecstatic, my dear,” St. Clair answered genially, drawing her toward a small stone bench and motioning for her to be seated. He then spread his lace-edged handkerchief beside her and, carefully splitting his coattails, sat down himself. “I had begun to wonder if you were to be content merely trading barbs as we have done this past fortnight. But we have progressed. We are becoming, at long last, entirely open with each other. You despise me, and I return the compliment.”
“Which in no way explains why you have deigned to bring me into fashion,” Gabrielle said, studying Lord St. Clair out of the corner of her eye, taking in the sight of his expressive winged eyebrows above eyes that turned from blue to lightest green with his moods, the straight, aquiline nose he looked down to such effect, the shape of his generous mouth, the marvelous way his longish, light, golden mane was tied back in a small queue.
The man wasn’t simply handsome, drat him. He was beautiful! What a pity the Fates, which had gifted him with such beauty, had somehow neglected to stuff his handsome skull with a brain. Or was she as wrong in assuming that as she was in her protestations that she couldn’t abide him?
“So, as we are being honest this evening—why have you chosen to bring me into favor, my lord?” she dared to ask outright, wearying of their constant fencing.
St. Clair produced a small enameled box from his waistcoat and went about the business of taking snuff, his expertise in the movements of the procedure marred only at the last, when he screwed up his handsome face most comically, pinched two fingers against the bridge of his nose, and then gave out with a prodigious sneeze.
She giggled, unable to help herself, for he looked so silly. Almost adorably silly.
“Ah, please forgive me, Miss Laurence,” he said, drawing a more serviceable handkerchief from his sleeve and wiping delicately at his nose. “Deuced evil habit, snuff. I’ve seen men with half their noses eaten away from the stuff.”
He gave a horrified shiver, then smiled. “Do you know what, Miss Laurence? I believe I will forswear the nasty habit beginning this very evening, if only by way of a public service, as no one will dare take snuff if St. Clair does not. Am I not wonderful to use my elevated stature for the betterment of mankind? Indeed, I am confident I am, especially when I consider my vast and most costly collection of snuffboxes. Too small to make into posy pots, I imagine I shall just have to give them all away to needy snuff takers in Piccadilly. And then I believe I shall reward myself with a new waistcoat. I saw the most interesting fabric the other day—silver, with mauve roses. Now, dear girl, what were you saying?”
“Never mind, my lord.” Gabrielle rolled her eyes, giving up any notion that she would ever understand this man, and telling herself that she didn’t want to understand him. He was probably only what she saw before her: a paper-skulled, imbecilic clotheshorse with more hair than wit, more self-consequence than a strutting cock, and all the mental acumen of a cracked walnut. She would be the world’s greatest fool to believe otherwise, no matter how pretty he was, no matter how many times his smiling face had invaded her dreams these past two weeks.
Besides, she believed she already knew why he had undertaken to champion her. He had done it simply to prove that he could take what he considered to be an unknown, fire-headed country bumpkin and raise her to the level of a Lady Ariana Tredway. The only thing she couldn’t understand was why he allowed her to speak so uncivilly to him—and why he found it so necessary to be mean to her whenever no one was about to overhear them.
And one more thing bothered her, unnerved her, haunted her in the night long after she should have found her rest. Her reaction to each touch of his hand, each penetrating look of his oddly intelligent, impossible-to-read eyes. Why, she could almost think herself attracted to him, if she didn’t believe herself above such nonsense.
“Yes, well then,” St. Clair said as the silence between them lengthened, rising and holding out his hand to her after retrieving his lace handkerchief, “as we seem to have run out of cutting things to say to each other, may I suggest we return to the ballroom? We have been absent for a sufficient length of time for those who are inclined to low thoughts to have taken it into their heads that we have been indulging in a romantic assignation. Why I continue to be so kind to you I do not know, but once again I have served to raise your consequence. Now, I fear, I must reward myself by twirling a less unwieldy partner around the floor and then take my leave. I wouldn’t wish for Lady Undercliff to preen overmuch at having snagged me for an entire evening.”
“Unwieldy?” Gabrielle angrily snatched her hand from his, stung by this latest in a string of insults even as she relaxed in her resurgence of anger, which was much easier to deal with than any softening of her feelings toward the inane dandy. “I’ll have you know I am considered to be a wonderful dancer.
