His drawing room was crammed with girls waiting to meet him and his fortune. Not one of the girls held his attention. His attention was free to wander about the room at will. And it did, stopping frequently on the slender, blonde woman by the window, who stood alone sipping sherry in that stunning red dress.
By the time the butler summoned them for dinner, he’d come to a disappointing conclusion: as different as they were in appearance, the girls all shared two things in common—they giggled at everything he said even when it wasn’t particularly witty and they all wanted his money.
‘Give them time, Sutton,’ his mother cajoled, reading his mind as he took her into the ballroom for supper. They’d decided beforehand that it would be an unfair advantage for him to take a girl into dinner the first night. ‘The girls are young. The stakes are high for them. Their parents are watching their every move.’
‘Once I see them in their natural habitats, playing the pianoforte or games, or picnicking, they’ll start to act more like their true selves? Is that it?’ The words came out more cynically than he intended.
‘Dear lord, Sutton, “their natural habitats”? Really? You make this sound like a zoo.’
‘Tell me I’m wrong.’ He was starting to think his fabulous idea of a house party was a mistake and now his ballroom was full of dinner tables and moon-eyed girls. He’d never wanted to be back down in his stables so badly.
She tapped his sleeve with her fan as he walked her to her place. ‘Cream will rise to the top, dear boy, just wait and see.’ Sutton hoped there was enough time. In his experience at the dairy, cream took a while to separate. He wasn’t sure he had that much time.
Sutton made his way to his table, disappointed to find himself boxed in by Miss Lila Partridge on his left and Miss Imogen Bettancourt on his right, their beaming parents beside them ensuring his attention remained fixed on their daughters. A quick glance around the ballroom revealed even more disappointing news. The elusive lady in red was seated at a table near the door, lucky her. She could escape. He watched as she smiled to her tablemates, laughing as she leaned close to the gentleman beside her. She might be having the best time of anyone present and she was clearly not interested in him, not in the least, which suddenly made her, without doubt, the most intriguing woman in the room.
The first thing Elidh noticed about Sutton Keynes was that he wasn’t interested: in dinner, in the women around him, or in any of the proceedings. He most decidedly didn’t want to be here and, unlike her, he was doing nothing to hide his displeasure over the situation. He was not the showman she’d anticipated. While she laughed and flirted and interspersed her comments with a handful of Italian exclamations, pretending to enjoy herself, he sat woodenly at his table, surrounded by pretty dolls who catered to his slightest indicator of interest.
He might as well have been a doll himself for all the responsiveness he showed. A very handsome doll, though. He had his mother’s dark honey hair, thick with a hint of a wave that saved it from being straight. The candlelight in the ballroom picked up the honey hues, causing them to wink temptingly like veins of gold in a mine. And an open face. She liked that. The firm mouth, the strong nose, the eyes that expressed exactly how he felt at being here. Trapped. She couldn’t see the colour of his eyes at this distance, but she could see how they felt. They were restless, always scanning the room as if he were seeking a way out.
It was an outlandish thought that made no sense. Why would he be wanting to escape his own party? A party he’d planned for the express purpose of finding a wife? If it was not escape he sought, perhaps it was a particular woman he was looking for? His gaze quartered the room again and Elidh felt a little rill of awareness tremble down her spine, accompanied by the sensation that he was looking for her. It took all her bravado not to sink down in her chair, to keep her eyes and attentions fixed on the men at her table, all of whom might be candidates for her father’s play.
She’d felt his eyes on her in the drawing room, his gaze coming back to the window where she’d stood. She’d been careful not to turn around or to cultivate his attention just as she was careful now to be immersed here at her own table. Should he look in her direction, he would see a woman who was enjoying a good meal in a beautiful setting, and enjoying her popularity at her table, giving no thought to her wife-hunting host. But in both cases, it seemed her attempts to keep herself separate from the cluster of girls around him had created the opposite effect. Even now, she could feel his gaze stop on her table. She must put herself beyond his reach. Surely he would forget all about her soon enough if she wasn’t there to be remembered, especially with so many other girls clamouring for his attentions.
Elidh rose from the table. The delicious supper was coming to a close and she felt a keen need to escape their host’s gaze, keen enough to risk violating tradition. A lady didn’t dare leave the table before the hostess gave the signal, but perhaps with the unconventional seating arrangements and her own table so close to the door, no one would notice. She chose to risk it. ‘Gentlemen, if you will excuse me a moment. I feel slightly faint and in need of some air after such a lovely meal.’ Eight courses. She and her father had never eaten so well. Sometimes they had eight meals all week.
Outside the ballroom, Elidh searched for a door, an exit, anything that led to fresh air and privacy. When she didn’t find one, she settled for a velvet bench set before a large window at the end of the dark hall. No one would notice her there unless they were looking. She needed a moment alone, a moment to think before the post-supper activities began. Sutton Keynes’s visual attentions had unnerved her. Perhaps she was being overdramatic. Perhaps she’d even imagined them simply because they were the one thing she didn’t want. That was the deal she’d made with herself, despite her father’s wishes.
She was here to help her father find a patron. Nothing more. As the Prince and Principessa, they could sing her father’s praises incognito, secure a patron and disappear, resurfacing for the patron as themselves. The patron need never see the Italians again. Sutton Keynes’s attentions made the latter harder to do. If he fixed his attentions on her, disappearing became not only a difficult feat, but a potentially dangerous one.
Perhaps she could blame tonight on the red dress and Rosie’s artful design of braids. She’d hardly recognised herself when she’d looked in the mirror. That woman had been stunning—sophisticated, self-assured. That woman could charm a patron and she had. She could not have done otherwise. She needed the gown, the hair, and the cosmetics to charm the table, to do her duty to her father and to herself. Their survival through the winter would depend on their success here. The gown had succeeded admirably in that regard. Men had been hard pressed to look away. Apparently, even Sutton Keynes, despite the fact they’d been seated on the opposite side of the ballroom.
Yes, that made sense. Tonight was all because of the dress. Without the red dress, she would likely have been invisible. Tomorrow, dressed in pastels like the other girls, she would not stand out and Keynes would forget about her. Elidh closed her eyes and drew a deep breath, starting to feel better. She would give herself just a few minutes more of solitude and she’d go back to the party. She was seeing trouble where there was none. She’d conjured a crisis when the man hadn’t even crossed a room to meet her. He hadn’t even spoken with her yet and it would stay that way.
‘I thought I might find you out here.’
Elidh stiffened at the low voice in the dark. She was alone no longer. She opened her eyes slowly, careful not to jump or to show signs of being startled, careful to buy herself time, time to remember her role, time to hide her fear. A princess was never startled. A princess had the right to be wherever it was she wanted to be. Only guilty
