and fluttering their fans. He ran his eyes along the rank of them. A tall thin blonde, a short squat ginger piece, a medium-sized brunette with…
Good God. His sister, Issy, had not lied. She was here. Cassandra Furnival. Brazenly pushing her way back into society when by rights she ought never dare show her face. But then he should already have known she was brazen. Why hadn’t he learned his lesson when it came to her behaviour? She was the kind of girl who could entice a man to follow her out into a moonlit stable yard and almost make him forget the moral code by which he lived. The kind of girl who could, not one month later, entice an entirely different man to elope with her.
And that when she’d been scarce out of the schoolroom.
Back then she’d been pretty enough to cause two officers within the same regiment to lose their heads over her. Since then she’d only grown lovelier. To look at, that was. According to Issy, all that loveliness concealed the heart of an avaricious, designing baggage.
‘Nate,’ Issy had wailed, with tears trickling down her face, ‘if you don’t do something about her I don’t know who can.’
‘Do?’ He’d flung down his pen in exasperation, since not only had she burst into his study unannounced, but had also taken a chair even though she could see he was busy. And the tears meant she was not going to leave until she’d said her piece. ‘What do you expect me to do?’
‘Stop her! Before she gets some other unsuspecting male in her clutches and wheedles his fortune out of him, the way she did to poor Lady Agatha’s brother.’
Typical of Issy to use such emotionally charged words, in such a biased manner when, from what he’d observed of Lieutenant Gilbey and Miss Furnival, they’d both been equally culpable.
‘And just how,’ he’d said rather irritably, ‘do you think I could do such a thing? Even if you could convince me it was any of my business, which I don’t believe it is.’
Besides which, he had no wish to browbeat any female. It was not behaviour befitting an officer of His Majesty’s Army.
‘Of course it is your business! Lady Agatha’s brother was one of your junior officers. You can’t have forgotten poor Lieutenant Gilbey, can you?’
No, he hadn’t forgotten the lovelorn young man. He hadn’t forgotten any of the men who’d died while serving under his command. His life would now be far less uncomfortable if he only could.
‘Surely,’ Issy had persisted, ‘you can see that you owe it to his memory, to…to his family, too, who are all devastated to learn that Furnival girl is trying to worm her way back into society.’
He did owe the fallen a great deal. And their families. But surely not to the extent of coming the heavy with Miss Furnival? Not the Miss Furnival he recalled, anyway. She’d seemed a rather timid little thing, not this brazen harpy his sister was describing.
‘If she is as bad as you claim—’ and he wasn’t totally convinced of it ‘—I hardly think anyone is likely to receive her. You are probably making a fuss over nothing, Issy.’
‘It’s not nothing! Not to Lady Agatha. She was so cut up when she heard that girl had been taken up by that pea goose the Duchess of Theakstone that she left Town for fear she might accidentally come face to face with the designing baggage who cast her spell over her poor deluded brother.’
There had been a good deal more of the same. About how she’d brought some friend with her, too, who was from a background of trade and had no place in society ballrooms at all. Until, seeing that the only way he would be able to get his sister to leave him in peace to get on with his work would be to say that he would see what he could do.
Even though he had suspected much of what Issy claimed as fact would probably turn out to have no substance. He’d been certain that nobody would invite the girl anywhere, after what she’d done, even if she had taken up residence in London.
And so he hadn’t got as far as working out what he could really do about her, even if he did run her to ground.
So, for a moment, all he could do was stand stock still, staring at her. Just staring at her. Until she bent to listen to something the short, ginger girl was saying, and laughed.
Laughed!
As though she hadn’t a care in the world. When he…
He flinched as a series of stark and dreadful images surged to the forefront of his mind. Images he kept firmly locked away behind a sort of door in his memory. A good portion of them relating to Lieutenant Gilbey.
Gilbey sitting with his head in his hands. Gilbey pacing back and forth, his face tortured, after reading one of those damned letters she’d sent him. Gilbey’s shattered body staining the snow scarlet…
He found himself stalking across the room, dazed to discover that Issy had been right. And, that being the case, he did have to do something. Even though he didn’t know exactly what. Because, even though the hostess, Lady Bunsford, was hardly a leader of society, if the Furnival girl had got in here she would not stop until she’d gained the objective Issy had painted in such lurid colours. And that he could not allow.
The very moment he began to stalk towards her, she turned, as though sensing his interest. Looked at him. Frowned a bit, as though trying to work out why his face looked familiar.
And then her face lit up. As though she was delighted to see him again.
The power of that smile almost, almost made him falter. It was so warm. So welcoming. And promised so much. For a moment or two it felt as if she’d cast some kind of net, formed from invisible gossamer threads, and that she was reeling him in rather than him marching across a crowded ballroom to challenge her because that was his choice. The same way she’d done the very first time he’d met her, at that assembly near where the regiment had been based for a time. All she’d had to do, that long-ago night, was to look over her shoulder at him, wistfully, as she went through a door that would take her to the stable yard, and he’d trotted after her like a…like a dog called to heel. Even though he’d resisted the temptation to ask her to dance before that moment. Even though she was too young for him. For any man, so he’d thought. She’d been all promise. Blossom. Not ready to be plucked. And yet, oh, so damned alluring.
It was her mouth. The way the top lip pouted, as though inviting a man to suck it into his own mouth and…
No, it was her eyes. The liveliness that danced in them, making a man yearn to drown in their greeny-brown depths…
No, it was her skin. Which wasn’t blandly perfect like that of so many debutantes who reminded him of brittle porcelain. It was creamy and warm, and dotted here and there with moles which made his fingers itch to trace the course of their intriguing pattern…
‘Colonel Fairfax,’ she said, holding out her hand with the practised grace of a seasoned seductress.
No man could have resisted taking it, bending over it and bestowing the kiss she demanded. Least of all, as it turned out, him. Which infuriated him.
‘How delightful to see you again,’ she cooed, ‘after all this time.’
He straightened up and dropped her hand. Just because he acknowledged her beauty, her allure, it did not mean he was going to fall under her spell. Thanks to Issy he knew what she was,
