friend gave her arm a gently reassuring squeeze. ‘We are only going to speak to them, darling. Play hostess for Sophia whilst she deals with the unexpected arrival of the Earl of Sherbourne.’ Genevieve glanced across the ballroom to where the lady appeared to be in low but heated conversation with the rakish Dante Carfax, a close friend of Devil and Lucifer.
Just as the three widows were now close friends …
It was sheer coincidence that Sophia Rowlands, Duchess of Clayborne, Genevieve Forster, Duchess of Woollerton, and Pandora Maybury, Duchess of Wyndwood, had all been widowed within weeks of each other the previous spring. The three women, previously strangers, had swiftly formed an alliance of sorts when they had emerged from their year of mourning a month ago, drawn to each other by their young and widowed state.
But Genevieve’s suggestion a few minutes ago, that the three of them each ‘take one lover, if not several before the Season was ended’, had thrown Pandora more into a state of turmoil than anticipation.
‘Nevertheless—’
‘Our dance, I believe, your Grace?’
Pandora had not thought she would ever be pleased to see Lord Richard Sugdon, finding that young gentleman to be unpleasant in both his studied good looks and over-familiar manner whenever they chanced to meet. But, having found it impossible to think of a suitable reason to refuse earlier when he had pressed her to accept him for the first waltz of the evening, Pandora believed she now found even his foppish company preferable to that of the more overpowering and dangerous Rupert Stirling or Benedict Lucas.
‘I had not forgotten, my lord.’ She gave Genevieve a brief, apologetic smile as she placed her hand lightly upon Lord Sugdon’s arm before allowing herself to be swept out on to the ballroom floor.
‘Good Lord, Dante, what has put you in such a state of disarray?’ Rupert Stirling, the Duke of Stratton, enquired upon entering the library at Clayborne House later that same evening, and instantly noticing the dishevelled state of one of his two closest friends as he stood across the room. ‘Or perhaps I should not ask …’ he drawled speculatively as he detected a lady’s perfume in the air.
‘Perhaps you should not,’ Dante Carfax, Earl of Sherbourne, bit out. ‘Nor do I need bother in asking what—or should I say, whom—is succeeding in keeping Benedict amused?’
‘Probably best if you did not,’ Rupert chuckled softly.
‘Would you care to join me in a brandy?’ The other man held up the decanter from which he was refilling his own glass.
‘Why not?’ Rupert accepted as he closed the library door behind him. ‘I have long suspected that my stepmother would eventually succeed in driving me either to drink or to committing murder!’
Pandora—having found herself trapped in a corner of the ballroom with Lord Sugdon once their dance came to an end, and only managing to escape his company a few minutes ago when another acquaintance had engaged him in conversation—could not help now but overhear the two gentlemen’s conversation as she stood on the terrace directly outside the library.
‘Then let it be drink this evening,’ Dante Carfax answered his friend. ‘Especially as the Duchess has been thoughtful enough to conveniently leave a decanter of particularly fine brandy and some excellent cigars here in the library for her male guests to enjoy.’ There was the sound of glass chinking and liquid being poured.
‘Ah, much better.’ Devil Stirling sighed in satisfaction seconds later after he had obviously taken a much-needed swallow of the fiery alcohol.
‘What are the three of us even doing here this evening, Stratton?’ his companion drawled lazily as he threw wide the French doors out on to the terrace with the obvious intention of allowing the escape of the smoke from their cigars.
‘In view of your dishevelled state, your own reasons are obvious, I should have thought,’ the other gentleman remarked. ‘And Benedict kindly agreed to accompany me, once I told him of my need to spend an evening away from the cloying company of my dear stepmama.’
Dante Carfax gave a hard laugh. ‘I’ll wager the fair Patricia does not enjoy being referred to as such by you.’
‘Hates it,’ the other man confirmed with grim satisfaction. ‘Which is the very reason I choose to do it. Constantly!’
Devil by name and devil by nature …
The thought came unbidden to Pandora as she remained unmoving in the shadows of the terrace, having no wish to draw the attention of the gentlemen to her presence outside by making even the slightest of noises.
The aroma of their cigars now wafting out of the open French doors was a nostalgic reminder to Pandora of happier times in her own life. A time when she had been younger and so very innocent, with seemingly not a care in the world as she attended such balls as this one with her parents.
Occasions when she would not have felt the need, as she had this evening, to flee out on to the terrace in order to prevent any of Sophia’s tonnish guests from seeing that Pandora had finally been reduced to humiliated tears by Lord Sugdon’s blatant and crude suggestions …
Not that most of the ton would care if she did find herself insulted, many of society not even acknowledging her existence, or troubling themselves to speak to her, let alone caring if she constantly found herself being propositioned by those gentlemen brave enough to risk her scandalous company.
Indeed, if it were not for the insistence of Sophia and Genevieve in having her also received at whatever social functions they chose to attend, then Pandora believed she would have found herself completely ostracised since she had ventured to return to society a month ago.
‘A futile exercise, as it happens,’ Rupert Stirling continued wearily, ‘now that my father’s widow is also recently arrived at the Duchess’s ball.’
‘Oh, I am sure that Sophia did not—’
‘Don’t get in a froth, Dante, I am not blaming your Sophia—’
‘She is not my Sophia.’
‘No? Then I was mistaken just now in the perfume I recognised as I entered the room?’
There was the briefest of pauses before the other gentleman replied reluctantly, ‘No, you were not mistaken. But Sophia continues to assure me I am wasting my time pursuing her.’
Pandora’s mind was agog with the implication of this last conversation. Sophia? And Dante Carfax? Surely not, when Sophia lost no occasion in which to criticise the rakishly handsome Earl of Sherbourne …
‘Would not the taking of a wife solve at least part of your own problem, Rupert, in that the Dowager Duchess would then have no choice but to leave off living openly with you in your homes, at least?’ Dante now asked.
‘Do not think I have not considered doing just that,’ the other man rasped.
‘And?’
‘And it would no doubt solve one problem, but surely bring about another.’
‘How so?’
‘In that I would then be saddled for the rest of my life with a wife
