life like a moth might to a flame and being burned to a cinder. There was nowhere else, or no one else. This was it.
He had always been alone and he always would be.
Two weeks in the London Season had already seemed like a month and this was the fourth ball Adelaide had been to in as many nights. The same grandeur, the same people, the same boring chatter concerned only with marriage prospects, one’s appearance and the size of a suitor’s purse.
She was tired of it, though tonight the crowd was thicker and those attending did not all have the rarefied look of the ton. A less lofty gathering, she decided, and hence more interesting. Lady Harcourt beside her did not look pleased.
‘Lord and Lady Bradford are rumoured to be enamoured by the changing tides of fortune and one can see that in some of the guests present—a lot of wealth but no true class. Perhaps we should not have come at all, Penbury?’
Her uncle only laughed and finished his drink. ‘Adelaide isn’t a green girl, Imelda, and I am certain she can discern whom to speak with and whom to avoid. In truth, even those with genuine titles seem to be rougher these days, less worried by the way a fortune is made or lost.’ His eyes fixed on a group of men in the corner.
At that very moment the tallest of them raised his glass and said something that made the others laugh. Adelaide noticed he wore a thick band of silver around one of his fingers and that the cuff on his shirt was intricately embroidered in bronze thread. He was everything she had never liked in a man, a fop and a dandy, handsome to the point of beautiful and knowing it. Nearly every woman in the salon looked his way.
From her place to one side of a wide plastered pillar she watched him, too. Out of a pure and misplaced appreciation, she supposed, the length of his hair as extraordinary as every other feature upon him.
‘The Earl of Wesley is the most handsome man in the King’s court, would you not say, Miss Ashfield?’ Miss Lucy Carrigan’s voice rose above the chatter, breathless and adoring. ‘It is understood that his London town house has mirrors on every wall so that he might look at himself from all possible angles.’
‘And he would boast of this?’ The frown that never left the forehead of Lucy Carrigan deepened.
‘Well, if you were that beautiful, Miss Ashfield, should you not wish to look upon your form, too?’
Adelaide could only laugh at such a thought. My goodness, the girl was serious. She struggled to school in her mirth and find kindness.
‘Perhaps it would be so.’
‘My cousin Matilda said Lord Wesley kissed her once when she was much younger and she has never forgotten the feelings his expertise engendered. Indeed, she is long married and yet she still brings up the subject every few months.’
‘And her husband is happy to hear this?’
‘Oh, Norman can hardly object. It was Lord Wesley himself who introduced them to each other and steered them on to the pathway of Holy Matrimony.’
‘Which he believes in?’
‘Pardon?’
‘The earl? Is he married?’
Peals of laughter were the only answer. ‘Oh, dear me, no. A man like that is hardly going to be tied down to one female, is he, though word has it he did come close.’
‘Close?’
‘To Mrs Henrietta Clements. Some dreadful accident took her life a few months back, but the whole thing was hushed up quickly because she had left her wedded husband for Wesley. A scandal it was and the main topic of conversation for weeks after.’
Normally Adelaide stayed clear of such gossip, but fourteen days of society living had broken down her scruples somewhat and Lucy Carrigan for all her small talk was proving most informative.
‘And so the earl was heartbroken?’
‘Ahhh, quite the opposite. For a while nobody saw him at all, but then he began to spend far more time in the vicinity of fast women with questionable morals.’
‘You speak of London’s brothels?’ Adelaide could not quite work out what she meant.
The other reddened considerably and dropped her voice. ‘No lady of any repute should ever admit to knowing about such things, Miss Ashfield, even amongst friends.’ Lucy Carrigan’s eyes again perused the figure of the one they spoke about and Adelaide regarded him, too.
The Earl of Wesley was tall and broad with it, the foppish clothes out of character with his build. But the arrogance was not to be mistaken and nor was the intricately tied cravat that stood up under his chin and echoed the style of the day. The Mathematical, she had heard it called, with its three demanding and precise creases, one horizontal and two diagonal.
He stood with his back to the wall. Even as others came to join the group he was within, he still made certain that he faced any newcomer. And he watched. Everyone. Even her. She looked quickly away as bleached golden eyes fell by chance upon her face.
Lady Harcourt beside her was fussing about the heat in the room and the noise of the band. Tired of listening to her constant stream of complaints, Adelaide signalled to her chaperon that she wished to use the ladies’ retiring room and quietly moved away, glad when Imelda did not insist on accompanying her.
A moment later a small bench to one side of the salon caught her attention, a row of flowering plants placed before it allowing a temporary shelter. Glancing around to see that no one observed her, she pushed the greenery aside and slipped through, sitting down to stretch her legs. A row of windows before her overlooked a garden.
She had escaped, if momentarily, from the inane and preposterous world of being presented to society and she planned to enjoy every fleeting second of it.
‘Ten more weeks,’ she enunciated with feeling. ‘Ten more damned weeks.’
A slight noise to one side had her turning and with shock she registered a man standing there. Not just any man, either, but the foppish and conceited Earl of Wesley.
Without being surrounded by admirers and sycophants he looked more menacing and dangerous. Almost a different person from the one she had been watching a few moments earlier if she were honest. The pale gold of his eyes was startling as he looked towards her.
‘Ten more damned weeks, until...what?’
A dimple in his right cheek caught the light of a small flickering lamp a few feet away, sending shadows across the face of an angel. A hardened angel, she amended, for there was something in his expression that spoke of distance and darkness.
‘Until I can return home, my lord. Until this dreadful society Season of mine is at last over.’ The honesty of her response surprised her. She usually found strangers hard to talk to. Especially men who held all of the ton in thrall as this one did.
‘You do not enjoy the glamour and intrigue of high courtly living, Miss...?’
‘Miss Adelaide Ashfield from Northbridge
