Chapter 1
The brooch brouhaha.
“You!”
Alice Marwick regarded the Duke of Hawkney with surprise. Known for his aloof good manners and a dedication to noblesse oblige, for perhaps the first time in his life—in public at least—he looked like someone had just presented him with a dead rat, and the object of his wrath was… Clara Halfpenny.
Well, now, that was interesting.
“Hawk!” Mr Nathaniel Ashford exclaimed, regarding his cousin with chagrin. He was a handsome fellow and recently engaged to the lady beside him, who had been introduced to Alice as Miss Margaret Bancroft.
Alice sighed, expecting at any moment to lunge and catch Clara, who would undoubtedly fall into a swoon at such an indelicate greeting.
Except she didn’t.
“Indeed,” Clara replied, stiffening her backbone and looking like she might bare her little white teeth given the slightest provocation.
Heavens! This was even more interesting.
The dowager was also watching this exchange with obvious fascination. “You know Miss Halfpenny, Hawkney?”
And then the inevitable happened: Alice looked at the dowager, something she had been determinedly not doing all evening, though the desire to take just a little peek had been so enticing.
Oh! Oh, but all the pretty, sparkly, glittering loveliness that the dowager had swathed herself in was simply too much to endure.
Everything else became background noise, the drowsy buzzing of an irritating wasp, a warning sound but not immediately dangerous.
In some part of her mind, Alice knew she would reflect upon the stunning outburst Clara was enacting for the duke with astonishment, but for now she was too spellbound to care.
Alice took in the stunning array of rubies, some of them big as quails' eggs, and curled her fingers tighter around the stem of her wineglass lest those wicked digits took matters into their own hands and got away from her. The temptation was nigh on irresistible.
“That’s ‘your grace.’”
Alice doubted the words the duke ground out would have penetrated her avaricious stupor, if not for Isabelle Honeywell pinching her arm. Alice jumped at the intervention and returned her attention to the scene in time to see Clara turn an interesting shade of sickly green.
“Excuse me,” the girl managed, and then fled.
“Well, well, Miss Halfpenny has a backbone after all,” the dowager said with a delighted smile.
His grace looked a tad less pleased.
“A backbone?” Hawkney repeated, incensed. “Did you not hear her? She’s a bold chit with no manners and a complete disregard for her betters.”
Mr Ashford shifted awkwardly, frowning at his cousin. “Lord, Hawk! Never mind her, hear yourself. When did you get so stuffy?”
The duke glared at him. “Did you listen to what she just said to me?”
“I did, and it sounded perfectly reasonable.” He shook his head at the duke in consternation. “I’ve never known you to bully shy young women, either, Hawk. What got into you?”
“That creature is not shy!” Hawkney protested.
“I can’t believe it.” Izzy turned to Alice with obvious confusion. Her eyes were wide with shock, giving Alice reason to believe she had missed something truly noteworthy. “Clara never says a word… to anyone.”
The dowager’s eyes glinted mischievously as she toyed with a huge diamond ring glittering on one hand. “It seems my grandson brings out her better nature.”
This remark sent the duke off in high dudgeon, though his grandmother seemed delighted by his irritation.
“Oh, dear,” Izzy said, clearly agitated. “You know, I don’t think Clara had the slightest idea of who he is. Did she, Miss Marwick?”
Alice, whose attention had once more been seized by the rubies, gave herself a mental shake and reminded herself she had friends now, a new and interesting development, and friends looked after one another—apparently.
“What? Oh. Oh! No. Indeed, she did not,” Alice agreed.
“I’m quite certain she didn’t,” the dowager said with a chuckle. “And it does Hawkney good to be taken down a peg or two now and then.”
“We’d best find her,” Izzy muttered to Alice, pushing her spectacles up her nose and gazing around the ballroom. “She’s probably hiding behind a potted palm by now.”
“Being sick in one, more like,” Alice remarked, belatedly noticing a young man watching her.
His intent expression made warning bells explode in her ears.
Mr Aubrey Seymour, cousin to the Duke of Hawkney.
She’d thought him a handsome fellow, with thick, waving auburn hair and the most astonishing green eyes.
They’d not long been introduced, and she’d been aware of a lingering look of admiration in his smile which had unnerved her.
His expression wasn’t so admiring now. Worse, he wasn’t looking at her at all, but at the splendid diamond brooch that sat snugly upon her less than impressive décolletage.
Alice groaned. She ought to have listened to Lill.
Hadn’t she warned her not to be so bloody reckless as to wear the lavish jewel to an event where half the ton would be present?
Yet, if she had not worn it tonight, she never would have had the chance, for when would she next be at such a splendid event?
Never. Not as a guest, at any rate. Yet the young man looked troubled, and Alice’s stomach did an unpleasant flip as she realised that was recognition in his eyes.
She had never in her life been more grateful for Izzy’s stoic care for Clara, as the girl grabbed her hand and towed her into the throng.
“Perhaps we ought to split up,” Alice said urgently, glancing over her shoulder to notice the young man was following her though the crowded ballroom with a look of determination simmering in his lovely green eyes.
To the devil with him! “We’ll cover more ground that way,” she added, feeling wretched for abandoning both Izzy and Clara, who deserved better, but self-preservation was uppermost in her mind.
Izzy nodded. “I’ll check the retiring room,” she said, and darted away.
Relieved to have rid herself of one difficulty, Alice hurried on, making good use of her elbows as she forced her way through the throng. Perhaps she could slip outside before the fellow caught up with her.
“Miss Marwick!”
Alice ignored the upper-class voice that sent prickles of irritation running up and down her spine.
She refused to feel so much as a twinge of remorse.
Lord Erskine was a vile man, everyone knew it, and he had thoroughly deserved to have a fortune in jewellery snatched from under his nose.
If this fellow recognised the piece, he was likely no angel.
So it was with no compunction whatsoever that Alice did what she did best and disappeared.
The Dowager Duchess of Hawkney’s Christmas Ball, Hatherley Hall, Little Valentine, 23rd December 1815
The Honourable Aubrey Seymour looked around the crowded ballroom and muttered an oath.
Devil take the girl, where had she gone?
It was like she’d vanished. He’d been certain his attention had been fixed upon her, or at least the back of her head, for her short dark hair had taken his fancy.
The silver ribbon she had wound through the curls made her grey eyes seem to glitter that very same shade.
And how they had glittered. Intelligence and a razor-like shrewdness had shone there and made him suspect she was unlike any of the other young woman here this evening.
Not the kind to delight in polite conversation and social chit-chat.
Though she had barely spoken, his interest had been piqued, and he had determined to ask her to dance, and then he’d seen the brooch.
His late mother’s brooch. The one that had been in his uncle’s possession the night his Aunt Pauline’s jewels had been stolen.
Yet now Miss Marwick had disappeared, and the likelihood of finding her again in this crush if she did not wish to be found was negligible.
Aubrey felt certain she had remarked his recognition of the brooch, and had fled on purpose, which posed some very interesting questions.
Questions he was most eager to put to Miss Marwick, if only the vexing creature hadn’t eluded him.
He swore again, quite forgetting his surroundings.
“Young man!” scolded an elderly lady whom he recognised as one of his grandmother’s cronies. She was dressed in the style of the last century and held a large ebony fan which she used to whack him with.
“Beg pardon, Lady Grafton,” he said hurriedly, and escaped before she could read him a lecture on the proper comportment of a gentleman.
“Aubrey! Aubrey, hold a moment, don’t run off!”
Aubrey sighed, having been about to do just that before his sister Vinnie’s voice reached him. Turning, he forced a smile as she hurried up to him.
“Isn’t it a splendid success? Grandmama is in alt. I’ve not seen her so delighted in years,” she said, her green eyes glinting with satisfaction. “And where were you about to dash off to?”
“I wasn’t,” he lied. It was pointless trying to find the woman now in any case. But Little Valentine was a small place and Miss Marwick lived here, so she could hardly evade him for long.
His sister looked lovely tonight, very much like the portrait of their mama that had been painted when she was a young woman.
Pain squeezed his heart, a pang of regret that their mother was not here to see her daughter looking so beautiful.
Dressed in an exquisite gown of pale gold, she shimmered, her rich auburn hair shining in the blaze of candlelight that illuminated his grandmother’s home.
“I saw you hurrying off after Miss Marwick. Were you hoping to dance with her?” Vinnie asked, a provocative smile curving her lips.