Chapter 2
Chapter Two
“Gerald! Lady Ralston! How good to see you both again. How are your stables this year? Any new hunters?”
Once seated beside Rose, Magnus immediately struck up conversation with guests on his other side, recognizing a couple of Cassius’ neighbors who shared his interest in horses. Rose was glad, needing a few minutes to digest all that Madeline had just told her.
While the tales of the Duke of Ravenhill were outrageous and intriguing, the man himself could be of no personal interest to Rose, and she sighed her disappointment.
Her ideal right now would be a shy young man who loved novels, just as she did.
They could talk, dance, and then marry. Somehow or other, they would produce a sweet little family and be happy together…
The dining room door opened abruptly, just as the guests were finally seated and the servants were bringing through an array of tureens and steaming silver platters from an anteroom.
A tall, striking man with slightly overlong black hair walked in ahead of the butler, still carrying his silver-topped walking cane and taking off his gloves.
Only the man’s footsteps and a faint murmur of anticipation from guests broke the silence that had fallen around the room with his entrance. His expression was amused and insouciant.
“Don’t mind me,” said the newcomer in a deep and mellifluous voice, on perceiving his effect on the company. “I did write ahead to say that I would be a little delayed. Do I still have a place at the luncheon table, Cassius? Or should I go and do my penance in the library?”
As the man smiled and looked around the other guests, Rose had to acknowledge that he was indeed very handsome.
The reaction of several women around the table told her that Madeline had not exaggerated his attractiveness.
His eyes were intense and quite as dark as his hair, with eyebrows to match.
The duke’s cheekbones were razor sharp, and his mouth strong and assured.
Rose knew instinctively that Dorian Voss was not someone who had ever suffered from shyness or had ever shrank from the company of the opposite sex.
Several young ladies were already blushing eagerly under the Duke of Ravenhill’s penetrating gaze, and the Dowager Marchioness of Lepford was casting quite shamelessly inviting glances of her midnight-blue eyes in his direction.
Rose’s earlier ideas about seeking the society of Dorian Voss in order to impress Edwin seemed more ridiculous than ever now that he was here in the flesh.
The Duke of Ravenhill could have nothing in common with the ideal husband she imagined for herself.
From the little that Madeline had communicated, likely he did not even seek a wife.
Rose was determined to avoid him as much as she could.
“Come in, Dorian,” answered Cassius, Duke of Ashbourne, standing up with an amused expression.
“Do hand over your outdoor clothes and take a seat. No one need move or go anywhere. There’s a space by my wife down there.
Josephine is perhaps the only woman here whom I am entirely confident of being immune to your charms… ”
The Duke and Duchess of Ashbourne shared a look of loving humor at these words, and something more than that, too.
Rose felt slightly warm merely from watching the silent intelligence passing between the still relatively newlywed couple.
It was obvious that Josephine and Cassius adored one another.
How wonderful it must be to love and be loved in such a way!
Soon lost in daydreams of love once more, Rose absently watched a maid serving chicken soup and then took a bread roll from a platter on the table before her, sighing to herself as she broke it into small pieces on a side plate.
“What a very long sigh,” remarked a man’s voice, deep and musical, seeming to make something vibrate in Rose’s chest before she even realized he was addressing her personally.
Looking up, startled, Rose found that the seat Cassius had commended to the late arrival was unfortunately opposite her own.
The too-charming Duke of Ravenhill was gazing directly at Rose with frank interest in his almost-black eyes.
It was a look that took the warmth of her daydreaming, struck sparks in her belly, and ignited her blood so that her cheeks burned with heat.
“Sighs often are long, Your Grace,” Rose retorted, surprised at how clearly and steadily her voice emerged, despite the quickening beat of her heart.
Glancing sideways in the hope that Magnus might intervene and divert this man’s unsettling attention, she saw that her brother was still caught up in his animated horse conversation.
Rose did not like to interrupt him without cause and doubted Magnus would understand that it disturbed her to be studied in this way.
Why should the Duke of Ravenhill look at her like that?
Rose was not at all sure whether she liked it, particularly since there had been no chance for formal introduction, and he would not even know her name.
Wasn’t the attention of so many other women around the table enough for him?
Did Dorian Voss think Rose was one of his models or actresses?
That idea made her feel unusually indignant.
Rose only hoped that the duke would quickly lose interest in her, as most gentlemen did once they realized how painfully shy she could be. Her non-committal reply, however, seemed somehow to encourage him.
“You sigh beautifully,” the duke observed, those black eyes still trained intently on her face. “Then, I am sure you do all things beautifully. I do not see how it could be otherwise.”
Rose had no idea how to respond to such a comment, unsure whether it was even a compliment or something else more dangerous.
An invitation? There was something in the intensity of his sculpted face that seemed almost predatory, and she wished she could look away, or even better, run from the room.
At one-and-twenty, however, proper behavior was expected from a young lady, even when discomposed.
“Could you pass me the butter, please, Your Grace?” Rose asked after a few moments, once she realized that Dorian Voss was still waiting for some sort of response from her, and knowing it would be rude to say nothing at all.
At this polite request, the Duke of Ravenhill laughed and acceded.
“Your wish is my command, My Lady,” he added as he passed the required dish, that unnerving smile still lingering at the corners of his too-handsome mouth, although he thankfully said nothing further.
Rose took a sip of wine and then tried to occupy herself with the soup as various conversations rose and fell around her.
She was particularly glad to hear Lady Lepford’s voice addressing the Duke of Ravenhill, praying that the charms of this acknowledged society beauty would soon eclipse whatever he might briefly have found interesting in Rose.
“Was your business in Chelsea concluded successfully, Your Grace?” asked the golden-haired dowager marchioness.
Lady Lepford was an elegant and shapely woman, somewhere in her thirties, enjoying both the title from her long-dead husband and the considerable fortune of her own diamond mining family. Rank, money, and beauty together gave her all the social cachet and independence she could want.
“Most successfully, Lady Lepford,” Rose heard Dorian Voss answer, his voice as deep and resonant as a rumble of distant thunder. “I trust your own recent visit to Edinburgh was equally felicitous.”
Lady Lepford laughed somewhat archly.
“Most felicitous, thank you. There is, however, always virtue and pleasure in returning to ones old friends, I find…”
Now the two of them laughed together at a joke Rose could not make out, although she was gathering that they must know one another well. Uncomfortable both with the Duke of Ravenhill’s presence and her own eavesdropping, she forced herself to focus elsewhere.
Rose raised her eyes cautiously to look around the table.
If she wished to make Edwin happy, whom else might she seek to know from this party?
Her gaze lighted on the Earl of Gillingham, a tall, thin man with light brown hair and silver-framed spectacles, whom she remembered being introduced as a collector of antique books.
Lord Gillingham was an unassuming bachelor who had not engaged in last night’s games or fun, had gone to bed early, and had barely looked up from his newspaper at breakfast time.
Rose gathered that he was there with his more sociable sister Lady Susan and her husband Sir Arthur Golden, who were both determined to “bring him out of himself.” Was Lord Gillingham shy like Rose?
An idea began to form in Rose’s mind as she contemplated the oblivious gray-suited man halfway down the table.
In the present fever of her blood, the initial seed grew, bloomed, and bore fruit quickly.
Within minutes, she had begun to see Lord Gillingham as an ideal husband – quietly spoken , bookish, and unlikely to ever wish to be the center of attention in a room.
How wonderful if she could strike up an acquaintance at this house party with a man who could so easily be her one true love.
In her mind’s eye, Rose imagined walking together with Lord Gillingham in gardens and libraries, talking earnestly of everlasting love, promising their hearts to one another…
Then, she imagined winning the approval of her brothers and seeing the joy of her father on discovering she was to marry such a suitable gentleman.
Madeline and her younger sister and cousin could be Rose’s bridesmaids, and they would all wear flowers in their hair, just as lovely as those worn at Josephine and Cassius’ wedding three months ago.