Prologue #2
Amelia’s smile softened slightly. “Thank you. I will take your advice into consideration. The wedding is still a few weeks away, but I have already begun collecting pieces of knowledge to take with me into my new role.”
The woman sniffed. “See that you do.”
It was with no small relief that, when she glanced around the woman’s quavering plumage, she met her fiancé’s eyes.
Her stomach flipped in excitement, a thousand butterflies taking flight at once.
He knew her so well, correctly interpreting her silent plea for help, and immediately cut a swath across the room.
Lean and tall with deep chocolate hair, dark, intense eyes and bold slashes of brows, he was strikingly handsome.
And when he smiled…Amelia’s knees never failed to grow weak.
Now, he fixed that charming grin upon the matron who’d held Amelia captive for nearly half an hour.
Leave it to him to be her knight, come to rescue her.
He’d stolen her breath the very first time their eyes met, and every time since then.
She wondered if that reaction would ever dull with time; she certainly hoped it would not.
She’d grown quite attached to the way her heart skipped, how her body tingled whenever he was near.
His manners and mien had a way of drawing one in; everything about him projected confidence without arrogance.
He was perfect, and she did not know how she, of all women, had managed to catch his eye.
Smoothly, Dorian greeted the ladies and bowed deeply over the older woman’s gloved hand. “You look stunning this evening, Lady Opton. An absolute vision.”
All her previous gripes about men seemingly forgotten, the old woman’s scowl melted away and was reformed into a wide smile, as if her face had been made of wax set to a candle’s flame.
“You are utterly shameless, Lord Stadewell. Shameless!” Did she actually titter when he pressed his lips to her knuckle?
Amelia had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing aloud at the absurdity.
“I simply say things as they are.” He tilted his head and offered Amelia the barest hint of a wink. “Were I a few years older, my poor betrothed might have cause to worry about losing my affections to a lady such as yourself.”
The woman cackled with delight. “Only a few years?”
“Most assuredly,” the earl said, all gravitas.
“Alas, I was born in the wrong generation, but Miss Alvin and I will make a go of it the best we can.” He slipped Amelia’s arm through his without a glance.
“Speaking of which, I do believe this next dance is mine. If you will excuse us.” Without giving Lady Opton a chance to protest, he swept Amelia away with all the grace and guile of someone well-seasoned in the delicate art of Society interactions.
Finally free, Amelia clutched his strong arm and released a fit of giggles. “How do you do that?”
“Do what?” He grinned down at her, filling her vision with straight, white teeth and devilish dimples.
“So easily charm and enthrall everyone with whom you interact. Prior to your arrival, Lady Opton couldn’t say enough horrid things about men and the institution of marriage.”
“Hm. She must be related to Lord Hart,” he muttered.
“And then you swoop in like a knight, and she is practically swooning like a piqued debutante at your feet.”
“Can you blame her?”
“It is utterly maddening how you make everyone fall in love with you,” she said with a laugh.
“It comes in handy,” Dorian murmured, his eyes flitting to her lips. “And I do believe my skills have worked quite well on you.”
“It took more than your pretty words and a few flirtatious glances, Dorian.” It had been weeks since he’d asked her to use his given name, but she’d only felt right doing so after their engagement became formal—even then, only when no one else was in earshot.
Her heart danced a little jig each time she used it, and she could tell he liked it as well.
She swore his eyes darkened several shades whenever she addressed him as such.
She might have thought it was a trick of the light had she not come to recognize the same thing happened right before he gave in to temptation and kissed her.
“Maybe a few flowers and well-timed compliments—oy!” He made a little yelp when her elbow sneakily caught him in his ribs.
“You know perfectly well that there was more to it than that.”
“Oh?” He arched a brow as they took their place on the dance floor and assumed their proper positions. “Pray, what are the reasons you’ve fallen so madly in love with me?”
Amelia tried to remain unmoved by the seductive dip in his tone, but he knew well what it did to her. A frisson of awareness traveled the entire length of her body; her toes curled in her slippers.
What could she say? That she’d been fascinated by him from the first?
That she loved his humor and his quick wit?
That she loved how not a day went by that he did not make her laugh?
That she loved all the little ways he told her he was thinking of her—when he delivered a new book he knew she would appreciate, when he made sure his mother knew to have her favorite foods served whenever their families dined together, how he never let her win their races in the park because he understood and appreciated how she’d never respect him for it?
That she suspected there had never been a truer, more loyal man to have walked the earth?
That never in her life had she felt such love for another person, and experienced such love in return?
Dorian Poole, Earl of Stadewell and future Marquess of Kempton, was utterly perfect, as far as Amelia was concerned.
For a titled man of his age, his reputation was impeccable.
He had not been attached to any scandals, and, though they had not expressly discussed it, Amelia strongly suspected that he was far less experienced than some of the pack with whom he kept pace.
There was something innocent in his sweet gestures—his hesitance to compromise her with so much as a passionate kiss—that gave her the impression that he wasn’t the flirt Lord Hart was, the charmer Lord Easton was, or the intense rakehell Lord Brinley was.
It made her nearly giddy to think that she and Dorian would learn alongside one another, lean on one another, and explore together.
“I have my reasons,” she breathed, feeling somewhat awestruck as she looked up at him and felt his warmth through their gloves.
Their wedding day could not come soon enough, as far as Amelia was concerned.
Later that evening, Dorian stepped out onto the terrace for a bit of cool air and a cheroot.
Unfortunately, he also needed to put some space between himself and Amelia.
They’d already partaken in their allotted two dances—a bloody idiotic rule if ever there was one—and he did not care to watch her twirl in the arms of other men.
As he examined the cherry-red tip of his cheroot in the inky night, he silently vowed that, when they were married, he and Amelia would dance as frequently as they desired. Society could hang, for all he cared.
“Dorian?” A woman’s voice came from the shadows. He turned but did not immediately locate the speaker.
“Hello?” he called softly. Amelia wouldn’t have had the temerity to follow him outside unchaperoned, would she? He knew he’d be fairly powerless to resist her if she had.
A woman dressed in a bejeweled gown the color of a summer’s night stepped into a ray of golden candlelight from a nearby window. Her silver-blond hair twinkled with brilliant jewels, glittering almost as much as her pale blue eyes in the moonlight.
“Cecily,” Dorian said, greeting her with the placid indifference of a man who’d once shared intimate relations with a woman, but they’d both moved on—him, with Amelia, and she, with a decorated general in His Majesty’s militia, if rumors were to be believed.
She was a few years older than he, but she’d been widowed young after marrying a man nearly twice her age.
They’d struck up a dalliance after an introduction Hart had orchestrated, but the last time he’d spoken to her had been months before.
Her full lips curved into the shy smile Dorian had once found irresistible. “I was hoping to see you tonight.”
“Oh?” he inquired, only half listening as he exhaled a curling cloud of fragrant smoke.
“Yes, I was hoping to speak with you. In fact, I’ve been trying to work up to it for quite some time.”
One by one, Dorian’s muscles began to tense. He took in the way Cecily twisted her fingers and her nervous posture, and he turned to face her fully.
“What is this about?” he asked warily.
“You see, I’ve given it a great deal of thought…and I believe we should reconsider our arrangement.”
“Our arrangement?” Dorian frowned. “We no longer have an arrangement; in fact, we have not for some time now.” They’d been bedmates off and on for a period of a few months, nothing more, and that had long since been terminated.
As far as Dorian knew, they’d both entered into the arrangement with the understanding that it was finite, purely physical, and nothing would come of it.
He was a hot-blooded young man, and she was a woman with needs.
Though his experience was rather limited in this regard, the few lovers he had taken were always treated with respect and, after the inevitable termination of their time together, that respect continued in public settings if they ever encountered one another.
He’d never been a man to flaunt his dalliances as some of his friends had; he liked to think he had a bit more decorum.
“But we could.” She approached him, dipping in and out of shadows as she moved, appearing and reappearing like a fevered nightmare.
“We both agreed to terminate our relationship,” Dorian reminded her. “It was a temporary arrangement. Besides, I am betrothed.”
“I know.”
“Then why are you making such an offer?”