Chapter 6
Chapter Six
Beware, my friends, the traps of romantic entanglement: vanity, unchecked urges, the arrogance of believing that the subject of your affections must needs return them. Nothing is so tragic as a woman—or a man—who mistakes a friendly smile for courtship.
Ian scanned the Worthing’s crowded ballroom with an expert eye. How he tired of this pointless endeavor. Only one thing kept him playing the wife-hunting game—the knowledge that if he didn’t, he’d be handing his father’s legacy to a man with the character of a snake.
He spotted an insipid woman bedecked in virginal white lace and couldn’t repress a shudder.
To think he’d come to this—surveying eligible women at a Christmas ball.
He should never have delayed the search so long.
After Father’s death, when he’d first heard the terms of the will, he’d wasted precious months searching for a legal means to overturn it.
The laws of entail should have protected him.
But his grandfather’s untimely death when his father was a child had prevented the man from carrying on the entail to Ian, leaving his father in a position to do as he liked.
And in his usual manipulative fashion, Father had done exactly that, leaving a most abominable will.
Ian’s realization that he couldn’t break it had fallen heavily upon him.
Reluctantly, angrily, he’d sought a wife who could give him the heir he needed to fulfill the will’s terms. To his surprise, he’d found he was a very ineligible bachelor, thank to all the absurd rumors.
Too many people had speculated viciously about his abrupt departure from England.
Too many others had whispered that he’d spied for the French.
Refuting so many longstanding rumors was impossible, especially when he had no wish to talk about what he’d actually done all those years. Besides, discussion of his activities on the Continent might provoke discussion of why he’d fled England, and that was unacceptable.
Thankfully, his unfailing attempts to behave like the perfect gentleman in the past year had softened public opinion toward him, though many people still distrusted him with their daughters.
Many agreed with Miss Taylor’s belief that all smoke signaled fire.
Some probably saw past his facade into the howling blackness beneath.
And now two of his choices had run off with other men. Two others had refused him after his damned uncle paid their parents a visit.
No doubt Uncle Edgar had thought Ian wouldn’t hear of his cowardly attempts to undermine Ian’s search for a wife.
But Uncle Edgar didn’t know how much his nephew had changed in the past years.
Ian was no longer the hotheaded nineteen-year-old who’d run off out of pride and stubbornness. This time he would stay and fight.
He wouldn’t let that bastard drag Chesterley into the ground the way he’d done his own estate.
If Ian couldn’t find a wife in time, he’d publicly reveal the truth about the man, even if it meant destroying himself in the process.
He’d send himself to hell if that’s what it took to put Edgar Lennard there, too.
Unfortunately, he now had another troublesome person to contend with.
His gaze fixed on a laughing figure across the ballroom.
Miss Taylor. Dressed in a modest gown more suited to a simpering virgin than a firebrand spinster, she stood with society’s most accomplished rumor-mongers.
Lady Brumley. Lord Jameson. The March sisters.
Miss Taylor was the only one among them with any sparkle or style.
Given her attire at their first meeting, that surprised him.
Tonight, she’d taken every care with her appearance.
Her pearl-encrusted slippers were most certainly costly, her jewels tasteful and elegant, and her hair swept up by a pearl pin much more sophisticated than the two pencils she’d sported yesterday.
Candlelight heightened the glow of good health on her cheeks, glancing off the creamy satin that sheathed a body even a courtesan would envy.
Bloody hell. He was thinking of her in those terms again.
What dangerous idiocy. Witness the way he’d missed half his shots after luncheon today, caught up in thoughts of nonsensical things like the sudden sunrise of her smile when Sara praised her father’s designs.
Or the impish gleam in her eye when she’d pretended not to have read gossip she’d written about him.
Damn the bloody woman for being so adept at invading his thoughts. And why must he feel this cursed attraction to her? It made no sense. She was a plague upon society and all good sense, a woman who traded on her father’s reputation to plunder the lives of anyone so foolish as to speak to her.
Even now, she conversed with Lady Brumley, sometimes dubbed the Galleon of Gossip because of her large frame and equally large mouth, not to mention her tendency to wear outrageous hats with a nautical motif. He could easily imagine the dirty byways their discussion wandered in.
“So you met Miss Taylor at her home, did you?” a female voice asked at his side. Without looking, he recognized the lavender scent of Jordan’s wife Emily.
Her question demonstrated why sexual attraction was dangerous.
If his mind had been clear this afternoon, he wouldn’t have underestimated Miss Taylor’s audacity.
In trying to force her into a lie, he’d instead tempted her to tell the truth, and that had caused him no small inconvenience in twisting her answer to cover up his sins.
Dragging his gaze from Miss Taylor was more difficult than he would’ve liked. “I see you’ve been talking to Sara. Yes, I met Miss Taylor at her home. I respected her father a great deal.”
“Did you really? Come now, Ian, I doubt you ever even met Algernon Taylor.”
Ian shrugged. “I needn’t have met the man to admire him and his work.”
“You must have admired him enormously to pay his daughter a condolence call. You never call on anyone without a purpose.”
She knew him too well. “Be careful, my nosy friend,” he said lightly. “You’re dabbling in matters beyond your purview.”
Emily arched one blond eyebrow, then glanced across the ballroom at Miss Taylor. “She’s very pretty, isn’t she?”
Pretty didn’t begin to describe her. The girls who tittered and flirted with him were pretty. She was energy itself, vital, alive, like a scarlet rose among pastel lilies.
But roses had thorns, and Miss Taylor’s thorns were tipped with poison.
“She doesn’t interest me, I assure you.” Amazing that he could speak the blatant lie with a straight face. And more amazing still that it was a lie.
“What a shame. You seem to interest her.”
That startled him. “What do you mean?”
“According to Sara, she was full of questions about you, especially when she heard that you are once again an eligible bachelor.”
He groaned. “I should’ve known Jordan couldn’t keep a confidence from you—”
“Don’t blame him for it. The news was circulating before I even left London this morning. Did you really think a family could keep an elopement quiet for long?”
“I suppose not.” So Miss Taylor knew the entire affair now. The bloody witch probably congratulated herself over her success. And why hadn’t that quelled her obsession with ruining his life? If she’d been asking about him, it clearly hadn’t.
Damn. He must find a new strategy for dealing with her.
“Miss Taylor had read that beastly article about you,” Emily went on, “but Sara set her straight on that matter, too.”
Ian frowned. “Set her straight?”
“Sara thought you might appreciate it if an unattached female like Miss Taylor knew the truth. After you explained to us this morning about your soldier friend and his sister, we were both eager to have the truth known. You’re being modest about the situation and your role, but we dislike hearing your character maligned so unfairly. ”
It was all Ian could do not to curse aloud. Now Miss Taylor would think him a bigger liar than before. Which, in a way, he was. “As I recall, I asked you to keep that story to yourselves to protect my friend’s privacy.”
Emily cast him a sidelong glance. “And we’ll do so. Sara merely wanted to help. You have been looking for a wife, after all. It’s important that eligible women know your true character.”
“Women like Miss Taylor, I suppose?”
“Of course.” Emily batted her fan a few times. “Surely you won’t balk at marrying a respectable woman simply because she has no great claim to fortune or birth. If you’re looking for a wife, Miss Taylor wouldn’t be a bad choice.”
He wanted to laugh. Marriage to Miss Taylor would be sheer disaster. With her loose tongue, penchant for digging up secrets, and delight in skewering men of rank, in less than a week—no, a day—after the wedding she’d be nosing into his affairs.
Besides, she’d never agree to marry him.
The little he’d gleaned about her indicated that her father had left her a substantial inheritance, so money was no incentive.
And since she thought him a profligate and a town rake, a man who lived to debauch women and humiliate his fiancée, the usual attractions of marriage wouldn’t tempt her.
Still, marriage to Miss Taylor would be as entertaining as it would be maddening.
That doesn’t even bear contemplation. “You seem to have a very favorable opinion of the woman. Yet you hardly know her.”
“True. But I liked her as soon as Sara introduced us. She’s adorable—funny and intelligent and direct.
You must admit you’re far too somber these days and certainly too secretive.
You need a woman like her to bring you out of yourself.
And if, like so many men, you want a wife with a spotless reputation, she has that, too. ”
He snorted. “Spotless? I seriously doubt it.”
“Oh?” Emily looked at him with interest. “Do you know something about Miss Taylor the rest of us don’t?”