Page 15

T hough he’d much rather have found his way to the Maitland ball that evening on his own, Will escorted his mother and sister in the family carriage. This meant that instead of simply jumping down and making his way to the Duke of Maitland’s door on foot, he had to wait with his mother and sister in the coach as it crept behind a parade of other vehicles doing the same thing.

“Stop fidgeting, Gilford,” his mother snapped at him as if he were a small boy.

He remembered when she’d begun to call him Gilford after his father’s death. The change had been unsettling, though in truth he should not have expected his mother to behave any differently. If she was to be relied upon for anything, it was her strict adherence to the rules of etiquette. And it wasn’t as if she spoke to him in any casual way. To her, he’d always been William, never Will, as his sister and schoolfriends called him.

Still, he was the sixth Viscount Gilford and was entitled to respect. Even if it was owed to him from his mother.

“I am a grown man, Mother,” he said tightly. “Not a boy to be chastised.”

If she was cowed by his correction, the viscountess didn’t show it. “Very well, then, my lord, please will you calm your fidgets?”

The treacly tone she used was as objectionable as her previous words, but by this point they were nearly to the Maitlands’ doorstep, so Will ignored her and gave a knock on the roof before opening the door to the carriage and jumping to the cobblestones.

Lowering the step himself, he reached back inside, and when his mother only looked tightly at him, he offered his hand to Meg, who raised a brow at him but accepted his assistance down.

Once in the ballroom, he glanced toward the corner of the room, where Lucy and her friends were to be found no matter the ballroom. Mrs. Clevedon, another of Lucy and Meg’s Ems, was deep in conversation with the son of their hosts, the Marquess of Edgmont.

“Where is she?” he asked his sister, who had been watching him with something like amusement.

“Who?” Meg asked innocently, blinking at him with all the guile of a newborn lamb.

“You know who,” Will said impatiently. “Lucy—that is, Miss Penhallow.”

On any other day, the cat-that-licked-the-cream look his sister turned on him would have only mildly irritated him. Today, when Lucy had nearly been injured by some unknown villain, Will had no patience for teasing.

Perhaps sensing his mood, Meg touched his arm. “Do not fly into the boughs. She is dancing with Lord Catesby. There.” She tilted her head in the direction of a pale-haired lady being promenaded in a country dance by the handsome Catesby, whose estates were on the brink of bankruptcy thanks to his late father’s gambling.

Will wanted to swear but contented himself with a feral sound in the back of his throat.

“Did you just growl?” his sister asked, agape.

Ignoring her question, he said, “I thought Miss Penhallow was never asked to dance. She’s a wallflower.”

He’d seen her with his own eyes at the first two balls he’d attended since his return to London.

“By choice. Not because she’s never asked.” Meg spoke with no small amount of exasperation at his thickheadedness. “Miss Penhallow chooses not to dance, because if she didn’t, her card would be filled with the names of wastrels and fortune hunters at every entertainment of the season.”

And didn’t that just hit Will right in the solar plexus?

Still, he needed more explanation.

“Then why is she dancing with Catesby?” Will demanded. “Not only does he not have a feather to fly with, but he’s a womanizer to boot.”

He himself might be a fortune hunter, Will thought grimly, but at least he knew Lucy wasn’t in danger of being seduced in his company.

Not much, anyway.

Meg gave him a disgusted look, as if she’d never heard a more crack-brained pronouncement.

“Maybe,” she explained to her elder brother as if he were a five-year-old in the schoolroom, “she is dancing with a man she heartily dislikes because she agreed to dance with someone else later in the evening. And since she has to refuse all dances if she refuses one, she is doing that mysterious gentleman the great kindness of agreeing to partner with everyone who asks.”

Will listened to his sister’s words with growing consternation. It had never occurred to him that by asking Lucy for her waltzes he was consigning her to take to the floor with men she disliked.

“Do not look so alarmed,” Meg said with a grin. “At least you know she believes the dances promised to you will be worth it.”

Scanning the row of chairs where the other wallflowers lingered, she turned back to him. “If you really wanted to return Lucy’s kind gesture, you’d dance with some of the other ladies without partners. There are always plenty of gentlemen at each ball, but they turn their noses up at those girls they deem to be beneath their notice.”

He hadn’t known this and felt like a churl for not realizing it for himself.

Before he could respond to his sister’s rebuke, she was headed toward where Mrs. Clevedon stood on the other side of the room.

Will had just returned Miss Frederica Honeywell to her mother’s side after a quadrille when he spotted Adrian and Woodward nearby. After thanking his partner for the dance, he hurried over to where his friends chatted.

“Ah, the man of the hour,” said Woodward with a knowing grin. “Were your ears burning?”

Wondering what the American was up to, Will hid his curiosity over the other man’s teasing under a veneer of unconcern. “Not particularly,” he said with a shrug. “Though your inability to stop thinking about me is your problem, not mine, Woodward.”

Adrian hid a laugh behind a cough. And Woodward scowled at him.

When he’d recovered his composure, Adrian said with an apologetic wince, “I believe in this case, Woodward isn’t the only one who’s been talking about you. There is some gossip working its way around the room that you need to hear about.”

At this, Will’s gut clenched. Had news of the Gilfords’ destitution reached the ears of the ton so soon? It had only been a week or so, but he knew that gossip ran rampant when it concerned the peerage.

“You were seen in the middle of Mayfair, man,” Woodward said with a shake of his head. “Did you think no one would find out?”

Ah, Will realized. This he had expected.

“Haven’t I taught you anything?” Adrian asked with mock disappointment. “Never kiss a lady in a public street. Certainly not in full view of Brook Street.”

“I told you what happened with the carriage,” Will said, dismissing their teasing. “I was merely comforting Miss Penhallow after she was rightly upset by the attack on my curricle. And there was no kissing.”

At least not on Brook Street.

“I’ve had the story from four different people,” Woodward said pointedly, “and all of them said you were kissing her. One said she was kissing you, but that was a gentleman who was very likely wishing he’d been the one driving the carriage.”

“Are you sure it wasn’t you, Woodward?” Will asked with a scowl. “You seemed awfully intent on impressing her with your own flattery last night.”

“Got to you, did it?” he asked, exchanging a sideways glance with Adrian.

“I think you’re missing the point,” Adrian said with a quelling look at the American. “You were seen with Miss Penhallow in a potentially compromising position. By the end of the evening you’ll have been in flagrante delicto. Miss Penhallow’s reputation could be in jeopardy.”

Will swore. He wanted to convince her of his sincere liking and affection for her before he made an offer. Because that was the only thing that set him apart from the other fortune hunters who flocked around her.

But if circumstances meant he’d need to do so sooner, then so be it. At least he’d be sure she was his.

Still, he wasn’t ready to discuss the matter with his friends.

“Thank you for letting me know,” he said to them both. “Now, what do you have to report about Christopher Hamilton? Has he entered the country in the past few weeks?”

“He has, indeed,” Adrian said, turning serious in a matter of moments. “One Christopher John Hamilton of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, disembarked from the Morpho Eugenia in Portsmouth on the thirtieth of April.”

“And Miss Blackwood was kidnapped on May seventeenth,” said Will, feeling a stab of excitement at the news. “Hamilton might have been the one to kidnap her, or his appearance on the scene might have prompted either her father or some other of her wannabe suitors to whisk her away. Thank you,” he said, clapping Adrian on the shoulder. “This could be just the bit of information we need to find out what became of Miss Blackwood.”

“Wait a minute before you run to Miss Penhallow with the news,” Woodward interjected just as Will was about to do that very thing.

When he turned a questioning look on Adrian, the other man looked apologetic.

“The thing is, Gilford,” said Adrian, “Hamilton didn’t come to England on his own.”

“No one ever truly travels alone,” Will said dismissively. “When I returned from Paris I had my valet, a footman, a cook—”

“Gilford, shut up for a moment and listen to Adrian,” Woodward said, breaking into Will’s list of his fellow travelers.

“Hamilton didn’t come alone,” Adrian restated. “He brought his wife.”