Page 8 of Her Beast of a Duke

Certainly, she had sought another dance at the next ball, and then another, and another, until…

Until he had abandoned.

“Then I shall not apologize,” Mary agreed. “Instead, I shall help you find your next betrothed, even if… even if it is not what you want.”

“How do you know this course isn’t of my choosing?”

“Your eyes give you away, my dear. I have seen how you view these ballrooms, Isabella. You view it more tactically than a man eyes up a chessboard, but that is gone. Your heart is not in this tonight. As your friend, I do not believe it should be either.”

“Well, whether it is or it is not, I am glad to be weathering it with you.”

Isabella linked her arm through her friend’s.

Across the room, Sibyl was being led to the dance floor by a young lord who looked as though he could not stop laughing with her, the two of them red-faced and smiling.

Her heart eased from its terrible barbed state.

My sister will be fine, she thought.I will endure anything as long as she is well and has prospects I might not get again. If Hermia could courageously face spinsterhood, then…

Then…

She didn’t have the strength to finish that thought.

“I see Lord Darington is here tonight,” Mary murmured, her eyes fixed across the ballroom upon the auburn-haired man she had caught the attention of at a recent ball several weeks ago.

Ever since, she had become quite besotted with the Viscount, who had inherited his title early but was still unwed.

“Will you finally speak with him again? It is clear he is smitten with you, too. See, he is looking over here.”

But before Mary could answer, a few lords passed by, their eyes immediately honing in on Isabella. Their gazes were not quite in the interested style she was used to, yet she still smiled demurely. Because she expended so much energy to muster her politest manners, she did not expect their sniggers.

“Lord Stanton remains absent from theton,” one lord said to his companions, and Isabella stiffened.

“Perhaps he had to travel further abroad to escape a certain lady’sways. After all, Lady Isabella has not been known for her loyalty to one suitor.”

“A dance is merely a dance, Lord Frederick, and these ladies will dance until their feet fall off,” the first lord snorted. “Although you might be right about her prospects. Some diamonds are not made to shine as brightly as others. Some are… merely stones, no?”

Isabella felt the burning humiliation of their remarks as they passed, their laughter lingering even after they had vanished into the crowd.Further abroad.The potential of that lingered far too greatly in her mind to ignore for a moment, even as she retained her composure.

Her smile did not falter once.

“Well,” Mary huffed, “men are rude, are they not?”

“They are,” Isabella muttered, rolling her eyes.

Her gaze lifted to the ballroom, hoping for something, justoneman who might smile at her a little gently, who might make her believe all would be well and she would regain her status as theton’sdiamond. She only needed a kind gentleman to showher that Lord Stanton’s outrageous abandonment of her had not ruined her prospects.

Around her, the ballroom had broken out into louder whispers. With shoulders tense, Isabella waited for them to be about her. Yet it was not her name that was on everyone’s lips now.

“It is the Beast of Rochdale,” a lady not too far away gasped. “He is here.”

The Beast of Rochdale?

Whispers flooded the room like a tidal wave, far greater than the ones about Isabella, and despite the pity she felt for whoever had arrived, relief eased through her.

“Finally, I am not the gossipmongers’ focus,” Isabella muttered to Mary, but even she had her eyes fixed on the entrance of the ballroom.

However, thisbeasthad already descended the stairs, and no matter how much Isabella tried to peer through the crowds, everybody stuck too close together.