Page 45 of The Lady is Trouble

“I see surprise beneath that tranquil facade,” Marianne drawled in a voice not unlike the one she used during sex. Obviously, gossip brought her as much pleasure. “Not invited, I assume, but no one would deny them. Both amusing toys, apt to turn this into the most discussed gala of the season.”

Words choked his airway as he gripped the flute hard enough to shatter glass. No matter Piper’s reputation, deserved, or Finn’s exceptional good looks, astounding, they would never be anyone’stoy, not as long as Julian breathed.

“Goodbye, Marianne,” he said before he said too much. With a bow, he left her to circle the outer rim of the ballroom, gaze tracking. He was taller than most, an advantage, and his target likely the next tallest in the room. Ah,there.

Finn lingered on the main staircase, caught in a robust tide he couldn’t swim through but looking, with an unruffled mien, as if he’d like to try. Again, that weighty feeling zipped through Julian: pride, affection, apprehension. A boy from the streets, without a single drop of the blood the ton believed made one exceptional flowing through his veins, Finn looked ready to conquer the world.

Placing his flute on a passing tray, Julian sidestepped, and Piper came into view. At Finn’s side, the top of her head barely striking his elbow, he feared the crowd would topple her. His eyes skimmed her length, and with the resulting burst of heat beneath his skin, he decided it best to wait until he could approach without hunger crossing his face for all to witness. Kissing the life from her in a crowded ballroom would strike the final blow to her reputation.

Stunning in a gown he wondered how she’d acquired, his hands itched to touch. The rosewood silk gleamed in the candlelight, setting her apart like a jewel embedded in dirt. What a gorgeous woman she’d grown into, he concluded with dismay, which she seemed unaware of as she smiled with apparent indifference at the men surrounding her.

Julian’s purpose weakened, his focus splintering.

Grabbing a flute from a liveried footman, he took a fast gulp while studying her over the crystal rim. When she finally noticed him, a shiver streaked through his chest and down his legs. She lifted a brow, commanding him to her side. As if she expected him to rescue her from the mob encircling them.

Only, he didn’t feel like being herded.

Holding her gaze, he lifted his flute in mocking salute.

Her lips thinned, then she nodded.Fine, he imagined her thinking,let’s play. In challenge, she took a proffered flute from a marquess with a horrid reputation and smiled as if the man ignited the night.

Julian took a threatening step forward, then recalled his objective and, more notably, his connection—or factuallackof one—to the woman holding him entranced across the scant distance of a ballroom. Close family friend, everyone knew, the story prudently circulated after his arrival on the earl’s doorstep. Yet, he was not her guardian.

Or her lover. Or her husband.

Turning away, he forced himself to participate in the inane banter, the grasping indelicacies, while compelling impulses took a hammer to his fragile ramparts.

Her legend had grown.

Well past the girl who sent teary-eyed governesses fleeing back to London with outrageous stories to impart, the girl who’d failed to manage even one London season successfully. This newly proposed version had her not only finally accepting her unfortunate lineage butembracingit. Although pity was bestowed upon her because one could not alter one’s biology, and her mother’s was most regrettable.

Having spent the past three years among the unsophisticated but inherently interesting natives of New York—an assumption she made no move to correct—Lady Elizabeth Piper Scott was considered entirely outside the pale but cream for the cat, and everyone wanted to take part in the latest valuation of the Earl of Montclaire’s wayward, half-American granddaughter. Listed in DeBrett’s along with the rest of them, but with a pencil-strike through her name, she could not bewhollycast aside. Most were thrilled, in a season scarce of excitement, to welcome her.

Scandalous Scott had returned to the proper side of the ocean.

She could only give the curious partial attention as she had a thousand auras to contend with. A vibrant swirl transformed by the incandescent crystal chandeliers and blazing wall sconces. She longed for her folio to record the brilliance, Julian’s assistance at categorizing the colors.

If a crowd hadn’t surrounded Finn as he lounged against a marble column, a careless sprawl calling to the cats in the room like a putrid plate of tuna, she would have elbowed him in the ribs and requestheassist her. But the titled flock provided no respite as they lined up before her, almost as they had when she posed as Madame DuPre, asking silly, no,absurdquestions about her supposed travels while the world stained around them like paint streaking down one of Julian’s canvases.

The rumors circled, the accounts propping them upmostlyuntrue, but they were, this mob of leering people, so riveted she felt lifted from her slippers.It’s no wonderPiper concluded with the culmination of her second flute of champagne,Julian wanted to leap from a speeding carriage rather than defend me from this.

Now everyone was cross with her.

Everyone who mattered that is.

Finn, the height of elegance and ease on his worst day, was, in actuality, hiding his apprehension over Julian’s reaction under layers of buttered charm. Humphrey and Minnie were sullenly awaiting the explosion, either Julian’s or the Duke of Ashcroft’s, in the relative safety of the carriage.

As for Julian…his glittering gaze periodically grazed her, then dusted off like a touch he hadn’t meant to place. Penetrating scrutiny, it was not. Was this her future? A fixture in his life, trivial and of little consequence.Foolish girl. She wanted to hold the key to his heart, his mind, his soul, when she was beginning to believe she was like his artwork.

There to admire, refine, then hide away when the project was complete.

The sumptuous Lady Coswell, who Piper swore Julian gave the cut earlier in the evening, stood close by his side, no doubt waiting to wrap herself around him if given a chance. Yet, Piper knew him well enough to see he was detached and impatient, his aura measured.

Piper nodded her head in agreement with Lady Allen and Countess Clare, having no idea the topic discussed, as she watched Julian consult his timepiece for the third time in an hour.

She wanted to look away, but she had rarely seen him dressed so elegantly. She tried to ignore the pinch in her belly, the pulse between her thighs. Even Henry Poole, Julian’s tailor, one of the best in London, couldn’t confine the sturdy physique shaping layers of wool, linen, and silk.

Noting the direction of her gaze, Countess Clare murmured, “Such extreme height must be a gift of the Beauchamp men.”