Grif smiled sadly and looked out over the dance floor, wishing he wasn’t forced to tell a decent chap like Fynster such a god-awful lie about Amelia. He had made up the outrageous tale one night over cards and with the considerable help of whiskey. His story went something like this—that his Uncle Angus had sired Amelia in an illicit but passionate love affair (the details of which had Fynster’s eyes bulging quite out of their sockets). But, alas, Uncle had been forced by family tragedy to return to Scotland, and Amelia’s mother had married an Englishman. It had been his uncle’s dying wish that Grif find Amelia and give her something that had belonged to her true father.
It had worked—Fynster had been so touched by the tale that he had immediately and earnestly set out to help Grif find as many Amelias as he could shake from a tree. He had high hopes for this ball, which he said was one of the more important events of the Season, but sadly, only one of the Amelias known to him was in attendance tonight… and she was the wrong Amelia. Which, to Grif’s way of thinking, left him a clear opening to ask after Miss Lucy Addison.
“By the bye,” Grif said as they both watched the woman in blue sail by again. “The young woman just there,” he said, nodding in the direction where Lucy Addison was now holding court with three gentlemen. “Do you suppose her Christian name is Amelia?”
Fynster looked to where he indicated and laughed. “Ah, so you’d join the ranks of gentlemen smitten with Miss Lucy Addison?”
Grif shrugged. “She’s a bonny one, she is.”
“She certainly is. I’d wager there isn’t a man in this room who hasn’t dreamed of her, myself among them. Very well, then… come along and I’ll see if I can’t give you a leg up.”
Grif grinned. “Ye’ll have me adoring ye yet, Fynster,” he said jovially.
“That’s quite unnecessary,” Fynster said, turning a little red of face as they started off.
Miss Lucy was entertaining the gentlemen around her with some girlish tale as they walked into her charmed circle. Something about having twisted her ankle, which had the men gathered about aahing at her misfortune. She looked up at Fynster and Grif, and smiled prettily at Grif. “Good evening, Mr. Fynster-Allen. How very good to see you,” she said charmingly, her gaze still on Grif as Fynster bowed over her hand.
“My pleasure, Miss Lucy, to be sure,” he said. “Might I beg your pardon? I should very much like to make a proper introduction of my good friend, his lordship Ardencaple.”
Her smile deepened; she was an old hand at this game, Grif could see, as she snapped open her fan and fanned herself. “I should think you may, sir.”
A bit too theatrically, Fynster intoned, “My lord, may I present Miss Lucy Addison.”
Miss Lucy daintily held out her gloved hand; Grif instantly took it and bowed deeply over it. “Ye canna know what a pleasure it is to make yer acquaintance,” he said, and thought he heard one of her fawners snort.
“My lord, I daresay the pleasure is mine,” she said, her smile perfect as Grif raised himself up. Her hand slipped from his. “Have you been in London long?”
“Scarcely more than a month.”
“Ah,” she said as her eyes quickly flicked the length of him. “And how do you find the weather here?”
“Quite pleasant, aye.”
“Isn’t it? I’m rather pleased, for I am quite cross when it is dreary.”
“Really, Miss Lucy! You’ve not a cross bone in your body!” one of the other men said with a laugh.
“I swear that I do, sir, and it is most likely to present itself when the weather is dreary,” she said, and smiled at the laughter of the men.
“Miss Lucy, I believe if you will check your dance card, you will find my name written against the quadrille,” another one said, edging forward.
“Oh! That is a quadrille they are playing, is it not?” She looked at the dance card dangling by a ribbon from her wrist. A very full dance card, Grif could see, for there was not a blank spot on it. “You are quite right, Lord Preston. I promised the quadrille to you.”
The lucky man stepped forward, his arm extended.
Miss Lucy snapped her fan shut, smiled adoringly at the others. “I do beg your pardon,” she said sweetly, and glanced at Grif from the corner of her eye. “A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Lord Ardencaple.” Before she could say more, Preston had clamped his hand down on hers, was pulling her along, ready to be gone from the throng of admirers.
Fynster sighed as she glided alongside Preston and the other men drifted away. “There you have it, then, Ardencaple. The most desired debutante in all of London. It’s the subject of much speculation as to who will win her hand.”
Aye, but it wasn’t exactly her hand that interested Grif.
He accompanied Fynster to the game room for a time, and when he’d lost a few more pounds than he cared to lose, he decided it was time he joined Hugh at the town house they had overrun, and left Fynster to carry on.
He took his sweet time making his way through the crowd, going against the tide so to speak, smiling and nodding at dozens of women who passed him by, but his head was filled with the lovely images of Miss Lucy Addison and her chestnut-colored hair—so filled, in fact, that he almost collided with a woman who stepped in his path near the main entry.
He recognized her instantly—Miss Crabtree had introduced them—yet he could not for the life of him recall her name.