Anna watched him surreptitiously, hoping feverishly that he would greet Lucy and walk on. But when he spoke to her, Lucy’s face erupted into a lovely wreath of smiles, her amber eyes sparkling, and Lockhart was caught in her perfect little web. Lucy had an enviable way with men, an innate quality that Anna could not explain.
Nevertheless, she told herself that Lockhart did not care for Lucy’s attention, but was simply being polite, and then she tried hard to believe it. Yet watching it— the charming tilt of his head, the broad smile—was so painful that she felt the urge to march into their midst and break up the happy little reunion.
It was her sister, Lady Featherstone, who stopped her by suddenly appearing at her side.
“At whom are you staring so intently?” Bette asked after kissing her on the cheek.
“What?” Anna asked, feigning surprise. “Why should you think I am staring? There’s hardly anything or anyone who captures my attention.”
“There’s someone who might,” Bette said, and slipped her hand into the crook of Anna’s arm, forcing her to walk along the edge of the dance floor. She leaned in, whispered conspiratorially, “You shall never guess who is in attendance tonight.”
“Who?”
“No, no… guess,” Bette said, poking her in the side.
“Bette!” Anna exclaimed. “I can’t possibly guess! Who, then?”
“Oh, all right,” Bette said, frowning at Anna’s incompetence at playing her game. “The Scot.”
Anna instantly perked up at the mention of the Scot. She had been intrigued from the first mention a month or so ago, when reports of a Scottish earl with business in London began to make the rounds of drawing rooms. He was making quite a splash, all told—it was said he was quite entertaining, quite wealthy, quite handsome, and quite in need of a wife—the latter being pure speculation, of course, but the fact that he was a Scot added an air of intrigue to the usual game.
As it happened, Anna had met a Scot once before— last Season, when Captain Lockhart had come into the ton’s midst for all too brief a time.
On that occasion, she had been at the Lockhart ball, and as Drake had not yet returned from the Continent, she had been quite bored. Until Barbara Lockhart, insufferable Philistine that she was, had introduced Anna to her Scottish cousin, and instantly Anna had been captivated by his accent, the air of impatience, and the scar across his cheek. That evening she had made a game of following him about, and when she’d found him, alone, poking about the Lockharts’ small study, she had been highly titillated.
Her reward had been a very passionate kiss that had left her breathless and weak-kneed and dying to know more. Unfortunately, that ruggedly handsome Scot had disappeared without a trace just a few days after that… at the same time the reclusive Ellen Farnsworth had disappeared.
That extraordinary coincidence, coupled with that extraordinary kiss, had fascinated Anna.
Some speculated that Miss Farnsworth went willingly with the captain—after all, she had something of a reputation in that regard. Others said the captain had kidnapped her, and that old Farnsworth was too much the penny-pincher to pay the ransom. And even wiser heads argued that there was no connection between the two disappearances whatsoever, very tiresomely insisting that the Scot had simply returned to Scotland and Miss Farnsworth had returned to Cornwall.
Whatever the truth, Anna had built it up to a great romantic adventure in her mind, and the story had so deeply ingrained itself in her imagination that she had, over the last year, devoured all things Scottish, from historical accounts, to travel volumes, to old maps. Scotland sounded magical, a land where time did not march so ploddingly along as it did here, in the Mayfair district of London.
Therefore, the mention of a new Scot excited Anna, and she very much wanted an introduction.
“There he is,” Bette said, tapping her arm with her fan as they strolled along the southern wall of the ballroom.
Anna looked to where her sister indicated and saw a group of men conversing. She recognized one strong back as belonging to the same gentleman she and Lucy had glimpsed as they waited to be announced. That surprised her; she had assumed the earl was an older man. The Scot was tall, like the captain, but not as thick. His hair, almost black, was slicked back and was longer than most, but nonetheless coiffed in the current fashion. His shoulders were perfectly square, his waist trim, and not fish-bellied like so many gentlemen of the ton seemed to be.
“Introduce me?” Anna whispered. “Come on, say you will!”
Bette laughed. “He is pleasing, is he not? But I haven’t been properly introduced, either.” At Anna’s imploring look, she laughed. “All right, then, I’ll see what I can do.” With a wink and a tap of her fan against Anna’s shoulder, she went sailing off to find someone to introduce them, leaving Anna standing alone against the thick brocade drapes.