It was during a break in the music when three new guests arrived at the top of the stairs. As their names boomed through the ballroom, a silence fell.
Tildy barely noticed the murmurs rising around her, and even so, she couldn’t have cared less about this Earl of Canterby that sent them all into a dither. All her attention was on keeping her belly from voiding her dinner. Because she’d heard two of the names and they were the two names she most dreaded hearing.
And what the hell were her brother and George doing at a ball? Neither of them attended society events if they could help it. She shot an accusatory glare at Aunt Elizabeth, who attempted to look innocent.
Oh blast.
She knew at once, she’d been set up. She glanced around her, looking for a path to that hiding place behind the potted palm, but she was crowded in by young lords and short of a scene, she could not escape in time.
Ah, well. There was nothing for it.
She would have to face her brother and her fiancé here, in the middle of the ballroom.
How mortifying it would be.
For them.
She threw back her shoulders and tipped her head, just so, and made her way to the bottom of the stairs, awaiting their astonished and joyous—or peevish—discovery of her.
They were neither joyous nor peevish—they both smiled genially—confirming Tildy’s suspicion that Aunt Elizabeth had been in league with them all along. When her aunt joined her, Tildy smiled—or something like it; there were definitely teeth—and whispered, “Traitor.”
Elizabeth smiled back. “I am only looking out for you, my dear. Now do be cordial.”
Cordial.
Of course. She excelled at cordial.
She stepped toward her brother and extended a hand. “Paddington,” she said in as cordial a tone as she could manage. It was a frosty cordial. “Wickham.”
Both men kissed her hand, Wickham’s salute being markedly more elaborate.
“Allow me to make known to you my sister, Matilda Paddington.” Her brother gestured to a tall lord standing to his side. “Matilda, may I present Deveney Hargrove, Earl of Canterby.”
Her first impression was that he was a large and looming man with dark hair and dancing eyes. He seemed amused to make her acquaintance. He looked familiar, hauntingly so, but it wasn’t until he bent over her hand and she caught a whiff of his unique and tantalizing scent that she realized why.
Her knees nearly failed her.
Her jaw dropped.
She gaped, rather like a tarsier she’d once seen at a menagerie.
It was him.
Her heart soared. Her soul sang. Her pulse thrummed.
And no wonder she had not recognized him right away. He was a far cry from the raggedy man who had rescued her from a rainstorm—had it been less than a week ago?
He was dressed in an exquisite and costly suit with a snowy cravat and collars that rose to an impeccable point. His unruly hair, like hers, had been tamed, and—to her immense satisfaction—his beard was gone.
He smiled. A dimple winked in his cheek.
She should have been overjoyed. She should have been thrilled.
She was furious.
He was an earl?
A despicable, feckless, lying earl?
“My lord,” she said, executing a curtsey. “So nice to make your acquaintance.” Oh, her tone was perfectly respectable. Only he caught the vitriol in that one word.
“Likewise.”
“I cannot tell you how pleased I am to see you here, Miss Paddington,” Wickham said.
Tildy blinked. Good lord. Was he gushing?
“We are so happy you are here,” her brother said, with only the hint of a reproof in his tone. “I know Wickham has been anxious to see you again.”
Wickham nodded. “Indeed.” He stepped closer, blocking her view of Dev, which annoyed her for some reason. She was angry with him, but she had to remind herself of that. “Would you care to dance?”
Normally, she would have refused Wickham’s request, because, frankly, she had no desire to dance with him in the slightest, but when she caught the dismay on Dev’s features she said, “Of course,” but only to make him pay.
She did not expect his woebegone expression or how it would lance her.
There little opportunity to think on it. Wickham whipped her into his arms and launched her into the dervish of a dance that stole her ability to think on anything. Of course, her mind was whirling as well.
He was a lord.
A lord of the realm.
Her beautiful soldier with nothing to his name, the man who had given her a gift she would never forget, was really a lord.
Better yet, she would not have to search for him. He was here.
As she made the rounds of the ballroom floor with her secret fiancé, her dismay faded. Her annoyance with him melted. Until she caught a glance of him, surrounded by tittering women in white and their slavering mamas.
It occurred to her, in that moment, that if she wanted to win him, there was no time for petulance. If she dared delay a confrontation with him, some other wench might well snap him up.
He was undeniably handsome, kitted out as an earl—although she cared not a whit about his title. It was the man she wanted.
Ah. It hit her like a stone.
She wanted him.