“No,” Ewan said.
“Yes, he is. And I know you know this because you are the son of an earl, but for some reason you are acting more like a cross gargoyle. How am I or any of the other guests supposed to dance with any gaiety while you glower at us from your corner?”
So that was the reason she’d glared at him whenever she’d danced by. He liked the way she talked, liked listening to her voice, even when it was filled with rebuke. He deposited her in a chair beside her mother and then went to fill a plate for her.
“Mr. Mostyn!” she hissed as he walked away.
Undoubtedly she was not pleased to be seated beside her mother and the other matrons at her mother’s table. She would have preferred to flirt at a table filled with men or to gossip with some of the other young ladies. Ewan wanted her out of the way of any such trouble.
He joined the line of other men filling plates for their ladies. Lady Lorraine was correct that he had not behaved properly in taking her away from her last dance partner. A gentleman asked for the supper dance in order to be the one who escorted the lady to dinner and then claimed her attentions for the duration. Since Ewan had whisked her away, he would have to fill a plate for her. He didn’t know what she liked, so he filled the plate with a bit of everything. One plate was not quite large enough for all the bounty the regent had bestowed upon his guests, so he filled two.
A pity he was working tonight because he would have liked to taste some of the fare, but he did not eat while he was on duty.
He brought the plates back to Lady Lorraine and sat them in front of her. The lady gaped at him. “Surely, you do not expect me to eat all of this!” She gestured to the food piled so high it all but reached her chin.
“I didn’t know what you liked,” he said.
“How very thoughtful of you, Mr. Mostyn,” the duchess remarked. “And since your father has taken up residence in the card room, I will share your bounty, Lorrie.”
“The card room?” said a voice Ewan recognized as the duke’s. “I merely stopped in to say hello.” The duke pulled a chair beside his duchess, who stared at him openmouthed.
“I would not leave my duchess to dine alone.” He took her hand and kissed it. The duchess snatched it back, but the duke seemed unperturbed. He sat beside her and eyed Lady Lorraine’s plate.
“Here you are.” Lady Lorraine pushed a plate toward her parents.
His task complete, and both parents present to chaperone her, Ewan shoved a chair up against the wall near Lady Lorraine and sat, watching her. Two or three times she turned round and looked at him. She even looked as though she might speak—though she always looked like she might speak—but then she was pulled back into the conversation at her mother’s table. Ewan did note that she hardly ate anything, though she did drink two glasses of champagne.
And then the dancing commenced again and her next partner came to claim her, and Ewan followed them back into the ballroom.
He returned to his corner and resumed what she had referred to as his cross gargoyle stance while she did some complicated turns with a young man who, from his tanned complexion, looked to have just returned from the Indies.
“While His Grace generally shows quite a bit of sense and sound judgment,” a woman remarked beside him, “I will admit to doubting the wisdom of hiring you to protect our daughter.”
Ewan looked down at the duchess whom he half feared he would step on and squash if he did not keep her in his sights when she was near. She continued to watch her daughter. Her gaze was assessing and critical, but far less calculating than that of the other mothers in the room.
“I am happy to say that I was wrong to doubt. You have done your duty with admirable…thoroughness.”
Ewan waited. He did not pretend to have Rafe’s understanding of women or his friend’s charm, but he knew enough of them to know the duchess had not yet said what she intended. When she did not speak, merely watched her daughter dance, he realized he would have to speak.
“But,” he said.
“Yes, but…” The duchess craned her neck to catch the eye of a man across the room. She smiled and then her look turned serious again. “You need only dissuade Mr. Mostyn from making any sorts of advances toward my daughter. You needn’t scare off every other potential suitor. We would like her to marry at some point, you see.”
Ewan understood the point of this ball and the rest of the Season very well indeed. Although he’d never been part of the London social whirl, he understood how vital it was for great families to meet other great families so they might marry their sons and daughters and remain great families. The Duke of Ridlington would want to marry Lady Lorraine to one of these men she danced with, but Ewan could not picture her saddled to the pug or the lecher or even this East India man.
“You would not want to scare off all of her prospects, would you?” the duchess asked.
Ewan rather thought that if he scared them off so easily, they should not have been prospects at all.
“Or perhaps you do wish to scare them away.” The duchess opened her fan and began to waft it in front of her face. “But that would serve no purpose, as Lorrie must marry, and we intend for her to marry well.” For the first time during the conversation, she looked at him directly, her hazel eyes clear and flat.
Ewan might be a blockhead, but he understood her meaning well enough. The duke and duchess had higher hopes for their daughter than the third son of an earl. And Ewan was not even a favored third son. His father had all but disowned him, although Ewan doubted he cared so much about him to go to the trouble of officially disowning him. And of course, soon the news would emerge that the Earl of Pembroke had been swindled and his fortune—all that was not tied up in land—was gone.
The duchess’s expression was not unkind. She was simply stating a fact, and doing so as politely as possible. He was not good enough for her daughter, and if he had forgotten that, well, she would remind him.
He had not forgotten. Not even in the park. He was a dolt—a big lumbering brute—and his place was here in the corner of the ballroom, not in the center of it. He wasn’t good enough. He had never been good enough.