The Viscount and the Virgin

But her hand never reached its intended target. The gentleman in the green waistcoat grabbed her wrist and snarled, ‘Do not presume to touch my person.’

Stunned by the venomous tone of his voice, she looked up, to encounter a glare from a pair of eyes as green as the jewels adorning his waistcoat. And just—she swallowed—as hard.

It was only the hardness of those eyes, and perhaps the cleft in his chin, that prevented her from immediately applying the word beautiful to the angry gentleman. She took in the regular, finely chiselled features of his face, the fair hair cut in the rather severe style known as the Brutus, the perfect fit of his bottle-green tailcoat, and the immaculately manicured nails of the hand that held her wrist in a bruis-ingly firm grip. And all the breath left her lungs in one long, shuddering sigh. She had heard people say that something had taken their breath away, but this was the first time it had ever happened to her.

But then she had never been so close to such a breathtakingly gorgeous specimen of masculinity before.

She pulled herself together with an effort. It was no use standing there, sighing at all that masculine beauty. A man who took such pains over his appearance was the very worst sort of gentleman to have spilled a drink over! Determined to make some form of reparation for her clumsiness, Imogen feebly twitched the handkerchief she was still clutching in fingers that were beginning to go numb.

‘I only m-meant—’ she began, but he would not let her finish.

‘I know what you meant,’ he sneered.

Ever since he had arrived in town, matchmaking mamas had been irritating him by thrusting their daughters under his nose. But worse, far worse, were the antics of enterprising girls like this one. It was getting so that he could not even take a walk in the park without some female tripping over an imaginary obstacle and stumbling artistically into his arms.

By the looks of her, she was yet another one of those girls from a shabby-genteel background, out to snare a wealthy husband who could set her up in style. Definitely not a pampered lady who had never done anything more strenuous than sew a seam. He could feel the strength in her wrist, as he held her determined little fingers away from their target.

It never ceased to amaze him that girls could think that running their hands over him would somehow make a favourable impression. Only two nights earlier, he had been disgusted by the apparently prim young miss who was seated next to him at dinner running her hand along his thigh under cover of the tablecloth. Just as this hoyden was attempting to run her hands over his torso, under cover of mopping up the drink she had thrown over him.

He glared down into her wide grey eyes, eyes which told him exactly what she was thinking. They were growing darker by the second. And her lips were still parted from that shuddering sigh.

To his shock, he experienced a reckless urge to yank her closer and give her the kiss those parted lips were begging him for.

Instead, he flung her from him. ‘I am sick to death of the lengths your kind will go to in order to attract my notice.’ And sickened to find that, in spite of his better judgement, his body was responding to this girl’s far-from-subtle approach.

‘My kind of…attract your…what?’ she sputtered.

‘Do not think to dupe me by a display of outraged innocence, miss. And do not presume to approach me again. If you were a person worthy of notice, you would have been able to find a more orthodox way of effecting an introduction and making me aware of your charms.’

Imogen stood, open-mouthed, while those hard green eyes raked her quivering form from top to toe with such insolence she felt as though he might just as well have stripped her naked.

‘Such as they are,’ he finished, with a sneer that left her in no doubt of his low opinion of her.

‘Well!’ she huffed.

One of his companions raised a lavender-scented handkerchief to his lips to conceal his smirk as the green-eyed exquisite turned and stalked away. The others sniggered openly.

Penelope and Charlotte flicked open their fans and raised them to their faces, but not before Imogen caught a glimpse of a pair of smiles that put her in mind of a cat that has a live bird under one paw.

‘Oh, dear,’ said Lady Verity, a frown creasing her normally placid brow as her friends turned their backs on Imogen and sauntered away, their noses in the air. ‘How unfortunate. He seemed to think…’

‘Yes, he made it quite plain what he thought. Odious man! Who does he think he is?’

‘I have no idea, but he seems to be someone of consequence…’

‘Someone who thinks a great deal of his own consequence, you mean,’ Imogen muttered darkly, taking in the arrogant set of the blond man’s shoulders as he strode towards the exit. ‘How dare he talk to me like that!’

Lady Verity was beginning to look perturbed. And Imogen realized she was clenching her fists and breathing heavily and, worst of all, scowling. All three things a lady should never do. Particularly not in a ballroom.

Oh, heavens, she thought, swinging to look towards the chaperon’s bench, where her aunt was sitting, monitoring her every move.

She took a deep breath, smiled grimly at Lady Verity and said, ‘I think I had better go and rejoin Lady Callandar.’

Lady Verity dipped a curtsy and went off after her friends, while Imogen braced herself to face her aunt’s exasperated brand of censure.

Not that her aunt’s face showed so much as a hint of disappointment that her niece had just demonstrated she was completely unfit to mix in polite Society. Nothing, but nothing would induce the woman to betray any kind of emotion in a public place. No, the unbearably gentle scolding would wait until they were in their carriage and on their way home, where nobody could overhear.

It began, as Imogen had known it would, the very moment the flunkey closed the carriage door on them.

‘Oh, Imogen—’ her aunt sighed ‘—I had such hopes for you when Mrs Leeming extended you an invitation to this small, select gathering—and what must you do but squander this opportunity by making an exhibition of yourself with one of, if not the most eligible bachelor in town! Everyone took notice of the way Viscount Mildenhall stormed out—’ she shook her head ruefully ‘—and by now I am sure nobody is in any doubt that it was because you threw your glass of champagne over him!’

She wished her aunt would give her space to explain that far from throwing anyone’s drink over the rude, arrogant fop, the whole thing had been an accident…although now she came to think of it, she wondered if it really had been an accident that she had been standing there, waving her arms about, at precisely the moment a supremely eligible viscount had been emerging from the refreshment room with a drink in his hand. Given the cruelty of the smiles as they had strolled away, she wouldn’t be a bit surprised to learn that Penelope Veryan had set the whole thing up. With Charlotte’s help.

But she knew it would be pointless to say a word against the Veryan girls. Her aunt was bound to simply point out that if she were not such an ill-disciplined, hurly-burly creature, who could be so easily goaded into waving her arms about like a windmill, the viscount’s waistcoat would have got away scot-free. And her uncle, she huffed, folding her arms in exasperation, was even more blind where the sisters were concerned. He was always telling Imogen to observe their manners, and use the example of those ‘perfect’ young ladies as her pattern. It was because they always listened to him with their heads tilted to one side, their eyes wide with admiration, whatever nonsense he spouted. And because they moved gracefully, dressed beautifully and had such polished manners. Oh, yes, they were exceptionally careful to conceal, from powerful men like Lord Callandar, their love of playing spiteful tricks on those less fortunate than themselves!

Well, if that was what it meant to be a young lady, she was glad her new guardians thought she was not one! She would never sink to the kind of unkind, sneaky behaviour those cats indulged in!

‘And when I think of the lengths,’ her aunt went on, ‘Mrs Leeming went to, to get him there at all! She will be furious with me! He has only recently come into his title, and is up in town for the express purpose of finding himself a bride with all due speed to ease the last days of his poor dear father, the Earl of Corfe. And Mrs Leeming has two daughters she particularly wished to bring to his notice.’

No wonder he was a bit conceited, thought Imogen, if he was the son of an earl on his deathbed. Especially if he was used to females flinging themselves at him because they all knew he was in town in search of a wife. But to bracket her in their company, just because she had waved her arm about…why, she had not even known he was standing behind her! What, did he think she had eyes in the back of her head?

He might be breathtakingly handsome to look at, but if he could not tell a genuine accident from a deliberate ploy to attract his notice, he obviously had the brains of a peacock, as well as the strutting gait of one!

‘What were you thinking?’ her aunt continued. ‘No—’ She closed her eyes, and held her hands up in a gesture of exasperation that had become all too familiar to Imogen over the past year. ‘On second thoughts, it is pointless asking you that! Not after the constant stream of excuses you have come up with ever since Lord Callandar brought you into our home on the death of your stepfather.’ She opened her eyes, eyes that were now filled with such sadness it brought a lump to Imogen’s throat.

‘It is such a pity my husband did not remove you from—’ she took a quick breath, and mouthed the words ‘That House,’ before continuing in a normal tone ‘—much sooner. You should have come to us the moment your mother died. Or even a year or so later, when it was the proper time to bring you out. Then I might have been able to do something with you. You were young enough then, perhaps, to have had some of your faults ironed out.’

She heaved a sigh. ‘Of course, although one can sympathize with your poor dear mother, for she never really recovered from—’ she pursed her lips and squeezed her eyes shut again ‘—that Dreadful Tragedy, nevertheless—’ her eyes snapped open ‘—she should not have permitted you to run wild with those Bredon boys.’

‘My brothers,’ Imogen could not help blurting. She knew that girls were not supposed to argue with their elders and betters. But sometimes she felt so strongly that she simply could not hold her tongue. Her uncle had informed her, less than one week after taking her in, that it was her most deplorable fault.

‘Properly reared young ladies,’ he had said, the corners of his mouth pulling down in chagrin, ‘should never set their own ideas above that of any gentleman. In fact, they should not even have them!’

‘Not have ideas?’ Imogen had been astounded enough to reply. ‘How can that be possible?’ She and her brothers had been used to having the liveliest of conversations around the dining table when they were all home. Even her stepfather had enjoyed what he termed a stimulating debate from time to time.

‘Stepbrothers,’ her aunt was firmly correcting her. ‘They are not blood relations.’

Imogen flinched. When Hugh Bredon—the scholarly man she had grown up to regard as her father—had died, his second son, Nicomedes, had done his utmost to disabuse her of the notion she had any legal claims on him.

‘My father never adopted you,’ he said coldly. ‘In the eyes of the law, you are not my sister. And therefore it would be quite inappropriate for you to make your home with me now.’

Nick, who was training for the law, had already given her the devastating news that the Brambles—the house where she had grown up, the place she had thought of as her home—would have to be sold to pay off the debts Hugh had racked up in the latter years of his life.

‘What is left over is to be divided equally between myself, Alaric and Germanicus.’

She had felt as though Nick had struck her. ‘What about me?’ she had asked in a scratchy voice. How could he have left everything equally between the three sons who had left her to nurse their father through his last, protracted illness? Not that she blamed any one of them. Nick was too busy with his law books. Alaric was away with his regiment, fighting in the Peninsula. And Germanicus was a naval lieutenant serving with his squadron in the Caribbean.

No, it was Hugh’s attitude she found hard to swallow.