How to Beguile a Beauty

“Ah, Tanner, here you are. I didn’t presume stealing Lady Lydia away for the first dance, but do see you have her returned here in time for the second. I shouldn’t wish to appear desperate by having to track the pair of you down on some balcony, would I? Now if you’ll excuse me, I believe manners compel me to find a certain rather rapacious lady and haul her about the dance floor for the next ten minutes as a reward for allowing me to escort her this evening.”

Justin then bowed to Lydia and Jasmine once more and turned on his heel, melting into the crowd that seemed to now border on a multitude in the large ballroom as the orchestra signaled with a rather rusty flourish of violins that the first waltz was to commence momentarily.

Tanner handed over the glasses of lemonade and then snatched up Lydia’s dance card, one corner of his mouth lifting as he read what Justin Wilde had written. “It would appear, Lydia, that you have acquired an admirer,” he said, handing the card back to her. “You as well, Jasmine? I assume so, as Justin is always very careful with his manners.”

“I don’t even know who he is,” Jasmine exclaimed, wide-eyed. “But he is pretty, isn’t he? Oh, look, there’s Lady Pendergast! She always wears so many feathers, doesn’t she?” She poked Mrs. Shandy with her fan, directing her attention to the rather prodigiously obese woman in purple, sailing past them as if propelled by some errant wind catching at the trio of enormous white plumes in her hair.

Tanner smiled at Lydia, and spoke softly. “Lady Pendergast’s feathers, a butterfly on the wing, most anything shiny—whatever takes her fancy. My cousin is easily amused, and even more easily distracted. But the baron was being attentive to you, I think.”

“The baron was only being outrageous, which I admit he does rather well,” Lydia said, taking the card, but not opening it. “I think he’s apprehensive about the evening, and how he’ll be received.”

“Justin? Apprehensive? I seriously doubt that.”

They both looked in the direction the baron had taken, just in time to see him bow to an older gentleman who pretended not to see the gesture before pointedly turning his back on him.

“Oh, that’s not good,” Tanner said, shaking his head. “What one does, others may do, until the whole room turns its collective back on him. We managed to chase Byron out of England only a fortnight ago, and now it would seem we’re about to do the same to Brummell, as well. That can’t happen to Justin. I won’t allow it. Excuse me, Lydia, while I follow him, make my own feelings known on the subject of his return and my friendship for him. After all, being a bloody duke has to count for something.”

Lydia nodded her agreement and watched Tanner hurry off to stand by his friend. It was as Jasmine had said, as everyone who knew him said: the Duke of Malvern was an honorable man.

Jasmine was now speaking with a young woman dressed all in virginal white, her complexion as pale as her gown, and since Lydia didn’t wish to interrupt, she busied herself by at last opening her dance card, to see what the baron had written that had brought such a strange smile to Tanner’s face.

The baron had scribbled his name on the second line, the fifth, and the eighth. The three dances he had mentioned. But it was the way he had signed the card that now brought a smile to her face.

Wilde. Wilder. Wildest.

What a wicked, wickedly interesting man.

The captain had been gentle, almost respectful, their attraction to each other expressed only in longing looks, but never in word or action. He had been, she was realizing more and more, not only her first love, but also her beginning. Not her end.

Tanner was an honorable man and a good friend (who had a spring in his step, according to Sarah), and a rather bemused but interested look in his eyes when she’d come into the drawing room this evening. She’d known, even at first feared, that Tanner could mean more to her than to simply be her friend. But she hadn’t considered that he might know that. Besides, Captain Fitzgerald stood between them, a bond and yet also a division.

Baron Justin Wilde, however, was a man totally outside her limited realm of experience, a man who well could be teasing her, or he could be using his teasing to cover something that was perhaps more than a casual interest.

Why, she was beginning to feel like the heroine in a Pennypress novel. All she needed now was a menacing stepfather, or a dark castle complete with a ghost.

It was good that Rafe was a duke, and could frank her correspondence for her, as Lydia already felt certain her letter to Nicole was going to run to two sheets, if not more. Which, for a quiet person who was accustomed to little excitement in her life, was rather extraordinary, indeed.

Chapter Four

TANNER AND JUSTIN stood on the dark balcony outside the ballroom, companionably sipping from their glasses as they leaned against the railing, looking out over the gardens and the inviting paths lit periodically by flambeaux.

It was good to have Justin Wilde back in his life, Tanner thought. They’d had grand times together in the past, young men fresh from school and the country, eager to explore the world and maybe make their own mark on it. They’d laughed together, traveled to the races and boxing mills together. Raced their curricles neck-or-nothing, drunk deep in disreputable taverns, even shared an opera dancer or two. They’d been young, so young, all of them, with their whole lives ahead of them.

Now those memories seemed to be of another world, another time, one before Justin’s marriage, his flight to the continent after the duel, and then many long years of war.

So many friends had been lost to that war, good men all. Jonathan, Richard, Harry…Fitz. A man needed to hang on to those friends he still had, stand with them, stand by them.

“I’m not hiding out here, you understand,” the baron said after a bit.

Tanner carefully kept his gaze on a married couple—but not married to each other—seemingly intent on finding a less well-lit area of the gardens. “Absolutely not. I would never think that of you.”

“It’s a mob of bodies in there. The woman must have invited all of London, and all of London came.”

“Perhaps even some who were not invited,” Tanner said, a small smile playing about his lips.

“I’ll ignore that remark. Balls can be exceedingly boring, don’t you think, when there’s no card room?”

“Yes, without doubt. Boring. And the wine is warm. All in all, a distinctly disappointing entertainment. I can’t imagine why any of us is here. Why are we here, Justin? And by here, I mean on this balcony.”

Justin drained his glass, and then stared into it for a while. “All right, since you’re being so insistent, I’ll admit it. I am hiding, perhaps just a bit. I didn’t expect Molton’s response. Some of the others, yes, I did expect idiots to be idiots. But not Molton. He was friendly enough when we were in Vienna. We worked together with the Austrians, securing Marie Louise’s condemnation of her husband so that the Allies could brand him an outlaw.”

“But now you’re both in Mayfair. Molton will follow the pack, perhaps even more so if he fears that someone will remember he’d been seen with you in Vienna.”

“At least Chalfont hasn’t asked me to remove my unacceptable self from the premises. There is that.”

Tanner turned his back to the rail, looking in at the bright, overheated ballroom. “Are you serious?” he teased his friend. “His wife is in alt, confident she has scored the coup of the Season, having you here. Her ball will be on everyone’s lips tomorrow. She was mortified, she was horrified, she feared her dear husband might at any moment draw his sword and order you out at the point of it. But as you’d already killed the once…”

Justin also turned about, to lean back against the railing. “So you’re saying I’m too outrageous to be in polite company, but too dangerous to exclude? How interesting. I might even like that. Shall I take to dressing all in black, do you think? Apply myself to developing a scowl?”

“You mean to combine a bit of Brummell’s severe attire with a hint of Byron’s pout? The ladies might enjoy that.”

Justin did a fairly good imitation of a dark scowl. “Ladies always enjoy the thought that they might be part of some titillating drama or the other. It’s their bread and butter. How else did George collect an entire treasure box filled with locks of pubic hair, for God’s sake. Women are fools. And then we have to defend their idiocy.”

“Sheila was one of Byron’s conquests?”

Justin shrugged. “I never inquired. Couldn’t bring myself to really much care either way, frankly, as long as she didn’t do anything so publicly stupid as Caro Lamb. I’ve had eight long years to refine on my mistake. I failed my wife, Tanner. I wed Sheila’s beauty, not concerned with more than scoring such a coup, having her on my arm. It was only once we’d gotten to know each other that we both realized we’d each married a stranger and, at heart, really didn’t even like one another. Let that be a lesson to you, my friend. Admire beauty, take it to bed if you must. But marry it? No, don’t do that.”

Tanner knew he had to ask this next question. “You’ve danced twice with Lady Lydia, Justin. You admire her beauty?”

The baron pushed himself away from the railing, to look carefully at Tanner. “Am I poaching on already-fenced property, my friend? If so, you’ve only to tell me. My friends do not appear to be so thick on the ground at the moment that I would risk alienating one of them.”

Tanner didn’t know how to answer that question. Was it only a few hours ago that he’d blithely told Rafe he would gladly welcome competition from somewhere other than the grave?

He’d watched Lydia and Justin as they’d moved around the dance floor in a waltz, and she’d seemed animated, quite happy, the two of them chattering the entire time…unaware of the sidelong looks, the furious whispers.

His friend Justin was handsome, rich, affable, and intelligent. Tanner didn’t mind that sort of competition. But how does a man compete with someone whose past made him also appear dangerous, even deliciously intriguing? Worse, how did one compete with a friend, dead or alive?

It was rather as if Lydia had bloomed today. First in the Park, then again once Justin had come on the scene. Tanner didn’t know what had happened, was happening. Perhaps Lydia had felt herself under her more gregarious sister’s thumb, and now felt free?

No, that couldn’t be it. Lydia and Nicole were more than sisters, even more than simply twins. They were very good friends. Still, he could understand how comfortable it might be for a basically shy person like Lydia to allow her sister to take the center of the stage, while she watched from the wings.

He’d thought—yes, he would admit it to himself—that, once Nicole was gone from the stage, as it were, Lydia would turn to him for companionship, and that their friendship, founded in tragedy, might grow into something more.

He’d even watch as she was pursued by other suitors, confident enough in his own ability to capture her heart when the time was right, when she could be sure of her decision. Especially now, today, as Lydia seemed to be ready to face life on her own, finally out from behind her sister’s shadow.

What a hell of a moment for Justin and his wicked smile, his even more wicked wit, and his romantic tragic past to show up on the scene…

“Tanner? Was the question that difficult?”