Page 7 of The Lady Knows Best

CHAPTER 3

Had the phrase devil-may-care been invented to describe

Lord Deveraux?

Daphne knew better. Still, he entered the Clearwaters’ ballroom with a smile and a swagger that defied every gasp, every whisper.

Tall and elegantly dressed in crisp black and white, he paused in the doorway just long enough to let every eye take him in. Then he dipped his head to acknowledge the crowd’s attention, as if they had intended to convey some honor by it. The movement made his golden-brown hair gleam beneath the light of several hundred candles; a careless kiss or two more from the summer sun and it would be blond, dark blond, the color of sun-ripened wheatfields or polished oak.

In the fraction of a moment between the lowest point of his sardonic bow and the straightening of his spine, the ballgoers shifted their notice to Miss Grey, like a flock of starlings wheeling as one, guided purely by instinct.

All but one of them, that was. However appalled she might be by his audacity in coming tonight, wearing the scandal of his broken engagement like a badge of honor and exposing poor Miss Grey to further distress, Daphne once more found she could not look away from the despicable Lord Deveraux.

Thus, when his head rose, his eyes naturally met hers. Or so it seemed to her, anyway. Standing as they were on opposite ends of the long room, one could not say for certain whom or what he might have seen or why both his brows and his lips curved in something like amusement. Or was it admonition?

Daphne jerked her gaze away, first to the floor and then to some greenery in a tall urn. For perhaps the first time in her life she wished she had been listening on one of the many occasions her sister Erica, the botanist, had tried to teach her something about plants. Because then she might have been able to occupy her mind as well as her eyes.

If she were thinking about horticulture, she would not be thinking about how devilishly handsome Lord Deveraux was, in spite—or perhaps because—of his rakish reputation.

If she could have mustered some curiosity about leaf patterns and shapes, she would have something to distract from the warmth that had settled low in her belly and now seemed determined to simmer there.

Desire?

She would deny it to her sister, all her sisters, anyone who thought to ask—not, of course, that anyone would. Desire was not something about which young ladies spoke openly. On the rare occasion someone as level-headed as Daphne was bold enough to admit desiring a man, she was expected to choose a more suitable object than Lord Deveraux.

Miss Cooper would call it irrational to deny one’s feelings to oneself. And Daphne knew she was hardly the first—if the tales of his numerous conquests were to be believed—to find the notorious viscount appealing. Attractive.

The danger lay in acting on those feelings.

Which, of course, she had no intention of doing. Even if she were foolhardy enough to consider it, Lord Deveraux would not—not with her, at any rate. Without any firsthand knowledge of the particulars, Daphne understood that courtesans, actresses, and young widows all had charms that the only moderately pretty and frequently pedantic daughter of a Dublin solicitor did not.

A small knot of people—though not small enough to be discreet—had formed around Miss Grey, ostensibly to support her through the ordeal of being in the same room with her former betrothed, and particularly to prevent the two of them from coming within speaking distance of one another.

Shrieking distance, however, was another matter. The cluster of guests was not quite thick enough to muffle the shrill, incoherent gasps of Miss Grey’s rising hysteria, which floated along on a steady undercurrent of whispers:

“How dare he show his face here? The nerve of some so-called gentlemen!”

And farther from the unfortunate young lady in question:

“He may be a scoundrel, but she’s the one who’ll suffer . . .”

“Imagine calling things off with a man who looks like that . . .”

“. . . a man who kisses like that . . .”

And almost at Daphne’s elbow:

“I heard it was all down to that horrid magazine. Where else would a girl get such wretched advice?”

The ball of warmth in Daphne’s belly hardened into a lump of cold lead.

That horrid magazine?

No, surely not. Though the coincidence was quite extraordinary. This month’s issue of the Magazine for Misses, containing Daphne’s advice to Aggrieved in Grosvenor Square, had come out the day before yesterday. And word of Miss Grey’s broken engagement had followed hard on its heels.

Daphne still had not fully reconciled herself to the possibility that people—strangers—might actually value her opinion and take her advice.

Wretched advice.