Page 42 of A Story of Love

Lori heaved an exaggerated sigh. “Very well, I will allow you to dress my hair. But absolutely no ringlets. Or curling tongs.”

Freddie smiled. “No ringlets or curling tongs, I promise.”

***

As usual, Fast ignored the cluster of young bucks who’d gathered around him the moment he’d entered the ballroom. Instead, he focused his attention on his erstwhile best friend, the Earl of Moreland, who was dancing with Miss Pascoe.

Tonight was the first time he’d seen the other man in more than sixteen years. Just looking at his smug, handsome face set Fast’s teeth on edge.

For years he had hated Moreland because the other man had married the woman Fast loved. By the time Fast returned to England last year—more than a decade and a half after he’d left—his hatred had burnt down to glowing embers.

It hadn’t taken more than a few weeks back home for his banked hatred to flare back to life. He’d expected that Moreland would keep a house in London and that he and Louisa would be engaged in the social whirl of the Season. He had dreaded that first meeting with his old love.

But the day had never come.

Instead, he’d discovered that Louisa had not been seen in London since her marriage. Moreland had kept his wife isolated on his country estate, where she had given birth year in and year out, until she was bed-bound, a shell of her former self according to the few people who had seen her. She’d been gravely ill last year and Fast’s two letters to her had gone unanswered.

And now Louisa was dead.

And Moreland was waltzing around a ton ballroom in the arms of a woman less than half his age, thoroughly enjoying himself if his self-satisfied smirk was anything to go by.

Fast’s jaws ached, making him realize that he was grinding his teeth again.

“Isn’t that so, Severn?”

He jolted at the sound of his name. “What’s that?” he asked, not bothering to hide his irritation from the Marquess of Dare—a tiresome youth who clung to him like shit on his shoe no matter how diligently Fast tried to scrape him off.

Dare smiled eagerly. “Er, I was just saying that the odds are currently in your favor when it comes to landing the Pascoe chit.”

“Don’t you know that wagering about ladies is bad form?” Fast barked.

The youngling’s face puckered and for a moment Fast felt guilty, as if he’d just swatted a puppy on the nose with a newspaper. “Oh, er, yes. Just so.”

“I haven’t participated in any of that foolery,” Viscount Melton said, cutting Dare a virtuous smirk.

“Being a kiss-arse is also bad form, Melton,” Fast said.

All the other young men guffawed.

“Have any of you—” Baron Kearsley began, but Fast didn’t catch the rest of what he said, the chatter around him falling away as the person he’d been waiting for all evening appeared across the crowded ballroom.

His mouth became as dry as the Sahara and yet he was suddenly perspiring like a bishop in a brothel. “Bloody hell,” he muttered. He’d known Miss Fontenot would look good in that blue-green gown, but nothing had prepared him for just how good.

“I say,” Dare squawked in his grating voice, “who the devil is that?”

Fast didn’t need to ask who the young sprog meant. Before he gave into temptation and snarled at the young men to not so much as look at Miss Fontenot, Fast pushed off the wall and made his way toward where she was chatting with the Countess of Sedgewick and several matrons. He knew it wasn’t possible, but the damned Fontenot woman seemed to draw all the light from hundreds of candles toward her.

As Fast had long suspected, the clinging silk of her gown displayed the sort of figure that men launched navies and declared wars over. The snug bodice was lower than she usually wore, but not so daring that it would offend even the most prudish sensibility.

Instead of the full-length sleeves she usually favored, Fast’s creation featured short, delicate puffs of silk that left her pleasingly plump arms on display. Or at least partly on display.

His choice of opera gloves in a matching blue-green kid had truly been inspired. The supple leather hugged her pale, creamy flesh in a manner that was positively decadent and required him to pause and subtly adjust himself before resuming his journey across the ballroom.

Her glorious mass of blue-black hair was, for once, arranged in an attractive coiffure rather than brutally scraped back from her temples and pinned to within an inch of its life. Thankfully, she had not opted for either a cropped, teased fringe or the annoying sausage-like curls that so many young women preferred. Instead, her thick glossy locks were twisted into a simple but elegant chignon that managed to look smooth yet artfully disarranged, as if she’d just tumbled from a lover’s bed.

Lady Sedgewick noticed Fast first and must have said something to Miss Fontenot because she turned to him, her eyelids lowering over her brilliant green eyes and her full lips curving into a mocking smile.

Christ she was lovely!