The Secrets of the Heart

But that did not mean she would fawn over him the moment he entered a room the way those giggling debutantes and their hovering mamas were doing now as St. Clair leisurely made his way down the long ballroom, his loyal trio of dull wrens undoubtedly freed to go their own way now that their leader was in his glory.

Counting slowly to ten, and waiting until the last possible moment, until she could absolutely feel the man’s presence behind her, Gabrielle blinked rapidly to put a sparkle in her wide, tip-tilted green eyes, spread her mouth in a welcoming smile, and turned, her hand extended gracefully as she trilled, “La, St. Clair, I would know you were approaching even if I were to be suddenly struck deaf. The visible stir your presence makes in a room is almost akin to that of a Second Coming. All in blue this evening, I see. I believe the viscount is nearing tears, so overcome is he by your exquisite presence.”

“Miss Laurence, I vow you bid fair to unman me with your sweet compliments,” St. Clair intoned, bowing over her hand, the touch of his firm, dry lips searing her skin, a shiver of awareness, of stubborn, defensive dislike skipping down her spine as his blue-green gaze lifted and met hers, holding her in thrall for several heartbeats. “Zounds, but I can yet again feel my puny attempts at brilliance fading into nothingness, faced with your overwhelming beauty.”

“Which you have so very kindly served to bring into fashion, my lord,” Gabrielle replied sweetly, inwardly gritting her teeth at the infuriating knowledge that she was speaking the truth. If St. Clair had used his seemingly bubbleheaded yet razor-sharp wit to comment disparagingly on her red hair she might as well have retired to the country and taken the veil for all her chances of ever becoming a success in Mayfair.

For despite Gabrielle’s planning, all her careful preparation to take London by storm, she knew she owed the man considerable thanks for his unexpected championing of her, and it galled her no end to admit it.

Yet admit it she did, tonight and every time she was in his company, for if she was young and somewhat sure of herself, she was not stupid. Her ritual obsequiousness was the unspoken price she nightly had to pay for St. Clair’s continued public favor. Shylock, in comparison, could not have been more insidiously demanding than Baron Christian St. Clair when he had called for his “pound of flesh.”

“I’ve visited your tailor just this afternoon, my lord,” the young viscount piped up after nervously clearing his throat, for he had been hovering around Gabrielle for the past quarter hour, partly because it did him no harm to be seen with her, but mostly in the hope St. Clair would appear, for everyone already knew St. Clair had been making it a point to single out Miss Laurence first at any engagement he favored. “I’ve commissioned an entire wardrobe from the man, paying him double if he has half of it complete next week,” the young man ended, clearly proud of himself.

“Indeed.” St. Clair inclined his head apologetically to Gabrielle for having to desert her to speak with the viscount, then turned to the young man, inspecting him through the stemmed, gilt-edged quizzing glass he leisurely lifted to his left eye. “How commendable of you, my lord, and how woefully overdue. Ah, that was too bad of me. Please, my lord, forgive my naughty tongue. However, if I may be so bold as to inquire,” he drawled, allowing the quizzing glass to fall to midchest, for the piece was suspended from his neck by a thin ivory silk band, “would you tell me what colors you selected?”

The viscount swallowed down hard, making it painfully clear to everyone that his throat had gone desert dry. “Green, Clarence blue—and dove gray, I believe. Did I choose correctly?” he asked dully, as if already sorrowfully convinced he had erred in his choices.

St. Clair allowed time for the silence to grow and for their near neighbors to lean closer to hear his pronouncement when it came. “Bien. Excellent choices, my lord,” he exclaimed at last, beaming at the young viscount. And then he frowned. “Oh dear, how do I put this delicately? I fear you will have to shed a few pounds in order to do credit to the cut of the jacket, my lord, not that anything I say is of the slightest consequence. Still, may I suggest you stable your mount and walk yourself briskly through the park each day for the promenade? That should rid you of your, um, bulges in no time. Don’t you think so, Miss Laurence?”

Longing to tell him that she thought it would be lovely if the visibly wilting viscount were to quickly search out his backbone and summarily stuff St. Clair’s quizzing glass down the baron’s gullet, Gabrielle smiled and said, “I have always believed judicious exercise to be healthful, sir.”

“Ah, exactement, Miss Laurence,” St. Clair responded just as Lady Undercliff’s overpaid musicians struck up yet another waltz. “And, so saying, perhaps you would honor me with your participation in the dance, another highly desirable form of healthful exercise?”

As social suicide was not on Gabrielle’s agenda for this or any evening, she dropped into a graceful curtsy and then allowed St. Clair to guide her onto the dance floor even as other couples joined them, the floor rapidly becoming crowded with persons eager to prove their agreement with the baron’s prescription for “healthful exercise.”

At last they were alone—or as alone as any two people could be on the dance floor—and now their private war could recommence. St. Clair lightly cupped Gabrielle’s slim waist with his right hand while she rested hers in his left, their bodies precisely two and one half feet apart. A slight pressure from St. Clair’s hand moved Gabrielle into the first sweeping turn of the waltz, and she smiled up at him, saying, “I do so loathe you, St. Clair.”

His smile was equally bright as he appeared to enjoy her opening salvo of the evening, for they had been throwing verbal brickbats at each other from their first meeting, exchanges Gabrielle could not remember which one of them had begun and which she still could not decide if she enjoyed or dreaded.

“Encroaching mushrooms, my dear,” he answered smoothly, sweeping her into another graceful turn, “usually do dislike their betters. Tell me, please—as I am all agog to know—do you lie awake nights, Miss Laurence, planning sundry vile terminations to my existence?”

“I wouldn’t care to waste my precious time thinking of you in any way at all, my lord,” Gabrielle countered, nodding a greeting to a female passerby, who was looking at her in undisguised envy for having snagged St. Clair yet again for his first waltz of the evening.

“Too true, Miss Laurence, too true,” St. Clair said, his hand on her waist gripping just a hair tighter than it had before, causing another unwelcome, disturbing frisson of awareness to sing through her blood. “You are much too occupied in forwarding yourself to think of others. Fame is fleeting, dear girl, and you are clever to enjoy the pinnacle of popularity upon which I have placed you while you can. Consider this: I may deign to cut you tomorrow, and all your fine success would come crashing down around your ears. Wouldn’t that be dreadful? Perhaps you should encourage our fuzzy-cheeked viscount to offer for you while you still bask in the sunshine of my approval.”

“I am visiting this fair city only to enjoy the Season, my lord. I am not on the hunt for a wealthy husband, not in the least,” Gabrielle bit out from between clenched teeth, still maintaining her smile, but with an effort, for she knew she was lying. Lying, and desperate, not that she could ever allow St. Clair to know.

“You don’t wish to marry? Gad, there’s a shocker! Feel free to perceive me as astonished!” St. Clair countered. “Then I was wrong to take one look at your meticulously constructed facade of gentility and see an empty-headed, fortune-mad beauty out to snare a deep-in-the-pockets title? Forgive me, Miss Laurence. I should have realized that you are in hopes of setting up an intellectual salon, or perhaps intent upon conquering Society in order to gain their cooperation with some private agenda you have yet to reveal—a series of good words, perhaps?”

Gabrielle opened her mouth to argue with him, but he cut her off.

“But, no. That isn’t it. Why, do you know what I think? I think you loathe and detest men. Don’t you, Miss Laurence? You hate us and wish to have us all fall in love with your beauty so that you might, one by one, grind our broken hearts in the dust. Why didn’t I see it before? How deep you are, Miss Laurence. How very deep.”

“Oh, cut line, St. Clair!” Gabrielle declared hotly as, the waltz over, he took hold of her elbow and guided her toward the balcony. “I may as well admit it, for it is obvious to me that you will keep mouthing inanities until I do. Yes, like every other unattached young lady here this evening, I am on the hunt for a rich, titled husband. The deeper his pockets and the loftier his title the better. I am mercenary, hardheaded, strong-willed, and so depraved by my ambition as to be capable of debasing myself by being polite to you in order to advance my standing in Society. Fortunately for my plans, in general I enjoy the company of gentlemen. It is only you I despise. There! Are you happy now?”

“Ecstatic, my dear,” St. Clair answered genially, drawing her toward a small stone bench and motioning for her to be seated. He then spread his lace-edged handkerchief beside her and, carefully splitting his coattails, sat down himself. “I had begun to wonder if you were to be content merely trading barbs as we have done this past fortnight. But we have progressed. We are becoming, at long last, entirely open with each other. You despise me, and I return the compliment.”

“Which in no way explains why you have deigned to bring me into fashion,” Gabrielle said, studying Lord St. Clair out of the corner of her eye, taking in the sight of his expressive winged eyebrows above eyes that turned from blue to lightest green with his moods, the straight, aquiline nose he looked down to such effect, the shape of his generous mouth, the marvelous way his longish, light, golden mane was tied back in a small queue.

The man wasn’t simply handsome, drat him. He was beautiful! What a pity the Fates, which had gifted him with such beauty, had somehow neglected to stuff his handsome skull with a brain. Or was she as wrong in assuming that as she was in her protestations that she couldn’t abide him?

“So, as we are being honest this evening—why have you chosen to bring me into favor, my lord?” she dared to ask outright, wearying of their constant fencing.

St. Clair produced a small enameled box from his waistcoat and went about the business of taking snuff, his expertise in the movements of the procedure marred only at the last, when he screwed up his handsome face most comically, pinched two fingers against the bridge of his nose, and then gave out with a prodigious sneeze.

She giggled, unable to help herself, for he looked so silly. Almost adorably silly.

“Ah, please forgive me, Miss Laurence,” he said, drawing a more serviceable handkerchief from his sleeve and wiping delicately at his nose. “Deuced evil habit, snuff. I’ve seen men with half their noses eaten away from the stuff.”

He gave a horrified shiver, then smiled. “Do you know what, Miss Laurence? I believe I will forswear the nasty habit beginning this very evening, if only by way of a public service, as no one will dare take snuff if St. Clair does not. Am I not wonderful to use my elevated stature for the betterment of mankind? Indeed, I am confident I am, especially when I consider my vast and most costly collection of snuffboxes. Too small to make into posy pots, I imagine I shall just have to give them all away to needy snuff takers in Piccadilly. And then I believe I shall reward myself with a new waistcoat. I saw the most interesting fabric the other day—silver, with mauve roses. Now, dear girl, what were you saying?”

“Never mind, my lord.” Gabrielle rolled her eyes, giving up any notion that she would ever understand this man, and telling herself that she didn’t want to understand him. He was probably only what she saw before her: a paper-skulled, imbecilic clotheshorse with more hair than wit, more self-consequence than a strutting cock, and all the mental acumen of a cracked walnut. She would be the world’s greatest fool to believe otherwise, no matter how pretty he was, no matter how many times his smiling face had invaded her dreams these past two weeks.

Besides, she believed she already knew why he had undertaken to champion her. He had done it simply to prove that he could take what he considered to be an unknown, fire-headed country bumpkin and raise her to the level of a Lady Ariana Tredway. The only thing she couldn’t understand was why he allowed her to speak so uncivilly to him—and why he found it so necessary to be mean to her whenever no one was about to overhear them.

And one more thing bothered her, unnerved her, haunted her in the night long after she should have found her rest. Her reaction to each touch of his hand, each penetrating look of his oddly intelligent, impossible-to-read eyes. Why, she could almost think herself attracted to him, if she didn’t believe herself above such nonsense.

“Yes, well then,” St. Clair said as the silence between them lengthened, rising and holding out his hand to her after retrieving his lace handkerchief, “as we seem to have run out of cutting things to say to each other, may I suggest we return to the ballroom? We have been absent for a sufficient length of time for those who are inclined to low thoughts to have taken it into their heads that we have been indulging in a romantic assignation. Why I continue to be so kind to you I do not know, but once again I have served to raise your consequence. Now, I fear, I must reward myself by twirling a less unwieldy partner around the floor and then take my leave. I wouldn’t wish for Lady Undercliff to preen overmuch at having snagged me for an entire evening.”

“Unwieldy?” Gabrielle angrily snatched her hand from his, stung by this latest in a string of insults even as she relaxed in her resurgence of anger, which was much easier to deal with than any softening of her feelings toward the inane dandy. “I’ll have you know I am considered to be a wonderful dancer. Why, the viscount has only this evening vowed to pen an ode to my grace in going down the dance.”

“That unpolished cub? Odds fish, m’dear, what is that to the point?” St. Clair responded as they reentered the ballroom. “The sallow-faced twit also seriously believes he will cut a dash in dove gray. He’ll probably insist upon a pink waistcoat as well, a thought that nearly propels me to tears! Ah, look, the gods have smiled! I do believe my poor trammeled-upon feet are saved. Lady Ariana approaches, smiling a greeting to me, her dear friend. You would be wise to observe her, Miss Laurence. Lady Ariana is a veritable gazelle on the dance floor. To quote the illustrious Suckling, ‘Her feet beneath her petticoat, like little mice, stole in and out as if they feared the light. And oh! she dances such a way, no sun upon an Easter day is half so fine a sight.’”

“You quote so often, St. Clair,” Gabrielle shot back, inwardly seething. “It is so sad that you never have an original thought.”

“Oh, I am mortally wounded by your sharp tongue,” he responded theatrically, “and needs must retire the field at once.” He gave a subtle signal to the viscount, who had been hovering nearby, painfully conspicuous in his hopes for another moment’s notice from the popular baron, and that man hopped forward sprightly to take Miss Laurence off St. Clair’s hands.

“How exceedingly amicable of you, my lord,” St. Clair intoned, bowing slightly in thanks. “It is the true sign of a Christian to be willing to graciously take back a young lady who has just recently deserted him for the better man. Miss Laurence, I leave you in good company. If you will excuse me?”

Gabrielle’s smile beamed brighter than the chandelier hanging above their ballroom, the chandelier she secretly wished would slip its moorings to come crashing down on St. Clair’s arrogant head.

“Will we be seeing you at Richmond tomorrow, for her ladyship’s garden party?” she asked, praying for a drenching rain on the morrow so that the baron would not dare attend and chance ruining one of his exquisite ensembles. If the painted popinjay refused to ride because he considered hacking jackets too barbaric for words, he most certainly would not deign to appear at a picnic in anything less than his usual outlandish satins.

“Point du tout, Miss Laurence. I fear you all shall simply have to make do without me,” he replied, lifting the lace handkerchief to his lips. “I abhor picnics, and can think of nothing more uncivilized. If I wished to be crudely rustic I should never have fled the countryside for London in the first place, which I did the moment I realized there existed an entire lovely segment of the populace that did not believe the pinnacle of their existence to be an afternoon spent lying on their backs in the fields, chewing hay. Why, just think, Miss Laurence: Can you really imagine me pushed into a tent with the milling crowd, or forced to sit on a blanket spread on the grass?”

“And pray why not, my lord?” Gabrielle could not resist asking. “After all, I hear most idling, wastrel grasshoppers flit about in the grass quite happily without benefit of a blanket at all.”

St. Clair gave a small, trilling laugh just as the viscount winced, evidently convinced Miss Laurence had said something dreadful and wondering why he had thought being in her company would do his own reputation any good.

“C’est merveilleux! But you are so droll, my dear girl,” the baron continued, smiling broadly. “You almost make me believe you have some sort of sense for amusing repartee. I shall leave you now, my heart light that you have said something brilliant. Good evening all,” he said, bowing once again, this time lifting Gabrielle’s hand to his lips before turning to Lady Ariana and leading her onto the floor, at which time the musicians immediately halted in the midst of the Scottish air they were playing and broke into another waltz.

“Isn’t he magnificent, Miss Laurence?” the viscount gushed, his tone filled with awe, earning himself a speaking look from Gabrielle as she excused herself, wishing her skin didn’t still tingle from the touch of St. Clair’s lips, and, mumbling something about having a crushing headache, asked to be returned to her chaperone.

CHAPTER TWO

There was a general whisper, toss, and wriggle,

But etiquette forbade them all to giggle.