How to Beguile a Beauty. Кейси Майклс

am,” Lydia said sincerely, getting to her feet and accepting Charlotte’s hug. “Lucas adores her, and she him. But I will miss her.”

      Charlotte idly rubbed at her perfectly round belly. “We’ll all miss her, but it isn’t as if she’s gone to the ends of the earth. She and Lucas will be coming to Ashurst Hall in July, to see her new niece or nephew—please God, the babe will have arrived by then—and also so that we can make plans for the wedding. By the way, it will be your job to talk her out of arriving at the church on horseback, with some of the little girls from the village prancing along ahead of her, streamers in their hair, tossing rose petals. Lucas, I’m afraid, is so besotted he’d grant her anything.”

      Lydia smiled even as she blinked away fresh tears. She loathed feeling like a watering pot; she’d always been so careful to hide her emotions, especially the stronger ones, which tended to frighten her. “Actually, I think that would be very nice. Very…Nicole.”

      “Don’t tell Rafe, but I agree. Oh, speaking of Rafe, he’s downstairs with our friend Tanner, who has come to take you for a drive on this unusual warm day in dreary London. It’s so lovely to see the sun, even when it plays hide-and-seek with us as it is today. Honestly, the only reason I came upstairs instead of leaving you some time to yourself was to tell you about Tanner’s offer. Not only am I as big as two houses, I may be turning senile. At any rate, Tanner somehow knew Nicole was leaving today, and thought he’d bear you company. Such a wonderful friend, isn’t he? So you go fetch your bonnet and pelisse, and I’ll tell him you’ll be down directly.”

      Lydia nodded, finding it difficult to speak, holding in her sigh until Charlotte had quit the room.

      Was this to be her life for the remainder of the Season?

      Charlotte and Rafe happily married; kind, caring, but also very much wrapped up in each other. Captain Fitzgerald, irrevocably lost to her. Nicole, her very best friend, off on a new adventure in her life.

      And Tanner Blake, the man she’d initially taken in such dislike through no fault of his own, the man who still seemed so doggedly determined to live up to his promise to his friend Fitz, could soon be married as well, with a whole new set of obligations.

      Why, were she the dramatic sort, she would say that she was alone in the midst of a multitude, which was not a very pleasant place to be.

      “If the exercise weren’t so fatiguing,” she told herself, “I should most probably throw myself to the floor and drum my heels against the carpet. Nicole always vowed it made her feel better. But I’m much too polite and restrained and civilized. Much too dull and boring. No wonder I sit with the desperate wallflowers. I may as well be invisible. Then again, if my inside were on my outside, if I were to act as I think and damn the consequences, like Nicole, I should probably shock everyone to their cores, including myself.”

      Lydia allowed herself another deep sigh before she lifted her slightly pointed chin and dutifully went in search of her pelisse and bonnet. The bonnet with the sky blue ribbon Captain Fitzgerald had picked out for her last Season, saying it went so well with her eyes. Thus armed, she then headed for the staircase, having firmly decided that she was a Daughtry, not a mouse, and it was time she began acting like one.

      Chapter Two

      “IT WILL BE A YEAR SOON,” Tanner Blake, Duke of Malvern, remarked as he accepted a glass of claret from his friend Rafe. “Sometimes it all seems a lifetime ago, and then at others it feels like yesterday.”

      He knew he didn’t have to say more than that for Rafe to understand to what he was referring. Last year’s battle was a fact in all of their lives, one never to be forgotten.

      “At least this time it looks as if Boney will be staying where we put him.” Rafe took up a seat on the facing couch in the large drawing room, a handsome man with a firm jaw and intelligent eyes. He put forth his glass in a toast. “To Fitz. And to all the good and true men who died in that damned unnecessary battle.”

      Tanner solemnly clinked glasses with his friend. He wasn’t the sort who indulged overmuch in spirits, but it was easier to trust the wine of France than it was the cloudy waters of London. He was much of an age with Rafe, but knew he looked younger, thanks to his dark blond hair with its tendency to wave when he neglected his barber, and to features his late mother had often cooed over as being “nearly Greek.” It was only his eyes, seemingly turned a deeper green in the past year, which aged him beyond the schoolroom.

      “They’re calling it all Waterloo now, you know, because Wellington stayed at an inn there while he wrote his dispatch to Parliament after the battle. I suppose it’s as good a name as any. A grand and glorious battle, they say now, a great victory for the Allies, destined to be one of the most memorable battles in history. All of these gushing fools forgetting that if they had just locked up the man more securely, none of it would have happened. To Fitz,” Tanner said, raising his glass. “To Fitz, and to the rest—and to stout locks.”

      Both men drank, then fell silent for some moments, each of them lost in their memories of Captain Swain Fitzgerald and all the other good friends they had lost.

      “I think she’s doing much better,” Tanner said at last, because it wasn’t a far leap in his mind from the captain to Lady Lydia.

      Rafe nodded his agreement. “To forget him would appall her, but Lydia knows that he’d want her to go on without him. You’ve been very good for her, Tanner.”

      “Have I? It’s no secret that she saw me as a constant reminder of what she’d lost, at least at first. But our time apart may have taken some of the edge off the events of that day last spring. I’d like to think we’ve become friends this Season. It’s what Fitz wanted.”

      “And you, being such an honorable man and all of that, also feel obligated to make good on your promise to a dying man. Tanner, I appreciate what you’ve done, what you’re doing. Left on her own, especially now that Nicole has quit the city, it’s no secret to either Charlie or me that Lydia would prefer to return to Ashurst Hall and a quiet life.”

      “I enjoy her company,” Tanner said, his eyes shifting toward the carpet at his feet. “Taking her out for the occasional drive, visiting the Elgin Marbles. I certainly wouldn’t say I’ve felt any of it a hardship.” He lifted his gaze again. “Have there been any suitors? I should think you’d be knee-deep in them.”

      Rafe shook his head. “Oh, no, let me correct that. There has been one, but I sent him away. Damn near booted him down the stairs, as a matter of fact. One dance at Lady Hertford’s ball, and the mushroom had the nerve to come propose marriage to Lydia’s dowry, and then only after his plea for Nicole’s dowry fell on deaf ears. It hasn’t been easy, coming home from the war, falling into the dukedom, dealing with the twins who, to my shame, I barely remembered. Thank God for Charlie’s steady common sense.”

      “Your wife is much too good for you, yes, but then you’ve always been a lucky bastard.”

      Rafe grinned, his eyes twinkling with mischief. “Don’t tell her. She mistakenly believes I’m quite the grand catch.”

      Tanner sat back against the cushions, content to be with his friend, in this place, in this time. He enjoyed visiting Grosvenor Square, and would miss Rafe when the Season was over and they all deserted the city for their country estates. It probably would be another year until he saw Rafe again. Or Lydia.

      “Rafe? Just because her sister isn’t here, Lydia can’t be allowed to shy away from Society for the remainder of the Season.”

      “I know. But Charlie is adamant in refusing to go into Society as she is. Women,” Rafe said, his handsome features softening. “She’s never looked more beautiful to me, but she has vowed that until she can see her own shoe-tops again, she is banning herself from all social engagements outside this house. And now that Mrs. Buttram is spending the majority of her time with her wrapped foot on a cushion—gout, she tells us—I imagine it’s up to me to boost Lydia out of here from time to time.”

      “Not necessarily.