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“It’s not a matter of looks,” Nicholas Blackmore, Viscount Clarendel, reminded his friend quietly. “We need fat purses more than full busts.”
And long may Pater rot in hell for that requirement. Not that Nicholas had ever cared about having a pretty wife—nor any kind of wife at all. He liked the soldier’s life: the thrill of the hunt, the rush of the charge. He didn’t even mind trudging around or digging in and doing nothing for weeks. It gave time for fun in between the horrors. Being only an extraneous fourth son, so long as Nicholas begged, borrowed, or stole enough coin to finance his equipage as an officer, he didn’t damn well need a wife. But as a bloody skint Viscount, his accounts—and responsibilities—became a whole different kettle of rotten carp.
“Sod it,” Tom muttered. “I’m off to the cards. If I have to summon a smile for another whippet-faced miss, I’ll throw myself out the window. A measure or two of scotch should pretty them up.”
“Wait.” A flicker of golden hair and a blessedly un-houndlike nose caught Nicholas’s eye. The girl in question turned with the next figure and revealed quite a pretty face before disappearing behind another, more spaniel-esque deb. “Who’s that? Another lovely church mouse like ourselves?”
“Which?” Tom squinted, and Nicholas waited until the dancers parted again.
The girl in question glittered in the candlelight, from the silver pins in her hair to the embroidered roses on her dainty slippers. Her pink and green shot silk gown—cut fashionably low across her breasts— showed off a glorious form, and creamy skin crying out to be touched.
“Her.”
“Ah. That one’s a prize, but a hopeless cause.” Tom sighed. “The Honorable Miss Sunderland. It’s her second Season. My cousin was mad for her last year. You remember Hewitt? Reedy, milquetoast sort?”
“God help the poor girl.”
“My sentiments exactly. He writes the most insipid letters when Eros strikes him.”
Nicholas studied the golden vision as she passed through the line of dancers. “Did the lady agree with your assessment of his skill?”
“Her father chucked him out on his ear. Along with two or three other likely chaps. I expect he hoped Cavendish’s eldest would offer for her, but he ran off with another chit over the summer.”
“So, she’s rich, and she’s been disappointed? Why haven’t you already set your cap?” Nicholas raised a disbelieving brow. “Easy pickings for a man of your skills.”
“I’d have to ruin the girl, I suspect. I’m not that desperate.” Thomas’s green gaze followed Miss Sunderland’s next turn. “Give me another four months with my London creditors, though...”
“You can always go to war in the Americas.”
Tom snickered. “I’d rather return to India—at least the food’s worth eating. There’s nothing but sawdust and flour in America. Unless you like skinning beavers.”
“Best you don’t lose any more hats playing cards, then.” Nicholas watched his prey. “I think I’ll go investigate Miss Sunderland’s chaperone.”
“The generously proportioned dowager.” Tom nodded toward the far end of the room. “That’ll be the dragon you require. Lady Crewe. My father had quite a fancy for her in their youth. I hear she’s rather desperate to unload her own daughter these days. Tread carefully, my friend. The cousin’s pretty but nothing like the Sunderland ledgers.”
“How do you know all these people?” Nicholas marveled. “You haven’t been back that long.”
“Unlike you, I write to my relatives. And I didn’t run off to India the second I turned seventeen, never to return.”
“I returned,” Nicholas argued. “Eventually.”
“For a year.”
“It seemed like a century.”
Thomas clapped Nicholas’ shoulder. “Your poor father. Raised so many good, well-mannered sons, and only the feral one outlived him.”
“Perhaps if he’d kept me at home, I’d have had the good sense to die young, too,” Nicholas muttered, taking a glass of wine from a passing server. “The boredom would’ve encouraged it.”
After trading a few more barbs about one another’s parentage, Nicholas parted from Tom to wend toward Lady Crewe and her bobbing, tittering court of sops and simperers. She stood amid several other chaperones, all discussing the upcoming fetes and balls, wild with the gleeful fantasies of returning officers. Being one of the dreamed-of horde, Nicholas couldn’t help but smile. This must be how a fox feels when the hen house is left open.
“Oh! Lord Clarendel!” One such army-mad mama waved her feathered fan in delight. “Just the dashing peer we need. I heard Lord Wellington’s men have made it to France. Do you think we shall all be sailing to Paris for victory balls by spring? Only I have the prettiest new muslin...”
Nicholas bowed to her. “Whether the victory dances are here or Paris, the muslin will undoubtedly be well appreciated, Lady Carther.”
She blushed and burbled his introduction to the others who had not met him on his previous brief appearances, including Lady Crewe. Nicholas made certain to pay particular attention to Lady Crewe’s fan and her opinion regarding the week’s upcoming balls. All the better to know where The Honorable Miss Sunderland might reappear.
He lingered amid the chaperones until the set broke up and the dancers began filtering back through the crowd. As he expected of a well-bred girl whose father had crushed several suitors without apparent rebellion, Miss Sunderland dutifully returned to her chaperone’s side. Up close, he discovered her beauty remained undeniable, though in a not-quite-fashionable way: her face was too square, her brows a touch too heavy, her mouth too wide. The effect created a striking, angelic visage with a rosy flush from the dance. A lovely picture indeed.
