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He might even imagine that the whole ridiculous plan had been designed on purpose to get him here, tonight, to Lady Meacham’s ball in honour of her daughter’s come-out. He didn’t know these people any more than slightly – Lady Meacham had been born a Townshend, and was Aunt Deborah’s late husband’s sister, thus no blood relation at all of his. But here he was sitting down to dinner in their grand formal dining room, at Lady Meacham’s left, with her daughter, whose ball it was, on his other side. They weren’t actually throwing the poor girl blatantly at him, at least not yet, but there were many other places they could have put her, and him, on this significant occasion in her life, and yet beside him of all people was the one they had chosen.

Directly opposite him, in the position of honour next to their hostess, was His Grace the Duke of Ventris, whom Xan had just met for the first time. The fellow had a damned satirical eye, and he was finding Xan’s predicament highly amusing. But then, he was safely married and couldn’t be tormented in this fashion. Lord Fairmount ignored him, and turned to address himself politely to Miss Meacham, who was very young and very shy, and greeted his every remark with giggles and blushes, whether he had intended it to be amusing or not. She was a pretty enough child, but she was no more than a child in his eyes and she was not for him, no matter what his aunt might scheme. It was going to be a long and tedious dinner, without question.

Bianca was a few places away on the other side of the table, he could not help but notice, and to all appearances having a much better time. She was looking particularly lovely in gold and cream silk, her splendid shoulders almost bare, her graceful neck adorned with pearls. It was almost impossible to imagine her running wild about Venice dressed in drab muslin and a paint-smeared apron, a scarf about her head, a pencil behind her ear. It might easily be a different woman, as she had claimed to Lady Wellbeloved. It would be far better if it were. Especially tonight.

Though she had not of late years spent any more time in society than he had, as far as he understood, this had plainly not prevented Miss Constantine from swiftly reaching a very good understanding with the gentleman at one side of her. They were deep in conversation – whatever they were talking about, it wasn’t a trivial topic like the weather – and she was nodding intently at something the young dandy-prat was saying to her, leaning forward and towards him, so that she might hear him better over the hum of chatter and clatter of cutlery. He was smiling at her and leaning in a little too, their bodies forming an angle of intimacy, her dark head and his auburn one closer together than seemed right or proper to Lord Fairmount. Xan wanted to leap up, sending plates and glasses flying, lunge across the table and strangle him on the spot, whoever he was, or beat him about the handsome head with Lady Meacham’s excessively ugly silver epergne.

This, then, was jealousy. Sexual jealousy, raging unchecked like a volcano, and it was entirely new to him. How he hated it. Xan dragged his eyes from the antics on the other side of the room, and returned to his painfully difficult conversation with Miss Meacham. If she had a character, and presumably she must, she wasn’t showing any of it to him. He had never before engaged in so long a discussion constructed entirely from platitudes on both sides. But out of the corner of his eye, he could see that her mother was beaming at them, delighted to see them talking together, even so awkwardly, and no doubt his aunt was doing the same from further up the table, curse her for an interfering witch. He’d had nightmares much like this.

Things improved only a little when the ladies made their exit and the gentlemen settled down to their port. Xan was no longer obliged to witness Bianca flirting – surely she had been blatantly flirting – or sustain his side of a clumsy conversation he’d had no wish to participate in in the first place, but he was soon surprised, and unpleasantly so, to hear the Duke opposite him address his young rival in friendly terms by his surname only – it was Cotwin, or something similarly ridiculous – and invite him to come and sit by him.

Lord Fairmount was thus excellently situated to hear exchanges revealing that the interloper was an up-and-coming solicitor who had some intimate connection with the affairs of the Constantine family, hence his acquaintance with Ventris and with Bianca. His presence here tonight was explained by the fact that he was apparently also a nephew or cousin of Lord Meacham’s, and a great favourite with the ladies of the family, no doubt because of his ready address and damned insinuating manners. Xan was painfully aware that nobody was ever likely to describe his own manners as insinuating, nor his address as anything but distinctly awkward.

This was all food for thought. It was good news, in a sense, because it explained why Bianca had been so deeply engaged with her dinner companion, who was not after all a complete stranger, but someone she must have met many times before, and with whom she shared topics far beyond the commonplace. But it was also alarming, for exactly the same reasons. The fellow was no chance-met flirt who might be as quickly forgotten; he was part of her life already, and might easily wish to be a much bigger part. To be her all.

Xan had accused Bianca of all sorts of things over recent weeks, often to her face, and he blushed to remember some of them, but for reasons he did not care to explore, it had never occurred to him before tonight to dwell upon the fact that she might have suitors. He would not say, or even think, other suitors. She had rejected his proposal; he was not a suitor, and never really had been. She was free as a bird, and could bestow her favours – her person and her fortune – where she wished. She could marry a rising young lawyer; he could imagine that. A house full of books and paintings and interesting discussions. She was witty, intelligent, accomplished, beautiful, desirable, well-connected, and apparently an heiress. Cotwin of all people would know exactly how rich she was. It seemed her family liked and trusted him, accepted him as an eminently suitable person with whom to be connected socially, or Ventris would not be so damned chummy with him at this very moment. Xan found himself grinding his teeth as the conversation at table flowed on without him.

He didn’t know what he wanted from life, apart from the urgent and ever-present desire to take Bianca Constantine away somewhere, anywhere, a cupboard would do, and make love to her for several hours. This he could picture, too. He could see and hear and taste it. But he did know without a shadow of a doubt that he did not want to be obliged to watch her standing conversing intimately with Cotwin, smiling at him again, and he most definitely did not want her to dance even once with the young twiddle-poop at the ball that was soon to commence. She should only be allowed to dance with him. To be in his arms. God knows he had no desire to dance with anyone but her, tonight or ever.

41

The first dance at any ball had certain strict rules attached to it. Normally, the lady of highest rank would take the floor with the highest-ranking gentleman who was not her husband or another close relative. But at a coming-out ball, that place of honour would go to the young lady whose ball it was: in this case, Priscilla, Miss Meacham. That young lady should by rights be stepping out first with Ventris, but Bianca saw that Richard and Viola had unaccountably disappeared, just at the wrong or right moment. (Best not to concern oneself with where they might be or what they might be doing.) Lady Meacham and Lady Deborah did not seem inclined to waste precious time searching for the elusive Duke, or winkling some doddering old marquess out of the card room; Priscilla’s partner was to be Lord Fairmount. He was an earl, a family connection, and unmarried; he was handsome, wealthy, had all his limbs and teeth, and was no more than thirty years of age. Who could be more suitable to take the hand of a young lady making her debut?

Bianca knew Xan well enough to be able to divine that he wanted no part of this. She was not sure if anyone else would be able to tell with such ease, but to her eyes, at least, his face was a mask of endurance; if his aunt and Lady Meacham between them were matchmaking, as it seemed they were, it was not with his prior knowledge or agreement. But she had little leisure to consider the matter any further just now, because James Cotwin had secured the first dance from her while they were still at the dinner table, and her gloved hand was in his as he drew her towards the dancefloor.

Mr Cotwin Senior was the lawyer who had drawn up the will that had made Bianca, Beatrice and Cecilia rich, at the late Mrs Albery’s direction. He was one of their trustees, and his son James was another. James had always been most interested in her plans to travel, paint and study, and was now her main point of contact to do with matters of her inheritance. He had a dry wit and was always a pleasure to deal with. She’d occasionally suspected that James’s father would not be entirely displeased if they became more than friends, but Mr Cotwin Junior was, she’d realised some while ago, no ladies’ man.

She’d been surprised to see him here tonight, but glad, as otherwise she would have been seated next to some indifferent stranger, like the elderly Baronet on her other side, who had had no attention to spare from his dinner and had barely spoken ten words to her, seven of which were, ‘Could you please pass the salt, miss?’

But James had told her with a comical grin that, hard as it was to imagine, Lord Meacham was his cousin on his mama’s side, and that he had grown up with Priscilla and her older siblings, spending a great deal of his childhood at their country home, though he didn’t normally have the time or the inclination to move in such exalted society these days. He knew Bianca’s mother, and asked after her and the news from Italy; he knew Cecilia and Bea, and had been down to the house in Suffolk on more than one occasion; had been there more recently than she had, in fact, and told her that they were both looking very well indeed.

It was pleasant to have a friend here, and pleasant to dance with a young man without any further complications or need to make laborious and trivial conversation, or fear unwelcome advances. She and he were of no particular rank, unlike so many others here, and nobody need concern themselves with their doings. It was even possible that he hadn’t heard the rumours about her and Lord Fairmount. This was soothing.

But she knew she could not dance with Mr Cotwin all evening, and she was resigned to either going without a partner, or being pursued by men who recollected that she was an heiress and saw this as a golden opportunity to make up to her. Neither of these prospects could please her, and so she was glad when Viola and her husband reappeared, looking cheerful and not in the least guilty for their absence, and she was able to dance next with him. Richard Armstrong was technically her brother, of course, which was frowned upon, and should be dancing with someone of higher standing besides, but he did not regard that and neither did she just now. ‘I daresay you’ll dance with Viola next, and all the tabbies will tut at you,’ she told him, and he agreed smoothly that he undoubtedly would, and if people made him come to tedious balls, for what he understood to be underhand purposes that were nothing whatsoever to do with him, they must deal with the consequences of it.

‘One of the advantages of being a duke, a father and an old married man,’ he told her with a wicked grin that recalled his previous rakish reputation, ‘is that I don’t much care what anybody thinks of me beyond my own immediate family. What can they do to me, after all? Your sister’s displeasure is a truly terrifying thing, but anyone else’s… I care not a button for it, Bianca. Even yours, sad to say.’

And before she could ask him what he might possibly mean by such an odd remark, he twirled her neatly about the floor and delivered her straight into the hands of Xan Challender.

42

Xan could see from Bianca’s stormy face that she most certainly had not asked her brother-in-law to engineer a dance between them so neatly, and also that she thought he had, presumably while they had been lingering confidentially together over their port when the ladies had withdrawn from the dining room.

But he had no chance just now to tell her she was quite mistaken. Ventris was saying lightly, ‘I think you must agree, Fairmount, that my dear sister-in-law deserves a more suitable squire than me, while for my part I have a great desire to dance with my wife, even though I should not. So I will pass Bianca into your care, and I recommend you get onto the floor smartly as soon as the fiddles strike up again, and before one of the alarmingly determined women in your family makes you step out with another little girl who has more hair than wit. I’m confident you have no wish to raise expectations you have no intention of fulfilling, in the ballroom or anywhere else.’

If he meant anything particular by this last remark, there was no time to consider what it might be. It was impossible to refuse, all the more because Xan didn’t in the least want to. He asked for nothing better than to take Miss Constantine in his arms, on any terms, and here was the perfect opportunity. And – could this really be pure chance? – it was a waltz.

Bianca wasn’t delighted by the idea, plainly, but she made no attempt to refuse, and took his hand when he offered it. ‘I had nothing whatsoever to do with that,’ he told her once they were alone, or alone as they could be when surrounded by hundreds of people. ‘Whatever that was just now – I have no idea. Perhaps merely part of the plan to show that your family has no sense of grudge against me, or wish to keep us apart. But I’ve barely exchanged above a sentence with the Duke all evening; you must have seen that we had no occasion to converse over dinner, being on opposite sides of the table with ladies on each side we were obliged to pay attention to.’

‘You might easily have spoken afterwards,’ she responded, unconvinced, as they took their places. ‘I cannot know because I was not there.’

‘Spoken for what purpose? I do not know him; he does not know me. We were hardly about to begin exchanging confidences in so public a place. And besides,’ he could not resist adding, though he was almost certain it was a mistake, ‘I can assure you that he was spending his time instead chatting in a very cosy manner with your young friend Cotwin. That fellow seems to have a great facility for charming members of your family, you above all the rest.’

Her eyes flashed, and she said with some heat, ‘How preposterous you are, sir! He is our family solicitor, and a good friend.’ They were going through the steps by instinct, their bodies responding to each other with ease and natural fluidity, as they had before in quite other circumstances, even though their words showed that they were entirely at odds. ‘Besides, you have no right to tell me whom I may speak with, or in what manner. My friendships are no affair of yours.’

‘You are a flirt!’

‘I am not! And if I were a thousand times over, it is still no concern of yours.’