Page 54 of Bad Luck Bride

Only through the first afternoon, and this party was already living up to his exceedingly low expectations. It hadn’t escaped his notice that Rycroft had prevented Kay from eating a second scone with her tea, and afterward, when she’d said she was going for a walk, the American had insisted on accompanying her. Watching them, Devlin had wondered in exasperation if the man told Kay what time to go to bed and what time to get up and what dress to wear each day.

The idea that she was going to marry this man and that it was all his fault made Devlin want to pound his head into a wall. Three of the duke’s sisters were also here, and their censorious looks in his direction didn’t help his mood.

He could have made some excuse and stayed away, of course, but he feared that it would have made no difference. Over two weeks since he’d last seen Kay, and yet he’d been unable to stop thinking about her.

Despite his best efforts, his mind had insisted on returning repeatedly to their conversation the night of the Mayfair soiree, and every time he thought of it, frustration, anger, guilt, and powerlessness surged in him again.

But those emotions, he appreciated grimly, were the easy ones. There was a far deeper feeling, lurking down inside, one that was proving much harder to conquer than it should have been.

Desire.

It rumbled inside him every time he looked at her. It shamed him every time he looked at Pam. And it slayed him with self-loathing every time he looked in a mirror.

Still, there was nothing for it. He’d accepted Simon’s invitation and that was that. He’d assumed, in light of what she’d told him the night of the soiree, that she wouldn’t be here, but now it was too late to bow out. And after all his teasing about her being afraid to be in his company, avoiding hers would be a laughable display of hypocrisy.

He walked to the window of his room and looked out at the view, but when he saw the gardens below, he almost groaned. There, as if to torture him, was a boxwood maze.

His mind flashed back to another maze in another garden long ago, and he closed his eyes, working to shove memories away, striving to bring himself back into the present and a girl who was not Kay.

But when he opened his eyes, his efforts were for naught. Amid the guests taking advantage of the agreeably warm spring evening to stroll the labyrinthine paths of the maze was the woman who’d dominated his thoughts for the past fortnight.

A hat of pale straw shaded her face, but beneath it, tendrils ofher bright hair curled at the side of her neck. Her figure, slim and lithe in a frock of apple green, evoked as much lust in him as the generous curves of her youth had done, and he began to fear that whether she was chubby or slim, seventeen or seventy-five, or anything in between, his desire would still be there, rumbling within him, ready to flare up at the slightest provocation.

After their first encounter in the flower shop, he’d thought things would get easier, but the opposite had proven to be the case. Seeing her, being near her was much harder than it had been seven weeks ago. Now, he could no longer prop himself up with anger and hurt pride. His resentment, his bitterness and rancor were gone, leaving only an awful aching vulnerability, the vulnerability of knowing that if he ever allowed himself to be that stupid, he could fall in love with her all over again.

She turned her head, lifting her face to say something to Rycroft, and when Devlin saw the wide smile that curved her mouth, a smile he’d seen many times in his youth, it hit him like a punch to the stomach.

He turned abruptly away. Pam, he reminded himself brutally, was waiting downstairs for him to take her for a stroll. They would not, he decided sourly, be exploring the boxwood maze.

Though Devlin had managed to avoid Kay after tea by escorting Pam and her mother through the rose gardens, ducking her that evening was more difficult. Calderon’s drawing room was not a large one, and though Kay seemed as averse to his company as he was to hers, avoiding her altogether was simply not possible,especially since each of them had to pretend a casual amiability that neither of them actually felt.

He managed to keep up the pretense somehow—by sheer force of will, probably—through the aperitifs and small talk, but when dinner was served, he found himself in trouble. Though Lady Stratham had seen to it that they were not seated near each other, that fact, he soon discovered, was meaningless. Kay was seated a good ten feet away on the opposite side of the long dining table, but that only meant that every time he spoke with the person to his right—a social necessity at dinner—she was directly in his line of vision.

Beside him, Lady Marchmont rattled on about breeding terriers for ratting, and though he made a pretense of hanging on every word, he found his gaze wandering to the other side of the table again and again. Given how Kay looked tonight, he doubted even a saint could have resisted a peek or two.

Candlelight had always been Kay’s element. Its soft, gleaming light lent an incandescent magic to the fiery riot of curls piled atop her head. Above the damnably low neckline of her soft pink gown, the candle glow gave her skin the translucent sheen of marble, and the pale brown sugar freckles scattered across her collarbone were plainly visible, just begging to be kissed. Every time he looked at her, the desire within him rumbled again, reminding him—as if he needed any reminding—that where Kay was concerned, he was weak as water.

He wished he could have diverted his attention with a glimpse or two of his fiancée, for Pam’s stunning beauty might have been enough to haul him back to sanity and remind him of his priorities, but, sadly, she was at the very other end of the table on his side, andDevlin could only see her if he leaned far forward. On the occasions when he did so, she was deep in conversation with Rycroft, who was seated beside her.

It was twelve courses of hell.

He got some relief when the ladies went through, leaving the men to their port, but it was a brief respite. When the men rejoined the ladies in the drawing room, Simon’s sister suggested dancing and told the butler to bring the gramophone into the great hall. As the servants rolled back the carpets and someone put a waltz recording on the gramophone, any relief Devlin felt evaporated.

He turned to find Pam, but it was too late, for she was already dancing, locked in the embrace of a good-looking young man whose name Devlin could not remember, but who was clearly the best dancer in the room.

More couples filled empty space in the great hall, leaving only a handful of guests on the sidelines. Rycroft, for one, who was standing nearby, talking with Simon and several of the other hotel investors. A bit surprised by that, he glanced around the room, searching for Kay.

He found her, back against the wall on the other side of the room, rather reminiscent of the ball at Lady Rowland’s so long ago. Before he knew it, his footsteps were taking him to her side of the great hall.

As he approached, he didn’t know what to expect, but he supposed the alarm he saw in her face was not wholly unexpected.

“Please don’t ask me to dance,” she said at once, holding up one hand as if to ward him off.

He hastened to reassure her. “No fear.”

“I’m not being a rabbit.”

“I didn’t say you were.” He moved to stand beside her. “But that remark of mine at Lady Stratham’s opera supper really got under your skin, didn’t it? Sorry about that,” he added when she made a brief nod of confirmation. “It was a boorish thing to say.”

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