Page 2 of Too Wylde To Tame
“It’s our secret. But if Kent so much as looks at you again, you will tell me. Won’t you?”
She nodded. “Without hesitation.”
“Good. Now, lets drag your cousin kicking and screaming from the bookshop and I’ll see you two home. With perhaps an ice in between. The heat is dastardly.”
ONE
“Twenty quid… no, fifty quid!”
Lord Jameson Dartwell grinned behind the glass of champagne’d just procured. “I could hardly be bothered for such a piddling amount,” he retorted with lazy good humor. The truth was he didn’t have the twenty quid, much less the fifty. He was well up the river tick.
“One hundred. Even you cannot deny that!” His companion exclaimed a bit too loudly.
“Hush, Harry!” Oliver Kent snapped. His words were sharp and hard though his voice was little more than a whisper. More quietly, he admonished, “Keep your voice down. Or do you want everyone present to know the particulars of this wager?”
“He’s right, Harry,” Jameson interjected. “This bet, should I accept it, is a bit more risqué than any of our prior wagers. We’d all be ostracized. And more importantly, my older brother would cut me off without a tuppence. Then the wager would be moot, wouldn’t it?”
“Righty-o! Ollie is always after me about opening my big mouth,” Harry agreed with a nod, absentminded as always. No doubt he’d have to be reminded again.
“All that’s left now is to pick the girl,” Oliver said, his gaze scanning the room. And then he stopped, a hawklike focus on the double doors that opened onto the ballroom. “Her.”
At once, they all swiveled toward the door, taking in the scene. Everyone knew who she was, of course. Her scandalous sister and more scandalous cousin had prompted their aunt to take a much firmer hand with her in an effort to get one of her nieces married off in a respectable fashion. “I’ll never be able to get near her!” Jameson protested.
“If you aren’t up for the challenge…” Ollie trailed off, the implication quite clear that the wager would be automatically forfeit.
“I’m up for the challenge. But can’t it be someone else? You know I prefer my ladies to be more slender than that cow, Miss Charity Wylde,” Jameson replied with an edge to his voice.
“Yes. It must be her,” Ollie replied with a kind of wicked glee. “No one else will do, Dartwell. No one else.”
Jameson turned to glance at her once more and gave a sigh of capitulation. “It’ll require some effort and no small amount of maneuvering, but I have no doubt whatsoever that I can accomplish the task.”
“One month and one hundred pounds,” Ollie reiterated with a smug smile. “You’ll win the bet by making her fall so madly in love with you that she will play fast and loose with her good name. Then you will jilt her publicly and Miss Charity Wylde will be a pariah—a woman with a reputation so tattered she will not even be able to show her face in society. It’s perfect.”
“Perfect for what?” Jameson demanded.
“Revenge, Dartwell. Revenge.” Ollie didn’t elaborate on what or who he was seeking vengeance for or against. He just stared at the young woman with smug satisfaction.
Across the ballroom, Lord Frederick Dartwell, Viscount Welbey, was doing everything in his power to pretend his brother was not present. Whenever Jameson deigned to engage with polite society trouble always followed. That he was with Oliver Kent was another matter. Kent was a troublemaker extraordinaire. Whenever Jameson associated with the social climbing wretch, trouble always followed.
And there was no one in his family whom he could ask for help. The prior generation of Dartwell men were all gone, most of them courtesy of their vices. The women were not much better. Scandal-ridden was a vast understatement when one spoke of his family. The truth of the matter was, that, in terms of the Dartwell family, Frederick himself was the black sheep. Having dared to walk the straight and narrow, every relation he possessed stared at him as he were some sort of exotic laboratory specimen.
But ignoring Jameson was no easy task. And given that Jameson had been pestering him for weeks about increasing his allowance—something Frederick had no intention of doing until his brother could show some semblance of responsibility—avoiding him had proven terribly difficult, as well. To that end, he kept his gaze averted from his brother and focused on any other area of the room. And it was for that reason that he was watching the door to the ballroom when she appeared.
She was tall for a woman though still quite a bit shorter than his own height. Her blonde hair had been arranged in a tumbled mass of curls that appeared to be held in place by one precariously perched diamond pin. Of course, that was an illusion, albeit a pretty one. With a delectably curvaceous figure and fine features, she was lovely. Lovelier than most, but not young. Well, not terribly young. He would guess her to be nearing five and twenty. And yet, she was not there in the company of a gentleman. That offered him some degree of hope. After all, his entire reason for being in society was to find a bride. And while the Season was nearing its end, she was the first woman to draw his gaze and keep it.
Then she turned to the woman beside her—who was still hidden from view by the ostentatious plumes erupting from Lady Montrose’s turban. The the blonde beauty’s laugh rang out, not the delicate tinkling of bells or the politely muffles giggles of most young ladies in society. No, her laugh was full bodied, louder than it ought to have been and all the more appealing for it. There was no artifice in it, not guile, and no self consciousness. She didn’t appear to be embarrassed by the attention it drew because, as far as he could ascertain she had no awareness of anyone else at all beyond her companion who had amused her.
He took two steps forward, heading in her direction to beg an introduction, but another laugh halted his steps. His brother’s. It was a sound he recognized well—cruel and taunting. Whipping his head around, he searched out Jameson and what he saw made his jaw clench. Jameson and his cohorts were staring in the same direction, all of them grinning like fools and elbowing one another like naughty boys playing a prank.
Reluctantly, his gaze traveled in the direction of Jameson’s and his companions’. It was her. The woman who had captured his attention. They could be looking nowhere else. If Jameson were to realize that Frederick had any interest in her, he’d court her for spite. And as his brother had no intention of marrying anyone at present and also lacked the funds to do so, he would never have honorable intentions toward her regardless of his reasons for instigating the courtship. To approach her would be to paint a target on her.
Just then, Lady Montrose stepped aside and he felt a surge of satisfaction. Based on the identity of her chaperone, Lady Marguerite, he had some notion of who she was. Marguerite’s nieces, four of them, had come to London for a season with her. The only question left was which one of the four was she? Surely one of the two that yer remained unmarried. He could not be so unlucky as to finally see a woman who robbed him of the ability to breathe, much less think, only for her to already be married to another.
Before he could even formulate a plan to finagle an introduction to her without Jameson seeing them, he saw his brother step forward, making a beeline for her. He was too far away to intervene. Instead, he could only stand back and watch as Jameson yet again ruined everything for him without even trying.
* * *
Charity staredat the glittering ballroom before her with excitement, its origin unknown to her. That evening feltdifferent. Something would happen, something would set that night apart from every other ball or party she had attended. What that was, she could not say. But she did know that it was impossible to recall the last time she had been truly excited to attend a social event. The joy of anticipating possibilities had faded as year after year, season after season, she failed to emerge with even one viable suitor.
