Page 3 of His Mad Duchess
She stumbled, one hand snatching at the fabric, crushing silk in her palm.Hold. Just hold.She didn’t know if she was begging the dress or herself. A hot tear slipped free, catching on her lower lashes.
She gathered the loose lining in a fist, fingers digging into the fine threads.Nothing else to do now but move. Keep going, find a corner, a door,any place to pull herself back together before the seams and the gossip finished what they’d started.
CHAPTER 2
“Sebastian, do stand still for a moment, won’t you?”
His mother always found him. She’d spent twenty years teaching him that no door was shut tight enough if she wished it open.
Sebastian, Duke of Ravenscourt, was already regretting the brandy he hadn’t yet poured when her voice floated across the crowded drawing room. He had tolerated exactly forty minutes of the Wrexford Ball before deciding he’d need two more brandies to last the hour his mother demanded of him.
He hated this sort of crush—too many people pressed shoulder to shoulder, too much heat under too many candles. It was only slightly tolerable because the host was his friend, the Duke of Wrexford.
He had scanned the room he entered immediately, half-listening to names drifting behind fans, alliances, debts, whisperedthreats dressed as gossip. Wrexford’s ballroom was good for that, at least—everything you needed to know about England’s polite rot in one gilded hall.
He turned to find her gliding toward him, all silken authority in dove-gray satin, her expression as perfectly arranged as the diamonds in her hair.
“Mother,” he said, the smile in place, his mask polished to match hers.
Beside her stood a slip of a girl, too pale for the Season’s fashion, clutching a fan like it might fly away. Just behind her, her mother stood, a thin woman in stiff silk, eyes darting between mother and son.
“Your Grace,” the Dowager Duchess said, her smile enough to make a grown man flinch.
“Mother,” Sebastian replied.
“Really, Sebastian,” Honoria murmured, “must you look as though you’ve been dragged here at gunpoint? May I present Miss Arabella Worthing and her mother, Lady Worthing. They have come up from Surrey for the Season. Her father’s shipping business does rather well. Quite remarkable, in fact, given these times.”
Sebastian inclined his head to the girl first, catching the faint scent of violet powder drifting off her gloves.
“Miss Worthing,” he said, voice smooth enough to coat a blade. “An honor. I trust the ball has not bored you to tears yet?”
The girl’s eyes fluttered—blue or gray, he couldn’t tell under the light—and she dipped a curtsey that nearly swallowed her whole.
“Not at all, Your Grace,” she squeaked. “It is… it is all very grand.”
“Arabella plays the harp delightfully,” his mother added, her tone breezy as if they were discussing the weather. “A most sensible young lady, don’t you agree?”
Sebastian nearly laughed, but caught it before it slipped out. A harp, a fortune, and a womb. The three requirements for sensible, apparently. He inclined his head at Miss Worthing again, offering a smile that felt like it might crack.
Sebastian felt the corner of his mouth twitch and buried it under the polite curl of a smile. “Sensibility is the finest virtue.”
“Quite so,” Honoria replied softly enough that only he heard. Her fingers brushed his sleeve as if she were trying to warn him. “It is the only virtue worthy of a title such as yours. Miss Worthing’s mother is quite taken with you already. I trust you will not disappoint her expectations.”
Lady Worthing’s polite smile didn’t quite mask the appraisal in her eyes.
“Your Grace is… most gracious,” she murmured. Her voice was meant to sound demure, but was warmer than she realized. She cleared her throat softly.
Sebastian arched a brow. “I live only to meet expectations.”
“Yes,” Honoria murmured, ice smooth. She turned to Arabella. “Miss Worthing, perhaps you would honor His Grace with a piece on the harp later this evening? I am certain he would find it soothing.”
He could see the blush creep up her throat.
“Does your harp obey you well?” Sebastian asked, his tone still velvet soft. “Or must you coax it a little, linger over a note until it surrenders what you want?”
She gave a startled laugh, her fan trembling at her wrist.
The blush that rose up Arabella’s neck this time was near crimson. Her mother’s lips parted just once, then snapped shut again as she shot a startled glance at Honoria.
