The Wedding Game. Christine MerrillЧитать онлайн книгу.
little gold speck, enthralled by it. He wanted to gaze into her eyes forever, until they revealed their mysteries. Worse yet, as she looked into his eyes he was overcome with a desire to unburden himself and share even the most carefully concealed secrets of his past.
Then the feeling dissipated. On second look, what he had taken for mystique was a glimmer of calculation. He did not have to reveal his true self to her. Somehow, she had found him out and meant to punish him for his impudence. She was merely playing the simpering wallflower to disguise a dangerous, almost masculine intelligence.
‘Thank you, sir, for your concern. My dress is undamaged. But your poor suit...’ She dabbed at the liquid staining his lapels with a force guaranteed to drive the stuff deeper into the fabric.
He seized her gloved hand as gently as possible to stop the damage it was doing. ‘That will not be necessary,’ he said, firmly. ‘But thank you for the attempt.’
‘Oh, but, sir, I am so sorry.’ She looked up at him with the melting gaze of a spaniel. The look appeared so suddenly that she must practise innocence in a mirror to produce it on cue. It left him all the more sure that she was not the least bit sorry. In fact, she enjoyed seeing him discommoded.
He gave her an equally practised smile. ‘It is nothing. We will not speak of it again.’ Because, God willing, he would never see her again. There was something far too disquieting about her. From now on, he would be on his guard and maintain a safe distance should they meet.
‘Thank you.’ She dropped a hurried curtsy and disappeared as suddenly as she had arrived.
Beside him, his friend laughed. ‘Well done, sir.’
‘Well done? I did nothing.’ He wiped at the stains on his coat and then gave up, throwing the handkerchief aside.
‘Apparently, you made an impression on Miss Summoner.’
Ben scanned the room for the pathway to his future. She was on the far side now, in conversation with the featherheaded chit who had doused him. Were they friends? No. There was something in the slant of their heads that spoke of a family likeness. ‘Dear God, do not tell me...’
‘Sisters,’ Templeton said with another laugh. ‘The little one is the elder. A spinster, from what people say.’
‘I wonder why,’ Ben said, not bothering to disguise his sarcasm.
‘She claims she does not wish to marry and that she cannot be parted from her sister.’
‘All women with an ounce of pride say something similar when they cannot get a husband,’ Ben replied. ‘It is far more likely that she behaved to others as she behaved to me and that society has taken a distaste of her.’
‘It hardly matters,’ Templeton said, quite reasonably. ‘After several years, she is properly on the shelf. But if you want the younger, you had best get used to her. The elder Miss Summoner will likely be a member of your household after you are married.’
‘She most certainly will not,’ Ben said with a shudder of dread. Looking into those eyes at breakfast each morning would be no different from coming to the table naked. She would strip each defence from him, giggling all the while.
‘Where else will she go?’ Templeton said in the voice of reason. ‘Lord Summoner will not live for ever. Then it will be up to her sister’s husband to take her on.’
‘Unless some unsuspecting gentlemen can be trapped into a union with her,’ Ben suggested.
‘What are the odds of that, after all this time on the market?’
‘All this time?’ Ben shot a quick look across the dance floor at her, then looked away before she could notice. ‘She cannot be much more than three and twenty. That does not make her a crone, no matter what society might think. If one plucked her feathers and unbraided that hair, and perhaps chose a different dressmaker for her—’ and taught her to hang on to her drinks and not to giggle so ‘—she would be quite pretty.’
‘But the eye.’ Templeton shuddered.
‘Those eyes,’ Ben corrected. ‘She has two. And they are not unattractive. Just rather...startling.’
‘What man wishes to be startled by a woman?’ Templeton shuddered again. ‘Perhaps you are greener than you pretend when it comes to the fair sex, Lovell. It is never good to be surprised by them.’
‘Perhaps compelling is the word I am searching for. Or captivating.’ Intoxicating. Fascinating. He could spend a lifetime trying to describe those eyes.
Templeton shook his head. ‘Neither of those are as good as they sound, either. If you wish to be a puppet or a slave to a woman, then get yourself a mistress. Your days will be full of all the passion and melodrama you long for with no legal bonds to hold you when it grows tiresome.’
‘I have no intention of living my life under the thumb of a woman, with or without marriage.’
Never again.
He continued. ‘Nor do I think the elder Miss Summoner actually possesses the facility to dominate the man who marries her.’ This last was not totally true. But the fact that he could imagine himself stripped bare and defenceless from a single glance might be nothing more than his own fears of the unhappy past repeating itself.
‘If that is so, then there is no problem at all,’ Templeton said, smiling. ‘You seem to feel more than confident of controlling her. Though you do not wish to marry for love or passion, you admit you find her at least marginally attractive. If you wish a connection to Lord Summoner by marrying his daughter, Miss Amelia should be no different than Miss Arabella.’
Why not?
When presented with such a logical argument, he could not immediately think of an answer. Then he remembered the lemonade stain on his best waistcoat and the possibility of future social occasions marred by such accidents. If he wished to be thought unshakable, he could not attach himself to a woman who was constantly rattling his calm and spoiling his appearance. ‘Only an idiot would pretend that the two Summoner daughters are interchangeable. Everyone in London admires the younger of the two. The elder is so far on the shelf that I did not even know of her existence. There is also the fact that I am seeking a wife who will be the picture of decorum and not an awkward wallflower. Belle Summoner glides through a room like a swan. And her sister...’ He stared down at his ruined waistcoat.
Templeton laughed. ‘You truly think that spill was an accident? My dear fellow, for all your polish, you are too naïve to survive the ladies of London.’
‘Whatever do you mean?’
‘Simply that if you come to Almack’s and hide in the corner rather than standing up for a set, an interested female will try to get your attention by any means possible.’
This horrifying thought had not occurred to him. ‘You think that...’
‘She is smitten with you,’ Templeton finished for him.
‘And she did that on purpose to win my favour.’ If that was true, then women truly were mad.
‘There can be no other explanation for it. She fancies you. Since she is without prospects, I am sure Summoner will be all the more grateful to you for taking her off his hands.’ Templeton clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Go to him now and claim your prize.’
‘I cannot go to him looking like this,’ Ben said absently, staring across the room towards the woman who had attacked him. Could that have been the meaning of that glint in her eye? He had been sure there was some ulterior motive in her actions. But he’d have sworn it had less to do with marriage than a desire to unravel him like a fraying tapestry. ‘I do not want to marry Miss Amelia,’ he said, annoyed. He should not need to say those words aloud to clarify his intentions. If she was a spinster, the room was full of men who did not want her.
Templeton gave him a pitying look. ‘You want Belle, as does every other man in London. But you have lost before you’ve begun,