“Hear, hear!” returned Benedict, standing now and offering Madeline his arm to walk through to luncheon, as Magnus also Rose and extended an arm to his sister. “We must assemble our incompetent card party again another time and play cards only for enjoyment without any of these disruptive competitive players.”
The rest of the card players agreed and all began to proceed towards the dining room where luncheon would shortly be served. Other guests were emerging from the billiards room, library, drawing room, music room and elsewhere. Conversation in the hallway where all met grew louder and confused, jarring Rose’s ears.
“…still not here. I dare say the couches of Chelsea are too comfortable…”
“…Dorian has always been of an artistic temperament…”
“…runs on both sides of the family, I believe. Did you hear that his mother once…”
“What is everyone talking about?” Rose whispered to Madeline, bewildered by this apparently universal fascination with the Duke of Ravenhill, even if he was so very tardy. “Why is it so interesting that Dorian Voss is late in arriving?”
Madeline and Benedict Emerton both looked back at her with twitching mouths. Rose felt frustrated that everyone seemed so determined to keep things from her. Was she not one-and-twenty and an adult now, just like Madeline and Josephine? A thought occurred to her.
“Has the Duke of Ravenhill been in the scandal sheets?” she asked her more knowledgeable friend, such publications being strictly banned in the Duke of Westvale’s household and only accessible to Rose when she visited Madeline or Josephine. “Is his name around the ton? Is that why everyone is talking of him?”
“Not for anything really very bad,” Madeline whispered back, indicating that Rose was at least thinking in the right direction. “But yes, he is well known…especially in…artistic circles.”
Now in the dining room, the guests took their seats, in no specific order, but with ladies and gentlemen alternating and the Duke and Duchess of Ashbourne at either end of the long oak table.
Seeing Rose’s still-enquiring glance, Madeline came to her side while others were still milling around their chairs. She whispered again in her friend’s ear.
“Dorian Voss is very handsome and charming and apparently every woman he wants falls for him. That is what the scandal sheets say. Fortunately, the women he wants are neither young nor innocent themselves, and often even of the demimonde, so he gets away with the most disgraceful behavior.”
“What do you mean?”
“He associates with artists’ models, women writers and musicians and so forth, on the most intimate and flagrant terms,” her friend now told her flatly, perhaps beginning to lose patience with Rose’s incomprehension. “Some older society ladies too, apparently, although their names are rarely published. I doubt you would have very much in common with him.”
“No, I would not!” gasped Rose, her grasp of the demimonde or any other layers of society outside her own privileged and cosseted sphere being quite limited. “How shocking! I think I would rather not speak to the Duke of Ravenhill at all. Ever!”
Chapter Two
“Gerald! Lady Ralston! How good to see you both again. How are your stables this year? Any new hunters?”
Once seated beside Rose, Magnus immediately struck up conversation with guests on his other side, recognizing a couple of Cassius’ neighbors who shared his interest in horses. Rose was glad, needing a few minutes to digest all that Madeline had just told her.
While the tales of the Duke of Ravenhill were outrageous and intriguing, the man himself could be of no personal interest to Rose and she sighed her disappointment. Her ideal right now would be a shy young man who loved novels, just as she did. They could talk, dance, and then marry. Somehow or other they would produce a sweet little family and be happy together…
The dining room door opened abruptly, just as the guests were finally seated and the servants bringing through an array of tureens and steaming silver platters from an anteroom. A tall,striking man with slightly overlong black hair walked in ahead of the butler, still carrying his silver topped walking cane and taking off his gloves.
Only the man’s footsteps and a faint murmur of anticipation from guests broke the silence that had fallen around the room with his entrance. His expression was amused and insouciant.
“Don’t mind me,” said the newcomer in a deep and mellifluous voice, on perceiving his effect on the company. “I did write ahead to say that I would be a little delayed. Do I still have a place at the luncheon table, Cassius? Or should I go and do my penance in the library?”
As the man smiled and looked around the other guests, Rose had to acknowledge that he was indeed very handsome. The reaction of several women around the table told her that Madeline had not exaggerated his attractiveness. His eyes were intense and quite as dark as his hair, with eyebrows to match. The duke’s cheekbones were razor sharp and his mouth strong and assured.
Rose knew instinctively that Dorian Voss was not someone who had ever suffered from shyness or had ever shrunk from the company of the opposite sex. Several young ladies were already blushing eagerly under the Duke of Ravenhill’s penetrating gaze and the Dowager Marchioness of Lepford was casting quite shamelessly inviting glances of her midnight-blue eyes in his direction.
Rose’s earlier ideas about seeking the society of Dorian Voss in order to impress Edwin seemed more ridiculous than ever nowthat he was here in the flesh. The Duke of Ravenhill could have nothing in common with the ideal husband she imagined for herself. From the little that Madeline had communicated, likely he did not even seek a wife. Rose determined to avoid him as much as she could.
“Come in, Dorian,” answered Cassius, Duke of Ashbourne, standing up with an amused expression. “Do hand over your outdoor clothes and take a seat. No one need move or go anywhere. There’s a space by my wife down there. Josephine is perhaps the only woman here whom I am entirely confident of being immune to your charms…”
The Duke and Duchess of Ashbourne shared a look of loving humor at these words, and something more than that too. Rose felt slightly warm merely from watching the silent intelligence passing between the still relatively newlywed couple. It was obvious that Josephine and Cassius adored one another.How wonderful it must be to love and be loved in such a way!
Soon lost in daydreams of love once more, Rose absently watched a maid serving chicken soup and then took a bread roll from a platter on the table before her, sighing to herself as she broke it into small pieces on a side plate.
“What a very long sigh,” remarked a man’s voice, deep and musical, seeming to make something vibrate in Rose’s chest before she even realizedhewas addressing her personally.
Looking up, startled, Rose found that the seat Cassius had commended to the late arrival was unfortunately opposite herown. The too-charming Duke of Ravenhill was gazing directly at Rose with frank interest in his almost-black eyes. It was a look that took the warmth of her daydreaming, struck sparks in her belly and ignited her blood so that her cheeks burned with heat.
