“Yes, I did.” Arianna sat in a chair close to her mother’s writing desk and rested her head in one hand as she watched her mother work. But there had been something in her mother’s tone... “Wait, Mama, you didn’t want him to?”
“Honestly, my dear, I didn’t. He was nice enough, but something seemed to be lacking in him.”
Yes, Arianna thought darkly, hedeeplylacked a sense of morality. The entire incident still felt vaguely surreal, as though she had seen it happen to someone else and not her. At some point she knew she would be forced to face the reality of the event, but until that happened, she focused instead on Derrick.
Her mother stopped writing and turned to Arianna. “Well, it was nice to see Derrick, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, of course. It was so nice. He is so...” Arianna stopped talking and flushed.
“He is eligible and handsome, and your father and I like him. Why not set your cap for him, my dear? You have Christmas to win him over, don’t you?”
“Mama, what of Lucas?”
“What of him? Whatever silly nonsense they quarreled over will cease to matter in time, and someday your brother will make amends with him.”
“Besides,” Arianna added, “it isn’t my duty to win him if he is interested in me. He ought to be the one who shows it, shouldn’t he?”
Her mother chortled. “My darling child, men at his age have no idea what they want, let alone act properly on it. No, if you want him, you must go after him. Be bold and clever. It’s how I caught your father.”
That surprised Arianna. She had always imagined her parents had been in love since they were children. “YoucaughtPapa?”
Martha smiled proudly. “I certainly did. He thought he was madly in love with another young woman, Giselle, but he didn’t know her very well. In truth, he was in love with theideaof her. I spent an entire garden party at his side, teaching him how to flirt so that he could woo her, but he got a little excited while practicing onmeand, well, let us say he realizedIwas the woman he needed after all. As it turned out, Giselle was secretly engaged to marry another and never would have looked his way.”
“I didn’t know that. He really fell for you like that?” Arianna couldn’t imagine her father loving anyone else. Even now, after all these years, he was a devoted husband.
“That’s my point, dear. Men often need a bit of guidance when it comes to that sort of thing. You must decide if you think Derrick is for you, and if he is, then work to show him that.”
Arianna didn’t like the idea of having to convince anyone she was worth marrying. She believed a man should see that on his own. However, her mother was right. She could try to persuade him a bit...
But what if he didn’t want her after all? If she let herself open up to him, dared to fall in love with him again, she wasn’t sure her heart could survive a break a second time. Yet seeing him today had brought up all those old feelings she’d had as a girl, in addition to a wealth of newer, far more intense feelings she wasn’t accustomed to.
Arianna had learned one very important thing that afternoon. When Solomon had kissed her, she’d felt nothing but confusion and repulsion. But when she had been in Derrick’s arms, even so briefly, something wild and thrilling had skittered beneath her skin. She’d felt truly alive. Perhaps it was worth the risk of facing a broken heart and praying that Derrick would feel the same.
But how to convince him?
“Arianna, are you listening to me?” her mother asked, a slight impatience coloring her words.
Arianna had forgotten her mother had been speaking—she’d been too lost in her own thoughts. “Yes, Mama.”
“Good. Now find your father and tell him Derrick will be joining us for dinner. He will be most pleased.”
As Arianna stood, she had either a truly terrible idea or a truly brilliant one.
She would take what her mother had done and turn it around. She would convince Derrick to giveherflirtation lessons... and perhaps, in the process, he would fall in love with her.
It had worked for her parents. It just might work for her as well.
Three
Derrick arrived promptly at the Asgil townhouse for dinner and was ushered inside by a butler, who took his hat and cloak. After being told where the family awaited him, he headed to the drawing room, knowing the layout of this home as intimately as his own. His thoughts were divided between a great happiness at having been reunited with family friends and a great sorrow that this reunion would not last.
He found the three Asgils at their preferred evening activities. Barrett, Arianna’s father, had the morning post—which he only ever read in the evenings—spread out on his lap. Martha sat at her desk, sorting through the day’s calling cards, of which there were always dozens. She made notes on a slip of paper for engagements she would make on the morrow.
But Arianna—beautiful, tempting Arianna—was not reading a book as he’d expected. She’d never been quite a bluestocking, but books were a favored way she learned things about the world. She’d always been eager to share her latest discoveries whenever he came to visit. At least, she had been before he and Lucas had fallen out.
Tonight, she was looking out the window, her breasts rising and falling as she breathed, a picture of beauty and melancholy. The book she ought to have been reading was grasped loosely in one hand at her side. What was she thinking about? Derrick couldn’t help but wonder at this unexpected change in her after this afternoon. She’d been all fire and teasing, but now she was quiet and pensive. Had the events of the day caught up with her?
Perhaps he had expected her to always be that sprightly, eager child who had followed in his and Lucas’s footsteps. But she had changed. There was a fire in her and a cloak of feminine mystery that came with growing up. Had she been this way two years before during her first season? Surely other men would have been drawn to her as he was now, craving to touch her, to taste her lips, to ask her a thousand questions so they could know more of what thoughts must be running through her mind. How had she ended up on Scandal Lane with a cad like Cumberland?
