Fine carriages, all marked with prestigious family coats-of-arms, were beginning to arrive. They moved down the oak-shaded drive in the moonlight. Lord Hastings was first, she saw, her father’s old friend. She knew his carriage, even in the shadows, for it was drawn by four white stallions with braided tails and manes.
Everyone would arrive soon.
Lord Robert Tarryton would arrive.
At the thought of his name, Amanda sucked in her breath and fought a wave of dizzying sensation. Yes, Lord Robert Tarryton would arrive. He would find her on the dance floor…
No, no, no. She would let him arrive first, and then she would go down. She would make a grand entrance on the broad curving stairway that led to the entry. She would walk slowly and innocently, but she would pause in the middle of the stairway, and she would look out across the sea of faces, and she would find that he was looking for her, only for her. Perhaps she would allow her hand to flutter to her throat, and, of course, her heart would be pounding mercilessly.
He would be the most elegant man present. Tall, and with his soft blue eyes and near-platinum hair. Lean and nonchalant, he would wear mustard brocade, she was nearly certain, for the color so enhanced his masculine beauty.
His eyes would touch hers…
And she would know that this night was indeed the night, the most beautiful of all summer nights—no, the most beautiful of all nights.
He would thread his way through the crowd to her, and he would capture her hand, and soon she would be on the dance floor with him. But his need to speak would be great, and he would sweep her away, out to the garden, into the maze. And she would run behind him laughing; all the way to the statue of Venus, and there he would set her upon the bench and fall down upon one knee and beg her to be his wife. She would smile, and clasp him to her to breast, and—
“Amanda! Amanda! We’ve guests arriving! Come down here immediately.”
Her dream dissolved in a shimmer of gray ashes as her father called her harshly.
“Yes, Father!”
“I’m going down; the guests are already filing in. Amanda!”
“I’m coming, Father!” she called in return. She swallowed down a touch of pain that he should always be so brusque with her. She was his only child, and though he provided for her in all things, he never displayed the slightest affection. She wondered sometimes if he despised her for not having been born a son, or if he despised her for bringing about her mother’s death with her birth. She didn’t know, and she learned over the years to harden her own heart and not to care. Danielle had been with her always, and Danielle showered affection upon her. Harrington, the butler and head of the staff, was proper in public and affectionate in private. At least she knew what caring was.
And now…
Now there was Robert. Lord Robert Tarryton. And she believed that he intended to ask her to be his wife this very night. She was so in love with him.
There had been other men in her life. In fact, she thought with a rueful smile, there had been many. She was accomplished, she was beautifully clad, and she was her father’s daughter. Dozens of the most influential young men had called themselves her suitors, and she had laughed with them and flirted with them, but she had never given her heart away and, for all of his coldness, her father had never forced her hand. Even when John Murray, Lord Dunmore, the royal governor of the colony, had teasingly suggested that she was of an age, her father had shrugged and said that she had a mind of her own, she was not quite eighteen, and there was plenty of time for marriage.
She did have a mind of her own, and she enjoyed life. Before leaving the Colonies for her schooling in London, she had ridden with Sir Henry Hershall, sipped spiked lemonade on the balcony swing with the Earl of Latimer’s second son, Jon, and played golf with the Scottish commander of Lord Newberry’s Highlanders. And even Robert she had teased mercilessly until she had returned home in November last year and discovered that she was in love with him, wonderfully in love, at last.
“Amanda!”
“I’m coming, Father!”
She rushed from the balcony, and through her room to the hallway, and from there, to the top landing of the winding stairway. Once there she paused, breathing deeply.
The great hallway below was already filling with guests. She hurried down a few steps and then paused again. This was her grand entrance. She was supposed to move slowly and demurely. She inhaled again, resting her fingers delicately on the bannister. She felt her heart beat. Robert should just be arriving. She should glance to the entryway and find him, and his eyes should be upon her.
Perhaps he had already arrived. She quickly gazed out over the room, smiling to friends. The dream was too real, and so she looked on to the entryway.
A man was just entering, handing his gloves and hat to Harrington, smiling and offering the man a word.
Suddenly he looked up, just as if he had sensed that she was there. She discovered his eyes upon hers.
Just as she had imagined…
Except that the man was not Lord Robert Tarryton.
It was her nemesis—Lord Eric Cameron.
God! What right did he have to be there? In her very house? Yet she stared at him, unable to draw her gaze from his.
His hair seemed very dark, almost black that night. He had not worn a wig and he had not bothered to powder it. He seemed exceptionally tall, towering in the doorway. His eyes, she thought, were even darker than before, indigo blue, with just that touch of taunting silver. He was dressed fashionably enough in a frock coat of royal blue, and white laced shirt, and breeches in a light-blue silk. His hose was white, and his shoes were adorned with silver buckles. Somehow he still didn’t look quite civilized. Perhaps it was the way he wore his hair, defying fashion. Perhaps it was the structure of his face. He was tanned, as if he spent much time outdoors, and his features were bold and strong, his cheekbones were high and his chin was quite firm and squared. His mouth was full and wide, and as his eyes met hers, she thought that perhaps his very smile gave him the look of something just a bit savage, for his lip curved with a slow and leisurely ease that caused little shivers to race down her spine.
