Miss Tasmin Lansing, the potential duchess they’d met in Hyde Park, was the first to arrive. She was accompanied by her mother, a baroness, and she brought a brightly wrapped gift. Declan exhaled. She’d come to play.
Helena stepped up, nodding to the baroness’s smiles and gestures of gratitude,blah, blah, blah— Declan marveled that Helena could remain so composed. Miss Lansing, too, looked unruffled and fortified. She made little effort of cordiality but stared openly at the duke instead. She’d worn a golden dress, a stark contrast to her dark hair, distinctive and modern. Was it too tasteful and refined for the duke? Declan had no idea what Lusk wanted, but other men in the room stared.
After a quarter hour, the duke drifted from the receiving line to a chair beside the fire. Miss Lansing saw the shift and smoothed her skirt and patted her hair. In two blinks, she transformed her face from impatient and suspicious to sugary and ecstatic. The change was mystifying. He had the errant thought that Helena had been true to herself, wholly authentic and open,from the beginning and the duke was a fool.Thank God.
Across the room, Miss Lansing glided to the fireplace and lit on the arm of the duke’s chair. Declan took a deep breath. He’d stalked highwaymen through haunted forests with less anxiety.
Another dozen guests arrived, along with them the next potential duchess, Lady Genevieve Vance.
While Miss Lansing looked striking and aggressive, Lady Genevieve sparkled and flitted. She’d worn red, like she had that day in New Bond Street. Today’s dress was a shade darker, more rose red, but it was just as fitted and it stood out in the green room like a berry.
Helena spoke to her briefly—she’d warned each girl in advance that there would be other contenders at the party—and left her to circulate.
Lady Genevieve descended on the duke within five minutes, her carousel of cheerful expressions calibrated to somewhere between loopy smile and ecstatic grin. The duke gestured to his footman for another drink, and Lady Genevieve was there, laying a gloved hand ever so lightly on his sleeve.
Ten minutes later, the third and final potential duchess arrived: Miss Marten from the museum. She looked the least certain and most out of place, but Declan felt she was, by far, the most provocative. Her flaming red hair was swept up in a loose chignon. She took in the party with large, excited eyes. She’d worn pink, the perfect color to accentuate her hair. She glanced around the ornate salon with a look of someone determined to toss a ring at a country fair and win first prize. Covet, thy name is Jessica Marten. She wanted all of this.
Helena greeted her, whispered some encouragement or strategy. Miss Marten located the duke, squared her shoulders, and moved in.
Declan looked away. It unsettled him to watch. He sought out Helena, sitting among the family beside her sister Camille. When she looked up, her expression was anxious and pale; her cheeks were taut with worry.
Declan’s chest hurt, seeing her distress. He forced a look of confident reassurance, caught her eye, and he gave her the slightestwe will win thisnod.
She answered back with a heartbreaking tiny headshake.No.
Declan looked back, not blinking.What’s happened?
She shook her head again, blinking back tears. She mouthed one word.
No.
Helena could not control what the girls did or said, and it was killing her.
It wasn’t their fault. They were trying, she could see them trying. Any normal man would have slipped away from the party for an easy assignation with any of them by now.
Miss Lansing was witty and droll and rather naughty. She whispered dirty jokes and made sarcastic fun of other guests.
Lady Genevieve was purer; she went straight for his vanity and his lust. She rubbed him likea shedding cat against a sofa, employing hands, shoulders, hips, and once she’d even inclined her head and leaned it against his shoulder.
Not to be outdone, Miss Marten, shy at first, but clearly in possession of the most to lose (or rather, the least to return to), did it all. She laughed with the trill of a bird, she touched his knee, she fetched him drinks and fed him cake.
Working together and separately, the girls were like a lesson in flirtation; they were so overt almost every guest noticed. What else was there to do at a party as boring and pointless as this one? Three beautiful women beguiling a duke was the only spectacle on offer, especially as the duke seemed wholly unaffected. He was, in fact, so inattentive Helena was forced to stop watching. The prospect of obvious failure frightened her too much. These three girls had been their key to freedom, her greatest hope. And now—
She shoved from her seat to make a circuit of the room. A table of gifts stood near the door, and she snatched up a toy bridge and carried it to Girdleston’s doll village. By sheer force of will, she glanced only once at Declan.
When she passed him, Declan said, “You’ll have to engage with the four of them. They’ve made a scene, and the future duchess must acknowledge it. If people see you laughing with the girls, it will give them less reason to talk.”
“Really?” she asked. She balanced the bridge on top of the cottage.
“It will give them something different to talk about.”
Declan was right, it couldn’t hurt. She left theminiature village and settled among the three women and sleepy duke and endeavored to engage them like old friends.
That is—the women chatted, while the duke said to no one in particular, “I’m only required to remain here for two hours. Does anyone know the time?”
On cue, the three potential duchesses twinkled with laughter—such good sports, all of them—but Helena’s chest collapsed. They’d failed. The duke meant to go. There was no girl here who would cause him to throw her over and stand up to Girdleston. These women hadn’t even broken the surface. Forget beguiling him, the Duke of Lusk seemed annoyed.
The more he ignored them, the more Helena wanted to take each girl by the shoulders and tell them,Save yourselves.No dukedom is worth this. Obviously he’s dead inside!
