Ciaran scowled. This was all Isla’s fault. If she hadn’t twisted him around her finger, he wouldn’t be cursed with this irritating protective streak. He shuddered to think what would happen when his baby niece Georgie had her first season. If he wasn’t lucky enough to be dead by then, he was doomed.
Vale laughed at his expression. “Never mind that pathetic look, Ramsey. You’ll be thanking me soon enough.”
Ciaran raised an eyebrow at Vale’s smug tone. He glanced at his friend, and found Vale smirking gleefully at him. It was a look Ciaran knew all too well, and he let out a low groan. “Damn it. What have you done this time, Vale?”
“Who,me? Why, not a blessed thing.” Vale blinked innocently at him. “It’s all Felicia’s doing. She’s made a new acquaintance—a young lady she met at Thomas Wilson’s Dancing Academy. Now they’re bosom friends, in the way of warm-hearted ladies everywhere. See for yourself. There’s Felicia, just there.”
Vale nodded toward a row of chairs lined up along one side of the ballroom. Ciaran looked, and his gaze locked on a lady in a bright green gown with a headful of thick, curly red hair. It was a distinctive red—a shade Ciaran had seen only once before. A dark, coppery red that belonged to a single lady, and that lady alone.
All at once he was back in Brighton again, lying on the sand in the early morning, the dying moonlight and the first pale rays of the sun wrestling over which of them would illuminate the white sand. The sound of the ocean in his ears, damp red hair, glittering drops of water clinging to long, dark eyelashes…
A single glance was all it took. He would have known her anywhere.
Lucy.
His ocean siren had reappeared, and in such spectacular fashion his breath stuttered in his lungs when he caught his first glimpse of her.
“Stunning, isn’t she? I noticed she was a pretty thing the day of the bout, but she was covered from head to toe in some dark, shapeless cloak or other that day.” Vale let out a low whistle. “She’s not covered now though, is she?”
No. She wasn’t covered now.
Nor was she in her bathing costume, with wet hair dripping down her back. Ciaran had admired her even then—her sparkling eyes and the bright color in her cheeks—but if Lucy was pretty soaked to the skin and smothered in layers of heavy, dark blue linen, out of it, she was…
Breathtaking. An undisputed beauty. In a bright green gown that brought out the glinting threads of red in her hair, she made his mouth water—
Ciaran frowned. In afriendlyway, that is. Not a lustful one. Certainly not a possessive one. Only a scoundrel leered at his friend.
Hisbestfriend. He opened his mouth to tell Vale he’d spent hours with Lucy since that day at the bout, but then he closed it again without speaking. Those moments were his—his, and Lucy’s—and he didn’t want to share them with anyone. Not even Vale.
Instead, he cleared his throat and asked, “What’s her name?”
“That lovely lady, my dear Ramsey, is Lady Lucinda Sutcliffe. She’s the Earl of Bellamy’s daughter. Poor man was madder than a Bedlamite, or so the gossips would have it. He died last year and left her with piles of blunt.”
Ciaran stiffened. Lady Lucinda Sutcliffe, heiress, daughter to a dead, mad earl. For the rest of the season, that’s all anyone would remember about her.
Jesus. No wonder Lucy had wanted to keep her full name hidden for as long as possible. Which wasn’t long at all, as it turned out. If Vale knew who Lucy’s father was, that meant all of London knew.
Vale frowned. “Never seen her before that day at the bout. She seems to have come out of nowhere. Felicia says she’s never been to London.”
Ciaran didn’t answer, but stood quietly, watching her. She and Lady Felicia were chatting together as if they were the oldest of friends. She held her head high, a slightly bemused smile on her lips as she watched the couples twirling about the ballroom.
“You do realize, Ramsey, if you’d only move a few paces toward her, you could ask her to dance?” Vale tried to prod him forward with a nudge to the ribs. “Come do the pretty with Felicia, waltz with a wallflower or two, then later we can reward ourselves for our good deeds with a little harmless debauchery. Speaking of debauchery,” Vale went on, “There’s a gaming hell in Covent Garden we might…”
Vale kept blathering on, but Ciaran didn’t hear a word.
He’d come to London only for her, yet a part of him could hardly believe she was actually here—that a few paces would bring him close enough to talk to her, touch her.
He’d thought of Lucy dozens of time—no, hundreds—since she’d disappeared from Brighton. Even after he knew she was gone he’d wandered every secluded stretch of beach, haunted every assembly and endless musical evening, hoping he’d somehow made a mistake—that he’d catch a glimpse of her.
But she’d disappeared without a trace. Without an explanation, and without a single word. His disappointment had been indescribable.
Now here she was, at the first ball he’d happened to wander into, on his very first night in London. Thousands of people flocked to the city during the season but somehow, with all the odds against it, Lucy had found and befriended Vale and Lady Felicia.
A rueful smile drifted across Ciaran’s lips. It was just like Lucy to somehow find the only two people in London who’d lead her directly to him.
“Shall we, Ramsey? Felicia’s waving us over.”
By now Lady Felicia had caught her brother’s eye with a few vigorous flutters of her fan. Beside her, Lucy had risen to her feet. Ciaran saw her glance around the ballroom, her lips pressed into a frown. Lady Felicia whispered something in her ear and gestured toward them with her fan. Lucy rose to her tiptoes, and Ciaran just had time to suck in a breath before her dark gaze caught his.
