“Cudworth said the gown was lavender, not purple.” Lord Quigley was several tables away, but his booming voice easily carried across the dining room. “He saw the girl fleeing Lady Fosberry’s library himself, but it was too dark to see her face.”
Johnathan froze. Cudworth. He might have known. If ever there was a man with a knack for being in the very last place one wanted to find him, it was Cudworth.
“I have twenty guineas here that says Lord Dingley challenges Melrose to a duel over this.” A florid-faced man at another table shot Lord Quigley an infuriating smirk. “What say you, Quigley?”
“Dingley’s not such a fool as that.” Lord Quigley gave a comfortable laugh. “Melrose will put a ball in him before Dingley’s finger can twitch on the trigger. I’ll lay you twenty guineas it was Lady Christine Dingley in that library with Melrose. That’s one way to bring him up to scratch, eh?”
Johnathan started to rise to his feet, anger coursing through him. He had no love for Lady Christine, but he wouldn’t sit here silently and let Quigley malign her.
Before he could strangle Quigley, however, Cross stopped him with a hand on his arm. “Don’t, Melrose. It will be taken as confirmation of the rumor, and make things worse.”
Johnathan sank back into his seat and stared at his friend, aghast. “Good Lord, Cross. What have I done?”
Cross gave him a helpless shrug, and Johnathan let his head sink into his hands.
The better question was, what hadn’t he done? It was all coming back to him now—the spinning ballroom, the nauseating gold wallpaper, Lady Susanna’s white bosom, the chase across the ballroom, and the delirious, heated moments in the library with a lady whose voice he hadn’t heard, and face he hadn’t seen.
Good Lord, how lowering to find all it took to turn him into an utter scoundrel was a few glasses of brandy!
“Quigley won’t be the only one wagering, Melrose.” Cross kept his voice to a murmur, so only Johnathan could hear him. “There are pages of wagers in the betting book already, and the rest of London will know of it before this afternoon. What in God’s name were you thinking?”
“Magenta,” Johnathan said, stupidly enough, but for some reason, it was the only word that came to his mind just then.
Cross stared at him. “What?”
“Lady Susanna’s gown. It wasn’t pink, it was magenta.”
“It wasn’t Lady Susanna, Melrose. I told you, I saw her leave the ballroom.”
Now that his head wasn’t muddled with brandy and the dizzying scent of sunshine and roses, Johnathan couldn’t imagine how he could ever have mistaken the lady from last night for Lady Susanna. There’d been a dozen tiny clues—the missing gloves, the lack of a corset—but even putting those details aside, hadn’t he been aware, at least on a primal level, that he wasn’t kissing and caressing Lady Susanna?
He had, after all, kissed Lady Susanna before, and never felt the wild surge of desire he had last night, when he’d held the mysterious lady in his arms.
Her seductive scent was both familiar and wholly unique at once. Rose, yes, but not like any rose he’d ever smelled before. It wasn’t a heavy, sweet scent, like so many rose perfumes, but different somehow, though he couldn’t say how, precisely. Only that it was like the difference between a perfume and a living, breathing, blooming spray of rose blossoms.
Beyond that, he couldn’t be certain of anything.
“Who is she, Melrose?”
“I, ah…I haven’t the faintest idea.” Johnathan blanched at the expression on Cross’s face. “I thought I’d followed Lady Susanna into the library, but it, ah…it seems I was mistaken.”
“You were mistaken,” Cross repeated flatly. “Devil of a thing to be mistaken about, Melrose.”
Johnathan hardly heard him. The lady he’d kissed last night, the elusive lady in lavender—he was sure he’d never met her before. That skin he’d caressed, it had been smooth, flawless, and her hair was thick, the loose waves drifting through his fingers.
And her figure…
Dear God, her figure.
Johnathan closed his eyes as a bolt of heat arrowed down to his groin.
She was slender, her curves slight but perfectly proportioned, and they fit his hands as if she’d been sculpted just for him. If he’d ever been introduced to such a lady as that, he’d remember her.
Cross nudged him. “Are you all right, Melrose? You look as if you’re in pain.”
“The lady, Cross. I’m certain I’ve never been introduced to her before. She’s new to London. How many petite ladies in lavender gowns could have been at Lady Fosberry’s ball last night?”
“You’ve just described half the young ladies who’ve flooded the marriage mart this season, and dozens of them were at Lady Fosberry’s ball.”
