Page 7 of The Luckiest Lady in London

“We must find out to which places he has been invited, my dear. Or, more usefully, which invitations he has accepted. The man is always drowning in requests for his company and he is very good about not spreading himself too thin,” Lady Balfour said authoritatively, as she and Louisa drove in the park.

Louisa fidgeted. It had been three days, but the subject of Lord Wrenworth would not go away. It did not help her resolution to put him behind her, once and for all. Nor did it help matters on the practical front—a proposal from him was a far-fetched notion that didn’t merit any in-depth discussion, let alone motivated efforts. It would be so much more productive if she could convince Lady Balfour to invite Mr. Pitt to one of her dinners.

“Wouldn’t Lord Wrenworth prefer to marry a lady with a loftier pedigree or a greater fortune?” Louisa tried one more time.

Lady Balfour snorted. “So he would. But that’s what a magnificent catch is all about: gaining the hand of a man who should make a more ruthless choice.”

Had her moonier sentiments concerning The Ideal Gentleman continued unabated, Louisa probably still would have protested, hoping someone would bring her back to her senses, but at the same time, she’d have been secretly thrilled that she had her sponsor’s backing to go boldly after the man of her dreams.

But she no longer wanted to be anywhere near him, a man who made her feel transparently greedy and social-climbing.

“Speak of the devil!” Lady Balfour whispered urgently.

Lord Wrenworth emerged from a bend in Rotten Row, the very image of a dashing gentleman charioteer in his nimble calèche. And in spite of Louisa’s wariness, her heart skipped a beat. There was no arguing with beauty of such magnitude.

“I thought bachelors didn’t come for these afternoon drives,” she muttered, annoyed with herself.

“So they don’t.” Lady Balfour spoke out of the corner of her mouth, busy nodding at Wrenworth. After all, he couldn’t approach a phaeton driven by ladies unless his presence had first been acknowledged.

To Louisa’s surprise, he didn’t merely nod and move on, but pulled up against their vehicle.

“Good afternoon, Lady Balfour. Good afternoon, Miss Cantwell. Enjoying a drive out before the rain comes again?”

Try as Louisa did, she could not detect any special inflection in the pronunciation of her name. But as soon as his gaze landed on her, she felt as if she were being peeled like an onion, layer by layer—an experience not the least erotic, but clinical, something done with gloves and forceps.

“But of course. And you, young man, what brought you here?” Lady Balfour inquired.

“A wild whim.” He smiled.

A man who could smile charmingly at toads, Louisa thought unhappily.

He drove abreast of them for no more than a minute. Perfectly appropriate, not a hint of impingement on their time. As soon as he left, Lady Balfour began to berate herself for not asking after his itinerary while she had him at her disposal. But even she did not suggest that the meeting was anything other than coincidental.

Louisa, however, felt a certain prickling at the base of her spine.

* * *

Lady Balfour would not have agonized over her missed opportunity had she known that Felix had already bestirred himself to seek them out. He had a good view of Miss Cantwell across a crowded drawing room at Mrs. Conrad’s house. Miss Cantwell pointedly—or so it felt—did not look at all in his direction.

He saw her again toward the end of the week, in the midst of a rowing sortie on the river. He wasn’t part of their merrymaking party, of course. Rather, he glided by on a yacht with a company of his own. She frolicked and laughed until she became aware of him. The mirth on her face slipped away, replaced by wariness.

So it was no fluke.

She truly saw something the matter with him.

He was oddly pleased—and stumped. What was one to do in such a situation? Certainly he could not walk up to her and say, Brava, old girl, for having the sense to be wary of me.

He put down the book on Asiatic travels he had been browsing. It was nearly four o’clock. He’d be expected at his club, his opinions eagerly anticipated on the day’s occurrences. As he exited the bookshop located a little way from Piccadilly Circus, however, he almost bumped into the subject of his preoccupation.

Miss Cantwell.

He ceased flicking book dust from his otherwise immaculate gloves.

She had just alighted from a Balfour victoria, clad in a green velvet walking gown. “I’ll be but a second picking up her ladyship’s order,” she said sweetly to the footman and the driver.

She turned around, and stilled in shock as she saw him, as if she had the misfortune of finding herself directly in the path of a sharp-fanged wolf.

Half a second passed before she recovered her composure. She smiled at him, a smile that radiated no warmth. “My lord Wrenworth, how do you do?”