Page 3 of A Very Bellamy Christmas

Stacia did not respond, her gaze locked with Lord Shelton’s.

You look away first, she silently challenged.

“I apologize, my lord,” Lady Crowley said. “I do not know what has got into—”

“I am the one who should apologize,” Lord Shelton countered, still holding her gaze.

The ice around her heart began to melt, slightly, and her lips began to form a smile.

And then the cad’s eyes flitted back to whatever he’d been looking at before!

You obnoxious, vile, insufferable—

“Miss Martin?” The Earl of Townshend’s diffident voice interrupted her internal diatribe.

“What?” Stacia snapped, still staring at Shelton, willing him to notice her.

“Er, I believe this is my set.”

“My dear?” Lady Crowley’s hand settled on Stacia’s shoulder and gave a slight squeeze. “Lord Townshend is here to claim his dance.” The older woman barely lowered her voice and, when Stacia did not respond quickly enough, hissed, “Your only dance.”

Shelton’s eyes slid back to hers. Naturally, the odious heel had heard that. His perfect lips quivered faintly and his eyes glinted with amusement.

It was mortifying.

But at least he was looking at her.

Lady Crowley’s fingers tightened painfully on her shoulder. “Stacia.”

Stacia gritted her teeth against the interruption.

You are a detestable cad, she silently flung at Lord Shelton.

But his attention had already drifted away. This time, Stacia could not help but follow it.

He was smiling across the room at Miss Sarah Creighton—who was fluttering and blushing. And why shouldn’t she?

Stacia’s foot twitched to kick him in the shin.

“Am I mistaken, Miss Martin?” the Earl of Townshend asked.

“You are not mistaken,” Stacia said, her words so clipped that the timorous peer flinched. She took the earl’s arm, cut a last withering look at Shelton—not that he noticed—and loudly said to the underside of his chin, “I beg you will excuse me, my lord.”

And then she all but dragged the earl onto the dance floor.

Townshend led her into a waltz, his jerky motions bringing to mind an automaton.

“I’m sorry, Miss Martin—but did I interrupt something?” Townshend asked after they’d waltzed—badly—for a moment.

She dragged her attention from the man behind her to the one in front of her and smiled, because the gentle earl did not deserve a scowling dance partner. “Not at all. I apologize if I appeared distracted.”

Townshend didn’t look entirely convinced, but the subject held little interest for him, so he raised another topic, this one dear to his heart. “Have you seen Lord Buckley’s newest acquisition?”

It was all Stacia could do not to run screaming from the ballroom.

But Townshend was a kind young man, if boring and pedantic, and she needed to remember that, even though his obsession with illuminated manuscripts—an interest he shared with Stacia’s father—was not a subject she cared to discuss in the middle of a ballroom.

“I have not yet seen it, but my father has.” That sounded too abrupt, so she added, “He believes it may be the work of Gerard Horenbout.”