on his clothes, only wincing once. “Let’s go get our money.”
“You are looking particularly lovely, Lucinda,” Aunt Louisa said when she came into her dressing room as Giselle was putting the final touches on her hair.
“You look very nice too, Aunt.”
“Your father wants to see us before we leave.”
Lucinda looked in the mirror as Giselle dabbed rose water on her neck and wrists. “I’m sure he wants to tell us how lovely we look. Thank you, Giselle. That will be all.”
The door closed softly as the maid departed. “He is in a mood, dear. Let us go and hear his tirade and then enjoy ourselves to the fullest at the Pendergasts’ ball.”
Lucinda would have opened the library door without knocking, but knowing that any casual behavior only irritated her father, and she would take any advantage, even if it were to wait until Laurent opened the door for her. She was quite certain what her father was going to say. There was no need to anger him further.
“Good evening, Papa. Aunt Louisa said you wished to speak to us before we left?”
Henri Vermeal stood at their entrance to the room and trained his eyes on his daughter. He waited until the door had closed behind the two women. “I trust that you will conduct yourself in a manner befitting your family’s place in society. And your aunt will make sure that all the proprieties are observed. I do not want to hear of you making a spectacle of yourself with that . . . that street ruffian. Am I understood?”
“Of course, Papa. I understand everything you have said,” she replied. She walked to his chair and stood on her toes to kiss his cheek. “I will see you tomorrow. Sleep well.”
The two women climbed into the Vermeal carriage and were seated side by side for the short ride to Nathan and Isadora Pendergast’s home.
“I don’t know what game you are playing, child, but your father is not a fool.”
“I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about, Aunt.” Lucinda turned to look out the window as the streetlights were beginning to shine.
But she did know what her aunt meant. She understood everything her father had said, but that did not necessarily mean she would abide by it. She intended to have a conversation with James Thompson. If he attended. If she did not lose her nerve. She would tell him exactly what she thought of him and his comments about her. Her stomach rolled over with the thought of confronting him. But she chided herself. She was not the daughter of Henri Vermeal for nothing. She would put that man, that street fighter, in his place.
James looked at the crowd of people surrounding him at the Pendergast ball. Word had gotten out about his fight a few nights ago, and he’d been shaking hands with the men and had been the subject of some fluttering debutantes’ lashes and a few direct looks from some married women, too, since he’d arrived. He scanned the room occasionally for one woman in particular, the one who seemed to have lodged herself in his brain. He was glad she wasn’t there.
There were plenty of willing women, and if his instincts were correct, especially a voluptuous brunette with plenty of curves to dig his fingers into. There were men, many of them, surrounding her, all wealthy and well-bred. He was guessing she was a widow, as there was nothing virginal about her. She conversed with them all but did not favor one over another, except for the alluring glances she was casting him. Maybe he would meet her later over drinks or in her bedroom. But when he pictured a bedroom with yards of lace at the windows allowing the moonlight to filter in onto a bed with a sturdy headboard, it wasn’t the dark-haired, buxom woman who had just licked her lips in his direction, it was a willowy blond with bones as delicate as the lace his mother made in the old country.
“An introduction to James Thompson?” he heard from behind him and glanced in that direction to Alexander’s Aunt Isadora.
“James?”
He turned. “Mrs. Pendergast. Thank you for inviting me this evening. Your party seems to be quite a success.”
“Aunt Isadora, if you please, James. Yes, everyone who had replied with their acceptance is here and a few who hadn’t!” She looked around at the crowd. “And it appears that you won your latest match just so you could hold court this evening.”
“I win