The Marquess Who Loved Me - By Sara Ramsey Page 0,61

poured her tea. “Your meals are as charming as I’ve always heard.”

“Thank you, Lady Salford. I hope to persuade him to stay with me rather than Folkestone — I am sure his genius takes the credit for why people accept my invitations.”

She couldn’t afford her chef, or her parties, but Lady Salford couldn’t know that. At least if Ellie turned respectable, she might live more cheaply. Far better to be thought a dull stick than a bankrupt one.

Lady Salford took the cup from Ellie’s outstretched hand. The conversation stayed neutral, never dropping into unseen currents. Lady Salford was eminently proper — not boring, precisely, but not one to even tiptoe on the edge of scandal. How she’d raised her children to be such rebels was a mystery. Her daughter Amelia was a secret writer; her niece Madeleine, whom she had raised for decades, had acted on a public stage; and her son Sebastian was somewhat of an enigma, since he spent most of his time on his plantation in the Caribbean. Only Alex, now Lord Salford, was proper — but perhaps he was just a late bloomer when it came to sin.

By the time the men entered the drawing room a quarter of an hour later, Ellie was itching for some sin herself. Propriety was all well and good. But the wine Sophronia had ordered and the restless prickling under her skin as she spoke of nothing and more nothing with Lady Salford combined to make her reckless.

If this were five years earlier, she might have taken a lover from one of her guests — a rake who wouldn’t hurt her but also wouldn’t press for the heart she couldn’t give him. But she’d been done with lovers for ages.

Until Nick had walked into her ball and claimed her. He walked into the drawing room the same way tonight, part proprietor, part predator. He’d leashed his darkest elements, feigning some transparent bonhomie with Lord Norbury, who regarded him with the confused, suspicious air of a man who had been warned to expect a lion and was instead presented with a housecat.

Ellie would have laughed at the thought of Nick as a housecat, but she knew his claws weren’t sheathed for her sake. Until tonight, he’d barely spoken to anyone in the party but her. His manners at the previous night’s dinner had been cold and aloof. Tonight, though, he had mounted a charm offensive that would have left all the foreign diplomats in the Court of St. James in the shade.

“You must join me for the hunts next year, Norbury,” Nick said as they entered. “My brother says we’ve a fine hunting lodge in some county or another, if I can find it.”

Ellie raised an eyebrow at Marcus, who entered directly behind them. He shrugged slightly. Neither had ever heard Nick show the slightest interest in retiring to the country. Marcus walked over to where Ellie sat. She remembered an instant too late that she hadn’t forgiven him.

“Your grace. Ladies,” he said, bowing to them.

“Mr. Claiborne,” she said. She kept her voice neutral. No one else could know of the rift that had sprung up between them. “I trust the gentlemen were comfortable with their brandy?”

His eyes flickered back to Nick, who had clapped Norbury on the back — odd, since Ellie was sure Nick would rather give up everything and become a lead miner in Derbyshire than become friends with the viscount. “Quite comfortable, Lady Folkestone, now that my dear brother has determined to play the host.”

“How charming,” she said.

Nick didn’t approach her. He kept Norbury cornered instead, taking him through the connecting doors to the green saloon where they might have brandy instead of tea. Norbury glanced at Ellie on the way as though she might rescue him, but she shook her head.

“Poor Norbury looks like he’s a Christian sacrifice in Rome, don’t you think?” Sophronia observed.

“Norbury can hold his own,” Ellie said. “And Lord Folkestone doesn’t bite.”

“Do you care to verify that personally?” Sophronia asked.

“Did you just wink at me?” Ellie asked.

“I would never be so vulgar.”

Then she winked again.

Ellie sighed. She should turn Folkestone into a lunatic asylum and charge her family and friends for their upkeep. None of them were sane, and they were fast pulling her down with them.

She kept that uncharitable thought to herself. “Ladies, how shall we entertain ourselves tonight? Shall we have dancing? Or perhaps a game?”

“I would defer to you, Lady Folkestone — whatever the young people prefer,” Lady Salford