now that he was a duke, that behavior was entirely warranted, so perhaps there was no need for him to change.
“Good,” Thaddeus said.
“The Duke of Hasford, Lady Ana Maria Dutton,” the butler announced.
And then all the breath whooshed right out of her again as everyone in the ballroom turned, as if on command, to look at them.
To look at her.
She tightened her grip on Thaddeus’s arm and stepped into the ballroom, an imperious expression she’d stolen from the late duchess on her face.
Nash stood within arm’s length of the punch bowl, even though the punch was barely drinkable. What with not being brandy and all. His grandmother was seated just behind him, and he was annoyingly aware of her every movement.
After a nap, she’d descended into his office and badgered Robert Carstairs, his secretary, and one of his numerous half siblings, into handing over all of the invitations that Nash normally declined.
She’d insisted they attend a ball that very evening, even though he’d had plans to—well, do what he usually did. Eat dinner, then go out for hours to stride about London, steadfastly avoiding anyone who might recognize him. If he was lucky, he’d stumble into a situation requiring he use his fists to right a wrong and then return home in the wee hours of the morning, exhausted and bloody.
It kept his demons at bay.
But he couldn’t very well tell his grandmother any of that. For one thing, it would reveal that he shared some of his father’s . . . tendencies, though Nash worked like the devil to control them. And now he had a purpose so he could prevent someone who apparently did not control them from inheriting the title when he was gone.
Which was why he looked like a gentleman who would far rather drink punch than throw one.
“That one looks tolerable,” she said, poking him with her infernal cane, then raising it to point toward a lady who was nodding and smiling at some sod who looked as though he actually liked getting dressed like this.
She was medium height, medium build, and wearing a gown in pristine white, her blond hair drawn up with a few curls spiraling to her ears.
As he perused her, she happened to glance over at him, her eyes widening as their gazes met. And then she arched one perfect eyebrow and her lips curled into a faint smile, and he could practically see the wheels churning—I’ve caught the eye of a duke. Because there was no possibility she would offer him that look based just on his appearance. He knew he was too tall, too broad, and too scowling. Not to mention his hands kept moving up to tug on his far-too-tight neckcloth.
“No.”
“And why not?” His grandmother’s tone made it sound as though he was refusing a sweet, not the person he might possibly spend the rest of his life with.
Though he didn’t want to care about his potential life companion nearly as much as he would a sweet. And if the option was a glass of fine brandy?
Well, he’d take the alcohol every time.
“I could reconsider.” He hadn’t entirely thought this all through yet, had he? His grandmother wanted him to marry, to produce children, so that Mr. John Davies of the Violent Tendencies wouldn’t inflict the family’s particular affliction onto the title. He hadn’t thought much—or at all—about marriage before, except to know he didn’t want it, because the only example he’d ever seen was fraught with tears and angry blows, ending with a mother who’d deserted her only child because the alternative was likely death at the hands of her husband.
But since it seemed he had to marry, he should marry someone he didn’t feel any emotion toward. Someone he could tolerate. Someone, he thought, he could live apart from, once they’d ensured the succession. That would be the ideal situation—a wife who lived her own life while he lived his, neither of them bothering about the other. Neither of them caring enough about the other to incite violence.
The blonde in the distance? The one with the raised eyebrow and the faint smile? The one whose appearance was pleasant enough?
She could be tolerable.
He was opening his mouth to speak again when he spotted her. Standing at the front of the ballroom, a vision in silver, looking as though she’d been plucked from the night sky and sent to honor Society with her presence.
Her hair was the black of night also, caught up in a luxurious swirl of