Page 14 of A Wicked Game

“Will it bethere?”

His smile was diabolical. “Maybe. Maybe not. You’ll just have to wait and see.”

Harriet could only stare after him in speechless frustration. The man was a born tease.

She watched him mount the steps of his handsome town house—the one he shared with his unmarried brother, Rhys—and disappear behind the shiny black-painted door.

Good Lord, what a morning!

Chapter Six

Madeline Davies, née Montgomery, the new Countess of Powys—a title she’d acquired on her recent marriage to Morgan’s oldest brother, Gryff—looked radiant as she ushered Harriet into their new town house in Grosvenor Square.

“Harry, you look divine! Is that one of the dresses we ordered from Madame de Tourville?”

Harriet returned her cousin’s hug with a warm smile. “It is.”

Maddie had badgered her into visiting the modiste favored by Morgan’s sister, Carys, who was infamous for her stylish, flamboyant outfits.

The dress was certainly more daring than anything Harriet had ever worn before: a dark blue taffeta with a sheen like wet ink on a freshly printed page. The color made her eyes look deep and mysterious—instead of muddy, like the Thames—and the cut was flattering in the extreme, with a daringly low neckline.

Harriet forced herself not to hoist it higher.

It felt strange to be wearing something so expensive. Last year she’d alternated between the same five dresses, forced to be endlessly creative with hats, gloves, and shawls to disguise the paucity of her wardrobe. She stillhadn’t adjusted to the sudden improvement in their finances.

The Montgomery fortunes had been precarious for years. Maddie’s father, her uncle William, might be Baron Lucas of Newstead Park, but Harriet and her father had always lived in the shabby-genteel area of Bloomsbury, making a steady, if not luxurious, living as mapmakers. Her mother had died of a fever when Harriet was nine.

When her father’s eyesight had begun to fail, the burden of running the printshop had fallen to Harriet, but she didn’t begrudge it in the slightest. She loved mapmaking, and she’d relished the chance to prove her skills and continue his cartographic legacy.

The discovery of a new seam of gold beneath their ancestral lands in Wales—lands jointly owned with their dastardly Davies neighbors—had eased their financial burdens considerably. Uncle William had gifted them such a generous sum that they didn’t really need the income from the shop anymore, and for a brief, glimmering moment Harriet had imagined visiting all the places she’d only ever drawn on maps. But no amount of money could restore her father’s sight; he needed her here in London, so she’d pushed her dreams aside.

“Lord John Copeley’s been asking about you,” Maddie whispered, linking her arm through Harriet’s. “And Eugene FitzGibbon has been clamoring for an introduction all week.” She shot her a congratulatory look. “They say he owns half of Shropshire.”

Harriet rolled her eyes. “Society’s so fickle. They’re only paying me attention now because our fortunes have improved. Neither of them gave me a second look last season, when I was just your poor relation. Do they really think my memory’s so bad?”

Maddie chuckled. “I’m afraid so. Still, it’s nice to be wanted.”

Harriet shrugged. She tried to quell her nerves at the thought of seeing Morgan again, and, as if summoned, caught sight of him across the ballroom, standing with her two great-aunts, Constance and Prudence.

She quashed a groan of dismay. The Aunts were shameless gossips who delighted in meddling in everyone’s affairs. Their deceptively sweet appearance—Constance regularly brought her knitting to evening entertainments—belied two razor-sharp wits and a propensity to wheedle information out of absolutely anybody. Harriet had often thought that the war against Bonaparte would have been over a lot quicker if Wellington had employed the two of them as spies.

Morgan, however, seemed to be enjoying their company. As she watched, he threw back his head and let out a laugh that had the gaggle of women hovering at his periphery, all hoping for an introduction, murmuring and fluttering their fans.

Harriet rolled her eyes.

“I have to welcome the other guests,” Maddie sighed. “Will you be all right on your own?”

“Of course.” Harriet smiled. “You go.”

When Maddie drifted away Harriet slid into the ballroom, trying not to attract attention, and threaded her way through the crowd toward Morgan.

As if he weren’t handsome enough in regular evening dress, tonight he was wearing full dress uniform, all gold braiding and broad epaulettes, and her heart gave a little twist in her chest. It was no wonder he had women fawning all over him.

Would he kiss her tonight, as he’d threatened?The thought made her palms sweaty.

Using a potted fern on a pedestal as cover, she edged closer to a group of young matrons who were loitering nearby, intrigued to hear what they were saying.

“Do you think he has a mistress?”

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