Page 32 of To Tempt a Troubled Earl
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“HENRY DUCHAMPS-AVERY, Eleventh Earl of Rossingley, and Mr Christopher Angel.”
To describe a hush as settling across the room would not be an exaggeration. Followed by a noise akin to a swarm of a thousand bees as mouths whispered in ears and ladies murmured behind fans. At his shoulder, as erect and haughty as Kit had ever seen him, and utterly ravishing with it, Lando accepted the stares as his God-given due. Tonight, under his severe evening coat, the earl had selected a delicately embroidered sky-blue waistcoat. Though Kit had had opportunity at dinner to drink his fill, he still found himself sneaking admiring glances.
Once introduced to the matronly Lady Chalfont—from whom Kit only warranted the tiniest acknowledgment, given that his elusive aristocratic companion was far more interesting—a glass of punch found its way to his hand, and he was free to wander and act as if he belonged.
Even though he didn’t, he found his evening entertainment fascinating and hideous in equal parts.
The ballroom and its occupants were a far cry from the country dances he’d endured growing up in the Kentish countryside. According to Lando, as they’d made their way across Mayfair in his crested landau, this wasn’t a ball but asoirée, thus less grand and less formal. As Kit supped his weak fruit punch, lamenting a lack of fortification, his mind boggled as to how a ball could possibly be any grander. At least twenty servers waited on no fewer than sixty guests, entertained by a string quartet and a rather large gentleman belting out popular tunes on an overdecorated harpsichord. Assisted by garlands of flowers strewn across every surface and a cornucopia of lavish evening wear, the whole event was a dazzling riot of noise and colour, making Kit quite nauseous.
But no matter how many ladies in their flouncing finery wafted past on the arms of eligible young gentlemen, no matter how many mamas and timid second daughters engaged him in curious discourse, only the earl’s slight figure ever caught his eye.Doomed, Kit thought miserably, sinking a second glass of oversweet punch. Doomed to be infatuated by a man possibly plotting his downfall.
If Kit had hoped his lowly status as a provincial gentleman required to work for a living excused him from partnering ladies in dance, he was very much mistaken. No sooner had ten minutes elapsed before he was accosted by two young females of the plainer variety, both insisting he take to the floor. With Lando deep in conversation with a wizened patriarch, he had no alternative but to smile brightly and then stumble his way through a stately polonaise. Faring better in the quadrille, he manoeuvred the ladies back to their chaperone and then escaped the waltz by hiding behind an enormous potted plant bursting with flowers, which made him sneeze.
Lando, he observed, did not take to the dance floor once. In fact, as the dancing began in earnest, he hardly caught sight of his strikingly fair head at all. Sir Richard was not in attendance, nor Lord Cobham as far as Kit could tell, but he spotted Gartside during the second quadrille, surrounded by a rowdy group of young bucks already deep in their cups.
He heard him before he saw him, braying with a sneering kind of laughter, and for a second, Kit pictured the man leering over his poor sister, mocking as she cowered in fear. Flames of anger, still blazing away as though Gartside had assaulted Anne only yesterday, licked at his self-control. If it wasn’t for a blushing young debutante and her sponsor attempting to ascertain his annual income through the medium of polite commentary, Kit would have marched over and socked Gartside on the jaw. Once he concurred with his female companions that the room was gay as a spring day and that Lady Chalfont did indeed gather the most delightful of crowds, Kit did the next best thing and took himself in search of a drink much stronger than bloody fruit punch.
*
HE MET UPwith Lando in the card room, the earl’s cool countenance and frosty hauteur as immaculate as on arrival. In contrast, Kit was sure he looked as hot and het up as he felt.
“People do this for fun?” he exclaimed as Lando cast an appraising eye over his appearance. “I’ve had three mothers ask me whether I’m a first or second son, and two daughters interrogate me on the number of bedchambers in my country home.”
Lando’s mouth quirked. “On a cooler evening such as this, I advise loitering on the upper balconies. It’s an excellent deterrent. And if you select a windowed balcony with a long sash leading out to it, one can observe the vigorous goings-on inside without ever having to exert oneself.”
“Did it not occur to you I might have appreciated those sage words in the carriage on the way here?”
Lando’s pale blue eyes fluttered, full of mischief. “You were sulking. Magnificently.”
He had a point.
“And,” Lando continued, his delectable lips still twitching, “then I would have denied myself the pleasure of watching you dance.”
Kit made a harrumphing sound. “Watch me long enough, and I’ll be dancing on the end of a rope.”
“Ah.”
“Ahis not reassuring.”
Kit’s annoyance with Lando almost rivalled his desire. Which was a lot. Half of him wanted to strangle the man and the other half wanted to do something equally improper whilst a guest in another person’s house. Instead, he had to satisfy himself with a further grunt and flopped into an empty chair.
“Do swallow your spleen, Kit, darling,” Lando murmured. “There’s a time and a place for anger, and it isn’t now. All you’re achieving with that thunderous face is a sore jaw from clenching your teeth.”
“Gartside is despicable,” Kit groused, ticking off the other reason for his poor temper. “I can barely manage to be in the same room as the man. Maybe I should lead him out onto one of those upper balconies, plant him a facer, then push him over it.”
“Why don’t you distract yourself with joining the next game of loo, instead.” Lando’s gaze flicked around the room. “You can take my position. It’s Gartside’s favourite, probably because it’s one of the few games in which his small intellect grasps the rules. And at least then, you can mollify yourself with taking a few guineas from him while chumming up. Look, he’s here to play now.”
Having thrust him into the card game, Lando annoyingly vanished, leaving Kit once more having to control an urge to string Gartside up by his cravat. To make matters worse, he couldn’t even temper his hunger for revenge by thrashing the man at loo. Which was damned infuriating as loo was one of the easiest games to manipulate ever invented. Tonight’s game would have been child’s play, seeing as every man around the table was already three sheets to the wind. All of them were determined to show off their purses too. Kit could have won every trick and every chip in his sleep.
Except he couldn’t because a corruptible, gullible customs official—open to bribery—would be useless at cards. Why would he need to be corruptible if he won regularly at the gaming tables? So, if Kit wanted Gartside to think him a person keen to accept backhanders, he’d have to stew in his own miserable juices and lose his pennies hand over fist.
Which Kit did with remarkably good grace, putting up with the jeering, the sneering, the drunken braggadocio, and every other snide insult Gartside and his pals threw his way. When Kit could so easily have fleeced the lot of them.
As he congratulated Gartside on his meagre winnings, with a slightly too firm pat on the back, Kit retaliated in the only way he knew how—by dipping his nimble fingers inside Gartside’s waistcoat pocket.
Chapter Sixteen
