Page 1 of Loving a Beast of a Marquess
ChapterOne
Lady Evangeline Pevton smoothed down the front of her peach muslin dress and sighed. Peach wasnother color, but her aunt insisted on putting her in it at every possible opportunity—possibly because Evangeline’smotherhad preferred peach. But Evangeline’s mother had been somewhat darker and much better suited to the shade.
Evangeline sighed again.
“Enough,” her aunt, Dorothea, said, tapping her fan against the back of Evangeline’s hand. “Do you want everyone to discover our predicament?”
“No, Aunt,” Evangeline said dutifully, although, truth be told, she didn’t know that would necessarily be a bad thing. It had only been a month since her father’s disappearance—and all the unfortunate discoveries that had gone along with it—and although Dorothea was determined to conceal the reality of the situation, Evangeline could hardly see how it could be kept a secret for long.Especiallywhen they were at one of the major balls of the season, held by none other than the Duke of Norfolk.
Before them, the quartet began tuning in preparation for the first dance to begin. Evangeline winced at one particularly flat violin. Being blessed with perfect pitch felt a little more like a curse at times like these.
“Smile, girls,” Dorothea said, beaming at everyone who passed them. “Emily, that includes you.”
Emily, Evangeline’s younger sister, swallowed convulsively. “I don’t know how Icansmile,” she said, her voice little more than a whisper. “I—”
Evangeline took Emily’s hand and squeezed it. “You know we must marry before Papa’s secret is out,” she said under her breath, “and you know Aunt will not let us rest until we find husbands.”
“But it has barely been a month!” Emily hissed back. “We should still be mourning.”
“Quiet!” Dorothea glared at Emily, and Evangeline’s hand tightened around her sister’s. If she had her way, she’d have taken the burden of marriage onto her own shoulders, but that would not have protected Emily. “You know if your father’s heir discovers he is now the Duke…” Dorothea shuddered. “You must pray you are both married by that time.”
Evangeline resisted rolling her eyes with difficulty. “I know,” she said. “He is a devil among men. A prowling demon. A monster. Abeast.” To her relief, her words brought a smile back onto Emily’s face. “And if he discovers us, two unmarried women in his household, he will eat us alive.”
Dorothea blinked at Evangeline in displeasure. “You may choose to make a joke of it, to be sure, but there is little doubt your lives will beextremelyunpleasant if he inherits, and you remain in the house.”
Privately, Evangeline didn’t know quite how her father’s heir, a man about whom she knew little save he was a libertine, could be quite as bad as her aunt portrayed him to be, but expressing such things only resulted in an argument. If there was one thing about which her aunt was certain, it was that the Marquess of Harley, her father’s heir, was a devil incarnate.
A portly gentleman approached them and bowed. “Lady Pevton,” he said to Dorothea. “Lady Evangeline, Lady Emily. You are looking divine tonight.”
In peach, Evangeline rather doubted it, but she merely tucked her shawl more firmly about her shoulders and dipped into the shallowest curtsy she could manage. Beside her, Emily managed a somewhat deeper curtsy, and her aunt was all effusive smiles.
“Lord Mountsby,” Dorothea said graciously. “How wonderful to see you here tonight.”
“Indeed, indeed, a delightful event.” He waved a plump hand and fastened his attention firmly on Evangeline. She bit back a grimace. “It is a shame to see such a lovely lady not dancing,” he said. “Would you do me the honor of this dance, My Lady?”
In an ideal world, and one in which her father had still been alive, Evangeline might have been tempted to refuse. There were countless excuses that sprung to mind—she was lame, her sister was feeling faint, she was already promised the dance toanyother gentleman—but her father wasnotalive, and she had the burden of being required to marry swiftly.
“Of course,” she said, accepting his hand and glancing back at Emily as she was led out to join the lines of couples already forming. At least it was not a waltz; if it had been, she might not have been able to bear the feeling of his clammy hands pawing all over her back. As it was, she was obliged to have him hold her hand, and that was bad enough.
Lord Mountsby licked his lips. He was a florid man who, at best, appeared to be in his late thirties. Evangeline rather suspected he was older, however; he’d already had one wife who had perished in childbirth. The idea that she might be the next made her shudder.
“You have been absent from society as of late,” he said when they joined together. “I had thought there might have been more opportunities for us to get to know each other.”
“I’m afraid we were called away to my father’s estate,” she managed. This wasn’t, strictly, a lie: they had indeed been called to her father’s estate whereupon they had been confronted with the devastating fact that her father had appeared to have taken his own life. Her heart clenched at the memory, but she continued, “My aunt was keen for us to return to London, however.”
“How excellent.”
“Indeed,” Evangeline murmured. There were other several sets of this dance to go, and she could think of nothing worse than to endure them with a man who was so focused on her chest that he forgot to note where her face was.
Although… She glanced up in time to see a gentleman extend a leg as he bowed before her sister. At least she was not confronted with a dandy. Lord Mountsby was an uninspiring example of a gentleman well past his prime but unwilling to admit it. He disgusted her, but at least she was not inclined to laugh at him. If a gentleman approached withsucha waistcoat—featuring phoenixes, no less—she would have been unable to keep a straight face.
There was some commotion by the door, and Evangeline turned to see a tall man enter the ballroom. His chestnut hair was brushed back in the latest fashion, and his coat fitted tightly against his broad shoulders. At first glance—and she had little time for more than a glance—she thought him easily the most handsome man in the room.
His gaze brushed over her and moved on, no doubt in search of something more interesting than either she or Lord Mountsby. She didn’t blame him; her partner was hardly prepossessing, and she was dressed in peach.
“I see the Marquess has finally deigned to arrive,” Lord Mountsby said, distaste in every word. “No doubt he will unleash his legendary temper on us, too.”
“The Marquess?”
