Page 13 of The Duke Meets His Match

Watched it all unfold around her as if from a withdrawn, isolated place. Like a dusty old spinster sitting on a shelf.

It would not do.

She stood abruptly. “May I bring you and Lady Starr refreshments, Lady Walmsley?” Her question interrupted the conversation they were having with the lady seated next to them, whom Susan belatedly recognized as Lady Melton, one of the few people Susan remembered from the wedding the year before. “And you, Lady Melton? Would you care for refreshments?”

“I am feeling a bit parched, I will confess,” Lady Walmsley said.

“Are you sure it’s no bother?” Lady Starr asked.

“Not at all,” Susan assured her. She needed to move, to walk. She needed a purpose. She needed to do more than sit.

Collecting dust.

“None for me—but thank you, Miss Jennings,” Lady Melton said.

Susan nodded, rather surprised that Lady Melton remembered her name. “I’ll be right back, then, ladies,” she said.

The refreshment table was on the opposite end of the room as the dais, and Susan went that direction now, excusing herself as she brushed past people and nodded her head in greeting, intent only on her purpose. She stopped to speakwith no one—and no one encouraged her to do otherwise. She remembered nowwhy she had disliked balls. She should have asserted herself with Lady Walmsley and asked for an evening of rest before taking on London Society.

Finally, an eternity later, she reached her goal. Suddenly thirsty herself, shedished herself a cup of punch and began to drink greedily. Too greedily, apparently,for in her zeal to drink, she tipped the cup to her lips at too extreme an angle, and when another guest inadvertently bumped her, the punch sloshed over the rim of the cup and all over the front of her dress—the other person wholly unaware of the mishap he or she had caused. Susan hadn’t even seen who it was.

But now the entire bodice of her gown was soaked and slightly pink when it should be white.

How utterly mortifying.

There was nothing to be done but address the problem. She quickly scanned the length of the refreshment table for napkins but could see none. She quickly put her cup down on the table and opened her reticule. Had she remembered to put a handkerchief inside? She’d had other things on her mind when they’d arrived at Lady Walmsley’s and couldn’t remember.

No handkerchief. Of all the times for her to spill her drink, of all the times toagainforget a handker—

“Ho! There you are. I was just coming to find you.” James’s voice was not far behind her.

Susan sighed with relief. Surely, James had a handkerchief—and his height would shield her from the other guests while she set to dabbing her chin and neck and bodice dry.

She turned slightly to greet him and found herself face-to-face ... not with James, no. But with theodious boorshe’d encountered in the library at Lord and Lady Cantwell’s wedding last summer.

His glinting black eyes narrowed upon seeing her.

“Aylesham, please allow me the pleasure of presenting my sister, Miss Susan Jennings,” Susan vaguely heard James say. At present, her ears were ringing, and her eyes were locked with the gentleman’s, which were like searing black coals. “Susan, may I present the Duke of Aylesham.”

“We meet at last,” the duke said.

***

Had George known that James Jennings’s sister wasthe harpyhe’d encountered last summer, he never would have agreed to an introduction. But he had. The damage was done. “We meet at last,” he’d said—a reply he considered diplomatic since making her official acquaintance hadn’t been an objective of his.

She was staring at him now,the harpy—her eyes wide, her mouth forming anObefore it snapped shut.

She quickly curtsied. “How do you do?” she managed to mutter.

“Better than you, I suspect,” George said. He pulled his handkerchief from his pocket, snapped it open, and handed it to her.

“Thank you,” she said, quickly wiping her chin dry and then dabbing her bodice with the handkerchief to soak up what wetness she could.

Had she been anyone but the harpy, George might have felt sorry for her.

“Are you all right, Susan?” Jennings said. “Shall I escort you to the ladies’ retiring room so you can set yourself to rights?”

“No, thank you, James,” the harpy—Miss Jennings—said. George reallyneeded to think of her as Miss Jennings, but his opinion of her hadn’t preciselyrisenthus far in this second encounter. It was difficult to imagine that JamesJennings, with whom George had acquainted himself fairly well over the past two years, on the Continent and at home, was the harpy’s brother. George admired and appreciated Jennings. He’d been with him in very close quarters a few times over the past several months, and he’d come to see him as a true gentleman and a man of action, with a piercing intellect, to boot. Jennings had mentioned coming from a large family and had shared a few anecdotes about them, but that was all.

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