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Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
April 1817
IT WAS, LADY ELIZABETH BANNING thought ruefully as she looked up into the reddening face of her latest fiancÉ, all the fault of her damnable temper. Again.
“Are you telling me that you’re jilting me?” William demanded incredulously. The Earl of Rosen was of average height, with a slightly stocky build that Beth suspected would, in middle age, run sadly to fat. But just now, at age twenty-six, his square jaw, regular features, speaking blue eyes, and thick fair hair worn À la Brutus were enough to ensure that he was held to be a very handsome man by those of the fairer sex—and which of them were not?—interested in such things. Of course, that assessment was undoubtedly helped along by the fact that he was also possessed of an income of something in the nature of twenty thousand pounds a year.
Which she was, regrettably, in the process of whistling down the wind.
“I am not jilting you. I am telling you that I feel we should not suit.”
Standing in front of one of the pair of tall windows, thickly curtained in claret velvet, that adorned the far wall of the small, book-lined library of Richmond House—the palatial London home of her brother-in-law the Duke of Richmond—with William less than an arm’s length away, Beth was conscious of a draft curling around her shoulders. They were left bare by the fashionable dÉcolletage of her slim, high-waisted frock of gleaming gold silk, its color chosen with care to set off her fiery curls. Really, the room seemed surprisingly cold despite the fact that a fire crackled in the hearth in deference to the crisp temperatures of the early April night. Instead of shivering, though, she folded her arms over her chest, lifted her chin, squared her shoulders, and held William’s increasingly incensed gaze without flinching. Conversations of this sort were never easy, as she had learned from way too much experience. Still, it had to be done, and she had already put it off too long.
“You cannot be serious. My mother is here.” William was practically quivering with outrage. His mother, Lady Rosen, was one of the ton’s highest sticklers, and over the course of the last two Seasons had made no secret of her opinion that Beth was fast. Beth had little doubt that William’s announcement that he meant to marry her had brought floods of tears and recriminations down upon his head.
“I am really very sorry.” Beth looked up at him remorsefully. The idea that he had stood up to his formidable mother for her made her feel even guiltier. She was sorry. Their engagement, which at the moment was known only to their immediate families, was of a little more than a week’s duration, and she had regretted it within hours of accepting his offer. She should have told him so immediately, of course. But he was such an eligible parti, while she, at twenty-one and embarked on her third Season, was no longer in the first blush of youth and well past the age at which most of her contemporaries married. Having brought William up to scratch—mostly, she admitted to herself, to spite his acid-tongued sister—she had thought, hoped, wished that if she tried very hard this time, things might be different.
They were not. She had tried her best, and still her stubborn heart refused to cooperate. She liked William well enough. She did not, however, love him, and she knew now she never would.
She could not marry him.
Had she not, three weeks ago, overheard Lady Dreyer, William’s high-in-the-instep older sister, insisting to Princess Lieven, the most top-lofty of the Almack’s patronesses, that no matter how much he dangled after her William would never be so foolish as to make Lady Elizabeth Banning, with her shocking reputation and scandal-plagued bloodline, an offer, she would never have accepted him in the first place.
But she had overheard, and the die was cast. The remark had both hurt and infuriated her, and when William, with, admittedly, some considerable encouragement on her part, did indeed come up to scratch, she had accepted him on the spot. Suspecting even then that she would live to regret it, she had added the proviso that they tell no one outside their immediate families until her brother-in-law the Duke, who stood in place of her guardian since both her parents were dead, should come up from the country, from whence he had arrived, most unexpectedly, earlier that evening. Still, whispers of an engagement had run like wildfire around the ton, so much so that Beth had actually found herself in the absurd position of seriously considering marrying the man simply to keep the gossips from saying she was playing fast and loose with yet another gentleman’s affections.
Fortunately, she was not yet as foolish as that.
“I spoke to your brother-in-law not an hour since.” William was breathing hard and his hands had closed into fists at his sides. “I told him then that I hoped to be able to announce the engagement at midnight tonight, and he made no objection.”
“Which is why I am telling you now,” Beth said. Her older sister Claire, Duchess of Richmond, had told her of William’s conversation with her husband, which was why Beth was giving William his congÉ in the middle of Claire’s ball. The timing was less than ideal, Beth knew, and she blamed herself for delaying until circumstances forced her hand. William was angry, as he had every right to be. She, on the other hand, would remain cool and composed. With that laudable objective in mind, her tone was eminently reasonable, and she laid a placating hand on his forearm as she spoke. The sleeve of his bottle green satin coat, which he wore with a pale yellow waistcoat and white inexpressibles, felt smooth beneath her fingers, but the tension of the limb beneath spoke to how very far from being placated he actually was. “Before the announcement is made. That way, neither of us need suffer the slightest degree of embarrassment.”
“Embarrassment. . . ” William’s eyes bulged and his face went from puce to purple. “My God, they are already betting on it in the clubs. At White’s, the odds are five to one against me getting you to the altar and ten to one against you actually going through with the ceremony and becoming my wife.”
“How dreadful.” Beth was genuinely shocked. Her lips pursed, and she shook her head in disbelief as her hand dropped away from his arm. “Gentlemen will truly bet on anything.”
William sucked in air. “Is that all you can say?”
“I’m sorry,” she offered again. Muffled by distance, the lilting strains of the first notes of the quadrille reached her ears. They had exited in the midst of a country dance, which had clearly run its course. She had pounced on William as soon as she had spotted him in the ballroom, but as he was more than passing fond of his own voice, it had taken her some time to detach him from the group he’d been edifying with a detailed account of his role in some long-past hunt. Now, with the quadrille striking up, Mr. Hayden, to whom she rather thought she’d promised the next dance, would be searching for her. Time to end this. “But when you have had time to reflect a little, I’m sure you will agree with me that it’s for the best. Truly, we should not suit.”
“But . . . ”
Prolonging this served no purpose. She started to turn away, adding with finality, “Pray excuse me. I must return to the ballroom now.”
“Wait.” He caught her arm above the elbow, his fingers gripping just a little too hard for comfort. She turned back to him with raised brows. “It’s too late to draw back. I’ve sent the announcement to the papers. It is to run in tomorrow’s edition.”
“Oh, no.” Beth thought of the torrent of gossip that would sweep over her—over her family, over William and his family—in the wake of her publicly crying off from yet another engagement, and she winced inwardly. There was already so much notoriety attached to the Banning family name that this would be in the nature of heaping coals upon an already smoldering fire. The resulting blaze would be intense. Her eyes went to the clock on the mantel. It was a few minutes past eleven p.m. Almost certainly, the presses would already be printing. There was little chance of withdrawing the announcement now. “You should not have done so.”
“You mean, I should have remembered that you have jilted two previous fiancÉs and expected you would do the same to me?”
She didn’t like the tone of that, but she had to admit that, from William’s point of view, she probably deserved it.
In any case, there was no undoing what was done. She gave him a small, wry smile. “Well, at least you may take comfort in the fact that no one will attach the least blame to you.”
“You’re right about that.” From his expression, it was apparent the fact did not please him. “But the scandal will besmirch us all.”
Catching her other arm, William jerked her toward him. Taken by surprise, Beth found herself coming up tight against his chest. The top of her head reached the bridge of his nose, which meant that they were almost eye to eye for a pregnant moment as their gazes collided. Supremely conscious that she was in the wrong—and also that a good portion of the ton was present at her sister’s party and would thus be able to hear any loud altercation that occurred inside the library—she confined her reaction to firming her lips and narrowing her eyes at him warningly.
“William—” she began.
He rushed on, cutting her off, his fingers tightening around her arms until they dug painfully into her soft flesh, cle...
