A Breach of Promise (The Rules of Engagement #1)(10)

The two women were halfway down the stairs whispering when the taller of the pair looked fleeting over her fan at Marcus. Her brows met, she averted her gaze and faltered. Was it panic he had seen flash across her face? The brief notion gave him pause. His gaze shifted from one woman to the other with a discomposing uncertainty.

It couldn’t possibly be.



Lydia glanced over her fan into the deep, dark, depths of her girlhood fantasies and faltered. “Lud, he is magnificent!” she whispered half to herself. “I can’t believe I had nearly forgotten him.” She thought she’d successfully banished her feeling, but upon seeing him again, his appeal was magnified tenfold, causing her stomach to do flips.

Marcus was no longer the young man she remembered, but a mature and urbane gentleman of fashion. He was elegantly dressed in an evening coat of midnight-blue velvet trimmed in silver, with satin breeches and a silver-embroidered waistcoat. Cascades of lace spilled at his throat and from his cuffs almost to his fingertips, which held the requisite, ornamental snuffbox.

“A magnificent cad, you mean. He’s positively gaping at your bosom, Lyddie!” Mariah said in a scandalized whisper. “I swear he’s undressing you with his eyes!”

Lydia’s lip twitched. “How lurid you sound. I really must censure your reading material.”

“There can be no doubt you have his attention now,” Mariah giggled.

“Then it’s too bad my breasts can’t speak. Hush now!” she said. “We’re almost close enough he’ll hear us.”

Though she tried to hide it, the idea that she’d captured Marcus’ attention made Lydia’s rebellious pulse quicken. He had shattered her hopes and broken her heart with callous indifference, yet she realized with dismay that the cad still affected her.

She’d fantasized about this meeting for weeks and how she would greet him with practiced hauteur, but now that the actual moment had arrived, her heart rose to her throat.

Marcus met them at the bottom of the stairs, with a courtly show of leg and a flourishing bow. Rising, he looked from Lydia to Mariah with a slight frown wrinkling his brow.

Reading his perplexity, Lydia halted. “Lud,” she breathed between lips frozen in a smile.

Mariah nudged her ribs with a bony elbow. “What is it, Lyddie?”

“He doesn’t even know me.”

“You can’t mean it!” Mariah said.

“It’s true,” she hissed. “Just note the marks of his uncertainty—the subtle arch of his brow, the twitch in his jaw, and how his gaze tracks back and forth between us.”

“Lackaday, you are right!” Mariah shielded another giggle behind her fan.

“I am indeed,” Lydia whispered back to her cousin. She directed Marcus her most winsome smile. “Now let us see how Mr. Dashing Diplomat worms his way out of this!”





Chapter Four


Marcus was stunned by the notion that the goddess might actually be Lydia, but reaching the bottom of the stairs, neither woman moved to receive him. Instead, they exchanged a conspiratorial smile. What the devil game are they playing?

Saved by his instincts, Marcus grasped Needham by the elbow. “Nicholas, I should like very much for you to meet my betrothed and her lovely cousin. Ladies,” he turned to the pair, “may I present my good friend and personal secretary, Mr. Nicholas Needham.”

Marcus awaited the next move with narrowed eyes and found himself trumped again when both women dropped into a silent curtsey. Marcus countered the play by sweeping an ambiguous gesture that might have indicated either woman. “Nick, I present my betrothed, Miss Lydia Trent.”

Nick regarded both ladies with expectation, whereby Lydia stepped forward with a triumphant look and brilliant smile. “Mr. Needham, my cousin, Lady Mariah Morehaven,” she completed the introduction the gaping Marcus had aborted.

Nicholas cast his friend a quizzical look that went unanswered. With a half shrug, he extended his arm to Mariah. “I would be most honored to be your supper escort, Lady Morehaven.”

Mariah smiled shyly and placed her hand on his sleeve. “It is my pleasure to accept, Mr. Needham.”

“Miss Trent?” Marcus at last recovered his senses to offer his arm, but when Lydia extended her hand, he brought it first to his mouth. “I am truly bedazzled. It appears my awkward little duckling has become the most exquisite swan.”

Her eyes widened. She snatched her hand away. “You take liberties, Lord Marcus —with both my name and my person.”

Marcus’ lips curved into a sardonic, half smile. “Do I indeed? But we are nearly wed.”

“We are nearly strangers, sir,” she corrected.

“Hardly strangers,” he replied, undaunted by her chilly demeanor. “I have known you all your life.”

“You have known of me, perhaps,” she contested. “You don’t know me at all.”

He broadened his smile to its full knee-weakening effulgence. “Then, my dearest heart, what I don’t know, I shall induce you to tell me. And anything you might withhold, down to your deepest darkest secrets, I shall thoroughly delight in discovering for myself.”

“You do presume much, Lord Marcus.”

He placed her hand on his velvet-clad arm. “Oh, I think not.”