Always a Maiden (The Belles of Beak Street #5)
Katy Madison
Chapter 1
London, 1806
Lady Susanah ducked down a corridor and slid into a darkened alcove furtively looking around. She wanted to scream. But ladies didn’t scream. They didn’t bemoan their fates. And they most certainly didn’t try to escape a function where eligible bachelors were present. Especially not when they were five and twenty and very nearly dried up old maids.
“Why?” she muttered.
She picked up the hem of her ballgown and tried to tear it. But the stupid material resisted. If she knew any curse words, she would be using them. But as she searched her mind for some unsavory phrase issued by a passing hansom cab driver, her memories refused to cooperate. The best she could manage was, “Oh botheration!”
But then the self-recriminations started. Four complete seasons and part of a fifth, a future duke and two future earls she’d failed to bring up to scratch. Well, one had proposed but had withdrawn his offer before the day was done. She’d lost all of her potential husbands to the belles of Beak Street. She took the defections with equanimity, with the dignity her station demanded and pretended that it didn’t mean anything. She’d even helped quell the scandals, and they just went on stealing her beaus one after another. But the announcement this evening had been like being thrown from a horse, sudden, jarring, and painful.
She’d never quite accepted defeat with the future duke. She’d very nearly landed him her first season. She would have if she hadn’t been so stupid as to refuse what he asked of her. Now in spite of her hints to him that she’d reconsidered her position, the last of the unmarried belles had reeled him into her net.
Bringing the edge of her hem to her mouth she tried to tear through it with her teeth. The dress tasted of chalk and floor wax and made her gag long before she was successful in starting a rent. Flinging her skirt down, she berated herself that she couldn’t manage a little thing like tearing her dress, let alone finding a husband.
Her mother would be looking for her, but Susanah was in a state. She didn’t know that she could stuff down her emotions and behave perfectly. Not this time.
“Damn belles,” she muttered almost gleeful that she managed to speak as she’d never done before. She could curse. But the despair quickly shoved through her tiny bit of satisfaction. Tomorrow she would be ashamed of her outburst, private though it was. “What do they have that I don’t?”
“Do you—”
A jolt of fear and surprise nearly had her jumping out of her skin.
“—really want me to answer that?” The voice was low and masculine and slightly familiar.
Her face suddenly aflame, she turned and opened her mouth to apologize, then flee, and instead gasped.
Evan Cooper stood just behind her in the recessed doorway of the alcove watching her intently. Although what was more shocking than being alone with him, was that he stood there with his waistcoat draped over his arm, the ends of his cravat drooped untied, and his shoes dangled from his fingers.
Obviously, he’d just come from some tryst. He hadn’t been there when she spied the alcove, but then she’d been too focused on watching the corridor for witnesses to her shame to look behind her. Her face burned in mortification, while he casually dropped his shoes to the floor.
“Why are you trying to rip your dress?” he asked as if it were a perfectly ordinary meeting and he wasn’t half undressed. He stepped into his shoes.
She should just go. She couldn’t be caught alone in a darkened corridor with him. He was a philander and a penniless one at that. He was the sort of man who could ruin her with just a hint of warm attention. Or worse he could deliberately bring about her downfall just to get at her substantial dowry and eventual inheritance. She wanted to be married, but not beneath her. She was supposed to net an aristocrat and one with a good title, not some mere mister.
He shrugged out of his evening coat and handed it to her.
Like an idiot she took it. “Where did you come from?”
“It leads to the servants’ stairs.” He gave a slight nod toward the door and pushed his arms through his waistcoat, then clicked the door shut. “I can help you.”
“I don’t think so,” she said with all the stiffness she could muster. She was never improper. Just as she never allowed her emotions to be seen—until now.
He buttoned his waistcoat, and she thrust out his coat. He ignored it.
“You were with Mrs. Barnet,” she accused. Nearly a half hour ago she’d heard her husband couldn’t find his wife. Not that it was any of her concern. Not that it mattered to her in the slightest. Not that she should have said anything about it, even if she had noticed.
His fingers paused on the last button and he looked at her, his eyes narrowed. “I don’t kiss and tell.”
Susanah didn’t know if that was a confirmation or a denial. She wasn’t good with subtleties, which could be part of the reason she failed to land a husband in four and a half seasons. “She’s very pretty,” she heard herself say. Her ears grew hot. She pushed out his coat again. “Here. I have to go.”
He made no move to take his coat and took the ends of his cravat and straightened them. “You don’t want me to rip your dress?”
She stared at him. Did he mean to rip her dress by assaulting her? Her mother had warned her time and again that a fortune hunter might try to force her to the altar by ruining her. That was why her mother never let her out of her sight. Almost never. Evan Cooper was exactly the sort of man who would look to marry an heiress like her because he had no expectations of his own. Although from a socially acceptable family, he only got by on the generosity of an uncle. But he was putting on his clothes, which would make it look less like anything improper had happened. Or perhaps even the fortune hunters thought her too long on the shelf. “Mr. Cooper?”