A Taste of Desire(10)
Miss Ashford shot a quick glance about the noisy room teeming with highbrow aristocrats, before lifting a gloved hand to her mouth and leaning in. “I don’t believe he is here at the present time—at least we have not seen him enter—but we have all agreed that Lord Armstrong would be our first choice.”
Amelia forced herself not to roll her eyes, trying to ignore the disturbing quickening of her pulse as a too vivid image of him came to mind. “Please tell me you have more sense than to be charmed by golden locks and dimpled cheeks?” Amelia raised a brow, endeavoring to look properly chastising. A look her father swore she’d perfected at the knee of her departed grandmother, who had turned expressing displeasure into an art form.
All three ladies exchanged looks of surprise, undoubtedly wondering what umbrage she could have with the young lord frequently likened to the Greek god Apollo. Amelia thought Eros more apropos considering the rumors of all those women.
“Are you speaking of Lord Armstrong?” Dawn whispered the man’s name with the same reverence most of the gentry and the aristocracy saved for royalty.
Amelia bit back a pained smile. “The very one and the same.”
“Why, I think he is utterly charming,” Miss Ashford said, her angular features softening, her cheeks becoming flushed as if the mere thought of the man turned her insides to mush.
“The man’s a rake. Would you have a man who believes it is his duty to bed every woman in town? I find him to lack any form of subtlety and his transparency particularly vulgar.” Amelia recalled with full clarity, the smile he’d bestowed upon her during their initial introduction. A smile meant to charm, to mesmerize. Her pulse thrummed. Yes indeed, vulgarly transparent.
Dawn pressed two white gloved fingers delicately to her lips, and Lady Jane and Miss Ashford gaped.
“Surely you jest?” Lady Jane whispered on a sharp inhalation.
Really, would she jest about something of this nature? The man was a rake. So perhaps he did not think it was his duty to bed every woman in town, but who would really quibble over the two dozen or so she had missed in her claim. “You ladies are much too sweet to be taken in by that scalawag.” Which was the truth. He was all that and more.
“Are you much acquainted with the viscount?” Dawn asked, her eyes wide and curious.
“Unfortunately, my father and he are well acquainted, and I have been forced to suffer the man’s presence—though thankfully only briefly—on several different occasions.” Yesterday’s encounter had exceeded the usual scope of their verbal exchanges. She could only pray future occurrences proved few and far between.
“How can you fault a gentleman who treats Mr. Fox-worth’s sister with that kind of magnanimity? Why, ever since Mr. Fox—hmm, I suppose that would be Officer Foxworth now. Well, ever since he joined the navy, it is Lord Armstrong who has been escorting her about town to social events. And if she attends a ball she is not relegated to the wall like some.” Miss Ashford paused to share another look of lament with Dawn and Lady Jane. “I think his loyalty to his friend is commendable. Truth to tell, if not for him, Miss Foxworth would otherwise be wasting away the Seasons in some town lacking proper roads and transportation.”
Amelia refused to mollify her opinion in the light of his altruism toward Miss Foxworth or his apparent dedication to his friend. However, the circumstances did explain why the thirty-one-year-old spinster had one of the most eligible bachelors squiring her about. Their association giving hope to all whey-faced ladies whose petals drooped on aging stems that their princes were not far behind.
“The poor woman is clearly smitten. That is as obvious as the nose on my face.” On the two occasions Amelia had seen the two together, Miss Foxworth had stared up at him with starstruck eyes, a splotch of pink lending color to her waxen complexion. If ever she’d witnessed a woman in the grip of lovesick infatuation, Camille Foxworth had surely been her.
“Well, smitten or not, I think it is kind of him to treat her so.”
Apparently, Miss Foxworth wasn’t the only one smitten, for Miss Ashford defended him with the zeal of a court barrister endeavoring to sway the jury to spare his client’s neck.
“Yes,” chimed in Lady Jane, “the man could have his pick of the most sought-after ladies of the ton.” She then blanched and shot a look of trepidation at Amelia. “Or at least the majority of them,” she corrected.
In the strictest definition, that relatively small, revered group did include her. But her offers had tapered since her first Season, when she’d accumulated twelve proposals of marriage. This Season would conclude with no more than five, all from gentlemen quite new to the marriage market.