How to Woo a Wallflower (Romancing the Rules #3)(30)

“Not at all. Remember our neighbor, Mrs. Honeychurch? She dropped it by.” Her voice rose in excitement. “She apologized for opening the envelope. Said she didn’t notice your name until after. Soon as I saw that fancy hand, I thought perhaps you’d been summoned by the queen.”

Gabe pressed a thumb to the spot where tiny fists were pummeling behind his brow. “You told Mrs. Honeychurch our new address?”

Sara quieted for a moment. “You have to trust some folks, Gabe. Not everyone is a threat.”

His bitter chuckle echoed off the hansom’s interior. “And on that count, we’ll never agree.”

“It’s an invitation to a ball.” Her tone dipped low as a whisper. “I thought perhaps you could ask Miss Morgan to accompany you.”

“I don’t go to balls.” Gabe slid the invite free of its envelope and nearly dropped the creamy square. It was the charity ball Clary Ruthven had mentioned. Which meant she’d be in attendance. He pressed the paper so hard, it began to ripple in his fingers.

“No, but this could be your first ball.”

“I don’t own proper clothes, nor do I know how to dance.”

“You can rent proper togs, and dancing isn’t difficult.” Sara nudged his shoulder. “It would be an excellent opportunity to become better acquainted with the young lady.”

“Not a good idea.” The ache in his forehead sharpened. He was quickly losing patience with his sister’s determination to pair him off with Jane Morgan. Unfortunately, she wasn’t the young lady dominating his thoughts.

“You’re not giving the girl a chance.” She folded her arms. A move that, as a child, had often spurred him to relent. Because Sara had been his only ally. The only one who cared whether he lived or died.

Gabe still hated disappointing his sister.

“If I invite her, she’ll expect more than I’m willing to offer.” According to the Ruthven Rules etiquette books, an invitation to a ball was a sure sign of courtship. He’d read every word of the damned book when he’d taken his role at Ruthven’s. The rules had seemed comical, but they’d taught him where the boundary lines were. What was expected of honorable men.

He’d absorbed enough to know there was no honor in giving false hope to a baronet’s daughter.

“Now, yes, but perhaps soon—”

“No, Sara. I will never wish to marry Jane Morgan.” He’d always known the fact and wasn’t sure why he’d held back from confessing the truth to Sara so bluntly. “She and I wouldn’t suit.” Every time he looked at the girl, she became a blushing bundle of nerves. Hardly the makings of a happy marriage.

Of course, imagining Clarissa Ruthven reacting to him in the same overheated way held a disturbing appeal.

“Then I fear she will never marry.” Sara turned her head to watch the other carriages passing, pedestrians making their way along the gaslit streets. “She’s the sort of girl men don’t notice. Quiet and shy. I doubt she receives many invitations to accompany gentlemen to balls.”

Miss Morgan was far too well bred and connected to turn spinster. From what he knew of her, she was kind and gently mannered. Some man would find that appealing.

Gabe already spent his days playing a role, controlling his impulses, attempting to be a proper, buttoned-down man of business. Marrying Jane Morgan would complete the picture. Gain him valuable social connections. He knew all the reasons he should marry the young woman. But he craved something in his life that was real. The woman he married would damn well spark something in him beyond practical impulses and put-on manners.

“Why don’t you attend the ball with me? You’ve never been to one.”

“Don’t be barmy.” Sara cuffed him on the leg. “I wouldn’t know which foot to put where, but I’ll wager Miss Morgan does. Ask her, Gabe. I’m not insisting you marry the girl, but give her an evening out and a turn or two around the dance floor.”

He wasn’t going to win. He rarely did when his sister set her mind on something.

While he mulled all his possible rejoinders and all Sara’s arguments to knock them down, the carriage stopped along the pavement in front of the Morgan’s modest red-brick home in Hampstead.

“I’ll ask her,” he finally said.

Sara beamed beside him.

“But I will make clear the invitation is extended out of friendship, nothing more.” Which sounded much easier said than done. Hell, he didn’t like disappointing anyone.

After jumping from the carriage, he held out a hand to assist Sara down.

“Of course you will,” she said, in a way that made him doubt she believed him about his lack of interest in Jane Morgan.

“Sara,” he said in a warning tone, “she is not the young lady I wish to marry.”

“Oh?” Halfway to the Morgans’ front door, she tugged his arm to pull him to a stop. “Then there’s another young lady?” She wore one of the knowing smiles he remembered from their youth. Her smiles had been in short supply of late, and he liked seeing her eyes alight with mischief.

“I never said anything of the kind.” There was an odd catch in his throat that his cunning sister wouldn’t fail to notice. He knew better than to hide anything from her.

“No, Gabe, you didn’t say,” she said as they continued to the Morgans’ front stoop. “You didn’t have to.”