A Lady's Guide to Fortune-Hunting(40)

‘Has she not?’ she pushed.

‘Whether she has or has not,’ he answered coolly, ‘bears little relevance to my actions, and even less to this conversation.’

‘Was that a set down?’ Kitty asked, intrigued and pleased at the discovery. ‘If it was, it was very good.’

‘Regardless,’ he seemed committed to ignoring her, ‘you are right at least to avoid Hanbury. His family estate is quite encumbered – I should not be surprised if he declares bankruptcy within the year – and he most certainly intends to marry an heiress.’

‘That is most useful to know,’ Kitty said, surprised. ‘Are there any other almost-bankrupt lords I should be aware of?’

‘Planning to make more use of me, are you?’ he enquired. ‘I am very much afraid that is where my advice dries up.’

‘I should think you might try to be a little helpful,’ she complained, aggrieved.

‘Miss Talbot, having now more than dispensed with my side of our little deal, I do not at all desire to be helpful.’

The dance was drawing to a close now. And so it seemed – by the finality of Radcliffe’s words and his tone – was their acquaintance.

‘I do hope,’ he said as the music stopped, bowing over her hand, ‘that you can take it from here?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, I believe I can.’

Archie wandered aimlessly through the rooms, moodily tasting of the buffet in the supper room and ignoring all attempts to draw him into conversation. He wasn’t at all sure why his fighting off a set of bandits had not garnered more excitement or respect from the object of his affections, or why she seemed so keen not to speak with him. It went beyond the pale. What was the point of exciting things happening to one, if it did not seem to matter to the people one most wanted to impress? And then his own brother to have treated him so much like a child, right in front of her!

Archie squashed another slice of plum cake in his mouth, to assuage his distress, before skulking off once more. Still preoccupied by his dark thoughts, just as he was on the point of damning the whole party to hell, Archie quite collided with a gentleman exiting the card room.

‘Good God, terribly sorry!’ he cried, even as his arm was caught securely in the other’s to stop his fall.

‘My dear boy, don’t be,’ the gentleman drawled. ‘It’s not every day someone swoons into my arms.’

Detecting a joke at play, Archie looked up, grinning, into the face of the amused Lord Selbourne. ‘My lord!’ he said in delighted greeting.

‘Ah yes, Mr de Lacy,’ he said, smiling. ‘Good to see you again.’

Thrilled to be recognised by someone he now considered a god, Archie beamed.

‘Care to join me for a game?’ Selbourne asked, though he had appeared to be about to leave the room altogether.

Archie hesitated. The music was starting up and he did feel his mother would expect him to be involved in the dancing. He looked back towards the dance floor to see the set was already beginning to form. Damnation – if he hadn’t spent so long sulking, he could have plucked up the courage to ask Miss Talbot to dance, which might’ve solved everything. He searched the room for her, wondering if he might still be able to bring it about. There was her sister, being led to the floor by Montagu – he had taken a shine to her, hadn’t he? – and there was Miss Talbot … dancing with Radcliffe. How odd. He had not thought James even liked her all that much.

‘Mr de Lacy?’ Lord Selbourne’s voice brought him back to the present. ‘A game?’

‘Yes indeed,’ Archie agreed, happy to be distracted from this latest puzzle. He followed Selbourne into the dimly-lit antechamber, where they joined a table of men Archie did not recognise, who were just forming a new game of whist.

‘Insipid game,’ Selbourne muttered to Archie, ‘but it’s the best they’ll do here.’

Archie murmured his agreement, though he was far from considering this turn of events insipid. He could not wait to tell Gerry – the boy would be beside himself with jealousy.

‘Aren’t you devilishly rich, my boy?’ Selbourne asked provocatively, peering at Archie over his cards.

Archie was not used to people saying this so overtly. ‘Yes, I think so,’ he said, before admitting, ‘Or, at least, I will in a few weeks – upon my majority.’ His mother had always impressed upon him the importance of honesty, and though it might lower him in the man’s estimation to know he was not yet one and twenty, he thought it best to speak the truth.

‘If I were you, I’d be having an awful lot more fun,’ Selbourne said carelessly. ‘Is this really your idea of a good time?’ He waved to the room in such a way as to intimate his total disgust for the entire ball and its contents.

‘Well, I suppose not,’ Archie said. ‘Of course not. Damned squeeze.’

‘I’m only here out of duty, of course,’ Selbourne said languidly. ‘Only way it seems to get a wife, and my mother does nag so. Family name and all that. But when I’m not here,’ he leant in confidentially, and Archie leant in too, hanging upon his every word. ‘You can be sure that I know how to have fun …’

Kitty’s dance card was full the whole night. Once her dance with Radcliffe was concluded, she had a bevy of other requests for her hand within mere minutes. Twirling across the room amongst London’s elite, she felt weightless, and truly powerful – the world was within her grasp, and she the only one brave enough to take it. They stayed at the ball into the early hours of the morning, dancing all night in their shimmering slippers, before Aunt Dorothy indicated, with a simple flick of her fingers, that it was time for them to leave. Collecting Cecily on their way – extracting her from where she had trapped Lord Montagu once more into conversation – they bade goodnight to their hostess and headed out into the night.