Her Reformed Rake (Wicked Husbands #3)(7)
The thought of any agreement involving her hand—let alone the rest of her—and Viscount Breckly was an abomination. It made an unpleasant, ill sensation wash through her stomach. The heated crush of the ballroom didn’t help the situation. Her cheeks were flushed, her skin prickly. A roaring sound rushed to her ears.
Four days remained until her father’s arrival.
She’d gone from desperate to frantic. And she’d decided that tonight at the Darlington ball, she’d have to find a replacement groom. Anyone would do. Dancing with Breckly most assuredly did not fit into her plans of thwarting her impending nuptials with the wretch.
Panicked. That was the proper word to describe her current condition.
Four days, drat it all.
“Aunt Caroline, he smells of hair grease and soiled linen. I won’t be able to bear it in this heat,” she said truthfully. “I feel ill just thinking of it now. There is also the matter of what occurred in the drawing room.”
Her father’s sister frowned at her, but the overall effect was somewhat diminished by a rather indiscreet hiccup. “Oh dear. I’m afraid fish always tends to affect me in such a monstrous way. But that is neither here nor there. It wouldn’t be seemly for you to deny him, and that is that. Your father has a high opinion of the viscount, and if you don’t make this match, he’ll have my hide. I’m sure his lordship was overcome by your beauty, as all men are. You play with them, Daisy, make them into beasts.”
Of course Aunt Caroline would blame the incident on Daisy, Aunt Caroline being cut from the same bolt of cloth as Father. Her marriage into an old blood Knickerbocker family in New York, the years she’d spent abroad, and the fact that she agreed with him in all things had made her Father’s clear choice in chaperone.
“Would it be seemly for me to lose my dinner all over Lord Breckly?” Daisy inquired with sham politeness.
A bejeweled matron swept past them, angling a look of ill-disguised disapproval in their direction. Daisy was accustomed to thinly veiled contempt. It wasn’t easy being an American girl who didn’t fit into the mold of fine English womanhood. Having a wealthy tradesman father who was half Irish and an aunt who liked to tipple didn’t exactly lend to being the belle of any ball. If she hadn’t her wits and her father’s wealth, she wouldn’t have dredged up any suitors at all.
“Hush,” Aunt Caroline directed before issuing another hiccup. “You mustn’t ever speak your mind, Daisy, and certainly not in a ballroom, of all places. Someone could overhear.”
Daisy didn’t particularly care if anyone did overhear. How better to advertise that she was available, ready for ruining? Her dowry was worth a small fortune. Surely some impoverished aristocrat would oblige her by rescuing her from the awful fate that awaited?
She fanned herself, wondering if her face was as shiny as it felt. Of course she had left her pearl powder at home tonight. “Aunt Caroline, do forgive me. It’s merely that I’m overheated in this crush of people. I think I need to step outside for a breath of air.”
“Outside?” Her aunt’s eyes narrowed with a prescient doubt.
“Before I faint,” Daisy added for good measure. She felt not a speck of guilt for leading Aunt Caroline down the garden path, for she was as determined as Daisy’s father to see her sold off to Breckly. “I would hate to cause a scene. Would you mind holding my champagne?”
Aunt Caroline’s slitted gaze fell upon the champagne flute. “Very well then, but don’t linger. And do not venture far. No good comes of young ladies flitting about in the dark.”
Daisy pressed her glass into her aunt’s outstretched hand, completely aware that the glass would be empty upon her return. “I wouldn’t dream of it, Aunt.”
With that, she took her leave of Aunt Caroline who, if past actions were to be an indication of future, would likely indulge in her champagne and spend the next few hours forgetting she had a niece at all. Which was just as well, for Daisy had to find an unsuspecting bachelor as expediently as possible.
She took great care to make her way through the revelers and toward the exit as she’d said she would, lest her aunt watched. In just a few minutes, Aunt Caroline ought to be sufficiently distracted and Daisy could re-enter the ballroom to assess her prey.
As she went, her eyes surveyed the room. The time for flirting and kissing was at an end. She needed to snare herself a husband by any means possible. The only means she could imagine that would force her father to acquiesce to a match other than the one he’d chosen was to ruin herself.
Yes, tonight, she would need to create quite a scandal. A scandal that destroyed her reputation and left her with no recourse except marriage to someone other than Viscount Breckly.
As she studied the gentlemen in attendance, her eyes collided with a familiar gaze. The effect was so stunning that she stopped where she was. Awareness sparked between them in live electrical wire fashion. The breath seemed to freeze in her lungs, and unwanted heat sluiced through her from head to toe, bathing her in a warmth that had nothing to do with the sultriness of the air and everything to do with the man watching her.
The Duke of Trent.
How was it possible that he was even more handsome tonight than the last time she’d seen him? Inexplicably, she recalled the sensation of his large hand, hot and heavy, pressed over her heart, directly to her bare skin. Had he followed her again tonight? Why did he watch her now, unflinching, his expression intense and unreadable? Hadn’t she told him to go play Galahad with someone else?