Winning a Lady's Heart (Danby #1)(3)

Lord W reported that the Earl of P placed a wager in the books at White’s with the timeline of when he’d wed Lady A, the granddaughter of the Duke of D. The information recorded by Lord P was—never.

A whistle hissed from between Alexandra’s teeth, as the paper fluttered uselessly from her fingers, spilling to a miserable heap on the floor.

“Whatever shall we do?” her mother cried. “How will we ever show our faces out in Society? That cad has marked you as unmarriageable, ruined your name, Alexandra.”

Alexandra watched her mother’s mouth moving, heard her father’s rambling tirade, but could not process either of the thoroughly confounding words. The sting of betrayal robbed her of clear thought.

“I must send around our regrets for Lord and Lady Williams’ annual ball. Oh, and you do know how I so love Lady Williams’s soiree.”

Her mother’s pronouncement only vaguely registered through the thick haze of confusion Alexandra moved through. “No.”

Her father folded his arms across his chest, eying her with a mocking condescension. “No? After he’s made a laughingstock of your name, you’d still show your face in front of Society.”

Alexandra tossed her shoulders back and squared her jaw. “Yes.”

That was just what she would do.





Because of both her mother’s friendship with Lady Williams’s and her desire to attend one of the most revered social events of the winter, Alexandra had convinced her they should continue with their plans of attending Lady Williams’s ball. Alexandra couldn’t quite stifle a sense of guilt. Her intentions for the evening were not honorable. She did not, however, feel guilty enough to alter her intention.

Ignoring the stream of shocked gasps and gaping stares she left in her wake, Alexandra moved at a near run through Lord and Lady Williams’s ballroom. Ten hours. It had been ten interminable hours since she’d learned she had never meant anything to Nathan. Six hundred minutes since she’d discovered he’d merely been toying with her. Thirty-six hundred seconds since she’d found her father had been right all along.

Focusing on those distracting numbers, she skirted the dance partners twirling close to the edge of the dance floor, all the while moving with deliberate steps towards the gaming room.

Not pausing to consider the next scandalous steps she would take, she hurried into the card room and did a quick survey of the gentlemen seated around the gaming tables. And her gaze collided with his—the one gentleman not gaping or gasping. The sight of him, so aloofly collected, made her quiver with a combination of fury and agony.

Damn him.

Seated behind a faro table, Nathan eyed her with a moment of pain. It was gone so quickly she thought she’d imagined seeing anything in his unreadable expression, which only infuriated her all the more. How could he be so casual? How, when her entire world had been destroyed, did he manage to appear so indifferent?

That indifference made her chest hitch painfully. Her movements had been too fast. His table was closer than she’d anticipated, and she stumbled awkwardly against it, sending chips and cards flying. The gentlemen seated there let out exclamations of displeasure that Alexandra ignored.

Alexandra’s hand clenched and unclenched at her side.

Nathan waited calmly, almost expectantly.

And it was that casualness that propelled her hand forwards.

There were further gasps as Alexandra flung a fistful of notes in his face. They fluttered uselessly like winter snowflakes back down to the table.

Her theatrics brought her no solace. Instead, she somehow felt worse…and then, of course, was the dawning realization of the scandal her actions that night had caused.

Her breath hitched painfully. Say something to me. Beg my forgiveness. Spare me this humiliation.

He sat there as cool as ever.

“You bastard,” she whispered.

“Come away, my dear,” her mother said quietly.

She staggered back a step, as her mother’s hand grasped her at the waist and guided her backwards. Alexandra shook her head, and suddenly reality penetrated the fog of pain.

She refused to release Nathan from her accusing stare until her steps had carried her away from the sight of him, and the choice was no longer hers.

Her theatrics had brought the evening’s entertainment to a screaming halt. The eerie hum of silence enveloped her.

“Just keep walking.”

Were those her words? Had she spoken? No, that had been her mother.

“Mother, heavens, forgive me,” Alexandra said achingly. Humiliation and despair tugged her closer to the precipice and threatened to pull her over.

Her mother gave an almost imperceptible shake of her head. “Not here.”

There was no reproach in that order, which only made Alexandra feel…reproached.

Alexandra made the mistake of looking around the room, and bile rose to her throat. She was going to be ill. The wide-eyed, eager stares directed at her, coupled with the fans raised to conceal the gossip, hammered home the implications of her actions that evening.

To focus on something, anything other than the gleeful eyes of the ton, Alexandra counted steps. One…two…three…

All in all, it was the longest two hundred fifty steps she had ever taken.

Lord and Lady Williams’s Italian marble floor stretched before her and seemed endless. She estimated they had another fifty steps before they reached the door that would carry them down the stairs to the carriage, and then…Oh Heavens, I am never going to be free of this hell.