“Miss Laurence, I vow you bid fair to unman me with your sweet compliments,” St. Clair intoned, bowing over her hand, the touch of his firm, dry lips searing her skin, a shiver of awareness, of stubborn, defensive dislike skipping down her spine as his blue-green gaze lifted and met hers, holding her in thrall for several heartbeats. “Zounds, but I can yet again feel my puny attempts at brilliance fading into nothingness, faced with your overwhelming beauty.”
“Which you have so very kindly served to bring into fashion, my lord,” Gabrielle replied sweetly, inwardly gritting her teeth at the infuriating knowledge that she was speaking the truth. If St. Clair had used his seemingly bubbleheaded yet razor-sharp wit to comment disparagingly on her red hair she might as well have retired to the country and taken the veil for all her chances of ever becoming a success in Mayfair.
For despite Gabrielle’s planning, all her careful preparation to take London by storm, she knew she owed the man considerable thanks for his unexpected championing of her, and it galled her no end to admit it.
Yet admit it she did, tonight and every time she was in his company, for if she was young and somewhat sure of herself, she was not stupid. Her ritual obsequiousness was the unspoken price she nightly had to pay for St. Clair’s continued public favor. Shylock, in comparison, could not have been more insidiously demanding than Baron Christian St. Clair when he had called for his “pound of flesh.”
“I’ve visited your tailor just this afternoon, my lord,” the young viscount piped up after nervously clearing his throat, for he had been hovering around Gabrielle for the past quarter hour, partly because it did him no harm to be seen with her, but mostly in the hope St. Clair would appear, for everyone already knew St. Clair had been making it a point to single out Miss Laurence first at any engagement he favored. “I’ve commissioned an entire wardrobe from the man, paying him double if he has half of it complete next week,” the young man ended, clearly proud of himself.
“Indeed.” St. Clair inclined his head apologetically to Gabrielle for having to desert her to speak with the viscount, then turned to the young man, inspecting him through the stemmed, gilt-edged quizzing glass he leisurely lifted to his left eye. “How commendable of you, my lord, and how woefully overdue. Ah, that was too bad of me. Please, my lord, forgive my naughty tongue. However, if I may be so bold as to inquire,” he drawled, allowing the quizzing glass to fall to midchest, for the piece was suspended from his neck by a thin ivory silk band, “would you tell me what colors you selected?”
The viscount swallowed down hard, making it painfully clear to everyone that his throat had gone desert dry. “Green, Clarence blue—and dove gray, I believe. Did I choose correctly?” he asked dully, as if already sorrowfully convinced he had erred in his choices.
St. Clair allowed time for the silence to grow and for their near neighbors to lean closer to hear his pronouncement when it came. “Bien. Excellent choices, my lord,” he exclaimed at last, beaming at the young viscount. And then he frowned. “Oh dear, how do I put this delicately? I fear you will have to shed a few pounds in order to do credit to the cut of the jacket, my lord, not that anything I say is of the slightest consequence. Still, may I suggest you stable your mount and walk yourself briskly through the park each day for the promenade? That should rid you of your, um, bulges in no time. Don’t you think so, Miss Laurence?”
Longing to tell him that she thought it would be lovely if the visibly wilting viscount were to quickly search out his backbone and summarily stuff St. Clair’s quizzing glass down the baron’s gullet, Gabrielle smiled and said, “I have always believed judicious exercise to be healthful, sir.”
“Ah, exactement, Miss Laurence,” St. Clair responded just as Lady Undercliff’s overpaid musicians struck up yet another waltz. “And, so saying, perhaps you would honor me with your participation in the dance, another highly desirable form of healthful exercise?”
As social suicide was not on Gabrielle’s agenda for this or any evening, she dropped into a graceful curtsy and then allowed St. Clair to guide her onto the dance floor even as other couples joined them, the floor rapidly becoming crowded with persons eager to prove their agreement with the baron’s prescription for “healthful exercise.”
At last they were alone—or as alone as any two people could be on the dance floor—and now their private war could recommence. St. Clair lightly cupped Gabrielle’s slim waist with his right hand while she rested hers in his left, their bodies precisely two and one half feet apart. A slight pressure from St. Clair’s hand moved Gabrielle into the first sweeping turn of the waltz, and she smiled up at him, saying, “I do so loathe you, St. Clair.”
His smile was equally bright as he appeared to enjoy her opening salvo of the evening, for they had been throwing verbal brickbats at each other from their first meeting, exchanges Gabrielle could not remember which one of them had begun and which she still could not decide if she enjoyed or dreaded.
“Encroaching mushrooms, my dear,” he answered smoothly, sweeping her into another graceful turn, “usually do dislike their betters. Tell me, please—as I am all agog to know—do you lie awake nights, Miss Laurence, planning sundry vile terminations to my existence?”
“I wouldn’t care to waste my precious time thinking of you in any way at all, my lord,” Gabrielle countered, nodding a greeting to a female passerby, who was looking at her in undisguised envy for having snagged St. Clair yet again for his first waltz of the evening.
“Too true, Miss Laurence, too true,” St. Clair said, his hand on her waist gripping just a hair tighter than it had before, causing another unwelcome, disturbing frisson of awareness to sing through her blood. “You are much too occupied in forwarding yourself to think of others. Fame is fleeting, dear girl, and you are clever to enjoy the pinnacle of popularity upon which I have placed you while you can. Consider this: I may deign to cut you tomorrow, and all your fine success would come crashing down around your ears. Wouldn’t that be dreadful? Perhaps you should encourage our fuzzy-cheeked viscount to offer for you while you still bask in the sunshine of my approval.”
“I am visiting this fair city only to enjoy the Season, my lord. I am not on the hunt for a wealthy husband, not in the least,” Gabrielle bit out from between clenched teeth, still maintaining her smile, but with an effort, for she knew she was lying. Lying, and desperate, not that she could ever allow St. Clair to know.
“You don’t wish to marry? Gad, there’s a shocker! Feel free to perceive me as astonished!” St. Clair countered. “Then I was wrong to take one look at your meticulously constructed facade of gentility and see an empty-headed, fortune-mad beauty out to snare a deep-in-the-pockets title? Forgive me, Miss Laurence. I should have realized that you are in hopes of setting up an intellectual salon, or perhaps intent upon conquering Society in order to gain their cooperation with some private agenda you have yet to reveal—a series of good words, perhaps?”
Gabrielle opened her mouth to argue with him, but he cut her off.
“But, no. That isn’t it. Why, do you know what I think? I think you loathe and detest men. Don’t you, Miss Laurence? You hate us and wish to have us all fall in love with your beauty so that you might, one by one, grind our broken hearts in the dust. Why didn’t I see it before? How deep you are, Miss Laurence. How very deep.”
“Oh, cut line, St. Clair!” Gabrielle declared hotly as, the waltz over, he took hold of her elbow and guided her toward the balcony. “I may as well admit it, for it is obvious to me that you will keep mouthing inanities until I do. Yes, like every other unattached young lady here this evening, I am on the hunt for a rich, titled husband. The deeper his pockets and the loftier his title the better. I am mercenary, hardheaded, strong-willed, and so depraved by my ambition as to be capable of debasing myself by being polite to you in order to advance my standing in Society. Fortunately for my plans, in general I enjoy the company of gentlemen. It is only you I despise. There! Are you happy now?”
“Ecstatic, my dear,” St. Clair answered genially, drawing her toward a small stone bench and motioning for her to be seated. He then spread his