Only For His Lady (The Theodora Sword #1)(5)

“I am not enjoying myself,” Damian said coolly, from the side of his mouth, to his most bothersome sibling.

Gregory grinned widely and Damian forced his stare away from the stranger in her armor. He held out a glass of champagne. “Ah, yes, but now you are in disguise and you shan’t have all those ladies fawning over you if you’re your usual boorish, ugly self.”

“I have little interest in having anyone fawn over me.”

His brother gave a mock shudder. “Egads, have a care what you say, man.” He dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Should Mother hear you so disinterested in your Minerva she’ll have a fit of the vapors.”

Clearly not enjoying the evening’s festivities as he ought, Gregory opted to stay at his side and continue to make a nuisance of himself. “Though, I daresay I can never understand your appeal to the ladies. You’re deuced ugly.” There was the scar. “And you’ve a foul temper.” Which was more a product of devoting more attention to the title duke and the responsibilities that went with it, since he’d inherited the title and tasks charged him at age eighteen. But more importantly he had a dukedom, and that mattered to young ladies. And old ladies. Really, all women it often seemed.

“Shouldn’t you be off doing whatever it is you do at these events?” So he could attend the business of studying the plump warrioress across the hall.

“Dance,” his brother said with a wink. “You dance at these events.”

Damian ignored Gregory’s baiting in favor of studying the plump warrioress who now skirted the edge of his ballroom, with her back pressed against the plastered walls. He narrowed his eyes. Whatever was the chit doing?

“Though I daresay I’ve not seen you dance with anyone but your betrothed.”

The expectation had been there since he’d been a young boy of twelve and she’d been a proper, English girl of five. There’d been the talk with his father about the connection between their two great, ducal lines. However, “She is not my betrothed,” he muttered. She would be, or his father would turn in his grave.

His brother snorted. “Do not allow Mother or your Lady Minerva to hear you say as much.”

“Yes, that much is true,” he admitted. His mother would dissolve into a fit of vapors if he hinted at not offering for the Lady Minerva Quigley. Stunning, blonde, and with a sultry set of blue eyes for one just on her second Season, he supposed there could be any number of worse candidates for his future duchess than the daughter of his late father’s closest friend, a fellow duke. He thought of the creeper. “Though there is no formal arrangement,” he felt inclined to point out. For himself?

Another snort escaped Gregory. “And most assuredly do not let Mother hear you say that.”

The dancers parted, allowing him an unfiltered view of the lady warrior creeping along his wall like a growing vine of ivy. From across the room, their eyes locked. Where everyone was a Greek goddess or ruffled shepherdess, she, even in her bid to not stand out—stood out. Through the lady’s visor, he detected the rapid one-two-three blink of her eyes, and then she jerked her attention away…and continued her creeping. What was the lady doing in his ballroom, attempting to blend her form to the plaster of his walls?

Gregory cursed, jerking Damian’s attention away from the mysterious young woman. He followed his brother’s stare.

“Mother,” they said in unison.

Even with the first spare to the heir, Charles, very nearly wed, their Mother would not be happy until her remaining children were properly wed. More precisely—Damian. She bore down on them with an intentness in her hard, ice blue stare.

Gregory groaned. “She has the look.”

“Yes, yes she does.” They all knew the one. The look that said, even with the costumed ball, she planned on matchmaking, and as she’d already settled on Lady Minerva for Damian, this matchmaking likely involved the youngest Renshaw brother.

“Go.”

Gregory’s eyebrows shot to his hairline. “You’re being magnanimous? You’re never magnanimous.”

Mother was nearly upon them. “Unless, you’d care to meet the young woman she’s selected…”

His brother spun on his heel and disappeared into the crowd.

“Wherever did Gregory take himself off to?”

Damian glanced from the corner of his eye. “Mother.” Unbidden, he looked for the lady plastering herself against his wall. He scanned the ballroom for the glint of metal, but it was as though she’d at last managed to merge herself with the wall and disappear from sight. Gone. Damian set aside the fleeting intrigue. With the exception of the members of his family, he didn’t make it his business to wonder after anyone or worry about them, and a lady likely meeting a lover certainly held little appeal.

“Blast, I was trying to coordinate an introduction between him and Miss Carol Cresswall, the Viscount Fennimore’s sister.” She jerked her chin toward a shepherdess. “Regardless,” she said on a wave. “Minerva has arrived.”

“Has she?” he asked in clipped tones. He found this annual masquerade quite tedious. In fact, he found balls, soirees, trips to the theatre, all of it tedious.

“Must you act as though you find your own ball tedious?”

“It’s hardly my ball,” he drawled. In truth, none of it interested him. Nothing, really interested him. There were the responsibilities to see to: his three brothers, one particularly trouble-seeking and an oft-displeased mama. The armor-clad warrior, however had interested him.