The Lure of a Rake (The Heart of a Duke #9)(10)

They looked as one.

“The Marquess and Marchioness have asked you join them in the foyer.”

It was time. The inevitable reentry. Withdrawing her hand from Gillian’s, Genevieve smoothed her damp palms over her muslin skirts.

As they walked, her loquacious sister filled the tense silence. “The Duke of Ravenscourt will be our host. Mama believes that means he is trying to arrange a match for his son, the Marquess of St. Albans.”

Ahh, the wicked, dangerous one to avoid. Neither was the irony lost on her; another future duke, those gentlemen who believed the world was their due and were forgiven for jilting their betrotheds at the altar.

Her sister dropped her voice to a conspiratorial whisper, stealing a peek about as they walked. “I heard Mother and Lady Erroll say he is something of a rake.”

Of course he was.

“But even rakes can be reformed,” Gillian said with a girlish innocence that caused Genevieve to miss a step. She stumbled, and quickly righted herself.

With her beauty, and because of Genevieve’s scandalous roots, a na?ve miss like Gillian would be easy prey for those treacherous gentlemen. “No,” she said, the denial ripped harshly from her lungs. “I don’t believe they can.”

A flash of pity danced in her sister’s green eyes.

Tension knotted Genevieve’s belly. God, how she despised those sympathetic stares. They were even worse than the sneering, disgusted ones.

Her sister proved the tenacious spirit she’d always possessed as a small child. “My friend, Phoebe is recently married to Lord Rutland. He was rumored to be the darkest of all the scoundrels and, yet, they are hopelessly in love.”

They arrived at the foyer and Genevieve promptly closed her mouth. The last debates she cared to have in the presence of their parents were matters pertaining to the heart and rakes.

The marquess consulted his timepiece.

In an unspoken cue that came from years of devoted service, footmen rushed forward with the ladies’ cloaks. Meanwhile, Dunwithy pulled the door open. Genevieve followed silently behind her parents with her usually talkative sister, quieted.

How had her spirits not been completely crushed living in this place? As miserable as Genevieve’s banishment had been for what it represented, she’d spent her days in the gardens with the sun on her face; a crime her mother had lambasted her for since her return with tanned cheeks. The family filed into the carriage.

Moments later, a servant closed the door, shutting the Farendale family away in the large, opulent carriage.

Clasping her hands on her lap, Genevieve stared out the window at the passing darkened London streets. “I do not expect one misstep from you this night,” her father’s rumbling voice filled the confines of the black barouche.

She stiffened.

“You’re to—”

“Sit with the matrons and wallflowers,” she delivered emotionlessly. “I know.” And there was no dancing or smiling or conversing with gentleman.

He grunted.

Her sister shot her another look—the pitying kind.

And while her father launched into another lecture before the evening’s festivities, she stared out the window and dreamed of being any place but where she was.

*

Genevieve’s feet ached.

She had stood alongside the proper matrons and mamas for the past three hours, nodding at the proper moments and primly holding her hands clasped at her waist. That had wrought havoc on her miserable feet.

To be specific, her biggest toe and the one next to it throbbed with a pounding intensity to match the steady pressure building at the back of her head. A pounding that was a product of the noisy whispers and laughter filling the Duke of Ravenscourt’s ballroom. Though at this moment, she was particularly grateful for the distraction as it afforded the opportunity to rub those miserable digits. She discreetly drew her foot up and—

“Genevieve, do put your foot down,” her mother, the Marchioness of Ellsworth, said from the corner of her mouth, not taking her eyes off the crowded ballroom.

With a sigh, Genevieve lowered her heel to the floor and winced. Blasted slippers.

Did her mother truly think anyone was giving Genevieve any attention—a young lady long in the tooth in dull gray skirts, deemed unmarriageable because of a scandal from long ago? If she did, well, then she’d a good deal less sense than Genevieve had credited over the years. She trailed her bored gaze over the ballroom and she’d not given her much.

The perverse fascination upon the first event Genevieve attended had dimmed when it became rather clear that the whore from long ago wouldn’t don crimson skirts. Nor would she flutter her lashes at wed and unwed gentleman—something she’d never been guilty of, but the myth had been created all those years ago.

Absently, she did a search for him. Surely, it was inevitable their paths would cross and when they did, how could she bury the long-burning hatred she carried for the lying cad? She’d been so very enamored of the Duke of Aumere and his effusive charm, she’d failed to note the lies in his eyes and heart. Her gaze collided with a garish fop in yellow satin pants.

The gentleman studied her under hot lids and, cheeks burning, she quickly looked away. Perhaps they’d not forgotten, after all. Her father was a bloody, witless fool. The only stares that would ever be fixed on her were by gentlemen with dishonorable intentions. Something deep inside, something that felt very much like…regret, pulled at her. Regret for the dream that had never been, nor would ever be.