Irresistible by Mary Balogh Page A

perhaps last night had made it inevitable—was lose a friend. One of the dearest friends a woman ever had, even if she had not seen him for three years before this week and had had only that one precious letter from him.
    Sarah was chattering nervously and the others were all checking their appearance preparatory to making their public appearance at the door of the Shelby mansion. The carriage inched forward.
     
    Georgina looked quite perfectly turned out for her first London ball. Or so her brother thought fondly as she sat beside him in his carriage. She was dressed in white satin and lace, as was proper, she had white ribbons threaded through her fair and elaborately styled curls, and she was glowing with pleasurable anticipation. There was the suggestion of a tremble in the hand that rested lightly on his sleeve.
    Georgina was his favorite sister, though he would not have admitted to any living soul that he had favorites. He wished fervently for her success tonight and during the coming weeks. He felt almost as nervous as he knew she was. Her next words confirmed his suspicion.
    “Nathaniel,” she asked, almost in a whisper, perhaps in the vain hope that Margaret and Lavinia would not hear her from the seat opposite, “are you quite sure my appearance is not just a little vulgar?”
    Apparently she had found herself in a tussle with Margaret and the modiste over the low-cut bosom of tonight’s ballgown. Margaret and the modiste had won after insisting that her gown, far from being vulgar, was in extreme danger of being too conservative.
    Lavinia, Nathaniel saw in the semidarkness, was engaged in the characteristic gesture of tossing her glance at the roof of the carriage. Margaret drew breath to speak, but he held up his free hand.
    “I am quite, quite sure, Georgie,” he said. “You look extremely beautiful. If Margaret has to exert herself even slightly in an effort to find you partners tonight, I will be very surprised indeed.”
    “Lord Pelham is to dance the opening set with me,” she said. “But that is because you asked him to, of course.”
    “I most certainly did not,” he assured her. It had been all Eden’s idea to meet the girls during the afternoon and to reserve a set at tonight’s ball with each of them. His notice could do them nothing but good. Eden was a baron, after all, and both well-known and popular with the beau monde.
    “Lord Pelham was kind enough to ask Lavinia for the second set,” Margaret said, “and she refused.”
    As if any of them needed reminding!
    “I was there when it happened, Marg,” Nathaniel said ominously. “It was one of the more embarrassing moments of my life. I have explained to Lavinia that one does not refuse a dancing partner unless there is a very good reason for doing so—”
    “There was,” Lavinia said, interrupting him mid-sentence. “I told you so at the time, Nat, when you took me aside in order to favor me with a tongue-lashing.”
    “—such as not having been formally presented to the gentleman in question or like not having a free spot on one’s card,” he continued as if she had not spoken. His voice was rising, he noticed, as it so often did with his cousin. “You had been presented to Lord Pelham, one of my closest friends, by me, Lavinia, in my own drawing room, and every spot on your card was free.”
    “I informed him that I was not a charity case,” she said, looking at his sister just as if Nathaniel did not exist. “He was so condescending, Margaret. One could see at a glance that he had decided as a favor to Nat that he would ask these awkward little country bumpkins to dance—they would doubtless swoon quite away at the honor being accorded them. He has the bluest eyes, Margaret—have you met him?—and clearly expects every female at whom he deigns to direct them to fall into a mindless dither.”
    “I have met Lord Pelham,” Margaret said. “He is a handsome, dashing, charming gentleman. And very eligible, of