The Bluestocking and the Rake (The Regency Gentlemen Series) by Norma Darcy Page A

the aisle if you even look in her direction. The Lord and Lady Holt are nothing to it, mark my words.”
    “I don’t doubt it. And on the subject of the Holts, you did some damage there Tom, with Lady Emily, I mean, if you but knew it. I think you raised expectation in that lady’s breast, if not her parents’.”
    “I consider myself fortunate to have escaped from such an alliance. Look at her with Holkam, staring up at him with those doe eyes of hers. It makes me sick to watch them.”
    “Did you never think it was an act?” asked the earl softly.
    “An act? To what end?”
    “To make you jealous as hell, Tom.”
    “Me? Jealous?”
    “She’s punishing you.”
    “No, no…you’re way off there, March. Only look at the way she stares up at him. She’s quite obviously in love with him.”
    His lordship shrugged and set down his champagne glass. “Well then. If you’re not interested, perhaps I should make Lady Emily an offer?”
    “If you wish it,” replied his friend stiffly, downing the rest of his own champagne in two gulps.
    Lord Marcham turned away to hide a smile. Thomas was looking a trifle bosky, his eyes were glazing over and his countenance was flushed. His lordship had no doubt that Lady Emily’s determined flirtation with Mr. Holkam was the cause.
    “Marianne Blakelow is what you might call, in your style,” offered Mr. Edridge.
    Lord Marcham’s eyes strayed from the demure features of a voluptuous dark-haired beauty he had been admiring on the other side of the room and focused on his friend. “Blakelow? Related to Miss Georgiana Blakelow?”
    “The sister, I believe.”
    “Indeed? And is she here this evening?”
    “Mumps.”
    “Mumps?” repeated his lordship blankly.
    “The younger brother has it.”
    “Oh.”
    “They were worried that Marianne might have it too so they stayed away this evening.”
    “I see. And Miss Georgiana Blakelow? Is she here?”
    “Thoroughly Moralising Miss? Lord, no. She doesn’t ever come to occasions like this. Far too beneath her.”
    “You don’t like Miss Blakelow?” asked his lordship.
    “She makes me want to drop to the floor and say a thousand hail Marys and I am not even Catholic. She terrifies me.”
    His lordship smiled. Truth be told, she terrified him too. That is, the disapproving glint in her eye when she looked at him, as if she had just trodden in something unsavoury, the feeling that he would never be good enough to meet her exacting standards and the feeling that she had very deliberately set him at a distance as if she were handling an extremely explosive substance and needed to establish a containment area.
    He’d only come to the wretched ball in the vague hope that she would be there too. His eyes skittered around the room, over milk and water misses and mother hen chaperones and he wished that she were there. Someone to share a joke with, that delicious moment where their eyes would meet after he’d said something outrageous, merely to shock her or to force her eyes to his. Something about her intrigued him and he wasn’t entirely sure that the feeling wasn’t mutual. He looked amongst the dowagers and the chaperones and saw again what he already knew; that she was not present. Acknowledging within himself a mild disappointment, he decided that he needed to drown his sorrows in drink to get through the evening.
    He was distracted from his thoughts by the sight of Lady Emily Holt standing momentarily on her own with her back to him. In a trice he had left his friend and re-appeared at her side, grasped her arm none too gently and frog-marched her out onto the terrace.
     
    * * *
     
    “I did not mean to do it,” whispered Lady Emily, staring at the floor, her great blue eyes swimming with tears. “Indeed, I am very sorry, my lord, but when Mama asked me if you had made me an offer…I couldn’t tell her that you had not after all the expense…bonnets and gowns and slippers. Father would have been so disappointed in