Dangerous To Love by Rexanne Becnel

Author:Rexanne Becnel [Becnel, Rexanne]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 1997-11-15T05:00:00+00:00

Twelve

Lady Westcott handed the guest list to Lucy. “Look at this,” she snapped. “How am I to work with a list that includes nothing but bachelors? And such bachelors!”

Lucy took the list. It was written in a bold, slashing script. She’d never seen a secretary with such an aggressive writing style. That meant it must be Ivan’s.

An unwelcome knot began to coil in her stomach, a twisty, turny knot of heat. She hastily thrust the sheet of parchment back at Lady Westcott. Was everything the man did bold and forceful? Must even the paper and ink he touched churn her emotions until she became a blithering idiot?

“Well? Who is this Sir James Mawbey? Another of Ivan’s natural-born companions?”

Lucy focused on the letter she was writing to her brother and his family. Trying to write. “Sir James is the scholar whose lectures I have been attending.”

There was a short silence, but Lucy could fairly hear the wheels turning in the older woman’s brain. “The one Valerie has formed an unwise attachment to?”

Lucy put down her pen and looked over at the dowager countess. “The very same.”

To her surprise, however, Lady Westcott did not seem terribly upset by that bit of news, only a little thoughtful—and perhaps marginally amused.

“Could it be that Ivan is playing the matchmaker? Knowing, of course, that I must disapprove of a poor scholar for Valerie?”

“Something like that,” Lucy muttered. He also didn’t mind rubbing Lucy’s nose in the fact that Sir James was not interested in her. Lady Westcott did not need to know that, however.

Unfortunately the old woman seemed to have a sixth sense for affairs of the heart, for she studied Lucy shrewdly. “I still believe you have a tendre for this man, this penniless lecturer. You know,” she continued, forestalling Lucy’s denial with a raised hand. “You know, you haven’t the wherewithal to marry a man with no income to speak of.”

“I am well aware of the limitations of my situation,” Lucy retorted. “However, you are quite mistaken in your assessment of my interest in Sir James.” Once I might have had such a silly idea, but no more.

Other than one arched eyebrow, Lady Westcott did not comment on Lucy’s sharp words. Instead she shook Ivan’s note in front of her. “Well, what are we to do about this ill-advised guest list?”

Without comment Lucy reached for the paper again, and despite the butterflies in her stomach, reread Ivan’s list. Four bachelors, a couple of younger married couples, and Laurence Caldridge, Lord Dunleith. “Are there any other young ladies and their parents we might include?”

“Not any from the higher levels of society. They would be scandalized to think I meant to pair their darling daughters with the penniless bastards of the ton. Even a royal one.”

“They’re not all penniless,” Lucy said, unaccountably angered by the dowager countess’s haughty attitude. “In fact, Mr. Dameron and Mr. Pierce are wealthy in their own right. It’s only Mr. Blackburn who is without a reliable income, and he, presumably, the son of the king.

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