How to Catch a Viscount by Annie Burrows

Author:Annie Burrows
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2022-03-07T13:46:13+00:00

* * *

It was after the evening meal before Colonel Fairfax returned. ‘I have bought all the papers they’d let me buy,’ he said as he popped his head in the kitchen door, which was open, it being such a sultry evening. ‘Here’s one for you, my boy,’ he said, tossing one from his bundle of papers on to the kitchen table. ‘Nothing definite about casualties yet, it’s all rhetoric so far. However, there is one bit of news that will affect us all.’

‘Yes?’

James kept his eyes firmly fixed on the Colonel as Wilmot pounced on the paper and scanned the columns with a deep frown.

‘They are going to hold a celebration ball in the assembly room at the back of the Bull’s Head. You will come with us, in our carriage, of course.’

Would he? ‘I...’

‘No, don’t argue. I know you could get there on horseback, but you won’t want to spoil your evening clothes doing that, will you? And there has been little enough in the way of entertainment for you young folk since you’ve been in these parts. Besides which, there will be some people there it would be useful for you to meet and you won’t want to do that all muddy and smelling of horse, what?’

Never mind the useful people. A ball was not the place to hold a sensible conversation with anyone much, with all the bustling of bodies and the screeching of violins, and the many other distractions and annoyances. He took a break to make a polite but firm refusal, just as he would have done had anyone else invited him to a ball, face to face. He never accepted invitations made in person, on principal. Unless, that was, the invitation came from a very close friend, or for a very good reason.

But then he pictured Miss Fairfax, dancing the night away with a succession of nameless men. Laughing and enjoying herself while he stayed at home nursing his grudges and, probably, a decanter of something potent.

And every feeling revolted.

He jolly well would go to the ball! And damn well dance with her himself. And be the one to take her into supper, while he was at it. Just to prove that he could converse with her like a sensible, rational person.

Why shouldn’t he? There would be no harm in any of that, would there? It wasn’t as if he was going to propose marriage to her, was it?

‘Thank you,’ he therefore said. ‘I would be very grateful for the lift.’

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