Tangled Reins by Stephanie Laurens

Author:Stephanie Laurens
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Harlequin Mills & Boon Ltd.
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

For both Darent sisters their coming-out ball was the most enjoyable night of the Season. They were fêted and saluted at every turn. Dorothea danced with every one of Hazelmere’s close friends, with whom she now enjoyed an easy acquaintance. She also danced with Herbert, but in a quadrille, which he performed adequately if not gracefully. It was more than halfway through the evening before she found herself once more in the Marquis’s arms, going down the floor in the supper waltz.

Guessing that she must have been making constant conversation, he did not press her to talk, merely murmuring, ‘Tired, my lovely Dorothea?’

For a moment his use of her name did not register. Then she looked up and found all inclination to question his right to use it evaporating. Meeting his eyes, she felt that deliciously warm feeling spread over her. So she assented to the question with a smile, her long lashes dropping to veil her large green eyes from his gaze in a manner he recognised only too well.

Smiling, he wondered if he dared tell her how she looked when she did that, or what the action commonly conveyed, but decided that after such an explanation she would in all likelihood not speak to him for a week.

Suppertime was hilarious. As Dorothea and Cecily were the twin foci of attention, they could not sit together. Instead, Dorothea and Hazelmere were surrounded by a reckless throng of his close friends. While he sat beside her, interpolating remarks only when the conversation threatened to get too deep for her ears, they entertained her with numerous anecdotes, many reflecting on Hazelmere himself. They knew he was perfectly capable of putting a stop to it any time he wished, so when he made no move to dampen their spirits their hilarity knew few bounds. In this way the half-hour devoted to supper whizzed past until Dorothea was claimed by Lord Desborough for the first of the last three dances of the evening.

At the end of the measure she was hailed by a small group of her grandmother’s acquaintances, older ladies whom she had not yet had time to talk to. Laughingly dismissing Desborough, she went to spend a few minutes in their company. Eventually excusing herself, Dorothea passed slowly through the crowd, stopping to chat here and there, dispensing just the right degree of notice at each halt. Turning from one such encounter, she was addressed by Miss Buntton, a blonde ice-maiden two years her junior. ‘My dear Miss Darent,’ said Miss Buntton in her normal frigid accents. ‘Your gown is really so superb! Truly esoteric! But I fear my mama would never permit me to wear such a gown. She always says it does no good to stand out in a crowd.’

Dorothea, long inured to Miss Buntton’s waspish jealousies-thought she really made it too easy. ‘I’m sure, my dear Miss Buntton, that you run no risk of displeasing your mama.’ With a smile of gentle malice, she was about to move

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