Royal Regard Read Online Free Page A

periodically twitched,
tensing her muscles under an uncomfortable skin, the awful dress
gave the impression she would fly away from unwelcome obligations.
Every time she so much as trembled, Lady Firthley tapped her on the
arm with her fan, and the face Lady Holsworthy made when she was
cross was fascinating, too, if only because ladies so rarely
appeared peevish in public. Nick wished he were standing nearer, so
he could listen to her witty set-down. He’d bet a year’s income it
was witty.
    Turning away, Nick looked around for Allie,
hoping she might not see him presenting himself to a woman she
hadn’t chosen. Daughter of the seventh Duke of Wellbridge and
sister to the eighth and ninth, Lady Allison was the unquestioned
arbiter of appropriate ducal matches. To Nick’s chagrin, this meant
enduring endless lectures when he refused to help her sort through
eligible ladies, no small source of irritation. It was hardly his
fault she had made a deathbed promise to their mother that he
didn’t intend to keep.
    The sooner he could accommodate this
evening’s demands, the sooner he could leave. He was rather in the
mood for a card game, and perhaps a visit to King’s Place to spend
his winnings on a willing woman, as he had given his mistress her congé two weeks ago, after one too many whiny demands on his
time. Tonight, he would happily pay double for a lascivious woman
who would entertain him without following him home afterward.
    When he finally spotted his sister in the
crowd, he reconsidered approaching. He was not about to fight his
way through the gaggle of debutantes circling her, not when every
single one was vying to be promised the next set with him. There
had to be some other way to meet Allie’s ‘polite requests’ than
entertaining dozens of girls who would do anything to be a duchess.
Anyone’s duchess. He only wished there were more dukes from which
they could choose.
    Tugging at his cravat, which seemed suddenly
tighter, he turned his back, hoping no one had seen him looking for
Allie, or they might believe he was sizing up his matrimonial
prospects.
    The most engaging sight in the room, the
intriguing woman, was now fending off Lady Yarley and Lady
Lannadae, inveterate tattle-mongers and, presumably, the bravest
termagants seeking gossip. Her head turned frantically this way and
that, as if by doing so she might extricate herself from the
gossips and Lady Firthley’s grip on her elbow. Color rose across
her chest, and he wondered if it were caused by anger or fear. He
rather hoped for temper, so he might see Lady Lannadae taken down a
peg. Ah! A flash in her eyes. She was fuming.
    Nick had taken no more than two steps toward
the group, intending to either watch the sparks fly or provide the
woman’s escape before his sister noticed, when jerked from his
tunnel vision by a tap on his shoulder.
    “She set you on me early this evening,” he
observed without turning his head.
    Allie’s husband, Thaddeus Findemoor, Viscount
Nockham, tried to appear stern, a difficult proposition five years
younger and two stone lighter than Nick. Under his voice and below
the buzz of conversation, he said, “I thought last time was the
last time.”
    Nick raised a quizzical brow, pretending
relative innocence.
    “The dreadful-looking girl who just stopped
your world turning,” Nockham said, even his freckles aligning
against her. “You told my wife you had finished with married women
a year ago. To say nothing of why you’d want such an ugly one.”
    “Ugly is an overstatement.” He took in his
brother-in-law’s plain brown coat and unruly cinnamon-colored hair,
tidy only by the good graces of Nick’s sister. “Not as ugly as you,
at any rate.”
    Nockham ignored the insult. “You are the only
man in London who would disagree. And she is married nonetheless.
Lady Holsworthy, if you hadn’t guessed.”
    “Lady Holsworthy?” Nick repeated, like a
schoolboy who hadn’t studied his lesson. Whatever the