Free An Infamous Proposal by Joan Smith Page A

solemn promise, Hansard, if I— forget myself with Lady Capehart, I shall do the right thing by her.”
    “Very kind of you!”
    “Noblesse oblige,” Lord James said, and smiling vaguely, he pulled the sermons out from under his pillow. “And now, if you would leave me, I shall apply myself to the sermons.”
     

Chapter Nine

 
    Emma didn’t have time to get the green silk made up into a gown before the rout party. She had to wear one from before John’s death. As he had liked her to cut a dash in Society, however, her greatest problem was deciding which of the many hanging in her closet to choose.
    After examining half a dozen possible choices, she chose a low-cut rose taffeta gown that was flattering to her raven hair and creamy skin. With it she wore the diamond necklace that had belonged to John’s mama. It was not large, but the stones were particularly fine. They dazzled like concentrated rainbows around her creamy throat.
    She felt a little pang of regret when her carriage wheeled up through the whispering oaks and elms of Hansard’s park, with the hall rising in splendor against the purpling sky of twilight. It would have been fine to call Waterdown home, to stand in the entrance of the grandest home in the county by Lord Hansard’s side, welcoming their guests.
    His shocked “Marry you!” echoed in her ears. What had she been thinking of to offer for him?
    As the party had been assembled on short notice, Lord Hansard was not having any guests to dinner before the rout. It occurred to him that he could ask Emma to be his hostess, but in a provincial society, that would lead to marital expectations. As the locals had two hosts that evening, they were well satisfied.
    Hansard was almost sorry that Emma looked so ravishing when he greeted her. To see her back in colors after her long mourning carried him back to the first time he had met her, after her marriage to John. He had been astonished then that John had landed such an Incomparable and imagined future trouble for his aging neighbor with so extraordinarily beautiful a young wife.
    The trouble had never come during John’s lifetime, but when he glanced at Lord James, he had a sinking sensation that it had arrived now. The loose-lipped smile on the young lord’s face told clearly that he had forgotten all about the sermons of John Donne.
    “You came!” James exclaimed in reverent accents, when Emma came forward to be welcomed.
    Emma curtsied and said, “Good evening, Lord James.” But she said it in a very satisfied way.
    As the last guests straggled in, James said, “Let us begin the dancing with the waltzes, Cousin. It is not a formal ball, after all.”
    “No, let us not,” Hansard replied through thin lips. “And I don’t want you making a cake of yourself over Lady Capehart, James.”
    Nick was almost happy to note that Mr. Hunter had secured Emma for the first set. Any romantic menace he represented paled to insignificance beside the greater peril of the “fascinating” Lord James.
    Nick glanced around uneasily to see if James was misbehaving himself with any other lady, only to find him glued to the wall, watching Emma with a small, anticipatory smile on his handsome face, as patient as a cat lurking beneath a tree to catch a sparrow unaware. But as Nick glanced at Emma, he realized she was no sparrow. She was aware of James’s attention. Her coquettish glance flickered often in his direction.
    William Bounty won Emma for the second set. When James made no move to stand up with any of the young girls who were ogling him, Nick took him by the elbow and led him away from the wall.
    “This is a rout party, not a vigil,” he said. “You will stand up with Miss Emery, and you will pretend to enjoy her company.”
    Lord James was stricken with remorse. “Was I being rude? Dreadfully sorry, Cousin, but how can a man be expected to do anything but stare when he is in the same room as her? I shall be vastly amusing to your Miss Emery to