Free Seeking Celeste by Hayley Ann Solomon

an hour. This incivility alone would not have bothered him overmuch, but his sense of grievance could not help mounting as he was forced to alternately listen to Miss Danvers’s strictures on decorum while watching her bat excessively short eyelashes in his direction.
    The grandfather clock chimed the quarter hour with regularity as his poor horses were forced to pace about the courtyard, harnessed, still, to their coaches.
    Finally—finally—the dowager duchess had made her entrance. She suffered the earl to clench her hand in his and nodded distantly at his elegant bow. Then her eyes fixed on poor Miss Danvers, and even the earl—for all his sufferings—had it in him to feel sorry for her.
    A lesser woman might have quailed under the glare, but it was fortunate, indeed, that Miss Danvers was made of hardy stuff. She simpered ingratiatingly at the dowager and commented how awed she was to fall under her provenance.
    The dowager’s beady eyes passed from her, then back to the earl.
    â€œWho is this woman?”
    The earl was forced to explain, his long and careful dialogue interrupted at times by the simpering interpolations of Miss Danvers, who searched her enormous reticule for the various tomes of references she invariably carried upon her person.
    The countess waved them away irritably, then pointed, once again, at Lord Carmichael.
    â€œWho did you say she was?” With a sigh, the earl began again, only suspecting on his third retelling that the Dowager Countess Eversleigh might be a trifle deaf.
    When her hearing aid was finally procured, he managed an abbreviated account into the long horn and cursed himself for a fool to get involved in the unlikely imbroglio. Only the thought of Miss Derringer’s piercing, pleading tourmaline eyes kept him from making an ignoble exit down the dull marble stairs.
    Finally, it was done. Miss Danvers’s luggage was safely bestowed on the second lackey in the servants’ quarters, and the earl was free to make his escape.
    Staines was a good way away from his bachelor establishment in Mayfair, judiciously across from Grosvenor Square and overlooking several of the outstanding gardens that gave colour to the city, even in the duller, more lackluster months. So it was much later, indeed, that he made his weary entrance forcing—unbeknown to him—a footman, a valet, a housekeeper and a bevy of underservants from their beds.
    By ten the next morning he had recovered sufficiently to partake of a mild repast, scan the Morning Post for any items of interest—there were none—and head on to his club.
    Boodles was quietly active, for the season was about to begin and many other entertainments that were undoubtedly occupying the minds of member’s spouses and hopeful offspring. Lord Robert Carmichael, however, had other matters on his mind.
    â€œMorning, Edgemere!”
    â€œMorning, Rutherford! I hear you won your wager.”
    â€œOn Black Bess? But naturally. I’ve set my sights on another filly, however.”
    â€œTruly?”
    â€œYes, and not of the equine type.” Lord Justin Rutherford looked too smug for Robert to misunderstand his meaning.
    â€œAnother opera dancer?”
    â€œSpare me, Robert! I have had my fill of them. No, this one is an actress.”
    Lord Carmichael’s eyes twinkled, but his voice was solemn as he judiciously agreed that that made all the difference. Heartened, Rutherford rather generously admitted that Miss Martin had a friend with ravishing guinea gold hair.
    â€œCare to make her acquaintance?”
    The Earl of Edgemere regretfully declined, for there were other matters requiring his attention.
    â€œJustin?”
    â€œYes?”
    â€œDo you still have contacts in the home office?”
    â€œBy God, Robert, you know I do! Why the interest?”
    Carefully, Lord Edgemere explained. He was so unusually delicate about the query that Lord Rutherford’s lazy interest