Certainly not something he cared to admit to Lord Louis.
“You’re right,” he said, begrudgingly. “As you usually are.”
“Less work and more play, that’s what I suggest,” said Louis. “I’m off to the card room. Care to join me?”
Louis was not a naturally gifted dancer, and he had trampled on enough dainty slippers – and the feet within them – to make a youthful retirement from the sport.
“No,” said Malcolm, his attention caught by the flash of blue silk on the other side of the room. “No, I’ll cheer myself up somehow.”
Selina was standing at the edge of the dance floor, watching the dancers with an expression of pure delight on her face. It was a thousand times removed from the glare she had sported when she was talking to him.
The lady clearly enjoyed dancing. And yet, for years now, she had gracefully declined every invitation to dance. It wasn’t only Malcolm. The first time she’d rejected him, the experience was unusual enough that he took careful note of her afterward. Selina Balfour didn’t dance with anyone.
Malcolm was not in the habit of denying himself life’s pleasures, and he was at a loss to understand why Selina was.
He narrowed his eyes as a frown crossed Selina’s distant face. Something had disturbed her. But what?
He followed her gaze to the girl sitting quietly in a corner beside Lady Ursula Balfour, the elderly aunt Selina had praised for her spinsterhood. The old lady was gesticulating forcefully as she spoke to the girl, whom Malcolm recognised as Lady Isobel, one of Selina’s sisters.
“Excuse me, Louis,” he said, and made his way briskly across the room towards the seated Balfour ladies.
Lady Ursula fixed him with a distressingly knowing look. “Ah, if it isn’t the young Duke of Caversham. Are you enjoying the evening, Your Grace?”
He cleared his throat. “I would enjoy it much more if Lady Isobel would give me the honour of the next dance.”
Isobel’s pale blue eyes widened in surprise. She glanced at her aunt as though asking for help. “I’m afraid I have finished dancing for the evening, Your Grace. I have been unwell lately, and I am tired.”
Rejected by two Balfour heiresses in the space of ten minutes! Malcolm could not suppress a rueful smile. He supposed he had it coming. His offers were so rarely declined. “I am sorry to hear that. Perhaps, then, you would allow me to accompany you in to supper?”
“He’s terribly keen, Isobel,” said Ursula, in a painfully obvious whisper. “And terribly handsome!”
Isobel frowned, fixing Malcolm with a look that was almost suspicious. “You are keen,” she said. She left it there, neither a refusal nor an acceptance.
Malcolm shrugged. “I’d hate to see you without a partner at supper simply because you cannot dance.”
She sighed. “Selina told you to ask me, didn’t she? I saw you talking to her.”
He rubbed the back of his neck, glancing over his shoulder to find Selina fixing him with an icy stare. “As it happens, Lady Selina turned down my invitation and poured the glass of champagne I offered her into a vase.”
Isobel covered her mouth to hide a smile. “Oh dear. Well, if you dare risk irritating her further, Your Grace, I would be glad of your company for a while. Though please don’t think I was sitting here wishing for someone to notice me. I am quite content as I am.”
“That strikes me as a lucky thing,” said Malcolm, taking the seat beside her. “I have never managed to be content as I am.” His gaze returned to Selina, who had been drawn aside by her brother for a conversation that looked extremely animated.
He was not sure whether he had set out to irritate or to please her, but either way, he had failed. She clearly had no attention to spare for him any longer.
The Duke of Loxwell glanced in Isobel’s direction and made a signal that Malcolm could not decipher. Isobel rose to her feet. “Please excuse me,” she said. “It is very kind of you to sit with me, but –”
“Go,” said Malcolm, with a smile. Isobel dropped a hasty curtsey and went to join her brother and sister.
“I’ll give you three guesses what that’s about,” croaked Lady Ursula. Malcolm fought not to jump out of his skin. She had brought her wrinkled mouth so close that her gossipy whisper tickled his ear.
“I’m no good at guessing games.”
Ursula waved her cane towards her nieces and nephew. “Another wedding afoot!”
“My word.” No wonder Selina had reacted so scornfully when he’d suggested she might be Duchess of Caversham.
Nothing would explain Selina Balfour better than a secret love affair.
But when the Duke of Loxwell called for the room’s attention, he stepped aside to reveal Nathaniel Townsend, Lord Rotherham, hand in hand with the blushing and smiling Lady Edith.
As the duke announced his youngest sister’s engagement and cheers rang out around the room, Malcolm rose to his feet with the rest of them. To all appearances, he was watching the happy young couple with the greatest of pleasure.
But Edith and Lord Rotherham were no more than a blur as his eyes focused on Selina, clapping and beaming behind them. There was nothing on her face but joy.
She didn’t want attention. She didn’t want power. She didn’t care that her younger siblings were all marrying off before her.
She didn’t want a duke.
What the devil did Selina Balfour want?
3
Edith and Nathaniel were married with a speed the gossips described as alarming, but which all who knew them found perfectly natural. Within a month, he had whisked her away to Florence, where he had taken up a position as an aide to the Minister to Tuscany.
The remaining Balfour ladies waved them off with smiles and damp handkerchiefs and retired to the duchess’s private drawing room, which now seemed unnaturally quiet for
