And Then She Fell (Cynster 19 Cynster Sisters Duo #1) (38 page)

The news of Sir Peter Affry’s arrest and incarceration pending trial, a trial those lords and parliamentary dignitaries who had been permitted to view the evidence had confirmed could have only one end, had deeply shocked the ton. So many had welcomed Sir Peter into their homes, so many had shaken his hand, so many had judged him worthy of support that on learning of his perfidy, all of society felt deeply disturbed and, indeed, betrayed.

From up-and-coming politician and potential minister, he became a pariah in a matter of hours.

But within St. Ives House on that happy evening, the talk rarely strayed into darker spheres. Indeed, possibly in reaction to the darkness Sir Peter represented, everyone attending turned their minds and their hearts to embracing the shining hope and expectations for a joyous future embodied by the engaged couple.

In many ways, they, and the promise of their upcoming union, were the perfect and most appropriate antidote to lift the shaken spirits of the ton.

The family dinner ended with a traditional round of toasts to the affianced couple—ending with a warning to all, delivered by Honoria, that they would soon be summoned back to St. Ives House for the wedding breakfast. The date for the wedding was confirmed by Arthur, a beaming Louise by his side, then the gathering broke up to repair to the ballroom upstairs with everyone in a mellow mood and a delighted, expectant frame of mind. Every lady had more than enough fact and speculation to never be at a loss for conversation over the next several weeks, while as they climbed the stairs, the gentlemen traded opinions and quips on the benefits of a rapid engagement, and an even more rapid wedding thereafter.

Recalling one last duty she had to perform before taking her place in the receiving line upstairs, Henrietta drew her hand from James’s sleeve and, leaving him chatting with Gabriel and her father, turned—to discover Mary standing directly in her path, looking pointedly at her.

Henrietta laughed. “Yes, I have it.” Catching Mary’s hand, flown with her own happiness, she drew her younger sister—the last of the Cynster girls of their generation yet unwed—to the side of the room. “Here. This is where Angelica gave it to me, so . . .” Opening her silver reticule, Henrietta fossicked inside, then drew out the gold links and amethyst bead necklace, with its long, tapered, rose-quartz pendant.

She held it up, dangling from her fingers; both she and Mary studied it for a moment, then Mary reached for it—but Henrietta whisked it away. “No.” She met Mary’s eyes. “Let me put it on for you.”

Mary smiled delightedly and presented her back. Henrietta was significantly the taller—Mary was, if anything, shorter than Angelica—so looping the necklace into position was a simple matter.

Fiddling with the clasp, Henrietta softly said, “I didn’t believe, and if it weren’t for your pushing I never would have worn it—and I honestly don’t know if I would ever have found James, if he and I would ever have found our way to the happiness we now have, without it. Without The Lady’s help.”

Raising one hand, Mary touched the fine necklace, holding it against her skin. On her, the pendant hung fully between her breasts. “But you believe in the necklace now.”

“Oh, yes.” Henrietta was still fiddling. “If anything I would say I believe in it, in its power, even more than you. I’ve seen what it can do, experienced what it can bring. There!”

Feeling Henrietta pat the clasp at her nape, Mary turned, looking down at the necklace, at how it sat against her creamy skin; the cornflower blue of her satin ball gown, chosen to match her even more vivid eyes, echoed the purple hues of the amethyst beads. Looking up, she met Henrietta’s gaze. “Thank you.”

“No.” Henrietta held her gaze steadily. “Thank
you
. I know you’ve been waiting for this—to receive the necklace and be able to wear it and so find your own hero—literally for years. Even though you’re generally so impatient, you waited patiently—and then you pushed at just the right moment. I truly believe you were influenced by The Lady in that, that you’ve already felt Her hand, for you certainly played a major part in bringing me and James together.”

Henrietta paused to draw in a huge breath, then she smiled one of what Mary privately dubbed her over-the-moon-joyous smiles. “For that—for all of that—I wish you the very
best
of success in finding your own hero.”

Mary felt the warm wash of affection as Henrietta swooped and embraced her. She returned the hug with equal joy; she was sincerely happy, from the depths of her heart happy, to see Henrietta so perfectly matched. This was her sister’s fairy-tale ending; now it was her turn to go out and find hers.

“Henrietta!”

Releasing each other, they both straightened. Turning, they saw Louise beckoning imperiously. “Come along—we need you in the receiving line. And Mary, too—
you
should already be upstairs.”

Mary and Henrietta shared a glance, then they laughed and hurried to where Louise waited. Together, they swept their harried mother up the stairs.

“Really, I don’t know what’s got into you,” Louise said to Mary once the receiving line had been reached. Louise noted the necklace around Mary’s throat, hesitated, but then said, “But off you go and enjoy yourself.” With one hand, she made a shooing motion. “Just behave.”

“Yes, Mama!” Delighted—with the evening, with life in general—Mary was only too ready to obey. Her first task was to quarter the room, to see who was there and note the new arrivals as they streamed into the fabulous white, pale green, and gilt ballroom.

Very soon, the room was pleasantly crowded. Then more guests arrived, and the event became a certified crush.

Mary tacked through the groups, stopping to chat as the mood and the company took her; as a Cynster young lady raised very much in the bosom of the ton, such an event held no terrors. She’d cut her eyeteeth on the correct way of doing things, and knew every possible way around any social situation. Even the grandes dames, after observing her over the past four years, had accepted that she was entirely at home in this sphere and unlikely to put her dainty foot wrong, even while stubbornly following her own path.

Tonight, however, there was no advance to be made on her already defined way forward; the name of the gentleman she’d set her sights upon had not appeared on the guest list. Consequently, she had no particular aim beyond obeying her mother and enjoying herself.

Then the violins started playing the engagement waltz, and James and Henrietta circled the floor, so lost in each other’s eyes, with James so blatantly proud and Henrietta positively glowing with joy, that the company was held spellbound. When the affianced couple completed their circuit and other couples started to join them on the floor, Charlie Hastings, with whom Mary had been conversing, solicited her hand, which she happily granted.

Waltzing with Charlie was pleasant; Mary viewed him as an older brother. He had his eye on Miss Worthington, a young lady Mary was acquainted with, and she was pleased to encourage him by telling him all she knew.

But as the evening wore on, she drifted closer and closer to the wall. While she could chatter and converse with the best of them, and usually, when she had some end in view, she found the exercise stimulating, now, when she knew there was no point—when there was nothing she could or wished to gain from any conversation—she found her interest flagging.

She couldn’t, she decided, risk slipping out of the ballroom. Even though it had happened years ago, her cousin Eliza had been kidnapped from this very house during her sister Heather’s engagement ball. If Mary appeared to have vanished from Henrietta’s engagement ball . . . that was the sort of error Mary did not make.

But there were two alcoves, one at either end of the long room, both housing large nude statues and consequently, for the evening, screened by large palms. She elected to make for the alcove between the pair of double doors, the one less likely to have been appropriated by anyone else.

She was nearing that end of the room, several yards short of her goal, when, abruptly, she was brought to a quivering halt, nose to lower folds of an exquisitely tied cravat. To either side of the cravat stretched a wall of black-clad male chest.

“Good evening, Mary.”

She recognized the deep, drawling, sinfully seductive voice. She looked up—up—all the way up to Ryder Cavanaugh’s ridiculously handsome face. She’d decided years ago that such godlike male perfection was patently ridiculous, certainly in the effect it had on the female half of the ton. No, make that the female half of the species; she’d never met a woman of any class whom Ryder Cavanaugh did not affect.

In exactly that ridiculous way.

She’d made it a point never to allow even the smallest hint that she was aware of his charisma—the attraction that all but literally fell from him in waves—to show.

His late father’s heir, and now the Marquess of Raventhorne, he was considerably older than she was, somewhere over thirty years to her twenty-two, but she’d known him all her life. Nevertheless, she’d been surprised to see his broad shoulders moving about the drawing room before dinner, and to later see him seated a little way along the dinner table on the opposite side, but then she’d learned that he was a connection of the Glossups’ and had attended the dinner as the senior male of his line.

Ignoring the distraction of his gold-streaked, tawny-brown hair, a crowning glory too many ladies had compared to a lion’s mane, not least because it held the same tactile fascination, a temptation to touch, to pet, to run one’s fingers through the thick, soft locks, that had to be constantly guarded against, she fixed her eyes on his, a changeable medley of greens and golds framed by lush brown lashes, and baldly asked, “What is it, Ryder?”

From beneath his heavy hooded lids, his eyes looked down into hers. One tawny eyebrow slowly arched. He let the moment stretch, but she was too wise to let that tactic bother her; she held her pose, and let faint boredom seep into her expression.

“Actually,” he eventually murmured—and how he managed to make his voice evoke the image of a bed was a mystery she’d never solved—“I wondered where you were making for so very doggedly.”

She realized that with his significant height—Ryder would vie with Angelica’s husband, Dominic, for the title of tallest man in the room—he might well have been able to see her making her way through the crowd.

But why had he been watching her?

Most likely he was bored, and her determined progress had captured his peripatetic attention. She’d heard matrons uncounted bemoan the fact that Ryder grew bored very quickly. She’d also heard him described as “big, blond, and definitely no good,” except for his performance in the bedroom, which, by all accounts, was not just satisfactory but exemplary beyond belief.

Yet she’d always recognized the steel behind the languid lion’s mask, and knew he could be as dogged as she if he decided he wanted something—for instance to enliven an otherwise boring evening by toying with her.

Which, she had to admit, held a certain attraction. He was rapier-witted, and his silver tongue held a lethally honed edge, and he was utterly unshockable, yet there was a . . . she’d never been sure quite how to describe it, but . . . a
deepness
of strength in Ryder that, his ridiculous beauty aside, had always made her shy away from him.

She’d always thought that if ever he was moved to actually pounce and seize, even she would find it impossible to escape.

And she entertained no illusions about Ryder; she might be one of the strongest of ton females, even among the Cynster clan, yet not even she could ever hope to manage Ryder Cavanaugh.

Un
manageable was his middle name.

Given the point along her path at which she was presently poised, having Ryder Cavanaugh, of all the gentlemen in the ton, take any interest whatever in her—no matter how mild and, relatively speaking, innocent—was not just unnecessary but also could prove distinctly counterproductive, and might possibly give rise to unexpected hurdles.

For her, not him.

Given that she’d finally got her hands on the necklace and could now move forward along her path apace, she was even more adamantly disinclined to offer herself up as Ryder’s amusement for the evening.

She’d kept him waiting for her reply; that he had, indeed, waited, not shifting in the least, his hazel gaze locked on her face, meant that every second of further delay risked fixing his attention, a heavy, feline, weighty sensation, distinctly predatory, even more definitely on her . . . she tipped up her chin. “I don’t want to play, Ryder, at least not with you.” He would accept a straightforward—shockingly blunt—dismissal, while anything less definite might further pique his interest, so she held his gaze and simply stated, “You’ll only complicate things. So please, go and chase someone else.”

Brazenly, she patted his arm, pure steel beneath fine fabric, then stepped past him and pushed on, into the crowd.

Leaving Ryder Cavanaugh, Marquess of Raventhorne, utterly flabbergasted. “I must be losing my touch.” He said the words aloud, confident that, in the hubbub around him, no one would hear. Turning his head, he watched Mary slip through the crowd, tacking around this group, then that, halting whenever someone wished to chat, but not dallying. “What the devil was that about—and where the hell is she going?” And why?

“Clearly, I’ve grown rusty.” Either that, or . . . but he knew the advantages with which he’d been born hadn’t failed him yet. He wasn’t such a coxcomb as to believe that every woman in the land should come flocking to his lazy smile, yet . . . most did.

Mary hadn’t flocked. She’d run. No—worse—she’d calmly turned on her heel and marched off.

He wasn’t entirely sure what he thought of that, but . . . he recognized that she’d chosen her words, her way to dismiss him, deliberately. In that, she’d read him aright. Normally, if things had been normal for him, he would have smiled, mentally saluted her frank speaking, and moved on to more amenable prey.

Heaven knew, there was plenty of the latter about.