The Phoenix Of Love. Susan Schonberg
hard and rigid with anger. “You know the rules of the game as well as I do, and I’ve let you step around them once too often.”
She gasped in outrage, but he cut her off before she could make a reply. “This liaison has gone on far too long.” He smiled coldly at her. “It’s been a pleasure making your acquaintance, my dear.”
As she struggled to get up off the floor and retain her dignity, he let out his final parting shot as he was opening the door. “Oh, and Beatrice,” Traverston added almost as an afterthought, “I’m already married.”
The door slammed shut on her outburst.
It should have been a magical scene. It was not.
The green-marble and gold ballroom was filled to capacity with the wealthy and the beautiful, but the sight filled the marquis with disgust. The hot, airless ballroom was permeated with the sweet pungent odor of exotic perfumes overlaid with the acrid smell of unwashed bodies. The combination made Traverston wish that he had gone anywhere but to this gathering tonight. Still, for some reason he could not name even to himself, he stayed.
He lounged negligently against a fluted Corinthian column and casually watched the crowd through narrowed eyes. In silence, he cursed the misguided sentiment that led him to accept the invitation to this particular ball. If only Beatrice hadn’t chosen last night to spring her little surprise on him, he might have been at the opera tonight with her instead.
But no, he corrected himself. Regardless of what her intentions had been, he would have had done with her yesterday. To think otherwise was plain and simple folly.
He grunted in disgust. He must be getting old to be thinking such maudlin thoughts. Absently he retrained his wandering mind onto the whirling couples below him.
Traverston did not normally attend social functions of the ton. This came as a great relief to most of the hostesses of the upper ten thousand. As a wealthy bachelor with an important title, the marquis’s presence in London could hardly be ignored, so the ladies sent him their engraved invitations edged with gold. But they usually prayed fervently that he would not come. On one thing the gossipmongers were all in agreement: the Marquis of Traverston was a most disturbing man.
Usually it was in Traverston’s best interests to oblige the dragonesses that dictated the whims and fancies of society. He didn’t, after all, think much of their frivolous parties and gay gatherings. But tonight, he hadn’t been in the mood to oblige them. In fact, he had gone out of his way to get the vicious rumor mill started tonight. Already he had ruined one gentleman’s reputation over cards, and if he had anything to say about it, he would terrorize the sweet young debutantes later this evening just for fun.
“What? Lord Traverston?” A jovial voice bombarded his eardrum, disturbing his solitary reverie. “Bit of a surprise to find you here, old chap.”
Reluctantly Traverston acknowledged the existence of Sir John Whetmore, a distant acquaintance of his from the club, with a barely perceptible nod.
The gentleman stared good-naturedly at Traverston, mistaking the peer’s lack of civility for an inability to recognize him. He took the marquis’s hand and moved it up and down several times like a water pump. “Don’t you remember me?” inquired the gentleman with too much jocularity. “Sir John Whetmore,” he supplied helpfully.
Traverston remained where he was, slouched against the pillar. “What brings you to this insufferable crush, Whetmore?” inquired the marquis languidly.
“Oh, tush-tush!” pronounced the intruder with a booming laugh. “You’ve got too much town bronze, my lord! This party is simply ripping. Never had such a fine time.” Whetmore grasped the edge of his waistband as if to emphasize his own complacency with the affair. “After all, ‘tis a great success for Lady Eddington, don’t you know.”
When Lord Traverston failed to look impressed at this piece of information, Whetmore added significantly, “She’s my niece, don’t you know.”
“Ah,” said the marquis knowingly as he pushed himself upright off the column. He had definitely had enough of this pompous little man. He executed the smallest of bows to his fellow club member. “Then I must apologize, sir. Of course her ball is a smashing success.”
Traverston excused himself from Whetmore’s presence, keeping his exit just a cut above a snub. If there was one thing he was not in the mood for, he thought grimly as he stalked away from his former perch above the main floor, it was issuing mealymouthed phrases to placate some overblown tulip of the gentry.
The marquis fought his way down the short staircase and forward through the crowd, heading in the general direction of the refreshments at the far side of the room. He didn’t make it more than a couple of feet, though, before he was stopped dead in his tracks.
The object that prevented his continued passage through the crowd was perhaps seventy-five feet away from him across the room. In addition to that, there were at least two dozen people between him and her, including several whirling couples. But she stopped him all the same.
She was absolutely dazzling. Unlike most of the debutantes tonight, who looked insipid or even silly in white, this woman was magnificent. Even from a distance Traverston could see that she was unaffected by the oppressive heat and noise of the room. She looked calm, cool and pretty, and the crowd seemed to part for her automatically as she made her stately way through the masses.
“She’s fantastic, isn’t she?”
The voice in Traverston’s ear was so close to his own sentiment that he didn’t realize at first that someone was actually speaking to him. Still somewhat distracted, the marquis turned slowly toward the source of the rhetorical question, his eyes only reluctantly leaving the vision behind.
When Traverston identified the speaker, his reply was smooth and even. “Monquefort. I’ve no idea how you managed to find me in this squeeze, but I’m grateful. This gathering has become intolerable.”
The gentleman Traverston addressed was almost as devastatingly handsome as the marquis himself. Almost, but not quite.
Like the marquis, Lord Buxlcy, the Earl of Monquefort, was tall with broad shoulders and well-formed legs that needed no padding to look good in the formfitting clothes currently in fashion. But his slim, perfectly proportioned physique was where the similarity stopped.
Where the marquis was dark and mysterious, the earl was open and friendly. His smile was famous with the ladies, or perhaps infamous, as the dowagers would say. Women of every age seemed to gravitate to his blond good looks and careless charm, almost against their will.
For the ton, it was the mystery of the decade as to why the two men were friends, for they were almost as dissimilar in temperament as they were in looks. Indeed, it is doubtful that even Traverston or the earl could have said why they were friends. But neither one ever doubted the fact.
Tonight, as always, Monquefort had chosen his clothes with impeccable taste. His blue bath coat fit his shoulders without a wrinkle; his buff-colored pantaloons were snug and firm. The cravat around his throat was intricately tied in the style known as “the waterfall”, and the shine on his Hessian boots made all the dandies present groan with envy.
In comparison with the earl, the marquis was almost casual about his clothing. To be sure, he chose his outfits with the same care as the earl, patronizing only the finest tailors for his raiment. But, unlike Monquefort, once Traverston put on his clothes he forgot about them, never pausing even once during the day to examine his appearance.
As a consequence, the marquis had a certain masculine laissez-faire quality to him—an aura most members of the ton perceived but were never quite able to put their fingers on. His raven black hair, too long to be called stylish, only added to his rakish good looks.
All signs of dissipation, so evident eight years ago, were almost completely erased from the marquis’s appearance. All that remained of the hard living he had subjected his body to back in his younger days were the lines etched around the sides