The Runaway Countess Read Free Page B

curtsies to the queen. John’s sister, Susan, was one those misses and he had been recruited to help her
.
Hayden in return was recruited to help John survive the deadly dullness of it all
.
    Only for John would Hayden brave such a place and only after a stiff gulp of port
.
They had been friends ever since they were awkward schoolboys, drawn together by ashared humour and love of parties. John’s family took Hayden in on holidays when his own family was too busy for him
.
    But even for the Eastwoods he was regretting venturing in there, to the over-gilded overheated room stuffed with girls in awkwardly hooped satin-and-lace gowns and towering plumes—and their sharp-eyed
,
avidly husband-hunting mamas
.
    A new young earl like Hayden was just a sitting duck, or a fox flushed out of hiding
.
He wanted to run
.
    Until he saw
her.
    She stood amid the gaggle of white-clad girls, overdressed just like them, with the tall headdress of white feathers in her dark hair threatening to overwhelm her slender figure
.
She was silent, carefully watching everything around her, but she drew his attention like the sudden flicker of a candle in the darkness
.
    She wasn’t beautiful, not like so many of the pretty blonde shepherdess types clustered around her. She was too slim, too pale, with brown hair and a pointed chin, like a forest fairy. Yet she wore her ridiculous gown withan air of quiet, stylish dignity and her pink lips were curved in a little smile as if she had a secret joke no one else in the crowd could know
.
    And Hayden really, really wanted her to tell him what it was. What made her smile like that. No one had caught his attention so suddenly, so completely, in—well, ever. He had to find out who she was
.
    ‘Who is that?’ Hayden asked again, and it seemed something in the urgency of his tone caught John’s attention. John stopped grinning at his current flirtation, a certain Lady Eleanor Saunders, and turned to Hayden
.
    ‘Who is who?’ John asked
.
    ‘That girl over there, in the white with the silver lace,’ Hayden said impatiently
.
    ‘There are approximately fifty girls in white over there.’
    ‘It’s
that
one, of course.’ Hayden turned to gesture to her, only to find that now she watched
him.
Her smile was gone and she looked a bit startled
.
    Her eyes were the strangest colour of golden-green, and they seemed to draw him in to her, closer and closer
.
    ‘The little brunette who is looking this way,’ he said quietly, as if he feared to scare her away if he spoke too loudly. She had such a quiet, watchful delicacy to her
.
    ‘Oh, her. She is Miss Jane Bancroft, the niece of Lady Kenton.’
    ‘You know her?’ How could John know her and he could not?
    ‘She had tea with Susan last week. It seems they met in the park and rather liked each other.’ John gave Hayden a sharp glance of sudden interest. ‘Why? Would you like to meet her?’
    ‘Yes,’ Hayden said simply. He couldn’t stop looking at her, couldn’t stop trying to decipher what was so immediately and deeply alluring about her
.
    ‘She’s not your usual sort, is she?’ John said
.
    ‘My usual sort?’
    ‘You know. Dashing, colourful. Like Lady Marlbury. You’ve never looked twice at a deb before.’
    Hayden couldn’t even remember who Lady Marlbury was at the moment, even though she had been his sometimes-mistress for afew weeks. Not when Miss Bancroft smiled at him, then looked shyly away, her cheeks turning pink
.
    ‘Just introduce me,’ he said
.
    ‘If you like,’ John said. ‘Just be careful
,
my friend. Girls like her can be lethal to men like you and you know it.’
    Hayden couldn’t answer that. When was he ever careful? He wasn’t about to start now, not when feelings were roiling through him he had never felt before. He set off across the crowded room, leaving John to scramble after him
.
    And Miss Bancroft watched him approach
.
She still looked so very still, but he saw her gloved fingers tighten on the sticks