The Hellion Bride (Sherbrooke Brides 2)

Ryder saw her immediately. She was standing next to an older man at the very entrance. She was gowned in white, pure virginal white, her shoulders bare, her chestnut hair piled on top of her head with two thick tresses falling over her shoulder to lie on that bare white flesh. Ryder looked at her and smiled just as she looked up and saw him. He saw her go very still. He realized, of course, that there was something akin to contempt in that smile of his. He removed it. He relaxed. It didn't matter if she slept with every man on the island. It simply didn't matter.

But motives interested him. She interested him.

He walked beside a worshipful Samuel Grayson toward her. He saw upon closer inspection that she wasn't the heavenly beauty that Grayson saw her to be. She looked much older than nineteen. Her eyes were a fine clear gray, her skin as white as her bare shoulders, too white. But she was wearing more makeup than a girl her age should wear. She looked more like a London actress or an opera girl than a young lady at a ball in her own home. Her lips were thick dark red, kohl lined her eyes and darkened her brows. There was rouge on her cheeks and a heavy layer of white powder. Why did her uncle allow her to look a harlot in his own house? And that damned white virginal gown she was wearing, it was the outside of too much. It was as if she were mocking her uncle, mocking all the people present, perhaps even mocking herself.

Ryder heard the introduction and took her hand, turning it over and lightly kissing her wrist. She jerked and he released her hand slowly, very slow-

ly.

Theodore Burgess was of a different ilk. A tall man, thin as a stick, with a gentle face yet stubborn chin, he seemed inordinately diffident. He also seemed oblivious of the nineteen-year-old girl who flaunted herself beside him. He shook Ryder's hand with little strength and said, "A pleasure, sir, a pleasure. Mr. Grayson has spoken often of the Sherbrookes and his esteem for the Sherbrooke family. You are most welcome here, sir, most welcome. You will dance, of course, with my sweet niece?"

Was the damned fellow an idiot? Was he blind?

The sweet niece looked like a painted hussy. Ryder turned politely and said, "Would you care to dance this minuet, Miss Stanton-Greville?"

She nodded, saying nothing, not smiling, and placed her hand lightly on his forearm.

He realized that she'd said nothing at all to Emile. She'd ignored him. More tangled and unexpected behavior. He became increasingly fascinated. His curiosity rose accordingly.

"I understand you and Emile have known each other since you were practically children," he said, then released her to perform the steps in the minu­et.

When they came together again, she said, "Yes." Nothing more, just that flat, emotionless "yes."

"One wonders," he said when she was near him again, "why one would ignore one's childhood friend when one reached adulthood. Yes, one wonders."

It was several minutes before her hand was in his once more. She said, "I suppose one can won­der about many things." Nothing more. Curse the chit.

The minuet ended. To Ryder's relief, he wasn't sweating by the end of it. Grayson hadn't lied. The ballroom, brilliantly lit by myriad candelabras, was nonetheless fairly cool, what with the breeze com­ing from the

sea from all the open doors, and the ever-swinging palm fronds waved by small boys all dressed in white trousers and white shirts, their feet bare.

Ryder returned her to her uncle. He said nothing more. He turned away, Grayson at his side, to be introduced to other planters. He looked back once to see her standing very straight, her shoulders squared. Her uncle was speaking to her. He frowned. Was the uncle berating her for wearing so many cosmetics on her face? He hoped so, but doubted it. Personally, if it were up to him, he'd hold her face in a bucket of water then scrub it with lye soap but good.

He danced with every daughter of every Montego Bay merchant and every planter within a fifty-mile radius. He was fawned over, complimented on every­thing from the shine on his boots to the lovely blue of his eyes—this by a seventeen-year-old girl who could manage naught else but giggles—simpered at until he wanted to yawn with the boredom of it. His feet hurt. He wanted to go sit down and not move for a good hour. Finally, near to midnight, he managed to elude Grayson, three purposeful-looking planters, two more purposeful-looking wives with daughters in tow, and slip out onto the balcony. There were stone steps leading down into a quite lovely garden, redolent with the scent of roses, hibiscus, rhodo­dendron, so many more brilliantly colored blossoms that he couldn't identify. He breathed in deeply and walked into the garden. There were stone benches and he sat down on one and leaned back against a pink cassia tree. He closed his eyes.

"I watched you come out here."

He nearly jumped off the bench, she startled him so badly. It was Sophia Stanton-Greville and she was standing very close to him.

He looked up at her, not changing expression, making no movement whatsoever now. "I wanted to rest. I am not yet accustomed to the heat and every girl in that bloody ballroom wanted to dance."

"Yes. I understand that's what one does at balls."

She sounded cold, very aloof. She sounded as if she disliked him. Then why had she followed him out here? It made no sense.

He relaxed further, stretching his legs in front of him, crossing them at the ankles, crossing his arms over his chest. His posture was insolent. Never in his adult life had he been so rude in the presence of a woman. He said in a voice that matched her coldness, "What do you wish of me, Miss Stanton-Greville? Another dance perhaps, since it is a ball, as you so graciously pointed out?"

She stiffened, and. again he wondered why the hell she was even here. She looked out into the darkness. "You don't behave as most men do, Mr. Sherbrooke," she said at last.

"Ah, by that do you mean that I don't drool on your slippers? I don't stare at your very red mouth or your doubtless delightful breasts?"

"No!"

"Then what is it that I don't do?"

She turned away. He saw her fingers pleating the soft muslin folds of her gown. She was very slender, and although her gown was cut high in the new fashion made popular by Josephine, he could tell that her waist was narrow. He wondered about her legs and hips.

She said, turning to face him, this time a ghost of a smile on her painted mouth, "You are brazen, sir. Gentlemen don't speak so baldly, surely not even in England."