He was finding it appallingly difficult to maintain the pace of the dance. She seemed to command all of his attention. Everything else just drifted away to the periphery, unimportant.
“I haven’t any suitors.” She gave an elegant shrug, unconcerned. Truly unconcerned. She did not give a fig for securing his interest, for ingratiating herself to him.
“One would think,” he said, “that you were not particularly matrimonially inclined. Isn’t that the purpose of these things?”
She did smile then, a wry sort of grin that flirted with the very corners of her mouth. “I am not,” she said. “If that is your inclination, Your Grace, I beg you choose someone else.” She pursed her lips, considering. “Lady Rebecca Crain is lovely.”
“Which one is she?” he asked, fascinated by the working of her mind. At her nonplussed stare, he added, “I’m not one for the social whirl. There’s a new batch of fresh-faced debutantes every year, and it’s become quite impossible to tell them apart.”
“That one,” she said, indicating with a tilt of her head. “The blond with the peach gown.”
He craned his neck to look. “Good God,” he said, aghast. “She can’t be more than eighteen.”
“It is her first season,” she acknowledged. “But she is lovely and kind. You could do worse.”
“I am twenty-six,” he said. “And she is a child. Try again.”
For some reason that had pleased her. She glanced around the room, mulling his prospective brides over in her head. “Miss Iphigenia Wetherford,” she said, nodding toward a statuesque black-haired beauty currently dancing across the floor from them. “It’s her third season. She’s fascinating, and exceedingly accomplished.”
“I could never wed a woman called Iphigenia,” he said, shuddering at the prospect. “No, she won’t do at all. Choose again.”
“Your Grace, you cannot discount a woman because of her name,” she scolded. “That’s hardly fair. She didn’t choose it.”
“I can discount anyone I like,” he countered. “Dukes can afford to be discriminating. Choose again.”
“Lady Beatrice Ainsley is the daughter of the Marquess of Colridge,” she said, indicating the girl who danced opposite them. “She’s quite beautiful, and with a bit of maturity, she would make you a fine duchess.”
Lady Beatrice he was familiar with. She was coquette who had spent the evening casting her limpid blue eyes in his direction, but he had also seen her shooting disdainful glances at anyone she deemed beneath her. Several gentlemen had been sent fleeing from her sharp tongue.
“I had a horse like her, once,” he said. “An accomplished flirt when she chose, but with the devil of a temper otherwise. I don’t think I’d care to take a wife I couldn’t trust not to bite by hand off.”
Her lips quirked again in a sort of sardonic amusement. “Lady Alice Preston, then. She’s the daughter of an earl, well-educated, with a sterling reputation. She is very much involved in charity works.”
He wrinkled his nose in distaste. “She sounds like a paragon.