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front steps.
    Georgina left her cloak with the Beatons’ footman and joined Alex and Elizabeth at the end of the receiving line, at the foot of the grand staircase. This was always one of her favorite moments of a ball; the chance to look ahead and behind her, and see who was in attendance. To see if there was anyone who might need to have their portrait painted, or if there were any friends to greet.
    Tonight, though, there could be no one more fascinating than the person she was with.
     
    Alex detested balls.
    They were always overly warm, overly scented with the perfumes of the guests and the masses of flowers, and full of uninteresting conversation. He was also a rather poor dancer, which could often prove quite embarrassing.
    He could see, as he and Georgina and Elizabeth at last greeted their hostess and entered the ballroom, that this particular rout would be scarce any different from those he attended since his return to London.
    The dancing had not yet begun; the musicians were tuning up behind a bank of potted palms, and the crowd was milling about waiting for the opening pavane. It all seemed very aimless, with ladies exclaiming over one another’s gowns, gentlemen inquiring after one another’s latest acquisitions at Tattersall’s, couples claiming one another for the dances, and footmen moving about with full trays of champagne glasses.
    Yet he knew it was not at all aimless. Reputations were made and broken on the whispers behind fans, the gentleman-to-gentleman asides. It was a precarious, expensive world, one that some people, such as Alex’s brother, would pay anything, do anything, to stay in. In the end, the gambling and the spending had broken Damian, and all their family.
    And Alex had been far away, unable to stop any of the madness and unhappiness.
    In the midst of these renewed pangs of guilt, he felt the light pressure of Georgina’s fingers on his arm. He turned to look down at her.
    She smiled at him, and went up on tiptoe to murmur in his ear, “Absolutely horrid, is it not? Like a gathering of clucking chickens.”
    He laughed. “Horrid.”
    “Ah, the things we go through for our art, Georgie,” Elizabeth sighed. Then she drifted off to greet a group of friends.
    “Indeed,” Georgina said. She tugged at his arm. “Shall we join the fray, Lord Wayland? I do believe people are beginning to stare.”
    Alex looked down at her, at her inquisitive green eyes, and he knew then that he could never be the cause of another person’s unhappiness, as he had been with his family, being far away and unable to curb Damian’s excesses. He had only known Georgina Beaumont for a very brief while, but he knew that she would be very angry, and very hurt, if she found out about his friends’ silly wager, and his own secret temptations toward her.
    He had no wish to see those eyes full of anger. He wanted them to laugh at him, to sparkle and smile—to fill with admiration, as he was certain his did now as they looked at her.
    He turned back to the ballroom, and saw that they were indeed attracting attention. As a new duke, with a scandal for a brother, he had become accustomed to the attention, even though it still made him most uncomfortable. Yet now he found that a new duke with a beautiful, famous woman on his arm was an even greater object of interest than a duke alone.
    Mamas glared at Georgina, even as they urged their daughters to stand up straighter and smooth their hair. Some of the gentlemen, obviously admirers of “La Beaumont,” looked crestfallen; others took out their quizzing glasses and eyed the two of them speculatively. Sophisticated young matrons and widows studied Georgina’s gown, then looked down at their own lesser creations in chagrined comparison.
    The elderly Lady Collins, a notorious eccentric, said, loud enough to be heard even over the large crowd, “Is that that artist chit with young Wayland? I would wager that hair of hers is dyed! Never saw that red in