Amanda McCabe by The Rules of Love

who so richly deserved her happiness? Or of Lady Clarke, whose impropriety was legendary? To be envious at all was horribly unladylike.
    It was
not
envy, Rosalind told herself. It was simply fatigue. She was not accustomed to the social whirl.
    “Oh, no,” she said. “Leave His Grace to his conversation. I will just go sit down for a moment and will be quite well soon.”
    She gave Georgina what she hoped was a reassuring smile, and turned to make her way through the ballroom. Since she was of little importance in the grand
ton
scheme of things, it did not take her very long to make her escape—no one stopped her to talk, aside from one or two of Georgina’s friends. She slipped out the ballroom doors and past the butler, who waited to announce any latecomers.
    The ladies’ withdrawing room was down the staircase from the grand ballroom, and along a quiet, dim corridor. The long expanse was lit only by a couple of branches of candelabra, and only the faintest echo of music and voices could be heard from the party.
    Already Rosalind could feel the tight band of her headache loosening. She leaned back for a moment against the papered wall, and closed her eyes.
    So it is true
, she thought. Lord Morley
was
the one responsible for the diminished popularity of the rules. He was using his dash, his reputation as a rogue and a poet, to break the rules of good conduct, and others were following him. Not just young nodcocks like her brother, either, but people in polite society.
    She did not know why she should feel such a sourness of disappointment at the realization. Surely she had known all along. Yet it was one thing to know; it was another to
know
, to see it with her own eyes.
    Morley
was
a care-for-nothing, a slapdash poet who squandered the benefits and duties of his high position. She had always known that. And yet—and yet, he had been so kind to her that day in her office. He had brought her tea, had made her laugh.
    She could scarcely reconcile that man with the one who had stood so intimately with Lady Clarke in the ballroom.
    She was such a fool to feel so disappointed.
    As Rosalind reached up to rub at her temples, a voice came echoing down the empty corridor.
    “Good evening, Mrs. Chase. What an unexpected pleasure it is to see you here.”
    Lord Morley.
Rosalind’s eyes flew open, and she turned to see him standing there, half in the shadows. He looked mysterious, almost insubstantial, with a single flickering beam of candlelight falling over his dark hair, his high cheekbones. She could almost have fancied that he was a ghost, the spirit of a wild pirate of old, come back to claim his treasure—his woman.
    Unfortunately, he was all too real. And he had caught her yet again at her most vulnerable.
    Drat the man.

Chapter Nine
    “A gentleman must never approach a lady uninvited at a soiree.”
    —A Lady’s Rules for Proper Behavior
, Chapter Five
    R  osalind pushed herself away from the wall, staring dazedly at Lord Morley. She knew she was gaping like the veriest lackwit, but she could not seem to help herself. He was like a mirage—or a nightmare—standing there in the shadowed, quiet corridor. She had known she would see him here in London sooner or later; that was really one of the purposes of her visit, was it not? To somehow stop him from his rule-breaking.
    The difficulty was, her plan was only half conceived, and she had no clue what to do with him now. She had not thought beyond arriving in Town, and doing
something
to save her situation. What, she was not sure, but she had imagined that a plan would occur to her once she saw Lord Morley.
    She had not imagined she would meet him like
this
, however. Alone, in the half-dark. She thought herself a self-possessed woman, a woman of social poise. Of good sense. All that sense had fled, though, and she did not know what to say.
    She straightened her shoulders, and reached up to be sure her hair was smooth. “Good evening, Lord Morley. I did not see