To Tame a Dangerous Lord by Nicole Jordan Page A

not dancing, and what fun is a ball if you can’t dance?”
    “Indeed,” she murmured in agreement. “Haviland seems to be enjoying himself, however,” Madeline couldn’t help saying, glancing at him as he danced with the duchess.
    “Oh, no, his enjoyment is only an act,” Freddie declared. “He would rather shun balls altogether, with all the grasping young chits fighting over his favor. But he is more eager to get his grandmother off his back by marrying.”
    “He and the Duchess of Arden seem to be on good terms,” Madeline prodded.
    “Well, of course. They were neighbors for much of last year. And he courted her before she decided to marry Arden. Nearly dueled over her, in fact.”
    Madeline felt an inexplicable pressure squeeze her chest. Haviland had lost Roslyn Loring to the Duke of Arden? “When was that?” she asked, her voice holding a deplorable weakness.
    “Why, last summer … barely a few months ago. I think Rayne proposed to her, too—or so rumor says. But it obviously came to naught.”
    Madeline wondered if Haviland still pined after the lovely duchess. Probably so, if he’d harbored strong enough feelings for her to propose marriage.
    “At least he is finally doing something his grandmother approves of,” Freddie added. “His spy career was a blot on the family ledger, don’t you know.”
    “I can imagine.” Madeline hesitated before making a deliberately leading comment. “Haviland said his grandmother expects him to marry and produce an heir.”
    “Oh, yes. The dowager Countess of Haviland wants him to carry on the title something fierce. And she will likely get her way. She keeps insisting that she is near her last breath. If you ask me, it’s blackmail, pure and simple.”
    “Lord Haviland doesn’t really wish to marry?”
    “Not precisely. It’s not the shackles of matrimony he wants to avoid so much as the chains of the ton. He detests the superficiality of society. But his grandmama is a high-stickler—like my Papa, only a generation older—and believes she can make a proper nobleman out ofRayne if he marries well. Lady Haviland is badly mistaken, if you want my opinion. Rayne won’t change his entire character just to please his grandmama, even if he bends to her wishes regarding marriage.”
    Freddie gave Madeline no time to reply. Instead he grimaced and launched into another complaint. “But I would not like to be in his boots. If I were he, I would be dragging my heels, trying to make my final moments of freedom last. But not Rayne. For example, there was no need for him to come here tonight. He had a few days’ respite from his grandmother’s hounding, since she is still at a house party in Brighton given by Lady Beldon. Lady Haviland is a bosom friend of Lady Beldon’s, who is Lord Danvers’s maternal aunt.”
    Madeline frowned, trying to follow the tangled relationship, while Freddie gave a mock shudder. “’Tis utterly frightening, how matrimony seems to be in the air.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Well, the three Loring sisters all recently wed, you see. And Danvers’s younger sister, Lady Eleanor, became betrothed to Viscount Wrexham just this past week. Now Rayne is very likely to be next.”
    Madeline felt her spirits sink again. “Does he have someone in mind for his bride?” she asked, although not really wanting to know the answer.
    She was unaccountably relieved when Freddie shook his head. “Thus far he has only searched among the kind of young ladies his grandmother would find acceptable. But I think he needs to look farther afield, and so I told him just today.”
    Freddie suddenly gave Madeline a penetrating look, but she was still dwelling on the depressing possibility ofHaviland’s marrying soon, as well as wondering about the kind of ladies his grandmother would approve.
    She
didn’t have the requisite beauty and fortune to compete, of course. She was not particularly elegant or ladylike, either, even though she was a gentleman’s