Unfortunately, he appeared to have been uninvited to the festivities.
“I am sorry, Your Grace, but the duke and duchess are not receiving.” The head footman of Northumberland House, who’d been assigned the unfortunate task of asking Simon to step out of the crowd, delivered the unfortunate news with a slight tremor.
“I beg your pardon?”
The servant backed up a step. “They are not . . .” He cleared his throat. “Receiving.”
Simon turned to look at the stream of people dressed in their very finest, moving up the center staircase of the house, headed for the ballroom. “And so I suppose all these people are . . .” He trailed off, waiting for the footman to complete the sentence.
“. . . Family?” The footman finished, uncertain.
Simon supposed he should sympathize for the poor man, who had likely never turned away a duke before, but he could not muster the emotion. He was too irritated. “And the music from above. It is part of a . . . family gathering?”
The servant cleared his throat. “Erm. Yes?”
He was being turned away from Northumberland House because his sister had borne a child. Out of wedlock. The Leighton name was now synonymous with scandal. It had taken less than a day, and all invitations he had received for events to be held in the coming weeks had been politely revoked—it seemed a rash of cancellations had taken place across London.
Perhaps, had it been another day—another ball—he would have done what was expected and left, but Juliana was inside that ballroom. And he had a plan to win her. One that relied heavily on this, the last ball of the season.
Simon had had enough. “Well, I suppose we’re lucky that Northumberland is a distant cousin.” He pushed past the servant and started up the staircase, taking the steps two at a time as the servant followed along behind.
“Your Grace, you cannot!”
On the landing, he turned and faced the footman. “And how do you plan to stop me?”
“Your Grace . . .” The servant apparently planned to appeal to Simon’s better judgment.
Little did he know that Simon’s better judgment was already engaged in an alternate purpose that evening—to find Juliana and make her his.
He ducked around a cluster of revelers and pushed into the ballroom, finding her in the crowd the moment he entered; he was drawn to her like a moth to a flame.
He had missed her with a powerful intensity, and seeing her filled him with acute pleasure. She was his drug. He craved her nearness, her laugh, her courage, the way she moved her hands when she spoke, that little shrug that had driven him mad when he had first met her and that he ached for now.
She waltzed across the room on Allendale’s arm, dressed in a lovely gown of the palest pink, and for a fleeting moment, Simon was distracted by the fact that she wore such an uninteresting color—a color that made her blend in with the rest of the young, unmarried women in the room—until a turn in the dance gave him a view of her beautiful face, and it no longer mattered what she was wearing.
The only thing that mattered was the sadness in her eyes. The longing in them. For him.
Thank God.
For he could not bear it if she belonged to someone else.
The thought came on a wicked wave of desire—desire to march up to her, pull her from the earl’s arms, and steal her away.
Which, as luck would have it, was precisely the plan.
He had not removed his cloak when he had entered, and as he moved through the crowd, clusters of revelers stopped, first to stare, then deliberately to turn away from him. He knew what they were doing—had done it himself dozens of times before—and he would be lying if he said that the cuts were not painful.
But the embarrassment and shame that he should be feeling as each of these people who, mere days ago, were desperate for his approval, turned their backs to show him their disapproval paled in comparison to the pleasure he felt at the way they eased his passage to his single, undeniable goal: Juliana.
His Juliana.
He took a deep breath and, defying all convention and everything he had ever been trained to do or be, crossed directly into the center of the room, stopping dancers in their tracks.
Proving, once and for all, that she had been right all along—and that reputation was nothing when compared to love.
Allendale saw him coming. The earl’s friendly smile faded into a look of shock, and he slowed Juliana to a stop. The orchestra played on as Simon drew nearer to them, and he heard the confusion in Juliana’s voice when she said, “What has happened?”
Her voice was a benediction—that lilting Italian accent that he craved, the way she drew out her syllables and let them linger on her tongue. She turned to him, and her eyes widened—at his nearness or his attire or both—her lush mouth fell open, and the entire room disappeared. It was only her. Only them. Only now.
“Your Grace?”
He did not trust himself to speak to her. Not when he wanted to say a hundred things that were for her and her alone. So he turned to the earl instead, saying with a lifetime of ducal imperiousness, “Allendale, I am taking your partner.”
Benedick’s mouth opened, then closed, as if he were trying to recall the exact protocol for this situation. Finally, the earl turned to Juliana, allowing her the choice.
Simon did the same, holding out one gloved hand, palm up. “Juliana?” he asked, adoring the way her sapphire eyes darkened and her lips parted at the word. “I should very much like to cause a scandal.”
She stared at the hand for a long moment, then met his gaze.
And there was an unbearable sadness in her eyes.