Miss Charlotte Greene leveled a blank stare at Viscount Witherby. She should smile, to be polite of course, but her lips wouldn’t budge. So instead she simply murmured, “You are much too kind, my lord.”

“Kindness has little to do with it.” His broad, nearly connected white eyebrows waggled as his greedy gaze swept over her bodice. “I say, you are a
temptress,”
he hissed in a raspy whisper, most likely so her mother wouldn’t overhear.

Giving a distracted nod in acknowledgment of the absurd compliment, Charlotte pressed her lips together, suppressing a smile. The balding, elderly viscount might mistakenly consider it encouragement.

“Will you do me the honor of a dance in this next set?” he asked her bosom.

Absolutely not!
she wanted to shout. Her proper upbringing, of course, kept the thought from tumbling past her lips, but just barely. Taking a measured breath, she scrambled to find a suitable response.

At her hesitation, his bushy brows raised in haughty disbelief. Truly, if he had half as much hair on his head as he did on his eyebrows, he’d have quite the coiffure.

“Ah, I mean to rest for the time being, my lord,” she managed, watching the viscount’s spine stiffen as she spoke. “However, I do thank you.”

As her mother stepped closer beside her, Charlotte heard her frustrated sigh.

Apparently, Charlotte should have been eager for his attentions, or any attention for that matter, considering her well-known wallflower status. However, Charlotte just couldn’t summon the required gratitude.

“You’ll have to excuse my daughter,” her mother interjected. “She’s just being shy.”

Charlotte inwardly cringed at her mother’s muttered excuse.
Shy?
Why did that word always rankle her? Her mother’s well-meaning conciliations never failed to make her feel like a girl of seven. Still, the fact remained that being accursedly timid around men had little to do with it. The real reason she refused to dance this evening was simply that no one had asked her.

Well…no one who wasn’t foxed, looking for a victim to grope, or old enough to be her grandfather. Or all three as was the case with Viscount Witherby.

Even so, Charlotte hadn’t the time to wallow in self-pity. It was nearly midnight, and if her calculations were correct, a long-awaited dream of hers was about to come to fruition.

She just might find herself engaged to none other than Lord Tristan Devine.

As luck would have it—though there were those who thought it was more of a miracle—Charlotte had been selected to participate in the Duke of Wolverest’s bride hunt for his younger brother, a man she had been enamored of for so long—ever since that fateful day when he had rescued her mother and herself from their mangled carriage. Since then, she had been completely, irrevocably besotted.

She bit her lip, thinking of the other bride hopefuls and wondering again of her chances. Besides herself, there was her friend Madelyn Haywood (who Charlotte suspected would soon marry Lord Tristan’s brother, the duke, instead), the Fairbourne twins, and Harriet Beauchamp. Out of all of them, Miss Beauchamp was her only real competitor, as the twins had their eyes on Madelyn’s duke.

A waltz would be played next, and then the remaining women would line up at the north end of the room to await his decision.

Charlotte’s heart hammered inside her chest. It was almost time.

Thankfully, Witherby decided to leave Charlotte to her musings. He offered his arm to her mother, who clutched at it as she often did when her rheumatism ailed her.

“Good luck to you, my dearest,” Hyacinth Greene said quietly for Charlotte’s ears only. “If he has any sense in that handsome head of his, he’ll make the right decision.”

Charlotte gave her mother a small smile as the pair tottered off to a settee set against the wall, her mother throwing Charlotte an encouraging grin from over her shoulder.

A shaky sigh escaped her. Surely, Lord Tristan would pick her.

Just the night before, he had pulled her aside after dinner and told her that she was a cut above the others. He told her she was the only genuine one of the lot and that if he truly had to spend the rest of his life with any of them, it would be her.

Certainly, he must have been sincere? But if she was so certain, why did she feel overcome with doubt?

Perhaps because his words, however pleasing for her to hear, sounded a bit
rehearsed.

She blinked out of her musings when she noticed a man walking purposefully toward her. She squinted, willing her eyes to focus. Tall, raven-haired, and just a bit of a swagger. Lord Tristan.

She needed to pinch herself. Was she really here, in his ancestral home, waiting for his proposal? It was all so terribly romantic…even if it was a scandalous way to find a bride.

“Good evening, Miss Greene,” he said with a smile, holding out his hand.

She took it without caring where he was going to take her. He led her to the middle of the ballroom, her feet having no need for the glossy parquet floor, for she was surely floating.

His timing was impeccable. The first notes of the waltz began with their first movements. And as they danced, swirling and dipping, no words were spoken, though she couldn’t stop a giggle or two from escaping. Charlotte simply relished the joy of being in his capable arms.

A rush of heat spread down her back, making her shiver. She looked over her shoulder to see Lord Tristan’s friend, the notoriously wicked Earl of Rothbury, gliding past with his dance partner. She caught the handsome rogue’s glance for a second, but in that second all her giddy enthusiasm froze.

Not only was she unaccustomed to having men as attractive as Lord Rothbury give her anything more than a fleeting look, the earl’s glance held an intensity, a
forewarning.
Gone in an instant, it unnerved her.

She forced herself to brush it off, telling herself she either imagined it, or caught his stark look by mistake. Perhaps it was in response to something his dance partner had said.

Too soon, the waltz ended, and Lord Tristan walked her back to her mother. Breathlessly, she curtsied and managed a wobbly smile, all thoughts of Lord Rothbury and “his look” gone.

Bowing, Lord Tristan paused before straightening fully and then…and then he winked.

Winked!
With a half-roguish grin, he then sauntered away, disappearing into the crowd.

Charlotte’s entire body felt as if it would burst with delight. Glancing down at her mother, she wanted to gauge her reaction to Lord Tristan’s behavior, but Hyacinth Greene sat nestled in the overstuffed cushions of the settee, busily searching for something in her reticule.

Turning back, Charlotte glanced at the line of women assembling at the top of the room. It was time to join her competitors. There were only a few minutes until his lordship announced his chosen bride, minutes that up to this point Charlotte thought would be torturous. But that all changed after
the wink.
Now Charlotte was absolutely certain—she was the chosen bride!

“Hmm…now which tart shall it be?”

Adam Bastien Aubry Faramond, Earl of Rothbury, studied the line of women standing on the far side of the ballroom. “Come now,” he murmured with a grin. “I had thought they were all proper, respectable ladies.”

“I’m speaking of the pastries, as you well know,” Lord Pickering replied while eyeing the sweets greedily. With stubby fingers, he selected a honey-slathered scone and proceeded to cram it in his mouth. “So, whom do you think Tristan will pick to be his bride?”

Caught by surprise, Rothbury expertly dodged a crumb set free from Pickering’s mouth.

“I’ve stacked my blunt on the Haywood chit,” Pickering continued, flying bits of scone and all, “though Oxley claims he’ll pick one of the twins to be his bride. Ha! But we all know one thing’s for sure, he’ll not pick that awful timid gel. Miss…ah…Miss…Devil take it! Don’t suppose
you
remember her name?”

“Miss Greene,” Rothbury answered flatly, taking a self-preserving step back. Narrowing his gaze, he studied the five handpicked young women, coming again to a full stop on the only wallflower among them, the painfully shy Miss Charlotte Greene.

As he watched, she plucked at the band of lace ribbon at her waist, looking as if all the hundreds of pairs of eyes fixed upon her and her competitors had set jabbing pins to her nerves. As if she could truly
see
them anyway, with her spectacles tucked inside her bodice. She liked to pretend she didn’t need them, but he was one of the very few who knew of her little secret.

An odd sting of something akin to pity bit at him. Oh, even a jaded man like him could muster at least some smidgen of compassion for the poor creatures, including Miss Greene. After all, they had been subjected to participate in this wicked game that had scandalized all of London. Except him.

Rothbury despised himself for admitting it, but the duke’s plan to marry off his errant younger brother, Tristan, was sinfully devious. According to the strategy, Tristan would pick one lady from the group to be his bride at the end of a fortnight. And that group had been selected by the duke himself, allowing Tristan a choice, albeit a supervised one. And now that deciding moment had finally come upon them.

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