“Getting what I really want,” she said.
Her tight smile was a little unnerving. Had she misunderstood that he wouldn’t be offering for her—no matter what she said or did? “Lady Eloise, I don’t think you understand…”
Her face lit up in a smile, but it was aimed at a young man ahead of them. She made Drew stop in front of the fellow by digging her heels in and could not be moved. “My lord,” she said, beaming. “What a lovely surprise to see you tonight. I feared you’d be dancing with someone else.”
The fellow, the very one Father had turned her away from earlier, appeared startled by her appearance, but offered Lady Eloise a genuinely delighted smile and bowed deeply. “Not yet, Lady Eloise. I feared we might never have a chance to speak tonight.”
Drew was not introduced, and he stood silent on the sidelines, watching the brief press of fingers, the matching flushed cheeks as the pair revealed all the signs of a budding attachment. The besotted stares as they drank each other in wordlessly for a few minutes was decidedly awkward to watch.
Drew had felt and behaved this exact way around his first wife before he’d blurted out a hasty proposal. Looking on, it was a devastating reminder of what he’d lost.
He would have taken a step back, but Lady Eloise had a manacle grip on his arm. Drew couldn’t move away to allow them privacy to speak of their feelings. He had to stay and listen as the pair bumbled through his asking her to dance, and her breathless acceptance when he claimed the supper dance.
When the card was returned, and more halting words were exchanged, Lady Eloise looked up at him suddenly. “You can return me to my family now, my lord.”
He inclined his head, bemused by the exchange and by Lady Eloise ordering him about like he was almost a brother to her. “Of course.”
He nodded to the besotted young man and then escorted Lady Eloise back toward her family. “You could have introduced me.”
She fluttered her fan before her face. “To whom?”
“To the young man who is clearly smitten with you, and you with him, I suspect,” he suggested. “I wonder if I might look forward to seeing him again many times in the years to come.”
Lady Eloise blushed prettily and looked over her shoulder. When she turned back, her smile was strained as she whispered, “If you hold me in any affection at all, you will hold your tongue about him. My family…”
“Enough said. I can forget everything I just didn’t see,” Drew promised without a moment’s hesitation. If Lady Eloise’s choice was not popular with her family, he was the last man who wanted to meddle. It could be true love, even if the fellow was poor as a church mouse. Only Lady Eloise should have the right to decide who was the man for her. It wouldn’t be Drew, and he was very glad she might have someone better in her sights.
He returned her to a married female cousin. Stayed until Lady Eloise was approached by other bachelors and had the remaining spots on her dance card claimed for the later night.
The smitten young fellow was nowhere to be seen now, though. Who exactly had he been? No one Drew had ever met before, certainly. After a time, Drew excused himself from Lady Eloise and left the ballroom, looking for other forms of excitement to be expected at a ball of this size.
He went to the card room, won a small sum eventually, but in the end returned to the ballroom, biding his time as he waited for the right woman to appear.
His next wife really was taking her sweet time putting in an appearance.
So, he amused himself by discreetly keeping an eye on Lady Eloise as she was being swept around the dance floor by countless well-off gentlemen. When the smitten young man appeared to claim his turn before supper, her family started to whisper among themselves, clearly surprised and more than a little disapproving.
Drew hid a smile as Lady Eloise and her would-be suitor swept past him. They had nothing but eyes for each other as they danced. His blunt words to Lady Eloise had been made at the right time, it seemed. He wanted her to set her sights on someone else, perhaps this young man, by whom she had a better chance of being loved in return. Either way, whatever happened in Lady Eloise’s life was none of his concern anymore. It never had been, either.
Drew turned away. He was more than ready for his own match. More than committed now to finding someone who lit a spark in him. He wanted what he had with Clare again. He just hoped when he finally tied the knot, he was granted more wedded bliss than the first time. Fate couldn’t be so cruel as to shortchange him twice in his life.