A Summer Seduction by Candace Camp

dance card and have a covey of admirers clustered around her. Yet she could not suppress a niggling sense of disappointment that Rawdon did not return to join her as the evening wore on. She saw him dancing at one point with his sister and another time with his grandmother, and now and then she caught sight of him around the room, engaged in conversation. It was impossible to tell from his face whether he was enjoying himself or filled with boredom.
    It was circumspect of him, of course, not to stand up with her more than once on this, her introduction to London society. Nor would it do for him to dance attendance on her. Such things would only serve to make her noticeable in the wrong way. Still, she could not help but wish that he were a little less able to stay away from her, no matter how correct it was.
    And no matter how foolish she was to wish it.
    Damaris realized that a small headache was beginning to form at the base of her skull and she wanted very much toslide out of her slippers for a few minutes. She had left one dance empty on her card before the midnight supper, out of an unacknowledged hope that the earl might return and claim it. Now she seized the opportunity to slip away and enjoy a few minutes of solitude. Making an excuse to her last partner, she made her way toward the other side of the ballroom, where a set of double doors lay open to a side corridor.
    A knot of people stood not far from the doors she sought, and for a moment, Damaris thought that there was something vaguely familiar about one of the men whose back was turned toward her. Quickly she looked away, for fear he might turn and see her and she would have to stop politely to chat. As she walked past, a woman said, “Excuse me, Mr. Stanley.” Ah, so not someone she knew, after all—the name Stanley was unfamiliar to her. But a moment later the woman strode past her, then whirled to stand directly in Damaris’s path.
    The lady who faced her rather belligerently was younger than Rawdon’s grandmother, perhaps, but not by many years. Her hair was still brown in the back, but the front and sides were heavily streaked with pewter gray, and her eyes, hooded by age, were an oddly similar hue. Those metallic eyes now flashed at Damaris.
    “You!” Her low voice shook with barely suppressed rage. “How dare you come here? In front of all the ton !”

Four
     
    D amaris stared at the older woman. “I beg your pardon?”
    “You heard me.” The other woman came two steps closer, and it was all Damaris could do not to back away from her fierce gaze. “Do you think you can appear here and humiliate us like this? Do you intend to try to wring some gold from us in order to save ourselves the embarrassment?”
    Damaris blinked. She had never seen the woman before, but it was not hard to guess who she was. “I presume you are Lady Sedbury.”
    “I suppose I should be grateful you did not try to call me Grandmother.”
    “Trust me, I will never do that.” Damaris carefully kept her voice dry and detached. She could see the resemblance to her father in the woman’s gray eyes. His had been a lighter shade, with a hint of blueness, but the shape was the same, large and wide-set, though age had made the woman’s lids heavier.
    “Why are you here?” Lady Sedbury went on. “You must leave immediately.”
    “I am here because I was invited, and I hardly think it is your place to order a guest out of Lord Rawdon’s home.”
    “Just how do you think the Staffords would like it if they knew that their ‘guest’ was the bastard daughter of a common actress?”
    “I think they would be most surprised to learn that my father was your son,” Damaris replied, relieved that her voice did not shake. “Do you care to tell them?”
    “Of course not! Is that what you are threatening?”
    “I threaten nothing. I believe it was you who mentioned explaining my birth to the earl and his family.”
    “It has been so long—I thought you at least must have