Page 4 of The Secret Suitor

“We met once before, Mr. Prescott,” the young woman said beside him, dragging his attention away from his sister. “In London.”

Did she think he was looking at her? That was embarrassing.

He gave his attention to her fully, trying to place where they had met. Her dark blonde hair was plaited behind her head in an intricate style that looked heavy and uncomfortable, a feather bobbing from the top. Her gown was fine, the white fabric edged in accents that matched her gleaming gold jewelry.

“You do not recall me, do you?” she asked, her smile open and friendly. “It is no matter, Mr. Prescott. We may meet one another again as though it is the first time.”

“We are to remain dinner companions for the entirety of this house party, I believe,” he said, neither confirming nor denying her claim that he didn’t recall meeting her. “I will endeavor to prove I am not usually such a bore as I have been tonight, Miss…”

“Miss Stroud.”

He dipped his head in slight acknowledgment. “Miss Stroud. I have been tasked with the wellbeing of my sister, and I am afraid she has taken up the whole of my thoughts.”

“An arduous task?”

“Not in the least. She is bright and well-mannered, and I trust her implicitly. It is my own anxieties that have battered my brain this evening.” He reached for his wine goblet and took another sip. “Enough about me. Where are you from?”

“Shropshire. My brother is here,” she gestured across the table to the man seated beside Millie, his attention squarely on his dinner partner, blond hair gleaming in the candlelight. Good heavens, the man must use a barrel of pomade to achieve such a shine. “And my parents are further down there.”

The elder Mr. and Mrs. Stroud were seated five or six seats away, their attention wholly on the people around them. They were not worried about their charge, seated alone beside men she did not know. Wesley needed to take a deep breath. He was acting like a nursemaid—more anxious about his sister than this woman’s own parents were about her.

“Where did we meet in London, Miss Stroud?” he asked, hoping it would loosen his memories.

“You might remember the ball hosted by the Earl of Pollock for his niece? He is my mother’s cousin…many times removed.”

That certainly translated to distantly related. Had he attended that ball? The name wasn’t familiar.

She cut a bite of ham and speared it with her fork. “Or perhaps I am mixing that evening with the ball for Miss Orly.”

“That must be it.” He had certainly recalled that event. It had been an enormous crush for a girl of seventeen. Wesley had not been able to leave fast enough.

Miss Stroud’s smile was brilliant. Did she imagine that Wesley remembered meeting her? Unfortunately, he still did not.

“Surely we were not formally introduced that evening, Miss Stroud. I have a difficult time believing I would forget such a lovely face.”

She blushed prettily. “Not formally, no. But we passed one another multiple times.”

So, not introduced at all, it would seem. Wesley’s smile remained intact, though frustration pricked at him. He had never been the most sought-after gentleman in the room, for he had no notable title or vast fortune. He was comfortable, his family and situation well-appointed, but nothing remarkable. Not the sort of man in circumstances that sent women flocking to him.

He was no Mr. Darcy with ten thousand a year, as that novel by A Lady liked to boast.

Yet, Miss Stroud treated him as though he was the earl at the table and not mere Mr. Prescott.

Lady Dalmeer stood, signaling the end of dinner and inviting the women to follow her out. Wesley rose to pull out Miss Stroud’s chair. He watched as Nell and Millie fled the dining room with the group of women, talking quietly together.

“It was a pleasure to speak to you, Mr. Prescott,” Miss Stroud said, hovering beside her chair. “I was worried about being in one place for so long with the same group of people, but now I am looking forward to the rest of the house party.”

Wesley was at a loss. If he agreed with her, he would be sending a signal he wasn’t certain he wanted to send. But to ignore her? Unthinkable.

Fortunately, she dipped a slight curtsy and walked away without expecting a response.

Insufferable. That was the sum of Millie’s first dinner at Bellthorne Hall. She had been seated beside the last man she had thought or hoped to encounter at this house party: Mr. Stroud. When last they had met, at the close of the London Season, he had begged her to be his wife on the banks of the Serpentine, and she had been forced to swallow her shock and refuse him. She had not felt for him the same way he felt for her—indeed, she had not even the slightest inclination he had loved her prior to his bold declaration. It was a blessed miracle her mother had never caught wind of it, or she might have pestered Millie to reconsider.

Mr. Stroud had all three of Mother’s requirements: a fortune, good breeding, and a deal of sense. It was not enough for Millie, though. She certainly did not love him.

And now, to arrive in Yorkshire and not only find him present but sitting directly beside her? This reeked of Lady Dalmeer’s meddling.

Millie had not even had the option to ignore him in favor of her other dinner companion, because the man seated at her left had been engrossed with the woman on the other side of him.