By the following morning, London had done what London always did best.
It had taken one evening, one room, one girl, and made of it a fever.
Sophia's debut had spread through the city before breakfast had properly settled in half the houses of Mayfair. Men who had attended spoke of it over brandy in gentlemen's clubs long after midnight. Ladies who had seen her spoke of her over late breakfasts and luncheon tables the next day, their voices lowered not from discretion but from habit — the better to make their praise sound more intimate, and their envy less obvious.
She was beautiful.
No — more than beautiful.
She had looked ethereal.
She had been composed.
She had danced like a feather.
She had smelled of vanilla and roses.
She had smiled only just enough.
She had not been too eager.
She had not been too cold.
And, perhaps most dangerously, she had seemed newly arrived while also looking as though she had always belonged exactly where she stood.
By midday, the de Montfort townhouse could scarcely keep pace.
Laurence had intended to work.
He had truly intended it.
The morning was already warm, the sort of spring warmth that carried a promise of summer in it, and the windows of his study stood open to admit whatever air London might still offer before the day turned close and full. He had letters to answer, accounts to review, tenants' matters forwarded from the estate, and three invitations of his own that required either acceptance or refusal.
He sat at his desk with pen in hand.
And could not go three minutes without interruption.
The front bell rang once.
Then twice.
Then again.
At first he ignored it.
The household could manage deliveries without him.
Then the sound came again — louder this time, or perhaps only more intrusive because his patience had grown thinner. It rang and rang through the front of the house, followed by the faint but unmistakable shuffle of servants moving back and forth across the entrance hall.
Laurence set down his pen.
A moment later the bell rang again.
He closed his eyes briefly.
"What in God's name—"
By the time it rang a sixth time in less than half an hour, he pushed back his chair with more force than was strictly necessary and rose.
If London had decided to descend bodily upon the house before noon, he would at least like to know in what form.
He left the study, crossed the upper hall, and descended the staircase with the measured irritation of a man attempting not to look irritated and therefore appearing all the more severe.
The entrance hall below was in motion.
A footman stood with a flower basket in one hand and a small gilt box in the other. Another had two letters tucked beneath his arm and was reaching for a third item newly handed through the door. A maid hurried past with ribboned parcels balanced against her skirt.
And outside, visible through the open doorway, stood another servant from some other house with still more deliveries waiting to be surrendered.
Laurence stopped.
For a moment he simply looked.
Then, in a tone so calm it made the nearest footman straighten at once, he asked,
"What is all this nonsense?"
The footman blinked.
"Your Grace?"
"Why," Laurence said, with dangerous clarity, "has that bell been ringing continuously since morning?"
The servants exchanged glances.
No one seemed eager to answer first.
At last one of the older maids — a woman who had been with the household long enough to know that silence only sharpened Laurence's patience into something worse — cleared her throat and said carefully,
"Nothing was ordered, Your Grace. These have merely been delivered."
"For whom?"
The maid hesitated only a fraction.
"For Miss Sophia."
The answer was followed, almost at once, by a burst of laughter from the drawing room.
Not the rough laughter of men.
Sophia's laughter.
Bright, delighted, alive.
Laurence's gaze shifted sharply toward the open doors of the room beyond.
The servants, sensing both dismissal and the possibility of becoming collateral damage in a mood they had no wish to test, excused themselves in practical silence and disappeared that way as well, carrying baskets and boxes and letters into the room from which more awed little exclamations immediately followed.
Curious despite himself — and already fearing the answer — Laurence followed.
He crossed the threshold and stopped.
For one absurd second he genuinely did not know whether he had entered a drawing room, a flower shop, a post office, or a fashionable boutique under siege.
Flowers were everywhere.
Baskets of peonies, roses, lilies, lilacs, white blossoms he did not immediately recognize and exotic arrangements clearly assembled at extravagant cost. Notes tucked into ribbons. Calling cards pinned delicately at the front of baskets. Letters lay open across the tea table, the settee, the nearest chair, and even one end of the pianoforte. Boxes — hat-box sized, jewel-box sized, narrow lacquered cases, square velvet parcels — had been stacked in whatever places still allowed passage through the room.
At the center of it all sat Sophia.
She was on the settee, one slipper tucked beneath her, cheeks flushed with amusement, a letter in hand. Two maids sat nearby, attempting dignity and failing because they were too entertained. Another maid knelt by a basket of white roses, reading aloud from the attached card while Sophia laughed.
Laurence watched the whole scene with a feeling so immediate and unreasonable that, had he been a different kind of man, he might have ordered a fire lit solely to burn every single gift where it stood.
Flowers. Letters. Boxes. Tokens. Verses. Silk ribbon and scented paper and absurd declarations from men who had spent one dance in her company and already thought themselves poets.
And yet—
Sophia looked happy.
Truly, wholly, brilliantly happy.
That checked him.
He stood in the doorway another moment longer than necessary, listening.
"No, no — read that line again," Sophia was saying, one hand over her mouth.
The maid complied, smiling despite herself.
"'Your smile, Miss de Montfort, has deprived me of all ordinary peace and rendered the common occupations of life intolerably dull.'"
Sophia burst into laughter.
"Imagine writing that in full daylight."
"It grows worse, miss," the maid warned.
"Oh, then by all means continue."
The maid read on.
"'If Heaven is just, I shall one day have the honor of kissing the back of your hand and count myself blessed for the remainder of my life.'"
At that Sophia made an involuntary sound halfway between delight and disbelief.
"Blessed for life? From one hand-kiss?"
The younger maid giggled.
"Perhaps he has low standards of bliss, miss."
Laurence cleared his throat.
All three women turned at once.
Sophia's whole face brightened.
"Laurence!"
She rose immediately, letter still in hand.
"Oh, come and see. It is wonderful."
Wonderful was not the word Laurence would have chosen.
He entered further into the room, carefully avoiding a box placed so thoughtlessly in his path that he was tempted to step on it.
Sophia, oblivious to the danger of his mood, reached for his sleeve and drew him toward the armchair nearest the settee.
"Sit. You must hear these."
"I am not sure I must."
"You must."
He sat because resisting her when she was in this state was usually futile and, to his private shame, because he did like being summoned into her pleasure even when that pleasure was currently composed of other men's idiocy.
Sophia resumed her place and held up one letter triumphantly.
"This gentleman," she said, "has sent me a poem."
"Has he," Laurence said.
"Yes, and not a good one."
One of the maids, scandalized and amused, said, "Miss Sophia."
"It is not," Sophia insisted. "Listen."
She unfolded it dramatically and read aloud:
"'When first your beauty met my sight,
The room itself forgot its light—'"
She stopped and looked at Laurence over the page.
"The room forgot its light."
"How unfortunate for the chandeliers," he said.
Sophia laughed again and continued.
Another gentleman had sent flowers "in humble admiration."
Another hoped she had found the evening as memorable as he had.
One declared himself in "a state of uncommon agitation" after being granted a dance.
A fourth had enclosed a miniature book of sonnets and, on the flyleaf, written only: For the lady who made all other company seem pale.
Sophia seemed intoxicated with the absurdity of it all.
"So many flowers," she said, looking around her in delighted astonishment. "And gifts. And letters. Honestly, I had not imagined it would all begin quite so soon."
She turned toward Laurence, her eyes bright.
"You see? I have nothing to worry about."
He watched her.
What he saw before him was not a girl in danger of being swept away by these men, but a young woman entirely amused by their efforts.
That comforted him more than he would have liked.
At least, he thought, she humours them. She does not yet take them seriously.
Out loud he said only, "It would seem not."
Sophia leaned toward him and lowered her voice as though confiding in him something terribly thrilling.
"There are invitations too."
She gestured toward another stack tied in ribbon.
"So many. Dinners, musicales, promenades, evening gatherings, garden parties — all sorts of things. Madame Rose says we must go through them carefully and choose those at which one is best seen."
"And is that your chief concern? To be seen?"
Sophia's smile widened.
"Yes."
There was no vanity in the answer.
Only excitement.
Honesty.
"And to be remembered," she added. "That too."
One maid brought over a basket of pale peonies with a card attached.
"This one came only moments ago, miss."
Sophia took the card, read it, and shook her head.
"No signature beyond initials. Cowardly."
"Or cautious," Laurence said.
"Those are often the same thing."
He looked at her then with a mixture of affection, pride, and a weariness only he would ever understand.
There she sat, glowing amid flowers and nonsense, already learning that men became foolish around beauty and that she could, if she wished, make use of their foolishness.
He loved seeing her like this.
He hated the cause of it.
He would let her have the attention if it lit her so brightly.
But he would make certain to be present, as often as possible, at every event society thrust before her.
Let these men approach.
Let them bow and flatter and perspire over the backs of her hands.
They would do it under his eye.
And if any one of them imagined himself bold enough to progress beyond flowers into something more serious, he would first have to reckon with Laurence de Montfort — who had every intention of making himself an unspoken measure against which weaker men failed at once.
Elsewhere in London, later that same day, a very different room held a very similar conversation.
The gentlemen's club was full enough by early evening — cigar smoke gathering low beneath the lamplight, decanters opened, glasses half full, chairs drawn close in clusters of male certainty. The air smelled of tobacco, polish, old leather, and that particular arrogance which gathers naturally in rooms occupied exclusively by men convinced the world was more legible to them than to anyone else.
At one of the deeper seating groups, a lively dispute had already begun.
A group of men who had attended Sophia's debut were speaking of nothing else to those who had been preoccupied to attend.
"You cannot understand it unless you were there," one insisted, leaning forward with a drink in hand.
"Oh, listen to yourself," said another, laughing. "A single pretty girl and suddenly the world is transformed."
"She is not merely pretty."
"No woman is merely pretty while a man is halfway through a second glass."
The first man set his drink down.
"I am serious."
"As am I," replied his companion. "Beauty is no miracle. London is full of it."
"Not like this."
The second man laughed again, but a few others had begun listening now, drawn less by the topic than by the earnestness with which it was being defended.
Edward Astor arrived just as the argument sharpened.
He frequented the club often enough to be greeted at once.
"Astor," called Viscount Michael Grosvenor from the disputed circle, lifting his glass. "Come and rescue reason from fools."
Edward came nearer, smiling faintly.
"And what has made you all so heated before dinner?"
Michael, who had indeed been at Sophia's debut and who had been speaking of her with an almost feverish admiration for the past quarter hour, waved him toward an empty chair.
"Sit."
Edward did.
A servant poured for him automatically.
"What is the matter?" he asked, glancing from one face to another.
Michael answered first.
"The matter is that half these men were not at De Montfort's townhouse last night and therefore imagine the rest of us have all taken leave of our senses."
Edward lifted one brow.
"Have you?"
"Quite possibly," said Michael, without the slightest embarrassment.
The others laughed.
Edward took a sip and said, "Who has inspired such devotion?"
Michael leaned in.
"Miss Sophia de Montfort."
The name meant little to Edward then.
Not enough, at least, for the reaction it clearly caused in the room.
One of the men who had not attended scoffed.
"There. A debutante."
"Not merely a debutante," Michael said. "The debutante."
Another of the attendees added, "You did not see her. That is the whole difficulty. Had you seen her, you would not be speaking like an idiot."
"A dangerous opening line," said Edward dryly. "Go on."
What followed would have bored him entirely had it not been delivered with such unanimity from men he knew were not ordinarily sentimental.
They spoke of her beauty first, naturally.
Then of the way she moved.
Then — more unexpectedly — of the way she carried herself, the delicacy of her expression, the scent of her perfume, the exact sort of softness in her manner that seemed to invite tenderness and vanity at once.
One man said, half laughing at himself, "I would lay my life down if only to spend an uninterrupted hour with her."
Another said, "She is unlike any girl I have seen in years."
A third, who had not danced with her and seemed still offended by the fact, muttered, "Beauty is not everything."
Michael turned on him almost indignantly.
"This is my point exactly."
He looked to Edward again.
"You know I am not a fool with flowers."
Edward smiled into his glass.
"No. You are usually offensively sensible."
"And yet this morning," Michael said, "I went myself to the best florist in London and asked for an arrangement to be sent."
Edward looked at him fully now.
"You?"
"Yes."
"How much?"
Michael hesitated just long enough to make the answer interesting.
"Two guineas."
Edward laughed outright.
"Have you lost your mind?"
Michael threw up a hand.
"That is exactly what I said to myself while saying it. Flowers are a ridiculous expense. They wilt. They mean nothing. And yet suddenly there I was insisting upon the best arrangement available because anything less seemed absurdly insufficient."
One of the others nodded.
"That is what she does."
Edward, amused still but more attentive than before, said, "This sounds less like admiration and more like a mild epidemic."
Michael grinned.
"Come and promenade with us tomorrow and see if you do not become infected."
The suggestion was made half in jest, but once spoken it lingered.
"She will surely be out," Michael continued. "Every lady worth seeing appears somewhere in the afternoon."
Edward swirled the drink once in his glass, considering.
Why not?
He had no pressing engagement for the next evening. A promenade cost little. And if nothing else, the spectacle of seeing Michael Grosvenor prove himself sane again might offer some entertainment.
"You speak as though she is some celestial phenomenon," said Edward.
Michael leaned back, utterly certain, "You were not there. Had you been, you would understand."
Edward laughed and set down his glass, "In that case, let us see this marvel. It can do no harm."
And though he spoke lightly, something in him had indeed been piqued.
Not by romance.
More by curiosity and challenge.
By the simple male irritation of hearing too much praise directed toward a woman he had not yet seen.