For everyone, of course, would fawn over him. No one would behave naturally. No one would relax and enjoy the dancing. And no one would talk of anyone else but him for days - or more likely weeks - to come.

As if some god had favored them by dropping into their midst.

And yet it seemed clear to her that he despised them all - or that at the very least he found them all a colossal bore.

She wished he had come tomorrow - or not at all.

He was dressed all in black and white, a fashion she had heard was all the crack in London. When she had heard it, she had thought /how very dull, how very unattractive./ She had been wrong, of course.

He looked sleek, elegant, and perfect.

He looked like every woman's ideal of a romantic hero. Like that Adonis they all dreamed of, especially on St. Valentine's Day, come to sweep them off their feet and onto his prancing white courser and away to a happily-forever-after in his castle in the clouds - white, fluffy ones, not damp, gray, English ones.

But Vanessa deeply resented him. If he despised them and their offered entertainment so much, he could at least have had the decency to look like a gargoyle.

She heard the echo of the sigh that had wafted about the assembly rooms like a breeze and fervently hoped she had not shared in it. "Which one do you suppose is Viscount Lyngate?" Louisa asked in a whisper - necessary in the hush that had fallen over the room - as she leaned closer to Vanessa's right ear. "The handsome one, without a doubt," Vanessa said. "I would wager on it." "Ah," Louisa said, regret in her voice. "I think so too. He is impossibly gorgeous even if he is /not /blond, but he does not look as if he would be bowled over by my charms, does he?" No, he certainly did not. Or by anyone else's from this humble, obscure corner of the world. His whole bearing suggested a man with an enormous sense of his own consequence. He was probably only ever bowled over by his own charms. /What on earth /was he doing in Throckbridge? Had he taken a wrong turn somewhere?