Annabelle sensed the other wallflowers’ relief as Hunt ignored them and turned his attention exclusively to her. “Miss Peyton,” he said. His obsidian gaze seemed to miss nothing; the carefully mended sleeves of her gown, the fact that she had used a spray of pink rosebuds to conceal the frayed edge of her bodice, the paste pearls dangling from her ears. Annabelle faced him with an expression of cool defiance. The air between them seemed charged with a sense of push-and-pull, of elemental challenge, and Annabelle felt her nerves jangle unpleasantly at his nearness.

“Good evening, Mr. Hunt.”

“Will you favor me with a dance?” he asked without prelude.

“No, thank you.”

“Why not?”

“My feet are tired.”

One of his dark brows arched. “From doing what? You’ve been sitting here all evening.”

Annabelle held his gaze without blinking. “I have no obligation to explain myself to you, Mr. Hunt.”

“One waltz shouldn’t be too much for you to manage.”

Despite Annabelle’s efforts to stay calm, she felt a scowl tugging at the little muscles of her face. “Mr. Hunt,” she said tautly, “has no one ever told you that it isn’t polite to try and badger a lady into doing something that she clearly has no desire to do?”

He smiled faintly. “Miss Peyton, if I ever worried about being polite, I’d never get anything I wanted. I merely thought you would enjoy a temporary respite from being a perpetual wallflower. And if this ball follows your usual pattern, my offer to dance is likely the only one you’ll get.”

“Such charm,” Annabelle remarked in a tone of mocking wonder. “Such artful flattery. How could I refuse?”

There was a new alertness in his eyes. “Then you’ll dance with me?”

“No,” she whispered sharply. “Now go away. Please.”

Instead of slinking away in embarrassment at the rebuff, Hunt actually grinned, his teeth flashing white in his tanned face. The smile made him appear piratical. “What is the harm in one dance? I’m a fairly accomplished partner—you may even enjoy it.”

“Mr. Hunt,” she muttered, in rising exasperation, “the notion of being partnered with you in any way, for any purpose whatsoever, makes my blood run cold.”

Leaning closer, Hunt lowered his tone so that no one else could hear. “Very well. But I’ll leave you with something to consider, Miss Peyton. There may come a time when you won’t have the luxury of turning down an honorable offer from someone like me…or even a dishonorable one.”

Annabelle’s eyes widened, and she felt a flush of outrage spread upward from the neckline of her bodice. Really, it was too much—having to sit against the wall all evening, then be subjected to insults from a man she despised. “Mr. Hunt, you sound like the villain in a very bad play.”

That elicited another grin, and he bowed with sardonic politeness before striding away.

Rattled by the encounter, Annabelle stared after him with narrowed eyes.

The other wallflowers breathed a collective sigh of relief at his departure.

Lillian Bowman was the first to speak. “The word ‘no’ doesn’t seem to make much of an impression on him, does it?”

“What was that last thing he said, Annabelle?” Daisy asked curiously. “The thing that made your face turn all red.”

Annabelle stared down at the silver cover of her dance card, rubbing her thumb over a tiny spot of tarnish on the corner. “Mr. Hunt implied that someday my situation might become so desperate that I would consider becoming his mistress.”

If she hadn’t been so worried, Annabelle would have laughed at the identical looks of owlish astonishment on their faces. But instead of exclaiming in virginal outrage, or tactfully letting the matter drop, Lillian asked the one question that Annabelle wouldn’t have expected. “Was he right?”

“He was right about my desperate situation,” Annabelle admitted. “But not about my becoming his—or anyone’s mistress. I would marry a beet farmer before I sank to that.”

Lillian smiled at her, seeming to identify with the note of grim determination in Annabelle’s voice. “I like you,” she announced, and leaned back in her chair, crossing her legs with a negligence that was rather inappropriate for a girl in her first season.

“I like you, too,” Annabelle replied automatically, prompted by good manners to reply in kind—but as the words left her mouth, she was surprised to discover that they were true.

Lillian’s assessing gaze moved over her as she continued. “I should hate to see you end up trudging behind a mule and plow in a beet field—you were meant for better things than that.”

“I agree,” Annabelle said dryly. “What are we to do about it?”

Although the question was intended to be facetious, Lillian seemed to take it seriously. “I was getting to that. Before we were interrupted, I was about to make a proposition: We should make a pact to help each other find husbands. If the right gentlemen won’t pursue us, then we’ll pursue them. The process will be vastly more efficient if we join forces rather than forge ahead individually. We shall start with the eldest—which appears to be you, Annabelle—and work down to the youngest.”

“That hardly works out to my advantage,” Daisy protested.

“It’s only fair,” Lillian informed her. “You’ve got more time than the rest of us.”