Which was precisely the transformation Mary intended to ensure did not occur. Turning away, she resumed her scrutiny of the gentleman in question; he was standing in a group toward the middle of the long ballroom. “In my estimation, Randolph will be the perfect husband for me.”
Aside from all else, Randolph was a significantly milder version of Ryder; if she married Randolph, she was perfectly certain she would be able to influence him to the point of ensuring that he did not evolve into a nobleman anywhere near as lethally dangerous to the entire female sex as Ryder was. Indeed, marrying Randolph could be viewed as doing her gender a signal service; the female half of the population definitely did not need another Ryder. In addition to his physical impact, he was utterly unmanageable.
Fixing her gaze on Randolph, she reviewed his attractions. Unlike Ryder’s golden-brown mane, Randolph’s hair was dark brown, more like his mother Lavinia’s brown locks. While Ryder wore his hair slightly longer so that it fell in intriguingly tousled, windswept locks—a potent inducement to women to run their fingers through the unruly mass—Randolph’s hair was cut in a fashionable crop, neither long nor short, similar to many men present.
Randolph’s shoulders were broad, although not as strikingly broad as Ryder’s, and his frame was long and tended more to the lean than Ryder’s did, but then Ryder was taller by several inches, so the impressive breadth of his chest was in proportion. Randolph was entirely in proportion, too—just on a more mundane, less godlike scale.
That, Mary inwardly admitted, more or less summed up the difference between the half brothers. Not just between Ryder and Randolph, but also Randolph’s younger brothers, Christopher—Kit—and Godfrey. Ryder was the only child from his father’s first marriage; Randolph, Kit, and Godfrey were the sons of the late marquess’s second wife, Lavinia. There was a sister, too—Eustacia, known as Stacie. Mary knew them all socially, but not well; she had yet to learn all she wished given she intended to marry into the family.
She was impatient to get on, to move forward with her campaign to convince Randolph to offer for her hand. She’d spent the earlier months of this Season determinedly examining all the potential gentlemen; once she’d realized Randolph matched her requirements perfectly, she’d turned her attention to poking and prodding her older sister Henrietta into wearing the necklace a Scottish deity known as The Lady had gifted to the Cynster sisters. The Lady was connected to the family via Catriona, the wife of Mary’s cousin Richard. Catriona was a principal, and apparently well-favored, priestess of the deity. Through Catriona, The Lady had decreed that successive Cynster female cousins should wear the necklace to assist them in finding their true heroes. As a group, they’d long ago defined their “one true hero” as the man who would sweep them off their feet into love and wedded bliss. Although initially all had been skeptical of the necklace’s power, it had wrought its magic, first for Heather, then Eliza, then Angelica, and even though she’d persisted in not believing in it at all, most recently for Henrietta.
The necklace of amethyst beads and gold links from which a tapered rose quartz pendant hung had been passed on to Mary; it now circled her neck, the crystal pendant warm between her breasts.
And she believed—with all her heart and considerable will believed—that it would work for her.
But to help matters along, she’d already done her homework, studied the field, and identified Randolph Cavanaugh as her one—the perfect husband for her. All she really needed the necklace to do was to confirm her choice.
She’d received the necklace two nights ago, just before Henrietta’s engagement ball; Henrietta had clasped it about Mary’s throat and she’d been wearing it ever since. The previous evening had been the first opportunity she’d had to speak with Randolph while wearing the necklace; they’d both attended Lady Cornwallis’s soiree, but while she’d spent more than half an hour in the same circle as Randolph, chatting and conversing, she, at least, had sensed . . . nothing specific.