The Secret Mistress Page 11

  She almost froze with horror. He did think she was flirting with him.

  She was not really. Was she?

  Flirting was such a trivial thing.

  “No,” she said. “No. Absolutely not. I was told that you had requested the opening set with me. I could have said no, but I had no reason whatsoever to do so even though I did not know at the time who the Earl of Heyward was. Nothing was said about courtship. In fact, Tresham—”

  But she could hardly tell him that Tresham had called him a dry old stick, could she?

  “I am sorry,” he said. “I have embarrassed you.”

  “No, you have not,” she lied, and she closed her eyes briefly so that she could concentrate upon the sensation of having her hand enclosed in his.

  Cool night air. Warm, steady, very male hand. The most delicious contrast in the whole wide world.

  And then she felt her hand being raised until it was against his lips.

  Angeline, eyes still closed, thought she might well die. Of happiness.

  “I must return you to the ballroom,” he said.

  Must you?

  But she did not say the words aloud. Thank heaven! She had been quite forward enough tonight as it was. She got to her feet and drew her hand from his to straighten her skirt.

  “This has been a memorable day,” she said brightly as she looked up to find him standing only a few inches away from her. “Has it been as happy a one for you as it has for me? Despite the fact that you have had to dance? I will never forget a single moment of it.”

  “It has been a happy day,” he said.

  She tipped her head to one side. He had spoken with a remarkable lack of enthusiasm.

  “But the happiest part is that it is almost over?” she said, smiling ruefully.

  “You are pleased to put words in my mouth,” he said. “I would not be so ill-mannered as to suggest any such thing, Lady Angeline.”

  But he had not denied it.

  “I hope,” she said, and her voice sounded breathless in her own ears, “it will be a happier day in retrospect than it has been in the living. I do hope so.”

  And she whisked herself about and strode back along the path in the direction of the terrace and the ballroom beyond, her hands clutching the sides of her gown. She could almost hear Miss Pratt calling after her to stop striding like a man and remember that she was a lady.

  She did not want him to catch up to her and offer his arm. She did not want to touch him again.

  Not yet.

  She would suffocate.

  Tresham and Ferdinand had both used to tell her that she never did anything by halves—whether it was galloping her pony hell-bent for leather, diving into the lake at the deepest part as though she meant to dive right down to China, or climbing the highest tree as though to reach the clouds. It had always been said with a certain degree of affectionate admiration.

  They would not admire her now.

  For she did not fall in love by halves either.

  She was an absolutely hopeless case, in fact.

  No, not hopeless.

  One day he would love her too.

  Passionately.

  If one was going to dream, one might as well dream big.

  Chapter 8

  EDWARD ENJOYED MORE than half a day of relative freedom. He rode early in Hyde Park again with a group of friends—there were five of them this time—and encountered no one he did not wish to see. No one with the last name of Dudley, in other words. He spent an hour or so in the study with his secretary, looking over some important papers, dictating a few letters, deciding which of a flood of invitations he ought to accept and which he would decline, with regrets. He attended the House and even spoke up during one of the debates that interested him. He was to meet Headley and another friend later at White’s, where they were to dine together. They would probably linger there over their wine and their port until it was time to return home to bed.

  It was only a relative freedom, of course, for his mind would not remain focused just upon the day’s business.

  He must find time to call upon Eunice soon. He could not help feeling that he had abandoned her last evening when Windrow had asked her to dance. He ought to have objected, to have put a firm stop to the man’s insolence. Not that he owned Eunice, of course, or had any claim upon her at all, in fact. She would undoubtedly have been vexed with him if he had interfered. And she was still insisting that he marry someone more suited to his station, even though she had admitted that the ending of their agreement had left her feeling unsettled.

  Dancing with Windrow had actually had a positive effect upon her fortunes. She had had partners for each set afterward. It was true that she professed to despise dancing and all the frivolities of ton entertainments, but even so, she surely did not enjoy being a wallflower either.

  Anyway, he must call upon her.

  But even apart from that obligation his sense of freedom was only a very temporary one. For he must still marry. He must still choose a bride. Perhaps Eunice. Definitely not Lady Angeline Dudley.

  He could not simply dismiss the latter from his mind, however. She kept popping into it at any odd moment of the day. It was usually in a thoroughly negative way. She was bold, talkative, frivolous. Good Lord, she had talked with great enthusiasm about her thirteen new bonnets. But he was forced to admit—grudgingly—that she could also be amusing, especially on the subject of her own shortcomings and foibles. And he had had the feeling with the hat story that her chosen topic had not been an idle one. He had suspected that she was trying to cheer him up, that she was deliberately trying to coax a smile out of him.

  Which only meant, of course, that she saw him as an old sobersides, to quote Maurice’s habitual description of him.

  Why had she persuaded him to take her outside, then, first onto the terrace and then down into the garden? She had denied being instructed to court his favor. And why would Tresham give such instructions anyway—or countenance Lady Palmer’s giving them? Tresham despised him.

  He tried not to think about her. He tried to enjoy the illusion of freedom offered by the day.

  But he kept remembering, more than anything else, that moment when she had set her hand upon his. Or rather, he remembered the moment immediately following that one, when he had been assailed by a powerful and totally unexpected tidal wave of lust. He ought not to have been surprised. He had experienced it before—in the taproom of the Rose and Crown Inn. And he had acted without even a trace of his usual caution and discretion. He had first turned his hand beneath hers, then closed his fingers about it, and then raised it to his mouth.

  It was a dashed good thing she was an innocent, albeit a flirtatious one. She could not otherwise have failed to notice …

  Fortunately—very fortunately—his mind had got a grip on his body soon enough for him to be struck by the oddity of her flirting with him. He was not the sort of man with whom women flirted. Not women like Lady Angeline Dudley, anyway. Actually, not any kind of woman. Even Eunice had never flirted with him. And he had realized that Lady Angeline could have only one possible motive for flirting.

  He still believed it to have been her motive, even though she had denied it quite vehemently, and it made no real sense anyway. But for very pride’s sake she had been forced to deny it.

  Every time Lady Angeline Dudley popped into his head—and it was far too often—he firmly quelled the thought. It was too deuced uncomfortable, and she was too deuced … Well, if he tried to think of a type of lady he most definitely did not want to marry, she would be at the very top of the list. Head and shoulders above every other type.

  He would meet someone else even if Eunice would not have him. There were already a few distinct possibilities, in fact—Miss Smith-Benn, Lady Fiona Robson, Miss Marvell, for example.

  He enjoyed his day of freedom as far as he was able, then—his partial day, that was.

  He arrived home late in the afternoon and was informed by his butler that his grandmot
her was taking tea in the drawing room. Edward went up there to see her. She was with his mother and Lorraine. Susan was sitting on her lap. The child wriggled down, though, when the door opened and came flying across the room, arms spread wide, face alight with welcome.

  “Uncle Edward!” she cried in her very precise three-year-old voice.

  Edward scooped her up, and she cupped his cheeks with her hands, puckered her lips, and kissed him on the mouth.

  “You said you would take me for an ice the first nice day,” she said.

  Ah. Cupboard love.

  “And so I did.” He grinned at her.

  “It is a nice day,” she said. “Your whiskers are rough.”

  “So what should I do?” he asked her. “Take you for an ice or ring for my valet to come and shave me?”

  “Ice,” she said.

  “Five minutes, then,” he told her. “Give me a moment to greet your mama and your grandmama and great-grandmama.”

  He set her on the floor and bent to kiss his grandmother’s cheek.

  “You grow more handsome every day, Edward,” she said. “Your grandfather and I would have attended the Tresham ball last evening, but doubtless we would both have fallen asleep within the first hour. I am delighted to hear that you danced both the opening and the after-supper sets with Lady Angeline Dudley, though apparently you did not dance either one. That is all to the good as you had more opportunity to engage her in conversation and get to know her. Adelaide tells me she is a handsome girl, and Lorraine tells me you think her the most beautiful creature you have ever seen.”

  Edward winced. An exact quote, if he was not mistaken.

  “I enjoyed the evening, Grandmama,” he said. “I did have other partners too, though.”

  She waved a dismissive hand.

  “I have already invited Lady Palmer to take tea with your grandpapa and me tomorrow afternoon,” she said, “and Lord Fenner, her brother, at Lorraine’s suggestion. I used to know their grandmother on their mother’s side, you know, though she was older than I. Lady Palmer is to bring Lady Angeline Dudley.”

  Edward knew what was coming with a dull certainty.

  “Your mother and Lorraine will be there,” his grandmother said. “And you must come too, Edward. You will wish to take Lady Angeline for a drive in the park afterward if the weather is fine, as I daresay it will be. A courtship must be pursued vigorously, especially when the lady is so very eligible.”

  Edward opened his mouth to explain that there was no courtship and closed it again. His mother was smiling. So was Lorraine. And Susan was tugging at one tail of his coat.

  “Come on, Uncle Edward,” she said.

  “Susan,” Lorraine said reproachfully, but he held up a staying hand.

  “It seems that immediate action is what most ladies expect and demand,” he said. “We will go, Susan. Immediately, or as soon as you are fit for the outdoors.”

  Lorraine got to her feet to fetch outdoor clothes for her daughter, who was now clinging to Edward’s hand and bouncing up and down in her eagerness.

  And it struck Edward unexpectedly and for the first time ever that it might be great fun to have children of his own.

  But his sense of freedom had fled all too quickly and too soon. He had not put his grandmother right on her misconception when he had had the opportunity, and somehow it seemed that it was already too late to do so.

  Well, a tea, followed by a brief drive in the park, was not exactly a declaration of an intent to marry the girl, was it?

  But it felt as if the noose was tightening.

  THE DAY FOLLOWING Angeline’s come-out ball was really rather an exciting one even if it was somewhat anticlimactic. But, as Cousin Rosalie had explained when she left the ball at some ridiculously late hour—or early, depending upon which end one looked at it from—Angeline would need a quiet day in which to recover from all the excitement and exertion, and so would she.

  Enough bouquets arrived to fill the ballroom over again if she had felt inclined, Angeline thought. But, disappointingly, there were no flowers from Lord Heyward. And no visit from him either, though she did have one from the Marquess of Exwich, who came in the afternoon to offer her marriage.

  It was excruciatingly embarrassing to be forced to go down to the library, as Tresham insisted she do after he had been closeted with the marquess for all of half an hour while Angeline sat upstairs, all unsuspecting, reading one of her new library books. She had to listen to the proposal in person and refuse it in person. Tresham had flatly refused to do it for her.

  She had better get used to it, he told her afterward, having the nerve to sound bored. It was likely to become a frequent occurrence until she put a stop to it by accepting one of her suitors. And he would be damned before he would gain a reputation as a tyrant by refusing the serious offers of perfectly eligible gentlemen on behalf of his sister.

  She would put a stop to it when the right man came along, she told him. But she did not tell him that she already knew who the right man was. He would merely fix her with one of his looks and pass a remark of the dry old stick variety. When Cousin Rosalie had commented at the end of last evening upon the gratifying fact that only the Earl of Heyward had requested and been granted two sets with her charge, Tresham had fixed her with his stare and then spoken his mind.

  “Devil take it, Rosalie,” he had said. “I hope a sister of mine can do considerably better than Heyward. Is she to yawn her way through the rest of her life? Lockjaw might set in after the first fortnight or so.”

  Which he really had no right to say. Did he even know the Earl of Heyward? Besides, it was her life, was it not? No one was asking him to marry Lord Heyward.

  The morning was exciting even apart from all the bouquets from last evening’s admirers—or admirers of her fortune anyway. For she went to Hookham’s Library with Maria and Martha, and all three of them took out a subscription and borrowed books, a lengthy process that involved a great deal of talking and laughing. And then they rounded the corner of one high bookcase and came face-to-face with Miss Goddard, who appeared to be making her choice of books with considerably more serious intent. But she smiled warmly at Angeline and consented to be introduced to Maria and Martha, and then, at Angeline’s suggestion, the four of them proceeded farther along the street to a tearoom, where they spent a whole hour drinking tea and talking.

  Perhaps she ought not to have chosen Martha and Maria as friends, she thought ruefully during that hour as she looked from one to the other of them. Although they did not really look alike, both were small and fair and dainty and exquisitely pretty. She must look like a gypsy in contrast. Not that she had anything against gypsies. Indeed, there had been a time when she almost seriously considered running away to join a group of them who settled for a while a mile or two from Acton in their gaily painted caravans with their brightly colored clothes and their lively, toe-tapping music. But her papa would have come in hot pursuit if she had done so, and though he had never once lifted a hand to her, she was wary of provoking his wrath. His tongue was as lethal as Tresham’s was now.

  Anyway, she liked her two new friends, their looks notwithstanding, and they appeared to like her. They had mulled over yesterday’s triumphs while at the library together and discussed the merits and demerits of their various dancing partners. Maria thought Lord Heyward a little on the dull side, though perfectly well bred. Angeline thought Mr. Griddles would be rather handsome if he did not appear to have twice as many teeth as he was supposed to have. Martha could talk only of Mr. Griddles, whose teeth as far as she was concerned were his finest asset, and Angeline had to admit that they were at least white.

  They had shared information about how many bouquets they had received this morning. Angeline had received the most, but she was quite willing to concede—even to be the first to suggest—that the reason was that it had been her come-out ball.

  Now with Miss Goddard their conversation was altogether less giddy. They talked about books. Angeline a
nd her friends favored novels, but only if they had happy endings. They were all agreed upon that.

  “I can tolerate soaking a dozen handkerchiefs while I am reading a book,” Maria said on behalf of them all, “but I absolutely cannot abide weeping at the end unless it is with happiness. What is the point of sad stories? They ought not to be allowed. Or there ought at least to be a warning on the covers, and then no one would bother reading them and getting depressed by them.”

  Miss Goddard also read novels, but not often. When she did, she also preferred a happy ending provided it was a believable one and not of the happily-ever-after variety. She preferred reading that was instructional and educational, however, on a subject that made her think, that stretched her mind, that told her something interesting about life and the world that she had not known before.

  She ought to have been an utter bore, Angeline thought. And she ought to be detestable for other reasons—not least the fact that she was Lord Heyward’s friend and that he called her Eunice. Her father was a Cambridge don, for heaven’s sake. She spoke quietly and with very precise diction. She never giggled, and when she smiled, it was with quiet warmth rather than with a bright sparkle.

  Angeline actually liked her. And she hung upon her every word, encouraging her to talk more and more about the books she read. She would wager that Miss Goddard talked to Lord Heyward about books. It was no wonder he liked her so much.

  Did he do more than like her?

  Did he love her? It would not be at all surprising.

  “You were very kind last evening,” she said, “to converse with Lord Windrow at the supper table and then to dance with him. He is very silly. I daresay Lord Heyward told you what happened on the road to London a few weeks ago. He was obliging enough to insist that Lord Windrow behave like a gentleman after he had started to behave more like a rake.”

  Martha and Maria, both of whom knew the story, giggled.

  “Kindness had nothing to do with my behavior last night,” Miss Goddard assured her. “I could see as soon as we joined you that you were perfectly capable of handling Lord Windrow’s sort of gallantry. He is silly. It is a good word to describe him. He is also mildly amusing. Must I confess that I rather enjoyed dancing with him and matching wits with him? I had only ever been able to observe rakish gentlemen from afar before last evening.”