The Secret Mistress Read online

  The Earl of Heyward would not, Miss Pratt’s voice answered very clearly and promptly in her head. Angeline ignored it.

  “This is to be a waltz,” she said, “and I am happy to be able to say that I am allowed to dance it. And I am free.” She smiled at him with deliberately exaggerated coquetry.

  “My heart would have been smitten with dreadfully negative emotions if you had not been either or both,” he said, his eyelids drooped over his eyes in their customary way—though his eyes were keen enough beneath them. And they were laughing. “I would have felt obliged to challenge every patroness of Almack’s to … ah, not pistols at dawn. That would have been unsporting. Fans at dawn? I hear they can do dreadful damage when slapped across a man’s wrist, and the ladies would have an advantage over me in that I have never practiced dueling with a fan. However, it is now unnecessary for me to put my life and wrists at risk. You will waltz with me, Lady Angeline?”

  “Oh, I will,” she said. “It is my favorite dance in the whole world, you know.”

  “And Miss Goddard,” he said, looking beyond Angeline as he offered his hand. “May I prevail upon you to reserve the first set after supper for me? I shall be devastated beyond all hope of resuscitation if I must return home tonight without having danced with the two loveliest ladies in the room.”

  Angeline turned her head and smiled with genuine amusement at Miss Goddard. Would she say yes? Angeline hoped so, absurd as Lord Windrow was. It was really too, too bad that she had sat here all evening without partners. Did gentlemen not have eyes in their heads? Even if the blue of her gown would be far more effective if it were brighter?

  “Thank you, Lord Windrow,” Miss Goddard said. “That would be delightful.”

  She spoke with cool courtesy. It was impossible to know if she really was delighted or not. Perhaps she liked being a spectator at a ball rather than a participant, though it was hard to imagine.

  Oh, Angeline thought as she was led away onto the floor, she had wanted to have a good talk with Miss Goddard. She had wanted to pour her heart out to her. She wanted to be Miss Goddard’s friend, though she had no idea why. They were as different as night and day. Miss Goddard must think her horribly giddy and empty-headed. She wanted to prove her wrong if she could. She wanted to learn from her. She wanted …

  She wanted actually to find some dark, remote corner and bawl her eyes out. But that would be pure foolishness and would make her all red-eyed and ugly.

  There was no sign of the Earl of Heyward. Yes, there was. He was sitting on a love seat close to the supper room doors in conversation with Lady Winifred Wragge, who had the brightest red hair Angeline had ever seen, together with green eyes that slanted upward slightly at the outer corners and a complexion that reminded one of peaches and cream. She was also—of course—small and dainty. He was bending slightly toward her, giving her the whole of his attention, as he always did with a partner, and she was giving him all of hers in return.

  Well.

  Angeline turned the full force of her very happiest smile upon Lord Windrow, who was looking lazily back, apparently more amused than ever.

  “Is this not an absolutely wonderful evening?” she asked.

  “It is so wonderful, my fair one,” he said, “that I am lost for a word that is more wonderful than wonderful.”

  She laughed.

  “I do tend to exaggerate,” she admitted.

  “I do not,” he assured her, giving her the full benefit of his bedroom eyes. Well, perhaps not the full effect. They were still filled with amusement.

  She laughed again.

  He waltzed divinely. And that was no exaggeration at all.

  She could not have been happier.

  Chapter 13

  BETTY ARRIVED IN Angeline’s dressing room the following morning with watery eyes, a reddened nose, and a voice that a baritone might have envied if only there had been some volume to it. And she admitted when asked—it was self-evident really—that her head was pounding and she felt wretched.

  Angeline promptly sent her back to bed with the command that she stay there all day and not even dream of getting up even tomorrow unless she was feeling well again. And then she sent a direction to the kitchen that her maid be dosed and coddled with anything and everything the cook could devise that might soothe a head cold and all its attendant ills.

  Then she was left with a bit of a problem, for Rosalie was not coming until the afternoon, yet Angeline wanted to go out this morning. She could have taken one of the other maids, of course, but the housekeeper would look at her with long-suffering reproach if she suggested it. And she was certainly not going to ask Tresham himself to escort her, even supposing he was still at home. It would take too long to send for Ferdinand, even supposing he was home.

  She would go out alone, then. She was not going far. No harm would come to her, and it was unlikely anyone she knew would see her and report the indiscretion to her brother.

  She walked alone to Lady Sanford’s, then, and found to her great delight that that lady was from home but Miss Goddard was able to receive her. It was Miss Goddard she had come to see. She had conceived an idea during a night of restless, fitful sleep, and it had restored her spirits considerably.

  “This is an unexpected pleasure,” Miss Goddard said, getting to her feet as Angeline was shown into a small parlor.

  “I hope it is a pleasure and not an imposition,” Angeline said, taking the seat Miss Goddard indicated and removing her gloves. “It is just that I realized last evening when I saw you hidden in the shadows of the ballroom that I had been hoping ever since first meeting you that we could be friends. Which is absurd, I know, when you are an intelligent, well-educated, well-read lady while I—”

  She stopped abruptly.

  “While you—?” Miss Goddard raised her eyebrows.

  “I chatter,” Angeline said. “Constantly. About nothing at all. I cannot seem to help it. My governesses—all of them—told me I had nothing but fluff in my head and that it revealed itself whenever I opened my mouth. And I never made any particular effort to learn from them. I would sometimes try, but my mind would wander after a few moments. I hated poetry and drama in particular. Miss Pratt used to read a poem or a play out loud, giving very deliberate emphasis to every word, and she would stop after every few lines in order to point out all the literary and intellectual merits contained in them. By the time she got to the end of a poem or speech, I had no idea how it had started and was almost screaming with boredom.”

  “So would I have been,” Miss Goddard surprised her by saying. “What a perfectly dreadful way to teach. I really do not believe I would have liked your Miss Pratt. I suppose she was a very worthy lady.”

  There was a twinkle in her eye.

  “Oh, very,” Angeline said. “There was not a fault to be found in her. Which made my behavior toward her that much more reprehensible. I played the most awful tricks on her. I put a huge daddy longlegs of a spider between her sheets one evening, and her screams when she went to bed must have woken everyone in the village a mile away. I felt ashamed of that one afterward, though, for I knew she had an unnatural fear of spiders.”

  “It was probably not your finest moment,” Miss Goddard said. “But it does sound as if you were severely provoked. Learning ought to be exciting. Reading ought to be. How can one possibly enjoy it, though, when one is forced to stop every few lines to listen to someone else’s interpretation of what has been written? Especially the interpretation of someone worthy.”

  Angeline laughed, and so did Miss Goddard. But she had expressed very similar ideas about learning to those Lord Heyward had expressed at Vauxhall. Could learning ever be exciting?

  “Did you want to discuss Paradise Lost?” Miss Goddard asked. “It is some time since I read it, but it left a lasting impression upon me and I would be happy to share my thoughts with you.”

  She would like it of all things, Angeline thought. She would really love to have a friend with whom she could ta
lk about sensible, intelligent things. But it was not why she had made a point of coming here today. Today she had something else to say—something noble. Today she would do something for someone else, she would be unselfish, and then she would feel better. She needed to feel better. She had spent so many wakeful hours last night telling herself that she had enjoyed herself at the Hicks ball more than she had enjoyed herself on any other occasion in her life that her head had ached with all the happiness, and so had her heart. After this visit she could feel truly happy.

  “I really came to talk about the Earl of Heyward,” she said, leaning slightly forward in her chair.

  “Oh.” Miss Goddard sat slightly back in hers. “Are you regretting that you refused him?”

  “No, not at all,” Angeline said, her heart plummeting nevertheless to take up residence in the soles of her shoes. “I want to ask you a question. You must not feel obliged to answer, for of course it is impertinent of me and absolutely none of my concern. But all this business of ton alliances and marriages is horridly complicated, you know. Everyone wants to marry well, which means choosing and setting one’s cap at the most eligible … other. I will not say man, because it works both ways, though that did not really occur to me until after I had come to town and made my come-out. I had always thought that it was only we ladies who would be hoping to find the perfect husband, but of course that was shortsighted of me because men have to marry too, for a variety of reasons, and they also want to marry the very best candidate. And the very best, for both men and women, is not necessarily the person they like best. It is often whom their family likes best, or who society suggests is best, or who has the most illustrious title and lineage or the most money, provided it has not been acquired in business or commerce, of course, for then it is tainted by vulgarity, just as if money were not simply money. No one even thinks about love or the fact that the two people have to live together after they marry and make the best of what often turns out to be not a very great bargain at all even if it pleases all the rest of the world. People can be terribly foolish, can they not?”

  “Far too frequently,” Miss Goddard agreed. “What is your question, Lady Angeline?”

  “Well, it is very impertinent,” Angeline said. “But I shall ask it anyway since it is what I came here to do. Do you love Lord Heyward, Miss Goddard? I mean, do you love him in a way that makes you ache here when you think that perhaps you will never have him?” She tapped a closed fist over her heart.

  Miss Goddard sat farther back in her chair and set her arms along the armrests. She looked perfectly relaxed—except that the fore- and middle fingers of her right hand were beating out a fast little tattoo.

  “Why would you ask such a question?” she asked. “We are friends. We have been for years.”

  “But would you marry him if he asked?” Angeline asked her.

  Miss Goddard opened her mouth once to speak but closed it again. She started once more after a short silence.

  “We once had an agreement,” she said, “that we would marry each other at some time in the distant future if nothing happened in the meanwhile to change our minds. Neither of us felt drawn to marriage at the time, though we both recognized that eventually we might see the advisability or the necessity of entering the marital state rather than remaining single. We were seekers of knowledge at the time, two earnest young people who had not yet felt the pull of the world beyond the pages of a book or the learned confines of Cambridge or the exciting workings of our own minds. Something did happen to change our minds, of course. Edward’s brother died and he became the earl in his place. It made all the difference, you know. Not to who he is, but to what. And the what is important in the real world.”

  “But why?” Angeline asked her. “He does not need to marry money. At least, I do not believe he does, or Tresham would not even have allowed him to speak to me yesterday. He does not need to marry position. All society really demands of him is that he marry respectably. You are eminently respectable, Miss Goddard. You are a lady, and you are refined and sensible and intelligent. And you are his friend.”

  Miss Goddard smiled.

  “Lady Angeline,” she said, “you refused Edward yesterday. Are you trying to matchmake for him today?”

  Angeline looked down at her hands. It was precisely what she was doing. Though not so much for him as for her new friend, whom she liked exceedingly well. She dearly loved Martha and Maria and hoped they would remain her close friends for the rest of her life, but Miss Goddard was the friend she had always yearned to have. She could not understand quite why it was so. It just was. And it hurt her heart to see her friend a wallflower at balls, unseen and unappreciated when she was the equal of anyone and the superior of most. She was Angeline’s superior.

  “It just struck me,” she said, “that in all likelihood you love him and he loves you and yet he was forced into offering for me. Not literally forced, I suppose, but definitely maneuvered by what society expects of him. And by his family too, even though they are very pleasant people. I believe they actually like me and genuinely believed that I would be the best possible wife for him. But it is you he ought to marry. It is you he must marry. When he strolled about the ballroom with you last evening after supper—after you danced with Lord Windrow—you looked very right together. As if you belonged with each other.”

  “He certainly thought you looked very happy,” Miss Goddard said.

  “Oh,” Angeline said. “I was happy. Quite blissfully so. I have never enjoyed an evening so well in my life.”

  She looked down at her hands again. And instead of picking up the conversation, Miss Goddard let it rest. The silence stretched. Angeline looked up again after what must have been a full minute.

  “I just want to be your friend,” she said, “if that does not strike you as being too utterly absurd. I thought we might walk together in the park occasionally or go to the library together or spend a little while in each other’s company if we are attending the same entertainment. But I also want you to know that I will not find it awkward if you wish to encourage Lord Heyward’s suit. I will not feel you are somehow betraying me—if you accept my friendship, that is. Indeed, I would be very happy for you. I—Oh, dear, I have no right to be saying any of this. And the very idea that you would wish to be my friend—”

  “Lady Angeline.” Miss Goddard leaned forward suddenly and reached out a hand in Angeline’s direction. “I grew up in Cambridge with my father and my brother—my mother died when I was six. I grew up surrounded by men. In many ways it was a wonderful upbringing. I was allowed to read anything I wanted and to listen to endlessly stimulating conversations and drink in knowledge to my heart’s content. I knew no girls of my own age—I never went to school. Now I am here with my aunt, too old to mingle easily with girls of your age, too young to settle into a resigned spinsterhood. I am not poor or of lowly birth, but neither am I really a member of the ton except as the niece of Lady Sanford. I have never had a come-out. I do not have a bright and sparkling personality to be noticed when I do mingle in society. I do not wish to paint an abject picture of myself. I have always been very content with my lot in life. I have been privileged in many ways. Although I did not have governesses or go to school, I believe my own education to have been an excellent one. It was certainly one that always excited me. But Lady Angeline, I believe I have always longed for a female friend.”

  “Even one with a head full of fluff?” Angeline asked her.

  “Your governesses ought to have been boiled in oil,” Miss Goddard said.

  They both laughed.

  “I like you exceedingly well,” Miss Goddard said. “If I wish to consort with intellectual giants I will return to my father’s home and consort to my heart’s content. I would like to have a friend, even if we must discuss Paradise Lost.”

  And they both laughed again—at just the moment the parlor door opened and the Earl of Heyward was ushered in by a servant careless enough not to have come first to see if Miss G
oddard was home.

  He stood arrested in the doorway.

  Angeline’s heart leapt up into her throat and then dived again for the soles of her shoes. It was a most disconcerting feeling. She stood up—as did Miss Goddard, who crossed the room toward him, both hands extended.

  “Edward,” she said, “I have been enjoying a conversation with Lady Angeline Dudley, as you can see. We have both been agreeing that the Hicks ball last evening was a splendid event. Indeed, Lady Angeline believes that she has never enjoyed herself more in her life.”

  Angeline smiled brightly.

  “It was indeed a fine squeeze,” he said stiffly, keeping his eyes upon Miss Goddard. “I am sorry, Eunice. If I had known you had company, I would have gone away. I will do so now and come back another time.”

  “No,” Angeline said, “I was just leaving. You must sit down, Lord Heyward. Not that it is my place to offer you a seat in Miss Goddard’s house—well, Lady Sanford’s house, but she is from home at the moment and so it is Miss Goddard’s place to tell guests where they may sit and if they may sit. But you must not feel obliged to curtail your visit just because I am here. I have stayed far too long already, and I daresay Miss Goddard is wishing me to perdition. I shall … go.”

  “Lady Angeline came alone,” Miss Goddard said, looking only at the earl. “Her maid is indisposed. I shall send my own maid with her.”

  “Oh, no—” Angeline began.

  Lord Heyward fixed her with his very blue gaze. It looked ever so slightly hostile.

  “Lady Angeline,” he said, “it will be my pleasure to escort you home. I am surprised that the Duke of Tresham and Lady Palmer allowed you to leave Dudley House alone.”

  “Oh, they did not know,” she said, “and I have no intention of telling them. They would scold for a fortnight. I am quite capable of walking alone, however. I have not noticed footpads lurking on every corner, have you?”