The Secret Mistress Page 5

  It would seem, then, that her indiscreet behavior at the Rose and Crown was nothing unusual. How well did she know any of those men? She certainly had not arrived with any of them. And someone, it seemed, would be annoyed if he knew she was here alone. As well he might be, whoever he was, poor devil.

  Well, this time, Edward decided firmly, he was not going to get involved. If she did not know how to behave, and clearly she did not, it was not his concern—even if she did look slender and lithe and very much as though she might have been born in a saddle. And even if when she smiled she made one forget that it was not a bright, sunny morning.

  He felt rather hot and ruffled, he realized. What if she had seen him? She might have recognized him and hailed him. It would have been a ghastly breach of etiquette.

  “That,” Ambrose said, having refrained from answering George’s question until they had moved past and out of earshot, “is a riding hat. At least, I assume it is since it is on the lady’s head. And if it were a bird’s nest, it would be infinitely more tidy, would it not?”

  He and George snorted with mirth.

  “A hat,” George said. “I do believe you are right, Ambie. Perhaps it would not be such a monstrosity if it were dry.”

  Edward had hardly noticed the hat the lady wore. But he was about to be given a second chance to observe it. There was the sudden thunder of hooves from behind them, and before they could move to one side or take any other defensive action, five horses and riders went galloping past at full tilt, spraying water and mud indiscriminately in all directions, except over themselves. And then a sixth a decent interval behind the others—the groom.

  Second in line was the only lady who had braved the weather this morning, whooping with joyful abandon and laughing with wild glee, just as if she had never in her life heard of feminine decorum—as perhaps she had not.

  Her hat, glorious in its profusion of multicolored feathers culled from birds long deceased, bounced on her head in time with her movements and somehow stayed on.

  It was perhaps the hat, Edward thought belatedly, that had caused him to mistake her at first for a courtesan.

  He glanced down at his mud-spattered buff riding breeches and black boots—both new just last week and immaculately clean this morning. He flicked one gloved finger over his cheek to dislodge something wet that clung there.

  “Who is she?” he asked, though he was not sure he wanted to know.

  But neither of his friends had seen her before.

  Edward really did not want to risk coming face-to-face with her, whoever she was.

  “It is time I returned home to get ready for the House,” he said.

  His stomach answered with a return of the slight queasiness. He turned his mount to leave Rotten Row.

  A whooping laugh blew past behind him together with a flying horse and rider. She was galloping back up the Row, Edward presumed without looking around to confirm his guess. It sounded as if she was leading the pack this time.

  He felt more spatters of mud pelting against the back of his coat.

  And then he sensed something and was unwise enough to turn his head.

  She had stopped her horse. She had done it so abruptly, it seemed, that it was rearing up. But she brought it under control with an ease that could only have been born of long practice. Her companions were thundering off into the distance, apart from the groom, who was altogether more vigilant.

  Her eyes were fixed upon Edward, wide with recognition. Her lips were parting in a smile.

  Oh, Lord!

  At any moment now she was going to hail him, and there was enough of a distance between them that at least a dozen other riders, including his friends, were bound to hear.

  Edward inclined his head curtly to her, touched his whip to the brim of his hat, and rode away.

  She did not call after him.

  Devil take it, she was in London. He was bound to run into her again, he supposed. Perhaps even this evening. Perhaps she would be at that infernal Tresham ball.

  He frowned. This was not a day destined to bring him any pleasure. It had already started badly.

  Chapter 4

  ANGELINE’S PRESENTATION TO the queen had passed without incident. There had been no embarrassing encounters with the train of her gown, and she had met and chatted with other young ladies who were also making their come-out this year. She had high hopes of making friends of some of them.

  She had never had a close friend, which seemed like an abject admission to make, even to herself, though she had never felt dreadfully deprived. Her two brothers had been her playmates—and her adored heroes—when she was a child. When she was a girl, she had known all her neighbors at Acton, including those of her own age, and had been on amiable terms with all of them. But of course they all stood slightly in awe of her because she was the daughter and later the sister of the Duke of Tresham, with the result that she had never had a bosom bow, someone with whom to chat and giggle and in whom to confide all the deepest, darkest secrets of her young heart.

  Now, among her peers, perhaps she would find such young friends.

  And beaux.

  All the men in the vicinity of Acton, from the age of fifteen to eighty, were far too much in awe of her. Perhaps they all knew Tresham’s reputation too well and chose to safeguard their teeth rather than appear too friendly toward his sister.

  Oh, she was glad, glad, glad that she was here in London at last, that she had made her curtsy to the queen, and that she was dressing for her come-out ball. She could hardly contain her exuberance.

  She was already dressed, in fact, and Betty had just put the finishing touches to her very elaborate coiffure. She would not have thought it possible to arrange so many curls and ringlets on her head in such a pleasing arrangement. And she was confident that they would remain where they were. She shook her head gingerly and experimentally, but they did not cascade down about her shoulders. There was, of course, a whole arsenal of pins hidden away under them.

  Angeline got to her feet and looked at herself critically in the pier glass. She looked, she supposed, as well as she possibly could look considering two massive and unavoidable facts: first that she was compelled to wear white, and second that she was a great dark beanpole of a girl. She had had the misfortune to take after her father rather than her mother in looks, as had both her brothers. But that fact was fine for them. They were men.

  Nothing was going to dampen her spirits tonight, though.

  Nothing.

  She took the ivory fan Betty was holding out to her, opened it, and fluttered it before her face.

  “Will I do?” she asked.

  “You look ever so lovely, my lady,” Betty said. She was not being obsequious. She was just as likely to say the opposite if that was what she thought. Betty often did not approve of what her mistress chose to wear.

  Angeline gazed into her own reflected eyes.

  Who was he?

  Her heart had performed a triple somersault when she had spotted him this morning as she went thundering past him up Rotten Row.

  There he was.

  At last.

  Looking neat and lithe in the saddle, and just a little mud-spattered.

  She had been about to call out to him. But, just as he had done at that inn, he had inclined his head to her, showing that at least he recognized her, and had ridden away without a word.

  His behavior had been perfectly correct, of course. They still had not been formally presented. He had saved her from the horrible faux pas of calling out to a stranger in a very public place. Tresham would have had her head if he had ever heard about it. Even Ferdinand would have been annoyed, though by that time Ferdie was almost at the other end of the Row in a race with his friends. None of them were close enough to answer the question that had burned in her mind.

  Who was he?

  Angeline fanned her face a little faster before snapping the fan shut.

  Would she see him again?

  Would he be here ton
ight?

  She turned from the pier glass as a brisk knock sounded at the door. Betty answered it. Tresham and Ferdinand were standing out there, both tall and gorgeous in their black evening clothes with crisp white linen.

  Ferdinand was grinning.

  “We argued over who should come up for you, Angie,” he said, “and we ended up both coming. You look as fine as fivepence.”

  His eyes swept over her in what looked like genuine appreciation.

  “Thank you, Ferdie,” she said. “So do you.”

  He was twenty-one, one year down from Oxford, and well on his way to being as dedicated a rakehell as their brother—or so rumor had it, and Angeline did not doubt it. Neither did she doubt that he was wildly attractive to every female who set eyes upon him, and that he knew it.

  Tresham looked his habitual bored, handsome self.

  “Is this really our sister, Ferdinand,” he asked, probably rhetorically, “looking quite tame and civilized and, yes, very fine indeed?”

  One might wait a decade in vain for a compliment from Tresham. One ought to cherish one when it did come one’s way, then. But Angeline bristled instead.

  “Tame?” she said. “Civilized? Does that imply that I am usually wild and uncivilized? What do you know about me, Tresham? Before I came to town, I saw you on precisely two occasions after you were sixteen and I was eleven. And I would hardly misbehave during either Papa’s funeral or Mama’s, would I? You abandoned me when you left home so suddenly. All you knew about me afterward, presumably, was what you learned in the reports sent you by the various governesses you imposed upon me. And they all disapproved of me because I was not a perfect mouse of a young lady. What did they expect? What did you expect? I am a Dudley, after all. But I am not wild for all that. Or uncivilized.”

  Tresham regarded her steadily from his very dark, unreadable eyes.

  “That is better,” he said. “Now you have some color in your cheeks, Angeline, and are not unrelieved white from head to toe. Are you ready to go down? Or do you plan to make an entrance to your own ball after everyone else has arrived?”

  Ferdinand grinned and winked and offered his arm.

  Oh, she adored both brothers, Angeline thought as she took an arm of each and descended the staircase for the all-important duty of greeting the ball guests in the receiving line. She adored them even though she was constantly exasperated by them. She had heard much about them even though she had not seen a great deal of them during the past seven years—though Ferdinand had come home almost every school or university holiday, even if only for a few days. She had heard about the dangerous, reckless races, the fistfights, the mistresses, the duels, though that last applied only to Tresham. She had heard of two separate duels fought with pistols, in both of which Tresham’s opponent had shot first and missed before Tresham shot contemptuously in the air. And both duels had been over the other man’s wife, with whom Tresham was dallying. Fortunately, both duels were long over before Angeline heard about them. She was very disapproving of the cause, very proud that her brother had shot into the air rather than directly at a wronged husband, and very convinced that every nerve in her body had been shattered by the news and would never function properly again.

  Cousin Rosalie was waiting in the hall below and smiled at Angeline with approval and encouragement.

  “You really do look very distinguished, Angeline,” she said. “Other girls are swallowed up by white. You … command it.”

  Whatever that meant, Angeline thought ruefully. And she had noticed that Rosalie called her distinguished rather than pretty.

  She wondered suddenly how her mother would have described her tonight. Would she have called her fine, as Tresham and Ferdinand had done? Or distinguished, as Rosalie had done? Or lovely, as Betty had done? Or pretty? Or would she have frowned, as she had done in the past, at her daughter’s gangly height or at the extreme darkness of her hair and the indelicacy of her complexion? Or, as she had done once when Angeline was thirteen, at the fact that her eyebrows did not arch elegantly above her eyes?

  She had been in the middle of one of her increasingly rare stays at Acton Park at the time, even though Papa was already dead and therefore no longer to be avoided. Angeline had spent the whole of the subsequent week peering into mirrors, trying to arch her eyebrows the way Mama did. But when she had tried the new expression on her mother, Mama had told her she looked like a startled hare and warned her that she would have furrows in her brow before she was thirty if she was not careful.

  Perhaps her mother would have approved of her in white, Angeline thought. It was what she had almost always worn herself. Or perhaps not. Perhaps she would have seen more clearly than ever that Angeline in no way resembled herself and would have been unable to disguise her disappointment and her conviction that Angeline would never be the daughter she must have dreamed of. Although Angeline was no longer gangly, she was even taller than she had been at the age of thirteen. And her eyebrows would still not arch.

  But she was not going to grow maudlin over the hopelessness of her looks on this of all nights. She smiled dazzlingly at Rosalie without releasing her brothers’ arms, and they all made their way to the ballroom together.

  Its long length looked like an indoor garden, a luscious indoor garden, laden down as it was with white flowers—lilies, roses, daisies, chrysanthemums, among others—and green leaves and ferns. They were in banks about the perimeter of the room and circling the pillars. They hung in exuberant profusion from baskets on the walls. They were reflected in mirrors. The room was filled with their combined scents.

  The three large chandeliers had been on the floor for the past several days while every piece of silver and crystal had been polished and shined and dozens of new candles had been fitted in place. The candles had been lit now and the chandeliers hoisted up close to the gilded ceiling, which was painted with scenes from Greek mythology. The wall sconces had been filled with candles, which were also alight.

  The wood floor gleamed. The French windows along one long wall had been opened back so that guests could stroll on the lamp-lit terrace beyond. The orchestra members had already arranged their instruments on the dais at one end of the room. At the other end, the doors to the adjoining salon were open so that guests could help themselves to drinks and other refreshments from tables covered with crisp white cloths.

  It was all … overwhelming.

  Angeline had only ever attended informal dances in the drawing rooms of the more prosperous of her neighbors at home and a couple of assemblies at the village inn.

  She stepped alone into the ballroom and stood there, her hands clasped to her bosom, trying with all her might to resist the urge to weep.

  This was it. This was what she had longed for throughout the lonely years of her girlhood.

  Suddenly she felt lonelier than she had ever felt.

  And so excited she could scarcely breathe.

  Tresham stepped up beside her, drew her arm through his again, set his free hand lightly over hers, and said not a word.

  She had never loved him more.

  NO ONE HAD cheered wildly over Edward’s maiden speech in the House of Lords, but no one had jeered either. And he had not noticed anyone nodding off to sleep during its delivery. Several members had even shaken his hand afterward. One elderly duke, who carried a hearing trumpet with him but had not used it all afternoon as far as Edward had noticed, had even commented that the speech had been a fine piece of oratory. At which a younger peer had slapped him on the shoulder, winked at Edward, and observed that His Grace had said the same thing of every maiden speech that had been delivered during the past fifty years.

  Edward had joined in a general burst of laughter. It had been, actually, the best moment. He had felt accepted.

  Anyway, it was a huge relief to have that ordeal behind him.

  It would have been pleasant to relax at home for the rest of the day or else to have gone to the theater or White’s Club or somewhere else where he co
uld be a passive observer rather than an active doer. But there was this infernal ball of Tresham’s to attend. And, if that was not bad enough, there was the opening set to dance with Tresham’s sister.

  At least Eunice would be there. He would reserve the second set with her and hope she was content to sit it out with him. Then at last he would be comfortable and could relax in the knowledge that this long-dreaded day was effectively at an end.

  He arrived at Dudley House with his mother and Lorraine. He was happy to see them both in higher spirits than they had been for a long time. They were both out of mourning. His mother had become reacquainted with some of her numerous friends in the ton and seemed determined to put memories of her elder son to rest and concentrate her attentions upon her second son. Lorraine had put on some weight and looked the better for it. The color was back in her cheeks and the gloss in her hair. The weight, the color, and the gloss had disappeared even before Maurice’s death. Now she looked her age again. She was still only twenty-three, one year younger than Edward himself. She was a vivid beauty once more.

  Edward wished her well. He had always been fond of her and she of him. She had sometimes, though not often, confided her misery to him while Maurice lived. A few times he had tried to talk to his brother but had merely ended up being called a pompous ass for his pains.

  Edward made his way up the staircase inside Dudley House, a lady on each arm. This was one of the first grand balls of the Season. He doubted there was a person invited who was not here already or else in the long line of carriages outside the doors. The staircase was crowded as guests awaited their turn to pass along the receiving line.

  It still felt strange, Edward thought as they reached the doorway to the ballroom and the majordomo announced their names, to be treated with such deference. Mr. Edward Ailsbury had been able to slip into—and out of—any social event he chose without anyone particularly noticing. The Earl of Heyward was someone, even if he was also just an ordinary man or a pompous ass, depending upon who was describing him.