by Darcie Wilde
The crowd turned. The crowd looked and was silent. There were the Delacourte sisters. There was Octavius Pursewell, and Lewis Valmeyer. There was Patience, arrived separately with Marcus beside her. All of them had gathered to see her falter, and fail.
Slowly, the crowd began to murmur. Ladies whispered behind their fans. Men leaned toward one another and spoke confidentially. Madelene clutched Helene’s arm, and searing doubt stabbed through Adele. She’d got it wrong. The crowd was going to laugh. All of them. She’d failed her friends, failed herself. She was pathetic, hopeless, fat . . .
A queenly woman dressed in topaz silk with plumes dyed to match sailed out of the crowd to take Miss Sewell’s hands and kiss her cheek.
“My dear, dear Deborah!” She was Mrs. Wrexford, their hostess for this evening. “How delightful of you to join us. I was so hoping you would come, and let me see . . . These are your protégés?” Mrs. Wrexford beamed as Miss Sewell performed the introductions. “Lady Adele! I must compliment you. That gown is perfection! Clearly you have found a new modiste, and you have been keeping her a secret from the rest of us!”
Adele gazed up at her in mute gratitude, and her heart swelled with painful hope. She’s Miss Sewell’s friend. She’s being polite. It doesn’t mean . . .
Mrs. Wrexford had already turned from her to speak to a young matron who was stepping up to them. “Look here, Mrs. Beale, are not Lady Adele and her friends entirely splendid?”
Mrs. Beale smiled and waved her lorgnette. “Mrs. Wrexford, won’t you introduce us . . . Lady Helene, how do you do? I must ask if you would do me the greatest favor and come meet my brother? He’s demanding to know who the goddess in silver is and will not let me breathe until I have gained an introduction for him.”
Helene glanced sharply at Madelene, who lifted her chin and nodded. As Helene allowed herself to be led away, Miss Sewell instantly stepped into place beside Madelene. They had no time to exchange a word or draw breath before a matron in black whom Adele did not recognize edged up to them, or rather, to Madelene herself.
“Hello again, Miss Sewell. And Miss Valmeyer, I do hope you remember me. Mrs. Portman. We met last season at the Montgomerys’ boating party? What an exquisite gown you are wearing!”
Madelene blushed, but for once she did not stammer. “Oh, it was Lady Adele’s choice. She has such a wonderful eye.”
“I must say! I will certainly be speaking with her later, but right now you must come with me and meet my son, Damion. He’s . . .”
“Damion!” cried Miss Sewell. “Why, Mrs. Portman, I haven’t seen him since he came back from Cambridge. May I join the party?”
“Of course, Miss Sewell. It has been an age, hasn’t it? We can have ourselves a cozy little gossip while the young people get acquainted.”
Her chaperone winked and gathered her hems, but Adele had no time to feel abandoned, for a new crowd was forming, all around her. Women and men, matrons and youths, and a few gray-headed lords. And all of them, all of them asking for her.
“Lady Adele, this is Mister Rayburn, and he begs the favor of the allemande . . .”
“Lady Adele, spare my poor heart and tell me you have a waltz still free . . .”
“Lady Adele, so delighted to meet you. I am hoping you might favor me with the cotillion . . .”
“Not even a country dance left? I am desolate!”
“Lady Adele, would you care to . . .”
It was magic. It was what she had always wanted and more. Adele danced every dance, country dances and allemandes and cotillions and waltzes. When at last she had to sit down because she was breathless from the dancing, she found she had to settle disputes among the young bucks as to who was going to fetch her glass of punch and who her ice. Then came the fashionable matrons, glowing and smiling and chattering. What days is Lady Adele at home? I would dearly love to call. I’m giving a little luncheon, just a few young friends. Would you care to be one of the party? Oh, here is my son Douglas. Douglas, have you had a chance to meet Lady Adele?
And all the while, Patience watched, white-faced, from the edges of the room as society stood in line to speak with Adele.
She couldn’t take it in. She didn’t know which way to look or who to answer. She could barely breathe. She lifted her eyes to try to find Miss Sewell, or Helene, or Madelene, just to have an excuse to slip away, just for a moment.
She saw James.
The assembly rooms had been made in an Italianate style, and had been given an upper gallery that made a promenade around the dance floor. People looking for a little relief from the crush could stroll up there and watch the dancers below. James leaned on the railing, looking down at her. Despite the distance, she felt the touch of his gaze. She also felt his warm pride as he watched her. He saw her looking up to him, and their eyes met.
Adele’s heart tipped over, and suddenly nothing else mattered. She was light as a feather. She could lift her arms and soar over the crowd to join him where he stood if she so chose. As long as she knew James was there, she could do anything at all.
James pushed himself away from the railing and bowed down to her in his grandest style. He was so engaged in this that he did not see what Adele did; that Marcus was striding toward him.
***
James Beauclaire stood in the assembly rooms’ gallery promenade and watched the world fall in love with Lady Adele. Stunned murmurs wafted to him, up from the floor and across from his fellow spectators in the gallery, and their talk only made him grin.
“. . . that dress! So delightfully new.”
“. . . Shocking, I call it, an unmarried girl in such a color! But I must say she carries it off very well . . .”
“Who is she?”
“That’s the older of the Windford sisters, Lady Adele.”
She’d done it. She had planned and she had worked and she had created this moment for herself, and he was proud of her and for her.
“Beauclaire!” James was so focused on listening to the talk about Adele, the sound of his own name startled him. He looked around to see Octavius Pursewell sauntering up to him with an already rumpled-looking Lewis Valmeyer right behind. “What are you doing mooning about up here? We expected you in the card room hours ago. Lewis here wants revenge for that last drubbing you gave him.”
Lewis there was already well on his way to being drunk, and Dutch courage had put a dark gleam in his eyes.
“I’ll be along shortly,” he said to them. “But I warn you, Valmeyer, you’ll probably be disappointed. I am not inclined to serious play tonight.”
“Other things on your mind?” inquired Octavius.
“I’m afraid so.” James turned his attention back toward the dance below. “Bonne chance, mes amis.”
Fresh exclamation rose up from below.
“No! Lady Adele is a . . . well . . . She’s always been rather plain, hasn’t she?”
“Not anymore. That’s Lady Helene Fitzgerald with her, if you can believe it!”
“And can that be the mousy little Valmeyer girl? She’s positively radiant!”
James tried to settle himself back to his self-imposed sentry duty. But standing and watching was growing increasingly difficult, especially with the tide of men and boys surging in Adele’s direction.
Well. Let them dance with her. Let them charm and flatter. Not one of them had seen her as he had, in only her stays and chemise, flushed with desire. Not one of them had felt her bold kisses, her delighted hands on their skin.
And not one of them will.
The thought was immediate, and solid as stone. Adele was his. Entirely his. If she did not realize that already, he would teach her the truth of it. Patiently. Lovingly.
And then she looked up to him, and lightning shot through his heart. He bowed to let her know he saw her. He also understood that the time for watching was over. He’d intended to w
ait until he had definite news, but it was clear that would not do. It was time he showed the world who was to stand beside Lady Adele.
At that moment, a heavy hand fell on his shoulder. James turned to see Windford standing beside him, in his full, grim, ducal dignity.
“Good evening, Beauclaire,” Marcus said evenly.
“Good evening, Lord Windford.” This time James’s bow was much more restrained. “I didn’t think to see you here.”
“I didn’t mean to come, but Aunt had an indisposition and so I had to escort Patience. She wanted to be here to see Adele’s . . . entrance.”
James mouth curled into a small smile. “Somehow I suspect that’s not the word she used.”
“No. It wasn’t.”
“And now that she has seen it, what, pray, does Lady Patience think?”
“You can see for yourself.”
Indeed he could. Lady Patience stood with her usual coterie, including the Delacourte sisters. Even at this angle, James could make out their combination of horror and envy as the world attempted to crowd around Adele. Some young woman James didn’t know stepped up to Patience. Whatever she said, Patience’s face twisted up tight, and the answer made the other girl draw back in shock.
“Beauclaire,” Marcus dropped his name like a stone. “We need to have a word.”
“Of course,” James said. What other answer could he make?
It was, naturally, difficult to be truly private at a public ball, but Marcus led James to a shadowed corner of the gallery that was, surprisingly, by the strange currents of crowds, unoccupied. Marcus folded his hands behind him and gazed down his long nose at James, and James, for the first time in a very long time, remembered this was a man to fear.
He decided it would be best to speak first.
“You will have noticed by now, Your Grace, I have developed a marked preference for Lady Adele. I wish to assure you that my intentions are the most honorable.”
Windford was silent for a long moment. When he spoke, he was as serious as stone. “And if I threatened to cut her off if she married a French fortune hunter?”
“Are you going to do it?” James asked, as steadily, and as seriously.
“I wouldn’t want to. But I won’t let her be taken advantage of, either. Adele isn’t Patience. She’ll break.”
“You underestimate her, Windford. Adele is by far the stronger of the two.”
The two men stared at each other. Power and need, the right and the urge to protect, shifted between them in that thick, tense silence before it resettled into its new formation. James held his peace. He must let Marcus’s thoughts and feelings work themselves out. If this were the gaming table, he would wait easily, had done so a thousand times. But no hand of cards, no cast of the dice had ever meant so much, nor would it ever.
Finally, Windford sighed and ran his hand through his hair, thoroughly disordering it in the process. “You could be right,” he muttered. “I’ve never understood either of them.”
“Maybe you’ve never tried.”
“Someone else told me that recently, but that’s neither here nor there. I’m my sister’s guardian, and I have to ask the damned question. What exactly are your honorable intentions, Beauclaire?”
I intend to make her mine. James glanced over his shoulder at the glimmering ballroom. Laughter and music poured out in a great flood. Adele waltzed smoothly across the floor in the arms of another man. Some puppy, no doubt, attracted by a beauty in a fine gown like a little honey bee to a beautiful flower. Such a man could give her nothing. Adele, his Adele, would not be interested.
Would she?
James’s resolve to hold himself back, to let her have this moment to spread her wings, dissolved in an instant. He needed to be with her, to hold her, to claim her, to let the world see she was his.
“I have spent the weeks since the New Year’s ball working at leaving behind old habits,” he spoke to Windford, but he watched Adele. “I’ve built up a competency of my own . . .”
“Yes. I’d heard something to that effect. Impressive.”
James bowed. “By tomorrow, if all goes well, I should be clear of debt. When that is done, I intend to ask for Adele’s hand in marriage.” In fact, he’d told McNeil to bring word of the ship’s arrival direct to the ballroom. He’d even put his grandmother’s ring in his pocket in anticipation of the good news. “I do not pretend it is a good match, m’lord. But, I will come free and clear and with an honest path open to me. I mean to offer Adele my heart and my hand, both of which I swear will belong to her alone.”
Marcus did not shift at all as James spoke. He barely even blinked. In the back of his mind James told himself to never sit down to cards with this man. Windford could stare a hole in a brick wall.
“All right. It’s up to Adele. If she’ll have you, I’ll not object.” He glanced toward the swirling gathering below. “But you might want to be quick about it.”
***
“Did you see that dress? Is it from Paris? Who is her modiste?”
“They’re saying it’s someone new. A Mademoiselle Marie. I wonder if Lady Adele could . . .”
Marie would rejoice. She would be flooded with orders. But James couldn’t find it in him to cheer his sister’s good fortune. All he could think was that Adele had vanished.
Where had she gone? He craned his neck over the heads of the crowds and could not see her anywhere. There was Miss Valmeyer, sitting beside Benedict, not even talking as far as he could tell, just being together. There was Miss Fitzgerald, surrounded by a group of earnest young men and women, at least one of them a poet he knew, talking with great animation.
Then, James spied Deborah and waded through the crowd to her.
“Miss Sewell, I’m looking for Lady Adele. Have you seen her?”
“Lady Adele?” she repeated, owlishly.
“That is what I said,” he said, or rather snapped.
Miss Sewell scanned the crowd languidly. “Hmm. I don’t see her immediately. Have you tried the refreshment room? She has been dancing rather a lot.”
“What kind of chaperone are you?” he growled, but that only made the Sewell woman blink up at him.
“Did you say something, Monsieur Beauclaire?”
“No. You will excuse me?”
“Bonne chance, monsieur.”
What he muttered under his breath as he strode away toward the refreshment room was not suited to polite company. Miss Sewell was right, however. That was the most likely place, unless she’d gone to the retiring room . . .
“There you are, Beauclaire.”
James was so distracted, he did not recognize the man’s voice immediately. But when he turned, it was to see Mr. McNeil pushing through the crowd. His black coat was rumpled, and his scalp was beet red. James felt his heart beat once, twice.
“McNeil.” He clasped the other man’s hand. “Has something happened?”
“Yes, Monsieur Beauclaire. I’m afraid it has.”
***
Adele spotted James the moment she emerged from the retiring room. She felt sure he could have been in China and she still would have been able to find him. He stood in the shadow of the gallery, half hidden by a pillar, in one of the Italianate alcoves that gave the Bassett rooms their slightly scandalous reputation.
She smiled. She smiled also at the matrons and bucks, who were again crowding around and slid past them all.
“James, what is the matter?” she said as she reached him.
His face lit up to see her, and her heart jolted.
“Where have you been? I have looked everywhere.”
“Someone stepped on my hem, and I needed Bridget to stitch it up for me. But you haven’t answered my question. Something’s wrong.”
“Rien.” He said this with his easiest smile, but something dark shifted behind James’s
clear blue eyes. “Well, not much. I have had some bad news of my investments. Small, and soon put right.” He took her hand and raised it to his lips, pressing a light kiss to her fingers, and it became very difficult to think of anything else. “I shall have to be very careful in future, for it is impossible for me to hide anything from you.”
She smiled. “Completely impossible.”
Calculations ran back and forth in his eyes, making darkness flicker beneath the clear bright blue. It was like shadows in a sunlit well. Shadows in his heart. Adele realized she was holding her breath. But then the shadows cleared and James was himself again. She yearned for him. She wanted to kiss him and let the whole world watch. She wanted to stand on the rooftop and shout that she loved him.
But the shout that came was not from her.
“Adele, Adele!” It was Madelene Valmeyer, out of breath and pale as a ghost. “Helene has fainted!”
“Helene?” she cried.
“The Marquis of Broadheathe is here and she saw him and . . . something happened. I don’t know what. I can’t find Miss Sewell . . .”
“Good Lord!” Broadheathe was Helene’s former fiancé, the one she’d broken with so publically and scandalously. Adele turned swiftly to James. “I’m so sorry . . .”
“Go help your friend. I will call on you tomorrow.”
Adele met James’s gaze and saw how much he wanted to kiss her. She wished she could. She wished with all her heart she dared. But she could not, and she had to turn and push through the crowd. Helene was afraid of nothing. What on earth could have caused her to faint? Was she ill? Had she drunk too much? No. Helene would never . . .
While these thoughts raced ahead, a tiny portion of her mind and heart lagged behind, wondering about the darkness she’d glimpsed behind James’s eyes.
XIV
“Benedict, I need a favor,” James said when he finally tracked his friend down in the foyer of the assembly rooms. “I’m going to clean Pursewell out tonight.”
The decision had come to him the moment Adele’s eyes turned toward him and she asked him what was wrong. He felt his heart swell to the breaking point with love and resolution. He could not, he would not, come to her a debtor. He would not come to her a failure and a wastrel, dependent on her money. But he’d sunk most of what he had into those ships, and now it was gone, broken up on the rocks because of a sudden squall. McNeil assured him that those were simply the risks a man ran when he invested in ships and cargo, but McNeil hadn’t seen his love tonight, being courted and feted by other men, richer men. Better men. He had no time. One of them might turn her head, and her heart. He could not, he would not, risk that.