She slipped her arm through her grandmother's, drawing her into a comforting embrace. In the smoky light of the flambeaux, Lady Letty's face looked pinched with pain. It was the children, Jessalyn knew. Even after four years of such sights, her grandmother could not bear the plight of London's children. For Rosalie, the bal-maiden, had never forgotten what it was like to go to bed on a pile of rags with a belly swollen and cramping from hunger.
The linkboy ushered them up the stairs and through the front door. The earthy smells of horse and sweat were replaced by the honeyed fragrance of the best wax candles and the floral and spice of many perfumes. They were passed on to a groom of the chambers in powdered wig and glorious livery, who announced their arrival in stentorian syllables.
The Hamiltons stood at the top of a long, curving white marble staircase to receive their guests. Mr. Hamilton was a fat little squab of a man with a great pair of mustaches that if uncurled would reach thrice around his head. Mrs.
Hamilton was draped with gobbets of jewelry and rouged to the eyes.
The ballroom shimmered in the illuminated brilliance cast by the latest gas chandeliers. Dozens of faceted watch balls hung from the ceiling and window niches, reflecting the dazzling room a thousand times over. Plumed headdresses were le dernier cri for evening wear this year, and the room was full of feathers, undulating and swaying like wheat blowing in the wind.
"Gram has discovered the faro tables," Jessalyn said as she and Clarence faced each other in the first quadrille. "I cannot imagine where she found the stakes. I hope she isn't playing with vowels."
He drew her in a graceful circle in time with the music that floated down from the minstrel gallery. "Actually I lent her a few pounds," he said. "I thought she would enjoy the evening better." His lips parted in a wide smile, revealing the boyish gap in his front teeth. He looked especially handsome tonight in a bottle green velvet coat that matched his eyes and set off his buttercup yellow hair.
"That will teach you to admit that you're a banker," Jessalyn said, laughing and feeling a deep rush of fondness for him. And a wrenching guilt for promising to marry him when all along her heart still belonged to McCady, and always would. "I shall, of course, pay you back. Otherwise, when Gram loses it all, which she is bound to do, she will try to sell you one of her snuffboxes—"
"I shall buy it and sell it back to you later. How is that?" His smile was so warm and caring. An odd tightness squeezed her throat, making it difficult to speak.
"Clarence, I... You are a true friend."
The dance had ended, but Clarence kept hold of her hand. His eyes bored into hers. His face was taut with an intensity that made her uncomfortable. An intensity and a hunger. "I hope that I am more than that," he said.
She withdrew her hand. "I... It has grown rather warm in here. Perhaps a glass of champagne punch?"
He stared at her as the silence stretched between them. She held her breath, afraid that he would voice aloud the thoughts she could read in his eyes. But then his gaze shifted away from hers, and the moment passed.
"Yes, of course," he said, and, bowing, left her.
She watched the whirling dancers, and her chest tightened with a bittersweet ache. She thought of her first grown-up party of that long-ago summer, dancing with McCady, the way he had teased her when she tripped over his feet and then made herself dizzy staring at the ceding, the way he had—
It was as if he'd come walking out of her memory. Suddenly he was there in the doorway and looking over the ballroom as if he were the dark prince and everyone else his subject. Everything inside her seemed to give way, and for a moment she forgot to breathe.
He turned slightly, to greet his host, and Jessalyn stared at his proud profile. With his too-long hair and pirate's earring, he didn't look quite civilized. His sharp-boned face and hard body were too masculine for his elegant clothes. He doesn't belong here, she thought. Not in London with its boring crushes and oppressive rules. He belonged in another time when men wore armor and conquered kingdoms and lived by no rule but that of the sword.
I want you, Jessalyn.
Wanted her but could not love her.
Her emotions waged the same war as they had that day he had so coldly asked her to share his bed. Her Letty pride had demanded she slap his face, the hurt child in her had wanted to scratch and claw at him and hurt him back, but her woman's heart had wanted to fling herself into his arms and love him anyway. Love him hard enough and long enough until he had no choice but to love her back.
She was never going to get over him. It didn't matter whether they were in the same ballroom or on opposite sides of the world, she could feel the dangerous desire to give in, to give in to the temptation to believe that she alone out of all the women in the world could change him. That she alone could possess his heart.
Another quadrille had formed on the floor, blocking her view of him, and her heartbeat slowed. Only to stop completely when she saw that he was circling the room, in that lean-hipped, slightly hitching saunter that was uniquely his, and coming right at her.
She looked around with wide, frantic eyes and spotted a window alcove furnished with a marquetry side table that bore an enormous white glass vase and a smoking pastille pot. She made for it like a rabbit for a bolt-hole. She slipped into the alcove, craning her head around to see if he followed, and struck the table with her hip, sending the vase crashing to the floor.
"Bloody hell," she exclaimed beneath her breath.
"It was a rather hideous thing, wasn't it?"
Jessalyn whipped around, startled to find that her bolt-hole was already occupied by a young woman with pattern-card perfect features and silvery gold spindrift hair styled into a short cap of curls. Diamonds sparkled in her plumed headdress, and her silver lame dress shimmered in the bright candlelight. She twinkled like a skyful of stars.
Jessalyn remembered shaking this young woman's hand at the top of the stairs, and the flush that stained her cheeks burned hotter. "I am so sorry, Miss Hamilton. Please, you must allow me to replace the vase."
"Oh, pray do not consider it." Wisteria blue eyes danced with amusement. "We have put the wretched thing in every room in the house in the hope that some accident would befall it. My aunt Lucinda gave it to us, you see. She means well, the poor old dear, but she has a squint—can't see a thing, no matter how ugly it is, unless it's directly beneath her nose."
As a sign of the Hamilton wealth, the window curtains were cut extra long to puddle on the floor. To Jessalyn's astonishment the girl lifted the heavy brocade and swept the glass shards underneath with her feet. "There now."
She dusted her gloved hands together and sent Jessalyn a conspiratorial smile. "If anyone asks us what has happened to the wretched thing, we shall deny all knowledge of its existence."
"You must still allow me to replace it with something," Jessalyn said. "I insist."
"Why not make it something truly ugly, then, and we can give it to poor Aunt Lucinda?" She had a lilting laugh that curled up on the ends like flower petals. "I'm afraid you've caught me in an act of a most shameful cowardice, hiding in here. But if I have to perform one more curtsy tonight, I know my knees will give out." She peered out into the crowded ballroom, releasing a delicate sigh. She had an enviable bosom that swelled over the blond lace tucker that edged her stiff stomacher. "You are a friend of Mr. Tiltwell's. Miss Letty, is it?"
"Yes, but I am surprised you remember. You must have greeted five hundred people tonight, and surely you couldn't name all of them as an acquaintance."
"You don't know Mamma. I have been shown off like prime breeding stock at every crush, rout, and ball for the last three Seasons. A lure for a Title." She said the word with bitterness and as if it were possessed of a capital letter. "Of course, it is not my blood that is the bait but the enormous sum of money that is to be my dowry."
"I shouldn't mind an enormous dowry," Jessalyn said, and was pleased when Miss Hamilton laughed. She felt an odd sort of kinship with the other gi
rl. It was one of those rare instances, she thought, when you know you have just met someone who is going to become a good friend.
Again Miss Hamilton leaned out of the alcove to scan the room. Jessalyn wondered if she was looking for someone in particular. She was nervously twisting a small hand-painted fan in her fingers. It was the sort of elegant trifle a girl's beau would give her when he paid a call.
Miss Hamilton noticed the direction of Jessalyn's gaze, and she lifted the fan, spreading its leaves. A waltzing couple was painted on the stiff silk. A smile played around her small mouth. "I shall tell you a secret," she said, "although it is not to be a secret much longer. A—a man has asked me to be his wife. He is very handsome, and he does have a title."
"You must be very happy."
Miss Hamilton's purple-blue eyes darkened. "I would be if The Title weren't so obviously marrying me for the settlement. Until three days ago we had never laid eyes on each other. And he is not the sort of man to pretend feelings that he does not have."
But already she loves him, Jessalyn thought. Poor girl.
A bedizened and bejeweled woman in beaded puce was working her way down the length of the room, searching in all the window niches. "Oh, drat, there is Mamma." Miss Hamilton heaved a heartfelt sigh. "She is wise to all my little tricks." She looked at Jessalyn, and a brightness lit up her blue eyes—wisteria bathed with sunshine. "I should like it very much if you would call on me sometime, Miss Letty," she said, and though the smile remained bright, there was a loneliness in her voice.
Jessalyn smiled in return and held out her hand. "Please, my name is Jessalyn."
She gave Jessalyn's hand a gentle squeeze. "I am Emily."
They walked together out of the alcove, and Emily went forward to intercept her mother. She was so small and dainty, and she moved with a fluid grace that Jessalyn longed to emulate. Mrs. Hamilton had her fingers firmly fastened around the arm of a man, a long-nosed man with thinning blond hair and a haughty demeanor. The Title, Jessalyn supposed, and she felt a rush of pity for Miss Emily Hamilton. For he looked like the sort of man who would keep his wife in a gilded cage, while he amused himself with an aviary of ladybirds.
Suddenly a rough hand seized her wrist, pulling her around. She looked up into a dark angel's face, and her heart knocked against her chest. "What are you doing?"
"Waltzing with you," he said in a voice as gentle as a dawn wind. His arm slid around her waist, a possessive hand pressed into her back, and he swept her out into the middle of the dance.
For a moment her startled gaze locked with that of Clarence, who stood just inside the doorway with two glasses of champagne punch in his hands. But then they were swallowed up by the rest of the dancers.
She met McCady's gaze, and she felt the concussion of it like a blow. His mouth was set in that hard, tight line that always made him look a little cruel. "Are you still going to marry him?" he demanded.
"Yes," she lied, and looked away from him, down at her feet, which were moving as stiffly as stilts across the floor.
"If you ask me," he said, "you're making a mistake."
"I haven't asked you, and now if you will be so kind as to release me..."
"Come now, Miss Letty. Where are your party manners? When a gentleman begs for the honor of a dance, it is impolite to deny him."
"You hardly begged. You didn't even ask."
"A small oversight." He lowered his head until his breath stirred in her hair like a sea mist. "And you, Miss Letty, still can't waltz without looking at your feet."
To her shock she started laughing. It was nerves, and she tried to make herself stop, but she couldn't. Her laughter, wild and lusty, floated up to the ballroom's gilded ceiling. She didn't see, for her head had fallen back, but his eyes squeezed shut, and his mouth winced as if he were in pain.
The arm that was lightly resting around her waist tightened. "Jessalyn... remember that summer and the night of the blue moon?"
Her startled gaze fell to his face. There was an uncertainty, a vulnerability in his eyes that she had never seen before. As if for just a moment the shadows had opened to reveal a part of his soul. She swallowed around a thickness in her throat. "I could never forget that night."
Although the music hadn't stopped, he eased her out of his arms. "Neither will I," he said, a strange roughness in his voice. "As long as I live. No matter what I must do... what happens, I will never forget that night. Or you."
She stared at him, trying to divine what he was telling her. It was almost as if he was saying good-bye.
CHAPTER 17
Clarence stood before her with a glass of champagne punch in each hand and a baffled look on his face. "But we can't possibly leave now," he said. "It's barely midnight. What will people think?"
"I do not care what—" Jessalyn drew in a deep breath. "Tell them Gram has taken suddenly ill."
"If it's Caerhays, if he's insulted you, I'll demand satisfaction."
"Will you challenge him to pistols at dawn?" Jessalyn retorted, though she instantly regretted it. She pushed a great sigh out of her chest. "Oh, Clarence... we only danced."
Only danced. She didn't know why she had been left with this terrible sense of loss. She only knew she could no longer bear to be here among all the gilt and laughter and music. "Please, just take us home."
Clarence thrust the glasses of punch at a passing footman and slipped his hand beneath Jessalyn's elbow. "Very well. But I thought you understood how important it was for me to be here tonight. Aloysius Hamilton might not possess a title, but he has influence in government circles that most of your precious dukes and earls could only dream of. As my future wife you should be giving a thought, my love, to the advancement of my career in Parliament."
Jessalyn had to swallow back the need to tell him that she could never marry him now. But this wasn't the time or place to jilt the man who was, despite it all, still her dearest, her very best friend in all the world.
They had almost forced their way through the crush blocking the door when a great blasting toot slammed through the air, and silence descended in the room, sharp and sudden, like a clap of thunder.
All eyes turned toward one end of the grand ballroom, where Aloysius Hamilton stood mounted on a small dais, with a sheepish grin on his face and a brass coaching horn in his hand. "Now that I have your attention," he said, and his startled guests broke into relieved titters of laughter.
Aloysius launched into a rambling speech, most of which Jessalyn couldn't hear, but she supposed this must be the announcement of the big secret—Emily's betrothal to her title. And indeed, Emily soon joined her father on the dais. Aloysius took his daughter's hand and raised it to his lips. He kept her hand in his as he beckoned with the other to someone in a crowd of people to the left of him.
In spite of the heavy sadness pressing on her chest, Jessalyn could not help smiling as she watched her new friend, Emily Hamilton, hold out her free hand and draw a man up onto the dais with her. She was smiling still as she watched that man lift Emily's hand and kiss her fingers, before laying them on his bent arm. Smiling, smiling, smiling as a wash of pain froze her breath and blinded her.
Beside her, Jessalyn heard Clarence suck in a gasp of shock. Voices battered her ears: Betrothal... marrying an earl, Caerhays... They are all rakehells, but this one is mad. He's laying down rails from here to Cornwall, and he thinks to run iron horses... riding for a smash. And Hamilton, the bloody rich nabob, will have himself an earl's get for a grandson....
Although every eye was on him, he stood still and looked slowly around the room. His gaze stopped only when it found her. Their eyes clashed and held. She saw nothing in his face. Nothing at all.
If she had any pride at all, she would go up to him now and she would smile and wish him happy, wish them both happy, and act as if she were happy, happy, happy, without a care in the world. Oh, God...
She looked around for Clarence, but he had disappeared. She tried to push through the crowd of guests all tryi
ng to go in the opposite direction, toward the dais, to offer their congratulations. Suddenly she felt suffocated, as if all these people were a great weight crushing her, pressing her into the floor.
Someone touched her, taking her arm. It was Clarence. Oddly his face was blanched with shock, and a small tic was throbbing beneath his right eye. "He only got enough upon the betrothal to pay off his brother's gaming vowels," Clarence said, and though it made no sense to her, Jessalyn thought she heard a note of strained relief in his voice. "The rest of the settlement won't be his until after the heir is born."
Her own face felt so stiff, as if she'd been dumped in a vat of starch. She had to get away before she started cracking in a million pieces.
"Clarence, please... take us home now."
He stood within the shadows of the portico's pillars and watched her leave. The street was still clogged with carriages and swearing coachmen, for most of the guests would not depart for hours yet.
He watched until Tiltwell's scarlet town coach rolled down the street on well-oiled wheels, turned the comer, and was gone.
"Lord Caerhays?"
He turned. Emily Hamilton stood within the pool of light cast by the flickering torches. A look that was half worshipful, half fearful marred her pretty face.
"What do you want?" he demanded. Then immediately regretted the harshness of his words when he saw her flinch. They had been betrothed for three days, yet she couldn't bring herself to call him by his first name. Doubtless she would be calling him Lord Caerhays on their wedding night.
"My father wishes to speak with you, my lord." Her mouth trembled into a sweet smile that he tried, and failed, to answer.
He wanted to hate her, but he couldn't. It wasn't her fault that she wasn't somebody else.
"I cannot imagine why you and Tiltwell wanted to attend that crush in the first place, gel," Lady Letty said as Becka opened the door to them. "But once there, the least you could have done was stay above an hour or two. Instead you insisted upon leaving just when my luck was about to turn. There is nothing for it—I am going to bed."
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