by Mary Balogh
And that, he thought with enormous relief and perhaps a little twinge of guilt, was that. Moira Hayes was dancing with her usual grace and with a look of bright animation on her face. Not once during the whole set did she glance his way. Not once did he glance her way. He wondered if she was as aware of him as he was of her. He did not like the feeling at all. And he had no intention whatsoever of nursing it all evening.
When the minuet was finished and Ainsleigh had solicited Miss Wishart’s hand for the next set—Helen was talking with a group of ladies from Tawmouth—Kenneth strode determinedly across the room and made his bow to Moira Hayes and Mrs. Lincoln. The latter had watched his coming with a smile of gratified surprise. Moira had talked to her, pretending that she had not noticed his approach. She had willed him to change direction, he knew. He exchanged a few civilities with Mrs. Lincoln before turning his eyes on Moira.
“Sets are forming for the quadrille,” he said. “Will you honor me by partnering me, Miss Hayes?”
For a silent and awkward moment he thought she was going to refuse. He was aware of Mrs. Lincoln turning her head sharply to look in some surprise at her friend. But she did not refuse. “Thank you,” she said, sounding perfectly composed. She got to her feet and set her hand on his.
“You look unwell,” he said as they took their places in the set. Her face really was pale. There were faint shadows beneath her eyes. “Did you take a chill?”
“No,” she said. He half expected that her eyes would not quite meet his at this oblique reference to their night together, but she looked directly at him. “And I am quite well, thank you.”
He had annoyed her, he could see, by singling her out and asking her first, ahead of all the other ladies of Tawmouth, to dance with him. He had annoyed her by asking her to dance at all. “Smile,” he commanded her quietly.
She smiled.
He watched her as they danced. There was very little opportunity for conversation, and they did not avail themselves of even what little there was. When she smiled, she showed one of her best assets, her white and even teeth. They had always looked startlingly attractive with her very dark hair and eyes. This was the woman who had lain with him less than a week before, he thought—and the thought seemed unreal to him—the woman who had lain beneath him, warming to his intimate touch. They had been anything but passionate encounters, and yet heat had flared in her both times. She had not known what to do with it and he had not taught her, but it had been there.
He had been right, he thought, to be afraid to touch her. There really was a great deal of latent passion in the very respectable Miss Moira Hayes. She had not changed a great deal in eight years, despite outer appearances. Now, more than ever, he feared it. And yet he did not quite understand his own fear. He had come here to talk to her, to confront her, to assert himself. But perhaps that was the problem. He felt not quite in control in his dealings with Moira. And the knowledge irritated him and disturbed him. He was not accustomed to having his will thwarted.
Supper was announced at the end of the set, before he could return his partner to her seat beside her friend. He had not realized that it was the supper dance for which he had solicited her hand. But then, of course, his party had arrived rather late, and country assemblies often ended early by London standards. He looked at Moira with raised eyebrows and offered his arm.
“Shall we?” he said.
Her lips thinned. “I would rather not,” she said.
“But you will.” He bent his head closer to hers, his irritation further aggravated. Would she make a fool of him and make herself appear ill-mannered? “People are watching.”
She set her arm along his.
He would take advantage of this very opportune moment, he thought. If they must sit and eat together, then they would really talk. They would settle something between them, something more satisfactory than the nonsettlement of the morning after the ball. Most of the square tables in the supper room were set for four. Two tables beneath the windows were set for two. He led her toward one of them and seated her. He left her there in order to fill two plates. Someone had poured the tea by the time he returned.
“I have not heard during the week,” he said, not wasting even a moment on small talk, “of your broken engagement.”
“Have you not?” she said.
He waited for more, but she said nothing.
“You are not going to marry the poor devil, are you?” he asked.
“No, I am not.” There were bright spots of color in her cheeks, and her eyes sparked for a moment until she remembered where she was and forced her expression to blandness again. “Credit me with some sense of decency, my lord. May we now discuss the weather?”
“No, we may not,” he said curtly. “We will discuss the necessity of our marrying.”
“Why?” she asked. “You have no wish to marry me, and I have no wish to marry you. Why is it necessary that we do something so abhorrent to both of us?”
“Because, Moira,” he said, and he deliberately refrained from mincing his words, “I have been inside your body, where only a husband has any right to be. Because I left my seed there and it might even now be bearing fruit. Because even apart from that possibility, it is the proper and the honorable thing to do.”
“And propriety and honor,” she said, “are of more importance than inclination? Either mine or your own?”
“Why is the prospect of marrying me so repulsive to you?” he asked, goaded. “You were prepared to marry Baillie, who is an ass by even the kindest estimation.”
Her nostrils flared. “I will thank you to watch your language in my presence, my lord,” she said. “And the answer should be perfectly obvious to you. Sir Edwin Baillie is not responsible for my brother’s death.”
He sucked in his breath. “You blame me for Sean’s death?” he asked her.
“He would not have been at the Battle of Toulouse if you had not betrayed him,” she said. “And if you had not at the same time betrayed me.”
“I betrayed you?” He would have liked to reach across the table, take her by the shoulders, and shake her. But he was forced to remember where he was. Besides, the question of who had betrayed whom was not the main point at issue. “No, I suppose I must concede that he would not have been there. He might have been hanging from a rope long before the Battle of Toulouse. Or he might now be living at the other side of the world, chained to a gang of other convicts like himself. At the very best he might have been living somewhere in poverty and disgrace with my sister—and in wretched unhappiness, I do assure you. Such a life would not have suited your brother. I did what had to be done.”
“Who made you God?” she asked bitterly.
He sighed and picked up his teacup. “We have strayed from the point,” he said. “The point is that we have been together, Moira, that we have had carnal knowledge of each other. Our motives for doing so, our feelings for each other, are of no significance at all now. The point is that we must take the consequences.”
“As a criminal must take the consequences for his crimes,” she said quietly. “You make marriage sound so very inviting, Kenneth. To tell you the truth, I would rather marry anyone on earth than you—and that includes Sir Edwin Baillie. I would rather remain a spinster for life—which is what I will do. I would rather live in destitution—which might be only a slight exaggeration of what will in fact happen to me. I would rather kill myself. Is there anything else I can add to convince you that you can take your sense of honor and toss it into the sea?”
He would have liked to retaliate in kind. He was furiously angry—at her defiance, at her accusations, at her scorn of him. I would rather kill myself. Her instinct for survival had been somewhat stronger when put to the test a few nights ago. She had not chosen death then. He would like to have flung that fact in her face. But he did not have quite the freedom she had to show his scorn of her. He raised his
eyebrows and regarded her coolly. “No,” he said. “I believe you have been more than adequately eloquent on the subject. You will, of course, have to eat humble pie if you discover that you are increasing.”
Her eyes wavered from his for only a moment. “I would rather live with the disgrace,” she said.
“But I would not allow it,” he said. “No child of mine will ever be a bastard, Moira. If the situation arises, it will be pointless to try to set your will against mine. You will not win.” And on that point at least she would not shift him.
“Arrogance suits you,” she said. “You have the looks for it and of course the rank for it. You must have made a wonderfully effective officer.”
“My men learned that obedience to my commands was the best way to deal with me,” he said.
She smiled and even succeeded in looking amused. “Oh, but I am not one of your men, Kenneth,” she said.
He had a startling memory of just how much she was unlike any of his men. But he did not want to remember how he had desired her as he warmed her—and even before that. That memory could only complicate the issue. “I will grant you your wish,” he said, “since a week of reflection appears not to have brought you to your senses. I will grant it because it suits my inclination as well as yours. But only if there are no consequences to our coupling, Moira. If there are, you are to send for me—without delay. I will hear your agreement to this.”
“You are so very Gothic, Kenneth,” she said. “This and the horse whip. Would I be expected to snap to attention every time you cracked it?”
Unexpectedly and quite alarmingly he felt amused. So much so that he sat back in his chair and smiled slowly at her. “I doubt I would need a whip,” he said and immediately felt the doubt he had just denied.
“Oh, famous.” She rolled her eyes ceilingward. “Please do not complete that thought—I have just eaten. You are about to tell me that you would master me with your charm.”
He laughed outright. But he leaned toward her again before getting to his feet and offering his escort back into the ballroom. “You will marry me if there is a child, Moira,” he said. “For the child’s sake even if not for your own. And, by God, you will know something of the force of my anger if you try to do otherwise.”
She did not stand up. Even on the minor point of his escort she was determined to set her will against his. “I shall join Harriet Lincoln,” she said, nodding in the direction of a table nearby. “Thank you for escorting me to supper, my lord, and giving me the pleasure of your company. It has been a great honor.”
He made her his most formal bow. “The pleasure has been all mine, Miss Hayes,” he said, and made his way back into the adjoining room, smiling and nodding at people as he went, his pulse hammering audibly in his ears. He wanted to commit murder, he thought. Failing that, he wanted to give someone two black eyes and a broken nose and smashed teeth. Since neither option was appropriate to the occasion, he went to ask the very young Miss Penallen to dance.
* * *
MOIRA drew some steadying breaths. She hoped it had not been obvious to anyone else in the room that they had been doing anything more than engaging in light social chitchat. Whenever she had thought to do so, she had smiled. He had smiled most of the time. It had been rather disconcerting to quarrel with a smiling man.
She would rather marry a toad, she thought, but the uncharitable and rather silly thought succeeded only in raising her irritability level again. She smiled determinedly preparatory to getting up and joining Harriet and Mr. Meeson at their table nearby. But someone sat down swiftly in the place the Earl of Haverford had just vacated. Someone who was also smiling.
“Stay away from him,” the Viscountess Ainsleigh said breathlessly.
Moira raised her eyebrows.
“You have done very well for yourself,” Helen said. “With Papa dead, you have contrived to be on visiting terms with my brother no more than a few weeks after his return here. Of course, that happy effect had nothing to do with you, did it? It was all the doing of Sir Edwin Baillie. Doubtless you did nothing whatsoever to encourage him.” There was sarcasm in her voice.
“Sir Edwin Baillie is now the owner of Penwith,” Moira said steadily, “and exercises his authority as he sees fit. But you were once prepared to defy that old feud, Helen. I would have expected you to be glad enough that it is over.”
Helen glared for a moment, but she remembered to smile again. “How opportune it was for you,” she said, “that Sir Edwin decided, quite without any prompting from you, of course, that he must leave for home in the middle of Kenneth’s ball, and that Kenneth insisted upon dancing with you for a second time and then escorting you home personally when you were too concerned for your mother to accept his hospitality at Dunbarton. How opportune that he could not return but was forced to remain at Penwith for the night. One might almost think it had all been planned.”
“You believe I planned the snowstorm?” Moira asked scornfully. She had not expected either Helen’s hostility at the Dunbarton ball or her controlled fury now.
“I suppose next,” Helen said, “we will be hearing of the unfortunate ending of your betrothal. I wonder who will end it. It would be humiliating for you if Sir Edwin did it but shameful for you if you did. You have a difficult decision to make, Miss Hayes. Of course, all will be worthwhile if you can win the greater prize. My brother is temptingly eligible, is he not?”
Moira frowned and looked down to rearrange her napkin next to her plate. She could not quite understand this tirade. Unlike their brothers, she and Lady Helen Woodfall had had few dealings with each other as children. They had obediently avoided each other.
“Are you bitter over what happened with Sean?” she asked.
“Bitter?” Helen leaned forward in her chair. “Because he loved me and would have married me and was forcibly prevented from doing so? You may say if you wish that it was my father and my brother who did the preventing, but do not imagine for one moment that I do not know who betrayed us. Whom did you tell? Kenneth? Were you trying to win his favor even in those days? I have always suspected that you were. But you were not very successful, were you?”
“I thought he would be pleased,” Moira said. “I thought he would try to help. I . . .” She had been very naive. She had believed Kenneth when he told her he loved her. She had thought he meant to marry her, to fight his father and her own to win her hand. She had thought he would be pleased to know that Sean and Helen would join their fight. It had not occurred to her that the prospect of Sean’s marrying Helen would prompt Kenneth into such actions as he had taken and such lies as he had told. Even thinking about it now made her feel ill again.
Helen was smiling and watching her. “I expected you to be more quick-witted,” she said disdainfully. “I expected you to have a dozen denials and explanations and excuses at your fingertips. Perhaps you have a conscience, after all. Stay away from Kenneth. He is to marry Juliana Wishart, and his family is very happy about it.”
“You have nothing to fear from me, then, do you?” Moira said sharply. She was feeling very angry again. Had she thought to lift her spirits by coming to this assembly? She thought suddenly of that afternoon early in December—less than a month ago—when she had stolen an hour to herself and gone up to the hollow on the cliffs. She had looked forward during that hour with calm good sense to the changes that were about to be wrought in her life. And then Kenneth had appeared on the skyline. How much had happened since then! Her life had been permanently ruined since then.
All because he had broken a promise and come home.
“Stay away from him,” Helen said again, and she smiled once more, rose to her feet, and disappeared through the doorway into the ballroom.
And Kenneth, Earl of Haverford, wished her to marry him? Moira thought. To make Helen into her sister-in-law and the countess into her mother-in-law? The very thought was frankly terrifying.
She was being utterly foolish, she thought, giving herself a firm mental shake. She got to her feet and crossed to Harriet’s table, smiling and ignoring the feeling of queasiness.
11
SUNSHINE beyond the morning room window promised well for the new day and the new year. The snow had all disappeared, leaving the grass somewhat pale. It would be at least a month before the first shoots of spring pushed through the soil. The bare branches of the trees were spread against a blue sky.
Moira gazed through the window, one elbow resting on the top of the small escritoire at which she had been writing, her chin in her hand. A completed letter lay on the desk in front of her, the ink drying. The letter—the most difficult one she had written in her life. It was fitting, perhaps, that it should be written on the first day of the new year.
What would become of her? she wondered. What would become of her mother? Sir Basil Hayes had been able to leave them very little in his will. They were almost entirely at the mercy of Sir Edwin Baillie. Yet how could they expect any great generosity from him now when she had humiliated him by ending her betrothal to him? It was something that was just not done. It was enough, if they moved in higher circles, to have her ostracized for life. Even here in Tawmouth she would find it difficult for a while to hold up her head and be sure of her welcome at the homes of their friends.
She folded the letter carefully. She would not fall into self-pity. She had no one but herself to blame for the predicament in which she now found herself. She got to her feet. It was time to send the letter. She would walk into Tawmouth. The exercise would do her good. She still felt queasy this morning. The feeling would go once she had done what needed to be done. It was the indecision, the guilt that had made her feel ill for a whole week. As soon as she returned home, she would speak with Mama.