Historical Jewels

by Jewel, Carolyn

  Mr. Tallboys offered his arm. “Shall we?”

  Sophie liked Mr. Tallboys’s smile. They walked into dinner and he held her chair for her. When he was seated beside her, she leaned toward him and said, “I’ve been introduced to so many people tonight, I’ll never recall all their names.” John would expect her to remember everyone she’d met. “Will you rescue me, Mr. Tallboys, and whisper names to me?”

  “I will, ma’am,” he replied with an engaging grin. He had one of those smiles that made you smile back without even thinking why.

  She and Mr. Tallboys were closer to the head of the table than she’d expected to be. Close enough to easily overhear Banallt’s conversation. A servant placed a bowl of clear consommé before her, and when she leaned back, she saw Lady Harpenden lean to Banallt, her mouth by his ear. As he listened to the countess, his eyes settled on Sophie with a dark, unreadable gaze. She looked away. Mr. Tallboys sat on her right, but to her left was an academician, a member of the Royal Society whose name and occupation she’d already forgotten. Mr. Jacob Nolan, an astronomer—so Mr. Tallboys whispered to her.

  She was horribly aware of Banallt. Not only was he seated closer to her than she would have liked, he was on the opposite side of the table and perfectly within her line of sight. Mr. Tallboys leaned toward her again and she tipped her ear toward his. “You know Lord Banallt, of course,” he said. He’d been going around the table, whispering names and occupations to her. “I saw you being introduced to him tonight.”

  “Yes.” She had no desire to eat. None whatever.

  He nodded, very slightly, in the direction of her brother, who was sitting next to Miss Llewellyn. He was smiling, putting on an excellent show of being delighted with the girl at his side. Her brother’s manners were faultless. “Everyone thought she’d marry last season. Any number of young bucks wooed her.” Tallboys shook his head. “But with her beauty and connections, she might look very high indeed. The woman on Lord Banallt’s left is Lady Harpenden.”

  All Sophie could think was that Lady Harpenden was a lovely blonde who seemed to have no trouble making conversation with anyone around her. She was gay and light and completely comfortable in company so lofty.

  “Her husband, Lord Harpenden, is farther down the table. With the dowager countess there. She’ll talk his ear off.”

  “The poor man.” She picked up her spoon and pulled it through her soup, though she did not taste it. If she ate anything, she’d be ill.

  “The gentleman on the dowager countess’s other side is Mr. Underhill. He’s a director at the Bank of England. A notorious snooze. If you’re introduced, whatever you do don’t mention British monetary policy. He’ll lecture you until your brains congeal.”

  Sophie smiled at Tallboys. “I presume you’ve heard the lecture.”

  His expression turned so serious Sophie had a strong urge to giggle. “Took me a week to recover.” He shuddered. “Nightmares for months after.”

  She laughed. “Thank you for the warning.”

  Lady Harpenden let out a peal of laughter. Nearly the entire table looked in her direction. “I suspect she’s set her cap at him.” Mr. Tallboys chuckled. “Should be amusing to watch.”

  Sophie set down her spoon and turned to look at Tallboys. “Amusing? Why is that?” She had no right to be angry at Banallt, but she was. Why should it matter to her if he embarked on a sure-to-result-in-scandal affair? “I should think with his reputation she should have no trouble whatever.”

  “Ah,” Mr. Tallboys said. The smile faded from his eyes. “I daresay you’re right. But I think all the same she will not succeed.”

  “Why not? She’s quite a lovely woman. Why, she’s even a blonde.”

  “True.” He chuckled. “In the event, Mrs. Evans, Lord Banallt has been notoriously hard to catch since he was recalled from Paris.”

  Sophie lifted her eyebrows, looking at the earl and Lady Harpenden. Banallt’s eyes slid away from her. Had he been watching her?

  “From what I’ve heard,” Tallboys continued, “he’s not been interested in any particular woman this last century.” He shrugged. “Although…”

  “Although?”

  “The rumor is that he’ll marry Miss Llewellyn.” She did not have a good view of Miss Llewellyn from her seat.

  “Rumor seems to follow him,” she murmured, turning her attention to the gentleman on her left. She passed the remainder of the meal refusing to look in Banallt’s direction. Eventually, the ladies left the men in possession of the table and returned to the salon, where Sophie discovered she liked Banallt’s cousin, Mrs. Llewellyn, a great deal. She was a sensible woman. And Miss Fidelia Llewellyn was breathtaking. If the talk was true, she wasn’t Banallt’s usual sort. She was beautiful, no denying that. Sophie had never heard his name connected with any woman who wasn’t, but she was plainly a lady.

  The arrival of guests who had not been invited to dine increased the noise level in the parlor considerably, despite the fact that the gentlemen had still not yet come in. The news from France was on everyone’s tongue. Doubtless the gentlemen were discussing the Corsican yet. She wished she were a fly on the wall in that room.

  “My dear Margaret,” a woman said.

  Sophie, who had been looking in the direction the men would come from, didn’t see the woman approach; she only heard her voice. She looked back and was shocked beyond words to recognize the woman.

  “Constance,” said Mrs. Llewellyn. “Good evening to you.”

  “We’ve just come from the Duke of Portland’s.” She was still quite beautiful. “I’m glad we’re not too late to see you.”

  Mrs. Llewellyn put a hand on Sophie’s shoulder. “Constance, you really must meet the delightful Mrs. Evans. Have you met?”

  Sophie’s chest constricted. Smiling was impossible. Her throat threatened to close off.

  “No,” Mrs. Peters said. “I’ve not had that pleasure.” She extended a hand to Sophie. Either Mrs. Peters did not remember her, did not connect her with Tommy, or intended to brazen out their meeting. Any case was intolerable.

  A door opened across the room, and the gentlemen came in just as Sophie stood up and headed for the door. It was either leave or tear out the woman’s deceitful eyes.

  Chapter Seven

  Banallt was the last of the gentlemen to leave the dining room. Not that he’d lingered over the port or a cigar. In his opinion, Vedaelin served an inferior port, and he’d not indulged in a cigar. His clothes smelled of smoke all the same. But Sophie was out there among the guests, and if he was to be honest with himself, seeing her again had rattled him. He’d not expected that. And so he’d stayed behind longer than he ought to have while he worked out how he would respond to her. He settled on not at all. The maintenance of his dignity was required.

  He determined that Sophie should have no discernible effect on him. She’d made her feelings perfectly clear to him at the close of last year. The least he could do was oblige her wish, and her brother’s, that they have nothing to do with each other. He’d left Henrietta Street the other day painfully aware for the first time in his life that he was not going to have what he wanted. He was not, however, he’d learned, completely resigned to that unpleasant fact.

  Guests had begun arriving from other engagements, and the parlor was now noisy in addition to crowded. He deliberately sought out Sophie so as to avoid meeting her. Despite the crush, he found her quickly. Her posture was achingly familiar; the shape of her head, the slope of her shoulders, the tilt of her chin. And what a shock to see her in a gown that bared her shoulders and upper bosom. No other woman drew his notice the way she did, and there were plenty of better-looking females around. She stood near the middle of the room with his cousin Harry’s wife Margaret, facing the door he’d come in by. Sophie’s dark-lashed eyes were fixed on a woman he’d once have pursued straight to a mattress.

  Mrs. Peters stood with her back to him, so he could only imagine the quizzical expression on her face from the way her
head was tipped to one side. Margaret watched Mrs. Peters with an expression that suggested whatever she was hearing from the woman was not to her liking. Sophie looked as if she’d just been insulted. He veered away from the woman, and damn it all, the image of Sophie’s stricken expression stayed with him. Fidelia was on the opposite side of the room holding court with a crowd of men that included John Mercer. He ought to join Fidelia just to feed the gossip and tweak Mercer, who had pretensions where Banallt’s goddaughter was concerned. And, if he were honest, to see how Sophie felt about him courting. Not flirting, but courting.

  What if he was courting or flirting? Sophie Mercer Evans was none of his affair. He doubted he’d marry Fidelia, and didn’t care what Mrs. Peters had said to put that dead expression on Sophie’s face or whether Margaret approved or not. He and Sophie were done. He had been rejected and then warned away by her brother.

  He continued deeper into the parlor, pulling his gaze from the women. Best they cut all ties between them. Sophie, blast her, had been a topic of conversation among the gentlemen during their cigars and port. Vedaelin had been charmed by her and had made no secret of it, either. Banallt doubted he was the only man to leave the room wondering if Vedaelin thought he’d found his new duchess in Mercer’s sister. As for Mercer, he’d said little, and what little he did say had been, thankfully, to his sister’s credit.

  The fuss over her wouldn’t last, he told himself. Sophie Evans was new blood in a circle of jaded men who spent most of their time with women equally jaded. His heart clenched. Damn, damn, damn. And damn again. He was done with her. Utterly done. If he had any sense at all, he’d wait for Mrs. Peters to finish with Sophie and Margaret and let “La Grande Peters,” as she was called in certain circles, succeed in her pursuit of him. Or perhaps he’d allow Lady Harpenden to make progress with him. Mrs. Peters was more to his taste, but at least he liked the countess. He needed a distraction, and he’d gone far too long without sexual indulgence. Why not a mindless encounter with Mrs. Peters?

  He halted when he realized he was going to walk headlong into the wall if he didn’t get his mind off Sophie. The idea of taking Mrs. Peters to bed left him cold.

  “Banallt,” someone said. “Good to see you out and about.”

  “Tallboys,” he said. Tallboys had been Sophie’s partner at dinner. That had been a deft pairing of two fine minds. Until recently they’d not moved in the same circles. Tallboys had never been the sort to keep company with men like Tommy Evans. Or the Earl of Banallt, for that matter. What vices Tallboys had tended to keep him in better company than Banallt had once kept. “How are you?” he asked.

  He didn’t give a damn how Tallboys was, but the man proceeded to tell him, and that meant Banallt didn’t have to stand alone, stupidly staring at a woman who did not want him. Tallboys was not married. At his age he ought to be. He ought to find himself a decent woman and retire to the country to live boringly ever after. Sophie, damn her eyes, didn’t seem to have moved. He had her profile now, not her face. The arch of her nose was a glaring imperfection.

  “Have you an interest?” Tallboys said in the manner of someone who has repeated a question. Perhaps more than once.

  “I beg your pardon?” He had no damned idea what Tallboys had asked him. Mrs. Peters had finished talking to Margaret. Sophie was now making her way across the parlor, away from him. Away from Margaret. Mrs. Peters, on the other hand, was moving toward him. Her hips swayed invitingly as she opened a fan and waved it slowly under her chin. She was heading in his direction. God help him. He wanted to run.

  “You’ve been staring at her,” Tallboys said in a low voice. Well of course he was staring. Look at the way the woman was walking. He wasn’t the only man whose attention was on those swaying hips. He was probably the only man who didn’t want her any nearer. “I wondered if perhaps you felt you had a prior claim. You did meet her first, after all.”

  “No,” he said. He tore his gaze from Mrs. Peters. “There is no prior claim.” She was beautiful, but he wasn’t interested. He ought to be. He wished he were. Before Sophie, he would have been. Hell, he’d have already been to bed with her and found a way to drop her if she was as tedious as he suspected. He glanced around the room, looking for Vedaelin or even Mercer, if that would save him from Mrs. Peters. What he saw was Sophie heading for the door with short, rapid steps. Head down, she had her skirts fisted in one hand.

  Tallboys stepped back, hands lifted. “No need to snarl, my lord. If you reciprocate her interest, I won’t interfere.”

  “I don’t,” he said. He didn’t even care that he sounded curt. Sophie was moving at an angle to where he stood, but someone must have called out to her, because she hesitated, and he caught a glimpse of her face. Deathly white. And the tremble of her hand over her bosom. Then she fled. With a flash of the satin trim down the back of her gown, she was gone. “Damn,” he whispered. Well. Let her go then. Frankly, she had the right idea. He needn’t stay for this torture, either. He could leave while Sophie was in the retiring room fixing whatever disaster had happened to her rather shopworn gown. Couldn’t Mercer be bothered to properly outfit his sister for Town?

  “I thought perhaps you’d met her before tonight,” Tallboys said. “You knew her late husband, after all.”

  Banallt stopped staring at the empty doorway and looked at Tallboys. “Late husband?” To his knowledge, Mr. Peters was on the other side of the room. He wasn’t often caught flat-out stupid, and he’d just been, he realized. “Mrs. Evans, you mean?”

  “Why, yes, my lord.” Tallboys scanned the room. “She’s absolutely charming. Not the way you prefer them, but she’s got something all the same.” He smiled. “I’m relieved you don’t mind. The way you were staring at her tonight I thought you might.”

  “I was not staring at Mrs. Evans.” This entire evening was a fiasco, and he really couldn’t stand another moment of it. “Excuse me, Tallboys, won’t you?”

  Tallboys nodded. “My lord.”

  He dodged Mrs. Peters and left, heading for the stairs, mentally composing the excuse he would give a servant to deliver to Vedaelin. At the top of the stairs, where the corridor went one way to the ladies’ retiring room and another to God knows where in the house, a soft sound stopped him.

  Sophie was standing in a darkened portion of the corridor with her forearm on one of the marble columns that ran the length of the tiled walkway. Her head was hidden in the crook of her elbow.

  She gave no sign of having heard him. He could walk away. Continue down the stairs and out of the house. Away from here. He ought to. He took a step in her direction even though he didn’t intend to. Her shoulders heaved.

  “Mrs. Evans?”

  She stilled. Her forehead pressed into her arm just once before she lifted her head and looked in his direction. She opened her mouth to say something—probably, he decided, an order to leave her alone—but her breath stuttered, and her eyes…Her eyes were bleak. Broken.

  “What’s happened?” He was instantly cast back to Rider Hall, to the days when they’d been friends despite the relentless pull of his desire for her. He moved closer, near enough to touch her. He didn’t dare. “If it’s me who has upset you, please, dry your tears,” he said. “I have been called away. I’m on my way out now.”

  She put her back to the column and stared at the ceiling. Her breath hitched again, but softer this time as she struggled with whatever it was that had shattered her. Banallt’s chest shrank around his heart. “That’s—” She cleared her throat and started again. “That’s—It’s not you,” she whispered.

  He stared at her as she struggled to master herself, and for the first time since he had met her, he thought she might lose the battle. “Sophie,” he said. He took a breath. “Please, let me speak, and then you may either dismiss me or tell me what is the matter, as you wish. Agreed?”

  She nodded. Her hands were fisted and pressed against the column at her back.

  “I owe you an apology. It’s not to my cred
it that it’s taken me until now to make the attempt. That day at Rider Hall, you know the day I mean, I betrayed us both.” He fought for control himself as the emotions of that day came back. “No matter the cause, no matter my state of mind, I should not have behaved as I did.”

  “Banallt,” she said.

  But he lifted a hand to stop her. “I’ve not lived an exemplary life.” He glanced down the hall, but no one was there. “No one knows that better than you, but that day—that night of all the nights of my life, that is the only one on which I sincerely regret my behavior. I’ve since lain awake at night and…I imagine I behaved differently.” He glanced down. “How different our lives might be if I had not treated you so abysmally. I dishonored us both. You most of all. For all that and more, for every insult and offense, and I am aware there are many, I apologize.”

  She chewed on her lower lip. Her hands, he noticed, were no longer fisted but flat to the column behind her. “Thank you,” she said. And, God help him, something in her softened toward him.

  He nodded. “If I could take it all back, I would.” He hadn’t righted the wrong he’d done her. Nothing would do that. “I ought to have apologized much sooner.”

  “It’s all right.”

  “And now, on to tonight.” A selfless act from the Earl of Banallt? Could it be true? He was actually willing to stay out of her life. Had he ever done anything so much against his nature? “Is it my presence that upset you? If it is, you needn’t worry.”

  “That…No. Not you.” She drew in a breath. “I don’t belong here.”

  “Nonsense.”

  “Now I’m the one who is not being honest.” She chewed on her lip again. “It’s Mrs. Peters,” she said on an exhale that rattled the words. She caught herself, as she did whenever strong emotion challenged her control.