by Mary Balogh
She liked Mr. Adams. She disliked this man—an opinion that might well be colored by the fact that she had embarrassed herself before his eyes, she was ready to admit to herself.
“Mister Winters?” Lady Baird said, looking about the room with brightly curious eyes.
“Is deceased, Daph,” Mr. Adams said quickly. “Mrs. Winters is a widow. We are delighted that she chose Bodley-on-the-Water in which to make her home. She reads to the elderly and teaches the children and keeps the church supplied with flowers from her garden during the summer. She teaches Julie and Will to play the pianoforte, though they are displaying all the symptoms of tone deafness that afflict their father, I am afraid.”
“Mrs. Winters is what one would call a treasure, then,” Viscount Rawleigh said, his eyes looking her up and down and undoubtedly coming to the same conclusion that Mrs. Adams had appeared to come to earlier. Well, it did not matter, Catherine thought, swallowing her mortification. She had not dressed to impress his almighty lordship. If he saw her as a woman of moderate means, living far from any center of fashion, then he was right. That was exactly what she was.
“Beyond all doubt,” Mr. Adams said with a smile. “But we are embarrassing you, Mrs. Winters. Tell me how my children have progressed in the past two months. The truth, now.” He chuckled.
Catherine was annoyed to realize that she really had blushed. But it was not so much with pleasure or embarrassment at the compliment as with anger that it had not been meant as such. There had been a certain boredom in the viscount’s voice. What he had really been saying was that she was a dull woman. Well, she was that too.
“They have both been practicing daily, sir,” she said. “And both are developing a competence at their scales and the simple exercises I have set them.”
Mr. Adams laughed again. “Ah, the consummate diplomat,” he said. “But I suppose that with Julie at least we must persevere. The thought of a young lady growing up without that particular accomplishment is enough to give one the shudders. At least she shows some promise with her brush and watercolors.”
“I do not play the pianoforte with any degree of competence either,” Lady Baird said, “and I have not been a social pariah since my come-out. Indeed, I believe I did very well for myself in snaring Clayton as a husband, even setting aside the fact that we were head over ears for each other. All one does during a party when asked to play a piece, Mrs. Winters, is smile dazzlingly, hold up both hands, and say something like, ‘Look, ten thumbs,’ and everyone laughs as if one is a great wit. I assure you it works.”
“Perhaps Mrs. Winters should teach your children diplomacy rather than music, then, Claude,” Lord Rawleigh said.
“It must indeed be tedious to teach children who are not interested,” Lady Baird said with some sympathy.
“Not so, ma’am,” Catherine said. “And it is not interest they lack, but—”
“—talent,” Mr. Adams supplied when she stopped abruptly. He chuckled again. “Never fear, Mrs. Winters. I love them none the less for their lack of musical aptitude.”
“Ah, dinner,” Lady Baird said, looking across the room to see the butler speaking with Mrs. Adams. “Good. I am famished.”
“Excuse me,” Mr. Adams said. “I must lead in Mrs. Lipton.”
“Where is Clayton?” Lady Baird looked about her.
Catherine quelled an inner surging of panic. Oh, no, this was too embarrassing. But she was saved, as she might have known she would be, by the arrival of Mrs. Adams, who of course had everything organized.
“Rawleigh,” she said, taking his arm, “you will, of course, wish to lead Ellen in.” She looked with almost comic condescension at Catherine. “I have asked the Reverend Lovering to lead you in, Mrs. Winters. I thought you would be more comfortable with someone you know.”
“Of course,” Catherine murmured, amusement replacing the panic. “Thank you, ma’am.”
The rector was already bowing at her elbow and assuring her that he would consider it a singular honor to be allowed to take her in to dinner and seat her beside him.
“Mrs. Adams knows,” he said while that lady could still hear him, “that a man of my calling favors a table companion of good sense.”
Which was wonderful praise indeed, Catherine thought, laying her arm along his, and would undoubtedly confirm Viscount Rawleigh in his opinion of her as a dull woman. Not that she gave the snap of two fingers for his opinion.
She settled philosophically into what was bound to be a dull hour. Mr. Nathaniel Gascoigne sat to her left and appeared to be a pleasant gentleman as well as a handsome one. But she had little opportunity to converse with him. The Reverend Lovering monopolized her attention as he always did when seated beside her, a common occurrence when they were both guests at Bodley. He assured her throughout the meal that they must both feel humble gratitude for the honor bestowed on them by their invitations to be in such illustrious company. And he assured her too of the superior quality of every dish set before them.
Catherine lent him half an ear and enjoyed observing the company. Mr. Adams at the head of the table was the genial host. Mrs. Adams at the foot was the regal hostess. It always intrigued Catherine that they were apparently quite contented with each other when they were so very different in character. They were, of course, both beautiful people. She noted that Ellen Hudson, seated beside the viscount, made a few nervous attempts to engage his attention. Yet when he gave it, she became mute and noticeably uncomfortable. He would turn his attention back to the conversation of Mrs. Lipton on his other side. Mrs. Adams was noticeably annoyed. Catherine guessed that Mrs. Lipton would be seated far from the viscount in future. She noticed that Lady Baird and Mr. Gascoigne flirted with each other in what was very obviously a harmless manner. She noticed that Miss Theresa Hulme exchanged several longing glances with Mr. Arthur Lipton, her fiancé, who was too far from her at table to be engaged in conversation. She appeared to have little conversation and was soon largely ignored by the gentlemen to her left and right, poor girl. Lord Pelham was deep in conversation with Miss Veronica Lipton throughout dinner.
Catherine enjoyed being an observer rather than a player, though it had not always been so. Being an observer lent amusement to life and saved one much heartache. It was far more pleasant, she had discovered gradually over the years, to guard one’s emotions, to keep oneself at one remove from life, so to speak. Not that she did not involve herself in a number of busy activities, and not that she did not have friends. But they were safe activities, safe friends.
She found her eyes caught by Lord Rawleigh’s at a moment when half her mind was listening to the Reverend Lovering’s eulogy on the roast beef, just consumed, and the other half was woolgathering. She smiled into the familiar face a split second before she remembered that it was not familiar at all. He was a stranger. And she had done it again soon after assuring herself that it could never happen again. Her eyes slid awkwardly away from his and her fork clattered rather noisily on her plate.
But what was wrong with smiling at him when their eyes met by chance across the table? They had, after all, been presented to each other and had conversed in a group together for a few minutes before dinner. There was no reason at all why she should have looked away in confusion. Doing so had made her appear guilty, almost as if she had been stealing admiring glances at him and had been caught in the act. She frowned in chagrin and looked determinedly back at him.
Viscount Rawleigh was still observing her. He raised one dark and haughty eyebrow before she jerked her eyes away again.
And now she had made matters worse. How gauche she was! Merely because he was a handsome man and she felt the pull of his attractiveness as any normal woman would?
She smiled at the Reverend Lovering, and thus encouraged, he launched into praises of the superior discernment Mr. Adams had shown in the choice of chef.
• • •
SHE
was a widow. Interesting. Widows were always many times more desirable than any other type of female. With unmarried ladies one had to tread carefully—very carefully, as Nat had recently discovered to his cost. If one was a man of fortune and some social standing, one was seen as a matrimonial prize, to be netted at all costs by interested relatives, even if not by the young lady herself. Besides, unmarried ladies were quite unbeddable unless one was prepared to pay the ultimate price.
He was not. Only that once. Never again.
And married ladies were dangerous, as Eden had found within the past few months. One could lose one’s life in the face of an irate husband’s bullet or have to live with the guilt of having killed a man one had wronged. Even if the husband was too cowardly to issue a challenge, as appeared to have been the case with the man Eden had cuckolded, there was always the censure of the ton to be borne. That meant absenting oneself from London, and even perhaps from Brighton and Bath for a year or so.
Females who were not ladies were generally a bore. They were necessary for the slaking of one’s appetites, of course, and they were often marvelously skilled between the sheets. But they were too easily had and they generally had nothing at all to offer except their bodies. They were a bore. It was several years since he had employed a regular mistress. He preferred casual encounters if the choice must be made. But they posed their own danger. He had brought his body more or less safely through six years of fighting in the Peninsula as well as through Waterloo. He had no wish to surrender it to a sexual disease.
No, widows were perfect in every way. He had twice had affairs with a widow. There had been no complications with either. He had left each when he tired of her. Neither had put up any fuss. Both had moved on to the next lover. He remembered them with some fondness.
Mrs. Winters was a widow. And an extraordinarily lovely one. Oh, not in any very obvious way, perhaps. Ellen Hudson was dressed far more richly and fashionably. Her hair was styled far more intricately. She was younger. But it was in the very absence of such lures that Mrs. Winters’s beauty shone. In her rather plain and definitely unfashionable green gown, the woman became apparent. The eye did not linger on the appearance of the dress but penetrated beyond to the rather tall, slender, but shapely form within. It was an eminently beddable body. And the simplicity of her hairstyle, smooth over the crown of her head and over her ears, caught in a knot behind, with only a few loose curls to relieve the severity, drew attention, not to itself, but to the rich dark sheen of the hair. And the hair was not fussy enough to draw attention from her face, regular-featured, hazel-eyed, intelligent. Beautiful.
She was a widow. He silently blessed the late Mr. Winters for having the courtesy to die young.
The stay in the country promised to be tedious. Oh, it was good to be back in what had been his grandparents’ house. It revived many pleasant childhood memories. And it would be good to spend a few weeks with Claude. They shared the unusual closeness of identical twins and yet their lives had taken quite separate paths since Claude had married at the age of twenty. They no longer saw a great deal of each other. He could not ask, either, for more congenial company than that of two of his three closest friends. They had been close since they were cavalry officers together in the Peninsula. They had been dubbed there by one wag of a fellow officer the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, he, Eden, Nat, and Kenneth Woodfall, Earl of Haverford, because it had seemed that they were always in the thick of action.
But the stay was going to be tedious. He could not like Clarissa, though to give her her due, she seemed to be keeping Claude happy enough. It was very obvious to him, though, that she had set herself a mission to be accomplished during the next few weeks. She wanted him for her sister. And so there was all the tedium to be faced of being polite to the girl while giving no false impression that he was courting her. He knew he would be up against Clarissa’s determined maneuvering.
Sometimes he cursed himself for a fool for feeling such an obligation to Eden and Nat. Did he have to feel obliged to rusticate with them just because they had no choice but to do so? Could he not leave them to keep each other company? But he knew that they would have done as much for him. Besides, Horatia would probably be in town for the Season. He would be as happy to avoid seeing her.
And so he was stuck here for a few weeks at the very least. He needed more diversion than a brother and two close friends could provide. He needed female diversion.
And Mrs. Winters was a widow.
And available.
She had signaled as much more than once. Quite unmistakably. Her behavior was entirely well-bred throughout the evening. She appeared quiet yet charming, just as a woman of her apparent position and means would be expected to behave. She neither pushed herself forward nor hung back with false modesty. In the drawing room after dinner she conversed with Clayton and Daphne and Mr. Lipton and appeared to be doing so with some sense, if their interested expressions when she was talking were any indication. After Miss Hudson, Miss Lipton, and Miss Hulme had favored the company with pianoforte recitals and songs, she was invited by Claude to play for them and did so without fuss. She played well but did not linger after the one piece as Miss Lipton had done. When Mrs. Lovering rose to leave, Mrs. Winters joined her without hesitation, bade Claude and Clarissa a courteous good night, and nodded politely at the company in general. She waited quietly for the pompous ass of a rector to pile effusive thanks on his hosts, to commend them on their distinguished guests, and to praise the meal they had all enjoyed. Almost ten minutes passed before the three of them finally took their leave, Claude with them to hand the ladies into the rector’s conveyance and to see them on their way.
Oh, but she had signaled her availability. There had been the smile and the feigned confusion and the lowered lashes at dinner—beautiful long lashes they were too, as dark as her hair. And there had been the several covert glances in the drawing room, most notably the one she had given him after she had finished playing the pianoforte and was smiling at the smattering of applause. She had looked directly to where he was standing, propped against the mantel, a glass in one hand, and she had blushed. He had not been applauding, but he had raised his glass one inch and had lifted one eyebrow.
Yes, she was definitely available. As he stretched out in bed later that night, having dismissed his valet and extinguished the candles, his loins ached in pleasurable anticipation.
He wondered if the late Mr. Winters had been a good teacher of bedroom skills. But no matter. He would just as soon teach her himself.
3
SHE had just walked back the three miles from the small cottage elderly Mr. Clarkwell occupied with his son and daughter-in-law. She had been reading to him as she tried to do at least once a week. He could no longer get about without the aid of two canes, and sitting indoors or even in the doorway all day made him peevish, his daughter-in-law claimed.
Catherine scratched an ecstatic Toby’s stomach, first with the toe of her shoe and then with her hand.
“Foolish dog,” she said, catching him by the jaw and shaking his head from side to side. “Anyone would think I had been gone for a month.” She laughed at his furiously wagging tail.
It was a chilly day despite the sunshine. She poked at the embers of the fire in the kitchen grate and succeeded in coaxing it back to life. She put on more wood and then filled the kettle and set it to boil for tea.
It always felt good to come back home and close the door behind her and know that she did not have to go anywhere for the rest of the day. She thought about last evening and smiled to herself. Such evenings were pleasant and she had found the company congenial despite several moments of embarrassment. But she did not crave them as a general way of life.
Not any longer.
But it seemed the rest of the day was not to be all her own after all. There was a sharp rap on the door. She hurried to answer it, sighing inwardly while Toby went wild with barking. It was
a groom from Bodley.
“Mrs. Adams is coming to call on you, ma’am,” he said.
Mrs. Adams never called upon those she considered beneath her socially. What she did do was summon a person to the garden gate, regardless of the weather or of what that person might have been busy at inside the house. And there she would speak for a few minutes until she chose to signal her coachman to drive on.
Catherine sighed again and closed the door on an indignant Toby before walking down the path to the gate. It was not the carriage approaching this time, though, she saw immediately, but a group of riders—Mr. and Mrs. Adams, Miss Hudson, Miss Lipton, Lady Baird, Lord Pelham, Mr. Arthur Lipton, and Viscount Rawleigh. They all stopped and there was a chorus of greetings.
“How do you do, Mrs. Winters?” Mr. Adams said with a cheerful grin. “Clarissa decided that she must call you outside in case you missed and failed to admire such a splendid cavalcade of horses and their riders passing by.”
Mrs. Adams ignored him. She inclined her head regally. It was a head covered by a very fetching blue riding hat with a feather that curled attractively beneath her chin. She wore a matching blue riding habit. It was new, Catherine believed. And expensive.
“Good day, Mrs. Winters,” she said. “I trust you did not take a chill from riding home in the vicar’s dogcart last evening? It is a pity you do not keep a carriage, but I do not suppose you would have much need for one.”
“Indeed not, ma’am,” Catherine agreed, entertaining herself with a mental image of a carriage house in her back garden—twice as large as her cottage. “And it was a very pleasant evening for a drive, provided one was dressed appropriately.”