by Mary Balogh
“Very well,” she said, just as if she was making a decision that had not already been made for her. “I shall call on Papa this afternoon. Whether he receives me or not will be his choice. And I shall attend Lady Mindell’s ball tomorrow evening. Whether I am received there or not will be her choice and that of her guests.”
“Bravo, my love,” her husband said softly.
Harry squeezed her hand. “Now I recognize you,” he said. “Now you are Cathy again. I thought you had changed, but I see I was mistaken.”
If she was to meet disaster, she thought, at least she would do it with her head high and defiance in her eyes.
• • •
THE Earl of Paxton had been clearly mystified by the declared intention of Viscount Rawleigh to call on him with his wife during the afternoon. That much was obvious to the viscount when they were shown into the man’s drawing room and he rose to his feet to greet them. His eyebrows were raised in polite inquiry.
“Rawleigh?” he said, inclining his head. “This is a pleasure. Ma’am?”
By that time, of course, he had looked at her and had frozen. A quick glance at his wife assured Lord Rawleigh that she had not crumbled. She was looking steadily back, her head high. He was enormously proud of her. And she looked more beautiful even than usual in one of the fashionable afternoon dresses that had been made for her at Stratton.
“Hello, Papa,” she said.
There was a short silence.
“What is this?” the Earl of Paxton said, his voice strained.
“Your daughter did me the great honor of marrying me one month ago,” the viscount said. “We have been at Stratton and have now moved to town for part of the Season. We have come to pay our respects to you, sir.”
The earl had not taken his eyes off his daughter. “This is madness,” he said. “I suppose she tricked you into it, Rawleigh?”
Sometimes it took almost a physical effort to contain fury. But fury would serve no one’s purpose at the moment.
“If love is a trick, sir,” he said. “I fell in love with her.” But he did not want to talk about Catherine with this man or with anyone in the third person, just as if she were an inanimate object or else an imbecile who could neither understand what was being said nor speak for herself. He looked down at her and smiled. “Did I not, my love?”
It was a quite inappropriate moment, he thought, to realize that he was not lying. Or had he fallen in love with her since their marriage? The answer was not important at the moment.
She smiled back at him. What sort of pain was she feeling, he wondered, at this first reaction of her father to seeing her again?
“You are insane,” the Earl of Paxton said. “And this is insane. You must leave London at once or we will all be ruined. My son—”
“—has believed his sister to be dead for five years.” Lord Rawleigh could not quite keep the harshness out of his voice. “He knows she is alive. He met her this morning at Rawleigh House.” He smiled at his wife again.
“It was cruel, Papa,” she said. “I was not dead and I was not guilty of anything. I had agreed to go away and be no further embarrassment to you. Harry and I were always very dear to each other. You had no right to lie to him.”
Bravo, my love, Viscount Rawleigh thought. Bravo.
The earl ran the fingers of one hand through his thinning hair. They had not been invited to sit down, the viscount noticed.
“We have no intention of being an embarrassment to you, sir,” he said. “I will be escorting my wife to Lady Mindell’s ball tomorrow evening. You have the choice of absenting yourself if you had intended to be there. Viscount Perry has a similar choice, though I believe he has already chosen to attend. He has declared his intention of dancing the second set with Catherine.”
“He is just a puppy,” the earl said. “He does not understand—” But he paused midsentence and sighed. “I might have known something like this would happen one day. You were always the stubbornest woman of my acquaintance, Catherine. If you had not been, you would have married that scoundrel and been miserable with him for the rest of your life. I cannot say now I am sorry you did not do it.”
“Papa,” Catherine said softly.
He looked from one to the other of them in obvious exasperation. “You are fools, the two of you,” he said. “I thought you had more sense, Rawleigh. It is your brother, of course, who owns Bodley. Well, there is no point in your standing there for the rest of the afternoon. You had better come and sit down so that we can work out together how this thing is to be done. Not that it can be done. You must be well aware of that. Lady Mindell’s ball, you say? A disastrous choice. It is always one of the greatest squeezes of the Season. But you will not change your mind, will you?”
“No, sir,” Lord Rawleigh said, guiding his wife to the sofa the earl had indicated and seating himself beside her.
“No.” The earl nodded his head. “Well, we will have to do the best we can. Ring for tea, Catherine. You are in good looks. I will say that.”
“Thank you, Papa,” she said, getting to her feet again and pulling the bell rope.
It was easy to see where she had got her training in running a household. It was she, a few moments later, who gave quiet instructions to the footman who answered the ring. Neither she nor her father seemed to think there was anything strange about her doing so.
“You had better come here for dinner tomorrow evening,” the earl said, still sounding irritated. “We will go to the ball together from here. Unless the two of you come to your senses before then, of course.”
“We will be going,” Lord Rawleigh said. “And we thank you for the invitation, sir. We accept.”
Catherine sat down beside him again, her face a shade paler, but her chin still up. He took her hand in his, laid it on his sleeve, and kept his hand over it to warm it.
• • •
SHE had blown out the candles, but she had not lain down yet. She was standing at the window of her bedchamber looking down at the moonlit square outside. It was quiet and peaceful, even beautiful, despite its obvious urban look. She had loved London once, had longed to come here, had lapped up its pleasures and its excitement. She preferred the country now.
She wondered what she would be feeling this time tomorrow. The ball would be in progress. Would she still be there? Would everything be destroyed by then? But she felt curiously calm about the possibility. She had recognized during the day that this was the only thing to be done.
Her father was going to come with them. He had shown no deep affection for her during the afternoon visit—but then, he never had—but he had agreed at least to stand by her. It had made her feel good to know that. And Harry was to be there. He was going to dance with her. She hoped she was not about to do him irreparable harm. But he was nineteen years old, a man even if he had not yet reached full majority. It had been his decision to attend the ball and to dance with her there.
Daphne and Clayton thought she was doing the right thing—not that she had any choice in the matter, of course. Rex had directed the coachman to drive to their home after they left her father’s. Daphne had hugged her and Clayton had kissed her cheek. And of course they knew everything, as they had since before her marriage. Catherine knew that even though nothing was said now. They had recognized her name and had remembered the old scandal. It made no difference to their kindness.
Daphne was increasing—after more than two years of marriage. She was almost delirious with happiness and did very little to hide it, as most women of breeding would have done. Catherine was happy for her. Very happy and—oh, yes, and envious too. She leaned her forehead against the glass of the window and closed her eyes. Oh, to hold a newborn child in her arms again. Her own child.
The door opened behind her and she straightened up in some surprise. Toby leapt up from his cozy perch in the middle of her bed and jumped down
to the floor.
“Ah, you are not asleep,” her husband said, coming toward her across the room. He had not brought a candle with him.
“No,” she said. Had he come to stay? She had not realized how much she had yearned for his coming until now.
“Catherine.” He stopped when he was close to her. “I have been nothing but a disaster in your life, have I?”
She opened her mouth but closed it again. How could she answer such a question?
“I called your life dull,” he said. “I had no right. You were happy, were you not?”
“Contented,” she said. “I had come to terms with what had happened to me and I had learned to like myself again. I was at peace with the world.”
“And then I came riding through the village,” he said, “bored and looking for something to alleviate my boredom, and you had the misfortune to mistake me for Claude.”
“It was a shock,” she said, half smiling, “to discover that there are two of you, even though I knew he had a twin.”
“You have been at the mercy of ruthless men too often in your life,” he said. “First Copley and then me. It hurts to couple my own name with his, but the truth must be spoken. I cannot even apologize to you. Apologies are just too inadequate to right some wrongs.”
“You must not compare yourself to him, Rex,” she said, closing her eyes. “I do not.”
“But I must,” he said. “I have brought you to this. First, marriage to a man you despise. And then the nightmare of a return to the scene of your first unjust humiliation. Do you understand why I have had to be so cruel during this past week?”
“Yes.” She looked at him in the faint light from the window. “Yes, I do, Rex. And I do not despise you. You have come for comfort? Be comforted, then. I do understand. And now, tonight, I would not change our plans for tomorrow even if you were to give me the choice. This is something I must do. So be comforted. And I do not compare you to him.”
He laughed softly. “I came to comfort you if I could,” he said. “But you have deftly turned the tables. I thought you might be feeling lonely and frightened, Catherine. I thought perhaps you might need arms to hold you. Why you might want mine, I do not know, but I suppose they are the only ones available.”
He was feeling guilty, she realized. He had been feeling guilty ever since last week when he had finally learned the truth about her. He was feeling that he had been no better than Sir Howard Copley. That was why he had been so remote, why he had not come to her bed at night. She had thought it was because he was disgusted with her.
She lifted her arms and framed his face with her hands. And looking into his eyes, she was surprised to see them brighten with tears. He cared, she thought suddenly. He cared just a little bit.
“I want your arms,” she said. “I have been lonely without them, Rex. I thought you blamed me for not telling such a sordid story before you married me. I thought you were disgusted with me. It was not that, was it?”
He did not answer in words. He merely drew her into his arms and rocked her against him as she set her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes.
Love could sometimes be exquisitely sweet, she thought. She did not care about tomorrow. She would not even think about it. Or about the fact that guilt had made him tender. It did not matter what had caused it. She accepted his tenderness as a gift not to be questioned or examined and destroyed.
She accepted it as a gift.
“Stay with me,” she said. “Make love to me.”
“All night,” he said, his voice low against her ear. “Every night, Catherine. For the rest of our lives.”
Ah, it was a sweet and precious gift.
21
FOR almost a week Viscount Rawleigh had been very visible in the haunts of fashionable society. He had spent hours of each day at White’s Club. He had walked and ridden in both St. James’s Park and Hyde Park during the hours when half the beau monde was doing the same thing in the same place. He had made some afternoon calls, most notably on older matrons, those who had most influence over the opinions and behavior of the ton. He had even attended an evening concert in a private home, the type of event that was largely avoided by the young and foolish.
His lordship was more than usually sociable and charming. It was clear, the older matrons agreed with fond indulgence, that the unknown lady who had finally netted one of Society’s most attractive matrimonial catches had also netted the boy’s heart. They waited with some curiosity to meet his viscountess. He would be escorting her to Lady Mindell’s ball, he had announced wherever he went.
Younger ladies were less inclined to be indulgent. Viscount Rawleigh had been a great favorite among them for several reasons, the most obvious of which were that he was titled, wealthy, and handsome. Also, of course, he had been a cavalry officer in the Duke of Wellington’s armies, and was rumored to have the scars to prove it—none of which were visible, a fact that was vastly titillating to the female imagination. And there was the intriguing fact that he was a twin—most of them had seen Mr. Claude Adams and had sighed over the fact that he had been off the market for years and years. Perhaps most fascinating of all was the fact that Viscount Rawleigh had once been jilted almost at the altar—he had been in Belgium at the time involved in the events leading up to and including Waterloo, but the altar theory had more drama. There was something tragically romantic about a man who had had his heart broken—especially when he was a handsome man—and there was wonderful challenge in imagining oneself as the woman who could mend it.
No, the younger ladies were less than thrilled to hear of Lord Rawleigh’s sudden marriage to an unknown woman. But they were no less curious than their elders to see her, to judge her worthiness for such a prize, to pick her to pieces in their minds and well-bred conversation if their judgment went against her.
The gentlemen, less interested in the viscount’s marriage except perhaps silently to commiserate with him—a gentleman rarely married in a hurry, after all, unless he had been somehow forced into it—nevertheless considered him a good sort. He had talked and laughed and dined and drunk with them during the week, and he had lost moderate sums to the best of them at the tables. They wished him well and wondered, perhaps less avidly than their female counterparts, what manner of woman had succeeded in putting a leg shackle on him.
As Lord Rawleigh had assured his wife, then, the stage had indeed been set for the night of Lady Mindell’s ball. Perhaps it would be an exaggeration to state that the ton flocked to Lord Mindell’s mansion on Hanover Square for the sole purpose of seeing the Viscountess Rawleigh. Undoubtedly they would have gone anyway to the ball, since it was regularly one of the greatest squeezes of the Season. But certainly the knowledge that finally they would meet the elusive bride added a welcome interest to the event at a time, a few weeks into the Season, when collective ennui at the sameness of ton events was in danger of setting in.
• • •
IT seemed that every fashionable carriage in London must be lined up outside the Mindell mansion, waiting to disgorge its gorgeously clad passengers. And it seemed that every window in the house must be lit by a thousand candles. And that every servant in the house and every guest at the ball must be congregated either on the pavement and steps outside the house or in the hall or on the stairs beyond the doors.
There was nowhere—absolutely nowhere—to hide. Even the interior of the carriage was flooded with light as Lord Rawleigh’s carriage took its turn drawing up before the doors.
The temptation for Catherine was to dip her head, to gaze at the ground, to put on a marble exterior, once again to become passive, to allow life to happen to her. But instinct told her that that would be the surest road to disaster. Disaster, if it was to come, was not going to be met meekly. She had decided that yesterday.
She looked at the two men sitting on the seat opposite. Her father was stiff and stony. But he was there a
t least. He had come. She smiled at him, though he did not return the look. Harry was silent and pale—and smiling with affectionate encouragement.
“You look beautiful, Cathy,” he said when she met his eyes. He had said the same thing before dinner and again before they left their father’s house. He looked wonderful too, dressed all in pale blue and white. Surely even now, though he was still so young, there must be a few even younger ladies who were sighing over him. Rex’s brother had married at the age of twenty, she thought—only one year older than Harry was now. She hoped tonight would not spoil his image with the ton.
The coachman was opening the carriage door and setting down the steps. One of Lord Mindell’s footmen was hovering outside, ready to lend assistance if any were needed. The moment had come. Her father and her brother descended to the pavement.
“Catherine,” her husband said quickly but quite distinctly before following them out and turning to hand her down, “you are beautiful. You are my pride and joy.”
Surprise and gratification could not quite mask the sick dread that seemed to have lodged like a leaden weight in the soles of her slippers. But his words brought color to her cheeks, as perhaps he had intended. The smile on her lips would have been there anyway, and the sparkle in her eyes, and the lift to her chin.
The final temptation was to fix her eyes on some distant and inanimate object. Resisting temptation was incredibly difficult, but she did it. She looked around her, seeing people, not avoiding their eyes. But if she hoped to assure herself that after all no one was looking back at her, she was to be disappointed. There was the natural curiosity about any new arrival. There was in addition the heightened curiosity of seeing Viscount Rawleigh’s new bride—he had told her that everyone knew he was married. Oh, yes, there were many eyes directed her way.
Harry and her father were on one side of her, her husband on the other. She had her arm on his sleeve. His free hand covered hers and he bent his head almost to hers as they climbed the shallow steps to the hall and entered it. He was smiling in a way that might under other circumstances have had her heart turning clear over in her chest.