by Mary Balogh
“I—I—” she said.
He smiled at her. His hand was still extended. She felt as if eyes were on them but could not look about her to see. She felt doubly exposed and bewildered. She had promised Lionel. But it was merely a dance. A waltz. If she refused the Earl of Thornhill, she would not be able to dance it with any other gentleman.
She set her hand in his. “Thank you,” she said.
But she would not leave the ballroom with him. The French windows were open, as they had been at the Chisley ball, and the ballroom was warm. But she would not set one toe out onto the balcony.
She had thought the waltz intimate when she had danced it with Lionel. It seemed even more so with the earl. It was his superior height, she decided. And his hand, warm and strong against the back of her waist, was holding her a little closer than Lionel had done—and a little closer than her dancing master had done. He was holding her just a little too close. If she swayed toward him even slightly in the course of the dance, she would touch him—with her breasts.
She should have said no, she thought, now that it was too late. A very firm, chilly no. She darted a look up into his eyes. They were looking steadily back, as she had expected they would. They looked even darker than usual and more compelling through the slits of his mask. She looked down sharply.
“I thought we were almost friends,” he said quietly.
“No.” She drew breath to say more, but left the one word to stand alone.
“They have been warning you against me again,” he said. “I should not have taken you into the cool seclusion of the orchard, should I? Was he very angry with you? Would it help if I explained to him that nothing improper happened?”
“Is it true,” she asked, and she blushed, knowing what she was about to say, “that you fled to the Continent with your stepmother?”
“Ah,” he said, “they really have been busy. I would not use the word fled. It gives the impression of running in panic or guilt. But yes, I accompanied the Countess of Thornhill, my father’s second wife, to the Continent.” He was watching her keenly, she saw when she looked up briefly again. His head had bent slightly toward hers. People were watching. She could feel them watching.
“She had your child,” she said. She did not know how she got the words past her lips. She did not even know why she would want to say them.
“She gave birth to a daughter in Switzerland,” he said.
“And you abandoned them there.” She was breathless. Her voice was accusing. She wished—oh, she wished she had said no. Why had Lionel been so careless after protecting her all evening and after telling his mother and Aunt Agatha that he would look after her?
“I left them in their new home there,” he said, “while I came back to mine.”
Another couple twirled close to them and his arm tightened about her, drawing her even closer. He did not relax it after the couple were safely past.
“Do you have any other questions?” he asked.
“No.” She was being almost overpowered by that same feeling she had had when he kissed her in the Chisleys’ garden. At a totally inappropriate time. When he had just admitted … “Please do not hold me so close. It is unseemly.”
She raised her eyes unwillingly to his as his hold relaxed just a little. And then found that she could not look away again.
“You should not have asked me to dance,” she said. “Not that first time or any time since. It is not right. You should have stayed away.”
“Why?” His voice was very quiet. It sounded like a hand would feel slowly caressing its way up her back. “Because I am not respectable? Or because you find it impossible to say no?”
She bit her lip. “You just admitted—”
“No,” he said. “That is a poor choice of word. I just gave you a few facts. Gossipmongers love to take facts and twist them and squeeze them and sensationalize them until they are almost unrecognizable as truth.”
“But you cannot deny the facts,” she said.
“No,” he said, and he smiled.
“Are you saying, then,” she said, “that the facts do not mean what they appear to mean?”
“I am saying no such thing,” he said. “I will leave the facts with you and the interpretation of those facts that Kersey and others of your family or acquaintances have put upon them in your hearing. But you have liked me, have you not? We were almost friends at the garden party, were we not?”
His eyes held hers, and his voice beguiled her. She wanted to believe in his innocence. When she was with him, she could not believe him the villain everyone else thought him and that even she had concurred with. When she was with him, he was … her friend. And something else—something more. But she was afraid of the direction her thoughts were taking and brought them to a stop.
“Tell me,” she said, gazing earnestly at him, “that you are innocent of those things people say about you.”
“My father’s wife was never my mistress,” he said. “Her child is not mine. I left her in comfort and security in Switzerland because there was no further need for me to stay with her. Do you believe me, Jennifer?”
She drew in a sharp breath at the sound of her name on his lips—again. And she swayed toward him until the tips of her breasts touching his coat brought her jolting back to a realization of where she was. But they were very close to one set of opened French windows, and he waltzed her through them before she could look about her to see if she had been observed. She felt dazed, almost as if she had been in some sort of trance. She had forgotten for perhaps seconds, perhaps minutes, that she was dancing with him in a crowded ballroom and that in the nature of things their every look and gesture were being observed.
She was thankful after all for the comparative privacy of the balcony. And for its coolness.
“Yes, I believe you,” she said. “Yes, I do.”
“Gabriel,” he said, his head close to hers. “It is my name.”
“Gabriel.” She looked at him, startled. Gabriel? He was the angel Gabriel, she thought foolishly. Not Lionel, but this man whom she and Sam had called Lucifer.
“On your lips,” he said, “my name sounds like an endearment.” He closed the gap of inches between their mouths and touched hers with his own for a few brief moments.
It was hardly a kiss. It was even less a kiss than the other one had been. But he had continued dancing on the balcony and now they were at the next set of French windows and reentering the ballroom. But whereas he had probably intended the light touching of mouths to happen out of sight on the balcony, it actually happened a fraction of a second too late—they were fully in the doorway and fully in view of any of a few hundred people who happened to be looking their way.
Jennifer froze, terrified to turn her head to the right or the left, terrified to look away from his eyes.
He did not look away from hers. “If you dare to look into your heart,” he said, “and find that it has changed since last you looked, pay heed to it. It is not too late—yet. But soon it will be.”
Her eyes widened as the meaning of his words hit her. “Nothing has changed,” she said. “Nothing at all. I am going to be married in a month’s time. It is all arranged. I love him.”
His eyes smiled a little sadly. “You would not admit to that the last time we spoke,” he said. “It is true, then? What I have felt since meeting you, what I feel, is entirely one-sided?”
She bit her lip again. “You must not say such things,” she said. “Please. You say that we are almost friends and yet you try to upset me. You try to make me feel doubts when I feel none. You try to make me admit that I—”
“No,” he said softly. “Not if it will upset you to do so, Jennifer. Not if it will hurt you, my love.”
There was such an aching stab of … longing? deep in her womb that for a moment she closed her eyes. But the music was drawing to a close. Blessedly the set was coming to an end.
Oh, blessedly.
My love. My love.
He bowed
over her hand when he had returned her to the edge of the floor and they were flanked by Aunt Agatha on the one side and the Countess of Rushford on the other, and raised it to his lips.
Aunt Agatha was tight-lipped and smiling all at the same time. Lionel had not yet returned from the floor with Samantha. The countess was smiling and linked her arm through Jennifer’s.
“It is hot in here, my dear,” she said. “Come, stroll with me about the ballroom and onto the balcony. Let us be seen smiling and conversing together. Sometimes, I know, these things happen, and it is almost invariably not the young lady’s fault. Smile, dear. We have a great deal of smoothing over to do.”
Her arm was not as relaxed as her person appeared to be, Jennifer noticed. She also noticed that her smiling future mother-in-law was angry.
Jennifer smiled. And looked about her as the two of them strolled around the perimeter of the room in the direction of the French windows to find that everyone seemed to be looking at them. At her. It seemed hardly an exaggeration.
“Some cool air would be pleasant,” she said, holding onto her smile with a conscious effort.
My love. My love. The words, spoken in the voice of the Earl of Thornhill, echoed and reechoed in her head.
“WELL, MY ETHEREAL FAIRY queen.” His blue eyes smiled at her through the slits of his golden mask. “Are you able to grant wishes?”
Samantha looked at him warily. Although she had been chatting brightly with several gentlemen since the last set ended, because she loved Lionel she was always aware of him when they were in a room together. She had seen him send his mother and Aunt Aggy away and had heard what he had said to them. He had sent them away so that he could ask her to dance, she thought a few minutes later. But he did not need to send them out of the way in order to do that. It was quite unexceptionable for him to dance with her. In doing so now, though, he had left Jenny alone for the moment. But only for a moment. Then she was dancing with the Earl of Thornhill. Had Lionel not seen the danger? Was it not his duty to protect Jenny from the attentions of that man?
“Jenny is dancing with the Earl of Thornhill,” she said. “She could not help it. She could hardly have said no without appearing rude.”
“Yes.” He glanced over his shoulder. “So she is.” He was neither surprised nor annoyed. Almost, Samantha thought, as if he had planned it. But that made no sense. He had warned Jenny to stay away from the earl. He had made her promise never to speak with him again.
“You must be looking forward to the evening after tomorrow,” she said brightly.
“Must I?” His eyes were back on her. He was smiling in a perfectly sociable manner. He was dancing at the perfect distance from her. No one looking at him would realize that there was that special light in his eye, the one that had been there during their outing in the boat.
“Don’t,” Samantha said. “Don’t look at me like that.”
“How can I help it?” he asked. “But I am sorry.”
Samantha felt intensely unhappy. She was deeply and quite unwillingly in love with him. And he seemed to share her feelings. But it was not right. He had made his offer to Jenny and had been accepted. Perhaps he had been more or less forced into it, but he had done it nevertheless, and now he was honor-bound to live by it. It was not right that he look at her in this way and speak in this way. It was not fair—either to Jenny or to her.
In the last couple of days she had come to see Lionel as a weak, perhaps even dishonorable man, and the knowledge hurt and confused her. She loved him. But she would love him in the secret of her heart for the rest of her life, she had decided. She would not share sighs and lovelorn looks with him behind Jenny’s back.
She could not.
“I have made you unhappy,” he said.
“Yes.” She looked into his eyes. “Jenny is my cousin and my closest friend. She is like a sister to me. I want to see her happy.”
“So do I,” he said. “I care for her. Sometimes—” He looked away from her and they waltzed in silence for a while. “Sometimes we have to be cruel in order to be kind. Sometimes trying to protect other people from hurt only succeeds in bringing them greater and longer-lasting pain in the end.”
She did not know what he was trying to say. But despite herself she felt the stirrings of hope, the beginnings of a response that she had been quite determined to keep at bay tonight and forever in the future.
He looked directly into her eyes, still smiling, still waltzing with studied elegance. “If you and I protect her from pain now,” he said, “do you believe that we can hide the truth from her for the rest of our lifetimes? Do you believe she will not be more hurt by it in the future, when it is too late for anything to be done about it?”
Samantha felt as if she was about to faint. “The truth?” she said. “What is the truth?”
He looked at her and twirled her about the corner of the ballroom, saying nothing. But looking everything.
“But we cannot tell her,” she said.
“I cannot.” His smile faded for a few moments while he gazed deeply into her eyes. “I am a gentleman, Samantha. A gentleman cannot do such a thing even to prevent a lifetime of unhappiness for three people.”
“You want me … ?” He wanted her to tell Jenny that she loved Lionel and that he loved her. That only Jenny and the betrothal that had not yet been officially announced stood between them and happiness. Oh, no. No. “No,” she said. “No, I could not possibly. This is not right. It is not right at all.”
A part of her—a base part that horrified her—was tempted. Another part was repelled, repelled by him and repelled by her reaction to him. She could not love him, surely. He was no gentleman. Not really. A gentleman could not suggest such a thing. Not even when the alternative was to marry the woman he did not love.
Jenny. Oh, poor Jenny. She loved Lionel to distraction. And she deserved happiness. She did not deserve this sort of deceit and trickery.
“I will not do it,” she said firmly. “I could not. But for Jenny’s sake, if you feel that you cannot give her your full loyalty even if not your heart, you must tell her yourself. An honorable man would do that. An honorable man would not expect me to do it for him.”
“For us,” he said. “But it does not matter. I see that I have asked too much of you. And you are right. It was a dishonorable and ungentlemanly suggestion. I am ashamed that my heart tempted me into making it on the spur of the moment.”
Samantha was suddenly very aware of her youth. She was only eighteen years old. She resented it when people sometimes called her young and innocent and naive. And yet she felt all three at this moment. She had the feeling she had been caught up in something beyond her experience and beyond her ability to handle. She had fallen in love with Lionel because he was handsome and because he had kissed her—was there any other basis for her feelings if she was strictly honest with herself? And he had fallen in love with her because … Was he in love with her? Why? Why so suddenly? Could his feelings be so deep that he was willing to upset the plans of five years and cause scandal in doing so?
She felt bewildered and frightened.
“I would rather,” she said quietly and unhappily, “that we changed the subject, my lord.”
“Ah,” he said. “Yes. Of course.”
They began to exchange opinions on the various costumes about them.
10
SIR ALBERT BOYLE FOUND HIS FRIEND THE EARL OF Thornhill at home late in the afternoon of the following day. He was in the sitting room of his own apartments abovestairs, drunk.
It was neither the place nor the time of day in which to be inebriated. And Lord Thornhill was not the type of man to let himself get thoroughly foxed. Especially at home alone during the daytime. Not that he was very obviously drunk. Apart from the slight dishevelment of his clothes and hair and his slouching posture and the fact that there were two empty decanters in the room, one on a desk and the other on the hearth at his feet, and an almost empty glass dangling from one hand, he looke
d quiet enough. He was not dancing on tables or roaring out bawdy ballads.
But Sir Albert, waved to a chair by a careless hand—the one that held the glass—knew his friend well. He was drunk.
“Well,” the earl said. There was no slurring in his speech. “Is the deed done, Bertie? You have come here to celebrate? Ring for another decanter, my dear chap. These two seem to be empty.”
“She accepted me,” Sir Albert said. He did not approach the bellpull. He eyed his friend warily.
“Of course.” The earl refrained from adding that the girl would have had to be a blithering idiot to refuse. “My felicitations, Bertie. You are floating on clouds of bliss?”
“She had tears in her eyes the whole time I talked with her,” Sir Albert said, ruining his fashionably rumpled hair by running the fingers of one hand through it. “And she put her mouth up to be kissed when I was only intending to kiss her hand. She kisses prettily.” He flushed.
The earl regarded his friend through the inch of brandy left in the bottom of his glass. “Ah, the innocence of true love,” he said. “So you have a slave for life, Bertie. That will be comfortable for you.”
Sir Albert got to his feet and crossed to the window, where he stood, gazing out. “I am terrified, Gabe,” he said. “The tears. The look of surprise followed by hope followed by happiness and adoration. It was enough to turn any fellow’s head. It is enough to make me conceited for life.”
“But you are terrified.” The earl chuckled.
“It is such an enormous responsibility,” Sir Albert said. “What if I cannot make her happy? What if I come to take her for granted just because she was so easily won? What if she accepted me only because she cannot expect many such chances? What if—”
The earl swore, using language so profane that there could be no further doubt that he was severely inebriated.
“Bertie,” he said, reverting to decent English, “if you cannot see the stars clustered about your head, old chap, you have to be blind in both eyes.”