by Mary Balogh
He was the focus now of fascinated stares and of an excited buzz of conversation. And she had agreed to dance with him. It was a waltz. Of all the dances it might have been, it was a waltz. She wondered how many people would remember that it had been her cousin who had been at the heart of the scandal with him. Yet she was according him the public courtesy of dancing with him.
“You are more lovely than you were,” he said as he set one hand against the back of her waist and clasped her hand with his. “Far more lovely, Samantha. You are a woman now. I cannot take my eyes off you.”
She could feel his hands on her. She could feel his body heat, though they touched nowhere else. She felt surrounded by him. Suddenly she felt suffocated by him. She smiled from sheer instinct.
“Thank you,” she said curtly. She tried to look about her, to detach herself from the aura of his powerful presence, but everywhere about her she met curious eyes. She stopped looking.
“I came home,” he said. “I had to come.”
“I daresay one would become homesick after being out of the country for a number of years,” she said. “It is only natural.”
“I was homesick,” he said softly, tightening his hand almost imperceptibly against her back. “But for people more than places. For one particular person, whom I treated unpardonably because I would not have her share my disgrace. For one person I have never forgotten for a single day, Samantha.”
She looked into his eyes in shock, forgetting for one moment to smile. His silver-blond hair seemed thicker and shinier than ever. For the first time she noticed that he was dressed in pale blue and silver and white and looked like a prince from a fairy tale. But his words and their obvious meaning had jolted her finally out of the spell his sudden appearance had cast on her. She felt a welcoming fury build inside her as she smiled again.
“How gratified that person will be, my lord,” she said, “if she is able to forgive you and if she has not long forgotten you.”
His eyes became almost warm. “Ah,” he said, and the word was almost a caress. “Yes. You have grown up indeed, Samantha. I had hoped for it. You are angry and unforgiving and I am glad of it. You should not forgive me easily.”
“Or ever?” She made her eyes sparkle.
He smiled back, something Lionel had rarely done in those weeks when she had seen him frequently in his capacity as Jenny’s betrothed. Treacherously, she felt a lurching of desire deep in her womb. And an equal recoiling in horror. Could he really believe her naive enough to become entangled in his web again? When she knew how cruel and callous and self-serving he was?
Had he set himself that challenge?
And was there any possibility at all that he would win?
She grew cold with terror.
They danced in silence after that—for twenty interminable minutes. He waltzed superbly, never missing a step, never allowing her to collide with any other dancer, never slowing their progress about the perimeter of the ballroom or missing the sweep of a full twirl. His hand was firm and steady in hers. His shoulder was firmly muscled. His cologne was subtle and faultlessly masculine. She could remember his kiss—her first—open-mouthed, skilled, persuasive. He was the only man she had ever kissed who had used his tongue as well as his lips. A practiced seducer. Was it any wonder that she had fallen hard for him and had her heart quite shattered by his ultimate rejection? She had been a mere girl, inexperienced and naive.
No longer.
She danced and smiled. And tried to think of her beaux and her friends and of Jenny and the much-wanted third child she and Gabriel were now definitely expecting and of Lady Sophia, whose leg was miraculously healing now that the Season was beginning and there was much to be seen and done beyond the confines of her own home. She tried to think of Highmoor and the view from the hill to the abbey, spoiled only by the presence of a single tree on the slope. She thought of Mr. Wade and pushed the image away again, or she tried to.
And she felt Lionel’s magnificence and his attractiveness. She knew she hated him and despised him—despised him anew since their brief conversation at the beginning of the waltz. But she also wondered in fascination and dread how his kiss would feel now that she had had more experience herself. And how his body would feel against her own slightly more knowledgeable one—though only slightly. She was still woefully ignorant for a woman of her age. She wondered … No, no she did not. She did not wonder that at all. She was not given to lascivious thoughts.
She wondered if the waltz would ever end.
It did. But by the end of it she felt breathless and bruised and bewildered and unhappy. Desperately unhappy. Unhappy to the point of tears. He returned her to her group—Aunt Aggy was away in the card room, the necessity for close chaperonage long in the past—and bowed over her hand before thanking her for the honor and taking his leave of her.
Francis was looking uncommonly belligerent but showed his good breeding by resisting talking about what he clearly wanted to talk about. Francis, of course, had been a close friend of Gabriel’s at the time of the catastrophe. It was only later that he had become one of her beaux—though only because she was safe to flirt with and propose marriage to occasionally, she knew.
“The Earl of Rushford?” Helena Cox said, her eyes as wide as the proverbial saucers. “I have heard all about him. And you danced with him, Sam? I do not care what they say of him.” She giggled. “He is gorgeous.”
Mr. Wishart coughed and Helena giggled again. “Oh, and you too, sir,” she said. “Of course.”
“Gorgeous Wishart,” Sir Robin said. “It sounds altogether more distinguished than mere George Wishart, does it not? We must let it be generally known that George has officially changed his name.”
“You asked for it, Gorgeous,” Francis said in a falsetto voice when Mr. Wishart protested hotly.
She could stand it no longer. There was no air left in the ballroom, and what little there was was hot and perfumed and nauseating. There was no space in which to move. And the noise was deafening. She would faint—or worse, vomit—if she stood where she was for a moment longer.
“Excuse me,” she said hastily and turned to hurry away. She wormed her way through the crowds, occasionally having a brief path cleared by someone who saw her coming, once or twice having to stop for a moment to return the greeting of an acquaintance. The doors seemed a mile away.
She reached them eventually and hurried out into the comparative coolness and emptiness of the landing beyond. And was forced to stop when someone stepped into her path and did not move out of it. She looked up into his face, not very far above her own.
Never, never in her whole life had she felt such a rush of pure happiness.
LORD GERSON AND THE Duke of Bridgwater were greeted with refined enthusiasm by Lady Rochester, who had stayed on with her husband at the entrance to the ballroom to greet latecomers. She smiled with bland courtesy at the Marquess of Carew until his name was mentioned. Then her eyes widened and filled with interest.
“The elusive marquess,” she said. “Welcome.” But she made the mistake of extending her hand to him instead of merely curtsying. She glanced down in hasty, quickly veiled shock at the thin, gloved, hooked hand that shook her own. He did not see how she reacted to his limp as he followed his friends into the ballroom.
He felt shy, a rather ridiculous emotion for a man of seven-and-twenty to feel. And awkward and conspicuous. His friends wanted to promenade about the edge of the ballroom to find out whom they knew, to examine the new faces—young and female, of course—of the Season. But he wanted to stand still. He wanted only to look about him to see if she was there. He was no longer sure that he wished to make himself known to her. If she was there, he would not hide from her, he thought. But if she did not see him, then he would be content merely to watch her. If she was there. He hated the thought that he might have put himself through this torture for nothing.
His friends stayed with him for a while, the duke teasing him about being as skittish as the
freshest female recruit from the schoolroom, Gerson finding every remark hilarious.
“Is she here?” his grace asked, making free with his quizzing glass as he gazed about at the milling masses.
“She?” the marquess said. He had not yet had the time or the courage to make a thorough examination of the room.
“I hope she is worthy of this devotion of yours,” the duke said. “Pretty, is she, Hart? Young? Supple? Mouthwatering? And panting to become a marchioness?”
“This is rich,” Lord Gerson said. “You must point her out to us, Carew. You really must.”
But his grace’s elegant sweep of the room with his glass halted abruptly and he pursed his lips. He whistled softly. “Look at that,” he said quietly. “Pretty, young, supple, did I say? And mouthwatering? And bedworthy, too. Deliciously bedworthy. Not a day over eighteen, if my eyes do not deceive me.”
“Muir’s chit,” Lord Gerson said, following the direction of his friend’s quizzing glass. “Maybe only half a day over, Bridge. With a dowry to lend her beauty even if she were not already overendowed.”
“You know him?” his grace asked. “Present me, Gerson, there’s a good chap. I have to have a closer look. And feel, if it is only the girl’s hand. What would you wager that her card is already overflowing?”
Lord Gerson laughed heartily, and the two of them began to make their slow way toward the pretty young lady in white who was making a pathetic attempt to appear fashionably bored with all that was proceeding about her. The marquess smiled in sympathy for the girl.
But Bridge was going to have to wait for his introduction. The next set was about to begin and a handsome young fresh-faced lad was talking to the girl. But not leading her out. Of course, the marquess thought as soon as the music began. It was a waltz. She would not be allowed to dance it, since it was obvious she had only just made her come-out and she must have permission from one of the patronesses of Almack’s before she could dance the scandalous waltz. Perhaps later in the Season, if she was fortunate. Perhaps not until next year.
He had never seen the waltz performed, though he had heard of it. It had sounded to him like a marvelously romantic dance, each couple a unit unto itself, the man and his partner dancing face-to-face through the whole of it, able to look at each other and converse with each other for the full half hour.
And indeed it looked as wonderful as it had sounded. He watched for a few moments, enviously.
He had been aware during the five minutes or so he had been inside the ballroom that he had almost deliberately avoided looking about him for Samantha. He was not quite sure why. Was it because he was afraid she would not be there? Or because he was afraid she would?
In the event, he did not have to search for her. She waltzed into his line of vision. His heart lurched. She shimmered in a delightfully simple gown that looked both green and silver from this distance. She waltzed with grace and beauty. She smiled with pleasure.
His eyes followed her with love and with longing for several moments before he spared a glance for her partner. But when he did so, his eyes became riveted.
And his blood ran cold.
8
HE HAD LIED SO CONSISTENTLY AND SO OFTEN about the events of that morning when he was six years old that sometimes—not often, it was true—he almost forgot himself that it was a lie.
That his accident had been no accident at all.
He had been a disappointment to his father. Born five years after his father and mother’s marriage, it had seemed that he was probably to be the only child of the union. And while his father might have been glad that he had at least begotten a son, he had deplored the weakness of that son. He had been a small and sickly child, the darling of his mother, overprotected and coddled. A sniveling coward, his father had called him contemptuously on one occasion—it was when at the age of five he had gone running home crying because some village boys had chanted names at him and he had thought they were going to attack him.
Sometimes his father was not even glad about his gender. For had he not been his father’s heir, then his father’s nephew would have been heir to at least part of his property and fortune. And his father adored his nephew, his sister’s son, four years Hartley’s senior. Lionel, Viscount Kersey, he had been then. A handsome, charming, fearless boy, who had basked in his uncle’s favor and had taunted his cousin—except in the hearing of his aunt.
Hartley had adored him and feared him, had ached for his visits to Highmoor and then longed for his departures.
Sometimes Lionel had deliberately tried—usually successfully—to make him cry, pushing him painfully against doorways with a surreptitiously jabbed elbow, jumping out at him from dark corners at night, spilling his milk at table when his nurse was not looking—he had been endlessly inventive.
One thing Hartley had been good at was riding. Even his father had grudgingly admitted that he had a good seat and a firm hand on the reins. He had loved galloping his pony over permitted stretches of land and jumping over specially constructed fences—ones that would collapse easily if he did not clear them.
Vanity and the need to impress Lionel had made him rash one morning. Lionel had dared him to gallop with him across a forbidden meadow, one with ground that was too uneven and that had too many rabbit holes to be on the permitted route. He had accepted the dare, and they had left behind the startled groom who always rode with them. Before the man could catch up, they had been across the field and approaching a low, solid gate. Quite jumpable. Even so, he would not have jumped it if Lionel had not shouted a challenge. But Lionel had shouted and he had jumped.
He would have cleared the obstacle without any trouble at all—even in his need to impress, he had not been that rash. But Lionel had chosen to jump it at the same moment. He had been laughing. And one arm had shot out, its hand balled into a fist, and struck Hartley on the hip.
He had been midway through his jump. He had crashed down right onto the gate, smashing both it and himself in his fall. By some miracle his horse had cleared the gate and landed safely on the other side. By another miracle—though it did not seem a miracle for many months afterward—he himself had lived.
He had been conscious when the groom galloped up, his face contorted with terror, and then galloped off again to fetch help. Lionel had knelt over him, his face ashen, telling him over and over again that it had been an accident and he had better not forget it or make up stories that would shift the blame to someone else. That it was Hartley who had suggested both the gallop and the jump. Lionel had come after him to try to stop him.
During the few minutes of blessedly numbing shock before the weeks and months of truly hellish pain had set in, he had assured Lionel that he would never tell. Never, never, never. Even in those moments there had been the necessity to appear noble in his cousin’s eyes.
“There is nothing to tell, you bleeding little worm,” Lionel had hissed at him. For some reason those words had remained indelibly etched on his brain ever since.
And he never had told.
There were precious few good effects of what had happened that day. One of them was that he had stopped worshiping or even liking Lionel. Another was that he developed an iron will, a strong determination to conquer his disabilities. Although his mother lived for another four years after his accident, he never allowed her after that day to coddle him, to protect him. He knew almost from the start, despite what the physician told his father in his hearing, that he would walk again, that he would use his right arm and hand again, that he would learn to compensate for their stiffness by using his left hand, that he would make of his body the fittest, strongest instrument it could possibly be.
And he had learned to like himself, to accept himself for what he was. He was human, of course. It was not that he never envied other men or longed to be what he was not. But he did not allow envy or bitterness to gnaw away at him. He lived with reality.
Lionel had been ten years old. A mere child. Hartley forgave him when he was wel
l past that age himself and looked back. He never liked him, but he forgave him and accepted him as his basically cold, selfish cousin.
But dislike had intensified into something much stronger again. His father had been ill. The physician had thought for a while that he would not recover. Lionel had come. There had always been a strong bond between uncle and nephew.
And he had begun an affair with the Countess of Thornhill—the former countess, young stepmother of the present earl. Hartley, young and romantic, had adored her from afar for several years. She was very beautiful and very kind and not many years his senior. But he would not have presumed to treat her or even to think of her with disrespect.
Lionel had become her lover and had regaled his cousin’s unwilling ears with lurid, graphic descriptions of exactly what he did to her and what she did to show her appreciation—and her love. It had been a great joke to Lionel that she claimed to love him.
Hartley had thought he was making it all up—until the countess disappeared with the present earl and the story became too strong to be entirely disbelieved that they had run away to the Continent together because she was with child by her own stepson. Hartley disbelieved the one part of that story, of course. The child was Lionel’s—Lionel himself had disappeared in fright some weeks before the countess left with Gabriel.
She was living now in Switzerland with her daughter and her second husband. He believed there were a few more children from that second marriage. Once, on the only occasion he had asked the present Thornhill about her, he had been told that she was happy. He was glad of that. He had liked her. And of course it was understandable that she had fallen for Lionel’s charms. He was undoubtedly one of the handsomest men in England. She had been years younger than her husband, and the late earl had always been sickly. When older and wiser, the Marquess of Carew realized that it was probable the two of them had never had a regular marital relationship. She must have been lonely.