Waltz with a Stranger

by Martha Lou Thomas

  WALTZ WITH A STRANGER

  Martha Lou Thomas

  A ROMANCE OF REGENCY ENGLAND

  Quintilla Davenant is beautiful, witty, and sunny-tempered. But two unfortunate circumstances make it doubtful that a husband is in the offing: Quintilla’s dowry is negligible; her family’s talent is for science rather than for money-making. More damaging is that she was born lame, one leg far from matching its well-shaped mate.

  Quintilla’s disability does not handicap her: she can dance as well as walk (and even climb trees, although she restrains her impulse to do so). But society has decided that she is a cripple; when there is dancing, Quintilla sits on the sidelines. But Quintilla is eager to dance even without a partner, and she slips away from the ball to waltz by herself in the deserted library. There she is surprised by a handsome stranger who partners—and thrills—her.

  The young woman’s loving family has devised a plan to secure her future: they will find a widower for her—someone whose first wife provided the romance, and who now will welcome a capable second spouse to see to his household and his motherless children. Two dubious candidates are entertained at dinner by Tilla’s London hosts, her aunt and physician uncle, Sir Ian and Lady Guthrie.

  The stranger calls at the Guthrie home, and although Quintilla believes him to be an impecunious gentleman named Warrick Dhever, he is, unbeknownst to her, the legendary “Ice Baron,” Lord Eysley, who had returned from youthful adventures in America with bizarre ideas of the equality of man.

  Another guest in the Guthrie home is Dr. Edward Jenner, the discoverer of vaccination; he is hoping to have Parliament pass a bill that favours his preventive treatment over the more dangerous inoculation. But he has many enemies and faces angry mobs in London’s streets, from one of which Eysley rescues him and Quintilla. Eysley and Quintilla become friends; he finds her a most refreshing change from the simpering beauties of the ton. He determines to provide a worthy husband for her, never dreaming that one may already be at hand.

  “ ...conceal whatever learning she attains with as much solicitude as she would crookedness or lameness.”

  —Lady Mary Worthy Montagu 1689-1762

  To B.K.M.

  For her courage and common sense

  1

  There was comfort in the steady crackle of the fire, and peace pervaded the small library, isolated as it was at the back of the Grosvenor Square town house. Peace, however, was not what Quintilla Davenant wanted. She wanted to belong to the crowd of guests dancing upstairs in the ballroom where Lord and Lady Storr entertained the ton this evening.

  The slender young woman sat curled up on the cream silk sofa, her thin leg tucked under her shapely one. Blue eyes focussed on the rhythmic flicker of the firelight, rather than the open book on her lap. Reading did not help this night. Two legs the same size would help, or a society less uneasy in the company of the lame.

  The fire’s pulsating light, dancing on the ceiling and reflecting off the shiny leather bindings of book-lined walls, lured Quintilla from the sofa to enter the rhythm that engulfed the room. Languidly turning, turning on the polished oak floor, she circled past the Hepplewhite armchair at the desk, and floated into the far corner, around the mahogany music stand. Her outstretched hand slipped across the cool surface of its china plaque inset. Now she pirouetted slowly. Her limping gait was barely discernible beneath her long blue dress, luminous where its beaded trim caught the light. Gliding back by the fire, she curtseyed to the crewel-embroidered wing chair opposite the sofa.

  “You say I am the most graceful of dancers?” Quintilla spoke with exaggerated refinement. “La, sir, you jest. I distinctly remember four times when you flinched as I stepped on your toes.”

  Her smile grew into a low gurgle of laughter. Four and twenty, and still playing make-believe. Well, there was more than one way to dance at a ball! And here, alone, she could rest her face from all that smiling—pretending a dance card lacking any male scrawls was not a social disaster.

  What a stir in the ballroom were she to dance there alone, weaving in and out among the stately moves of a minuet or the figures of a country dance! She could almost hear the shocked whispers.

  Behind the fire’s hiss came the memory of whispers and suppressed laughter when she had been the butt of pranks. “Tom has looked everywhere for you, Quintilla, for he is dying to dance with you.” It had not been true.

  “Wait down by the gate, Miss Davenant, and you will be surprised by a secret admirer.” How foolish she had been to wait, and wait, for an escort who never came.

  At her birth old gossips had insisted she was marked by the Devil, and predicted the worst. Superstitious nonsense, but in bleak moments Quintilla sometimes wondered about the dire prophecies. Tears clouded her eyes. She shook her head back and forth in denial until ash-brown curls from a coiffure now in disarray tumbled over her forehead. It was much too late to cry about superstition. She brushed aside the wayward tendrils of hair. At four and twenty she had gained the maturity to conquer tears over her fate on the sidelines.

  Quintilla whirled away from maudlin memories, blue skirt swinging about her feet. She slowed to slide her hand along the serpentine curved back of the sofa, then whirled wildly in front of the door just as it opened.

  Framed in the doorway stood a man of medium height, dark, carelessly elegant in black evening attire. The fire sizzled and flared as Quintilla confronted the ice in his ebony eyes.

  Without a pause, he crossed the threshold. Reaching out for Quintilla’s extended hand, he pulled her to him and spun the two of them through the room’s eddy of light and shadow. Quintilla gasped, and had to stumble against him. Strong hands steadied her for the instant her face was buried in the folds of his cravat.

  He slowed their pace to gaze down into Quintilla’s intense blue eyes, a promise of deviltry lurking behind their startled surprise. His stern mouth relaxed; the hint of a smile teased its corners.

  Wordlessly, the two reached accord, and began to waltz slowly, both sensing the same mute rhythm. Around and around they drifted, barely touching. Quintilla’s soft fingertips pressed against the firm palm of his hand. Its warmth spread to the hollows in her heart.

  She looked up at his dispassionate face to note the amusement glinting in his eyes—not ebony, but a warm cinnamon brown. She could not contain her delight, and laughed, her laughter’s sound harmonising with the fire’s obligato. He arched dark brows and tightened his hold on her slim body.

  Away from the fire, the night’s chill had invaded the room through the French windows. Was that mutter of voices coming from the distant ballroom, or was someone just outside? Quintilla thrust aside a moment’s alarm. She would let nothing mar her bliss.

  Her dance partner glanced at the slight ripple of the striped silk curtains, then studied her face, seeming to search for an answer Quintilla did not have. She smiled a reply to the wariness now in his eyes.

  He whirled her back to the door and lowered his dark head to speak softly in her ear. “Our dance is over, little one.” Warm breath near her ear belied the words that carried such disappointment. “Back to the ballroom with you.”

  His fingers brushed away a persistently perverse strand of her hair before his hand moved to her shoulder to propel her through the door. Quickly, quietly, he closed it behind her.

  After a few hurried steps down the dim hall, Quintilla wheeled to look back. How perfect their unison, but how fleeting! Why did it have to end so soon? She sighed her answer—nothing lasts save dreams. Wistfully, she turned away to follow his command. He must not find her lingering outside like some mewling cat by the dairy door.

  Had he detected her limitation and taken her in disgust? Oh, no! It was not that. Please, not that!
Their interlude was as close as she had ever come to her dreams of la grande passion.

  She crossed the marble floor of the great three-storey entrance hall, hesitating at the foot of the broad stairs. Her hand rested on the mahogany handrail of its intricately designed iron balustrade. Perhaps he had thought her too forward, dancing without an introduction, and unchaperoned. Quintilla discarded the idea. She was of an age to be a chaperon rather than to need one. Besides, if she was not eligible to be a player in the game of courtship and marriage, should she not be exempt from the rules?

  “Yes!” The echo of her unintentional outburst merged with the hum of fiddle and flute coming from the ballroom. She regarded with rue the two liveried footmen who had imperturbably observed her uneven progress across the Great Hall. They registered no emotion at all.

  “Is that Margaret Guthrie’s niece?” The hard voice penetrated every corner of the Hall.

  Quintilla looked up at her hostess standing by a pillar at the top of the stairs. “Yes, Lady Storr.”

  “Are the stairs too much for you?”

  “Oh, no, Lady Storr.” Quintilla hastened to prove the truth of her statement, arriving breathless in front of her ladyship.

  “I am the Guthrie niece from Berkeley, Quintilla Davenant,” she reminded the emerald-bedecked woman. Sir Ian Guthrie’s medical practice among London’s leading families prompted invitations from far outside the physician’s intimate circle. Sometimes people remembered Quintilla’s limp when they did not remember her name.

  “I know who you are.” Her ladyship bristled at the intimation she might ever have forgotten anything.

  Quintilla tried to repair any damage innocently wrought. “You are kind to include me and my cousin Kitty in your invitation to the Guthries.” She took a deep breath before explaining, “I stole a few minutes from your splendid ball to view your library.”

  “An outdated collection. Nothing has been added since my stepfather’s death. But then, the Eysley barons never do collect anything but beautiful wives.” Only slightly taller than the petite young woman she faced, Lady Storr’s once-slender form gave evidence of more than two decades’ attendance at the sumptuous banquets which celebrated London social seasons. The heavy silk of her green gros de Naples gown failed to adequately contain a goodly part of her. Her shrewd green eyes appraised Quintilla’s oval face and high cheekbones beneath flushed cheeks. A pity to waste such looks on a cripple. “Miss Davenant, I caution you on your rosy cheeks. Either you have dipped too deeply into the rouge pot, or you are taking a fever. Do you feel the need to retire?”

  “It is the excitement of the evening, Lady Storr,” said Quintilla, wondering how she dared disagree with the set-down. She had to assume the lady did not mean to be so critical. It was her forceful voice. Rather intimidating.

  “The Earl and Countess Grosvenor do not attend tonight because their young son—ten or eleven, I believe—is quite ill with a fever,” sniffed the hostess, who discontinued her inspection. “Are you able to dance?”

  “I love to dance, Lady Storr.”

  Her ladyship’s expression harboured skepticism. “Then, let us return to the ballroom where I have a partner waiting for you.” Green plumes in a silk headband swayed above short red-gold curls as Lady Storr conducted her errant guest back to the evening’s proper milieu.

  Quintilla’s spirits rallied. Another chance with another dance partner! Indeed, never one door closes but another opens! She cast a last look down the stairs. He might come to the ballroom, that special gentleman. She did not even know who he was, but his immediate response to her solitary dance had stirred the depths of her yearning for a man’s love and devotion.

  Amidst the fashionable throng, Lady Storr headed straight for an ancient target. Proper introductions were made and Quintilla found herself partnered by a beribboned colonel who appeared almost old enough to have seen service in the Wars of the Roses. She supported the gaunt warrior through halting steps of a minuet until his laboured breathing gave her concern.

  “Sir, do let us breathe some fresh air for just a moment.”

  The colonel nodded his agreement and the pair moved through French windows onto a small balcony. Mist enveloped them as they stood in the cold air, unseasonable for May, and looked down on Grosvenor Square.

  Three figures were abroad at this late hour, walking rapidly to the southeast in the direction of the City, and the river. Was one of them the elegant enigma from the library? The assured set of shoulders looked familiar, but Quintilla could not be certain. She shivered as she watched the three disappear into the dark haze. Had she been an intruder in some assignation, some intrigue, there in the library? She chided herself. It was time she reined in her imagination as well as her romantic dreams. If she was ever to marry, as a woman ought, she must support, however reluctantly, her family’s effort to find her an acceptable husband.

  She turned to her wheezing escort. “Difficult to sight an approaching enemy on this murky night, Colonel.”

  The old soldier coughed his discomfort. Dutifully, Quintilla guided him back into the warmth of the ballroom.

  “Tilla! Have you been dancing?” Cornflower blue eyes glowed in the round and amiable face of flaxen-haired Kitty Fairfield. Kitty’s only problem at balls was how to assuage the disappointment of those young men for whom there was no space on her dance programme.

  “Yes, I have been dancing.” Quintilla grinned at her young cousin. “I had a few moments of a minuet with a military man—”

  “Tell me every detail.” Kitty pulled her cousin to gilt chairs against the wall, where they sat down. “You know how I love your details.”

  “A minuet with a military man, lean, aristocratic bearing, not more than ninety years of age,” Quintilla continued.

  Kitty sympathised with a mournful expression. The mischief in Quintilla’s eyes indicated there was more to come.

  “And I danced alone in the library with a hero straight out of a Minerva Press romance,” Quintilla announced.

  Kitty’s sympathy turned to disbelief. “Now you are doing it too brown, Tilla. I suppose you left the ballroom again, with never a thought for your reputation.” The disapproval implied by her words did not match the younger girl’s winsome face, but she did try to achieve a serious mien while parroting the often-heard admonition that restricted every female of good family.

  “Fustian! I am not well enough known in London to have a reputation to worry about, and in Berkeley, I am too well-known. Who would attribute misbehaviour to the ‘kindly Davenants’ sweet daughter’?” Quintilla smiled wryly. “I do so tire of trying to sparkle with a forced smile—a situation totally foreign to you, I know. A certified heartbreaker, you.”

  “Do not change the subject. Tell me about the library.”

  “I will gladly return to the ... the overpowering male who danced with me, briefly, in the library.”

  “Overpowering!” Kitty squeaked. A young man came to claim his dance with her. She accompanied him to the dance floor, but not before darting an enquiring look at her cousin.

  “Quintilla,” trilled Lady Mallow, her high-pitched voice at odds with her lanky figure, “the Ice Baron was here. Did you see him?” The rustle of her ladyship’s amber taffeta conveyed her excitement as the avid gossip settled herself in the gilt chair Kitty had abandoned.

  “I do not know who he is, Lady Mallow.”

  “He is a catch of the first water, that’s who he is, Quintilla, though he won’t be caught, I can assure you. What a pity you missed seeing him.”

  “What does he look like?” Quintilla glanced about the room, bright from the glitter of hundreds of wax tapers in gilded candlestands and crystal chandeliers.

  Lady Mallow blew through pursed lips. For a moment, there was a faraway look in her eyes. “He looks like his father, the eleventh baron. No, he is more handsome than his father, more assured. Returned from America quite independent-minded, you know. Odd ideas on the equality of men. His skin so darkened he looke
d like one of those savages.” She leaned forward to confide, “Edwina will be pleased. His presence gives cachet to her ball, for he rarely bothers with the social scene ... too busy counting his money, I suppose. Rich as Golden Ball. He is her stepbrother.”

  “Lady Storr’s stepbrother?”

  “Yes. She was a Woodville before she married. Oh, there was a family quarrel for you, the Woodvilles and Eysley!” Lady Mallow’s smug look conveyed intimate knowledge. She was not the chief of the tattlemongers, for she was seldom correct. She yielded to no one in genealogical knowledge, claiming kinship with half the kingdom’s aristocratic houses.

  “And he is called the Ice Baron?”

  “Because, well, he is the Baron Eysley, and he can be quite frosty, deliciously frosty, when ... displeased. Makes one long to melt him,” she chortled.

  “He sounds most intimidating.” Quintilla laughed, and, remembering her recent contact with Lady Storr, presumed it infected all family members. “I am glad I did not encounter him.”

  Lady Mallow shivered. “He can be most intimidating, but if he were to smile at you with those dark eyes and ask you to marry him in that low voice, you would be pleased to meet him.”

  “If I ever encounter him, and if he then proposes marriage, I will accept him, of course,” Quintilla teased.

  “And you would be marrying into one of England’s oldest, most noble families, Quintilla. No new Stuart peerages for them. The Barons Eysley arrived with William the Conqueror.” Lady Mallow spoke with such emphasis one might have assumed she had accompanied the Norman host across the Channel in 1066.

  “And it is all arranged, then?”

  “What?”

  “My marriage to the Ice Baron.”

  Her ladyship responded to the devilment in Quintilla’s eyes with a weak smile. “You make light of my remarks, Quintilla, but finding a husband is a serious undertaking.” She twitched and straightened in her chair.