by Edith Layton
“My lady,” he breathed, as he went to her and took her hand in his.
“My lord,” Leonora answered, daring to look in his eyes and then, seeing the interest there, not daring to believe his reaction to her.
“If I say that you are in magnificent looks tonight, I become a plagiarist, for I’m sure every gentleman here has told you those exact words already, but I will risk it.” The marquess smiled as he regretfully relinquished her hand. “You are in great looks tonight, my lady, you may add my sincere compliments to your list.”
For that moment, Leonora only stood and gazed up happily at him, no immediate words of reply came to her, and for that one moment, none seemed necessary. But then Annabelle, beside her, shifted her little slippered feet, and someone, somewhere else in the room, laughed loudly, and the moment was past. Then she became aware that she and the marquess were standing, arrested and silent, in the midst of a throng of interested persons. It would never do for her to continue to stare stupidly into the gentleman’s face, she thought dazedly, so she blinked her eyes and sought the words she had rehearsed.
When he saw her about to speak, his face changed as well and he said immediately, with a touch of rue, “Ah. But forgive me, for I fear I overstepped my bounds. I recall that you have not exactly been seeking my company of late. Please permit me to just leave my compliments and move on. I give you good evening, my lady.”
He smiled again, and sketched another bow, but she stopped him by saying quickly, in an urgent, hushed whisper that held more than a touch of desperation, “Ah no! Please, my lord, stay a moment.”
Since she had also reached out to touch his sleeve as she spoke, he remained still and kept his expression politely blank. He had no idea of what the lady sought to say to him, but however welcoming her smile had been, her past record caused him to fear the worst. When he had received the invitation to the Lord and Lady Benjamin’s soiree, he accepted the fact that he must show his face here tonight. The Benjamins, he knew, were not in the habit of including him in any of their social schemes. But the hostess was the Viscount Talwin’s elder daughter, and the Lady Leonora her sister, and no doubt the invitation had been arranged to smooth out the uncomfortable matter between them. He still had no idea of precisely what that matter was, or so much as a clue as to why the Lady Leonora should detest him as she did, but he had known that to refuse the invitation to make peace was to refuse to be a gentleman.
He had intended only to stop in for a momentary visit, had in fact come rather late so as to achieve the briefest possible encounter. But her face had caused him to forget that this was only a courtesy invitation that he had accepted for the sake of politeness. Now, the lady’s silence caused him to remember, and he suddenly wondered if she were actually going to dress him down for his presumption. So he held his breath as she opened her lips to speak.
“I wrote the thing out,” she said at once, her eyes searching his face, “but I thought it would seem foolish to drag a paper from my purse and read you a prepared statement. Foolish and cowardly. But you see,” she went on in low tones, dropping her gaze to his cravat, “every time I say a thing to you it gets garbled somehow. So I committed it to heart.”
Now he wore a look of bafflement, so she closed her eyes so that his confusion would not daunt her. Even as he noted how thick and dark her lashes were as they lay against her cheeks, she spoke, and her voice was so hesitant and the words so obviously rehearsed, that for a moment he thought that he was attending to some sweet child at her bedside prayers, rather than to this impossibly haughty and beautiful young woman at a fashionable soiree.
“My dear Lord Severne,” she began seriously, and at that, his lips twitched, for it did sound as though she were reading something she had printed out on the underside of her eyelids, “I know that in the past days it has appeared as though I were deliberately setting out to insult you. But I assure you that if I had done, I would have been far more successful and said far worse things to you, for I am not a fool, you know.”
But then the lady frowned and opened her great dark eyes and fixed them on the marquess and said in deeply grieved tones, “I almost did it again there, didn’t I?”
He only smiled and nodded at her. At that, at the sight of his barely contained amusement, she sighed. “Then I’ll leave off the prepared text, for it goes on at some length, you see, and I begin to realize that the more I say, the more difficult I will make it for myself. Lord Severne,” she said in a great rush, “I never meant to slight you. Indeed, I admire you very much and have always done, and as you’ll recall, I even owe you a debt of old, so there was never any reason to bear you the slightest ill will. What I said at the bookseller’s was all twisted about, for I was the one who was forever running into you and I didn’t wish you to apologize to me for something that was never your fault. Your speech was lovely. In trying to emulate it, I fair hung myself though, didn’t I?”
She never waited for his reply but only raced on to say, “But I’ve passed the last few years in the countryside, and have had little practice in social discourse, so I suppose that accounts for it, though I well know that nothing can excuse it I wanted so very much to avoid discussion of your divorce when we first met at my father’s house that of course I brought it up and then pretended I didn’t and made a cake of myself. Then I compounded the error at the bookseller’s. In my attempts to right matters, I continue to wrong you. So I’ll only say it the once: Please forgive me.”
He gazed at her thoughtfully and did not answer immediately. But before she could become too anxious, he broke the silence by saying, softly, musingly, “Years ago, when I was away at school, I had a schoolmaster who had the reddest nose. Even redder than your exquisite gown, my lady. And it was all pitted and pocked as well,” he continued blandly, as she looked at him curiously. “Since the fellow dipped deeper into his port than his lessons each night, he had grown himself a true grape-lover’s proboscis. One afternoon I was mentally tracing the topography of that amazing beak in an effort to stay awake during one of his interminable lectures on Greek history, when he called upon me for an answer. I promptly said, as near as I can recall, that the Greeks effected their entry into Troy by the remarkable device of hiding in a wooden nose.”
He paused to give his listener time to absorb his words, and then waited for her to fail in her attempts to contain her giggles. Then nodding, he went on, “After I recovered from my caning, I went to him to apologize. Of course, I then told him I had meant a wooden horse, since everyone knows you can’t look a gift nose in the mouth.”
“But you were only a boy then,” Leonora said when she was able.
“Yes, and isn’t it fortunate that you are not?” The marquess smiled. “For now I can ask you to stand up with me for this dance. And if you were, I could not You see? You are not the only one who can become so entangled in your words when you wish not to say something very badly, that you do precisely that. Perhaps I ought to have written it down so that I could get it right But from the moment that I first saw you this evening, my lady, I have been yearning to ask only one question: May I have this waltz with you?”
When she did not reply at once, but only gazed at him dazedly, he asked again, softly, “Do you waltz, my lady?”
“Yes,” Leonora breathed, and then dared only add, “but not very well.”
“Good,” he said with satisfaction as he took her hand to lead her into the dance, “then you won’t notice how maladroit I am. And since you are in such a penitent mood, you’ll probably apologize when I tread on your toes. I am in luck.”
He bore, she was always to remember, the clean scent of soap, with a faint overlay of the lavender which his valet had probably kept his linen in, and another crisp, distinctive scent very much like lemon mixed with sweet ferns. And his arms were very strong, and his body lean and strong as well, and she could not find the courage to look up into his eyes as he whirled her around the room. For in some fashion, there within the protective circle of his
arms, she felt safe from the power in his gaze, much as a tree at the very heart of the storm is spared its greatest fury, even as the surrounding landscape is not.
He did not press her to speak, but only held her as close as was correct and looked down at the top of her dark head and saw her lashes fall over her downcast eyes, and not for one moment did he believe that she was merely watching her steps so as not to lose count with the rhythm of the dance. For she danced superbly, or was it he, he wondered, just as all the seated couples and dowagers and chaperones did, as they watched the dark, distinctive couple move gracefully across the floor. They were as suited in looks and motion as a “demmed fine pair of matched blacks stepping through their paces in the park on a Sunday morning,” Lord Kilburn remarked bibulously to the lady’s father as they observed the couple, before his comment caused him to wax sentimental about his own fine pair of chestnuts.
When that dance was done he led her into another. And he would never have relinquished her while the musicians still breathed if he hadn’t caught the astonished eye of a watchful dowager just as he was about to draw the Lady Leonora forth with him into the dance once more. Then he recalled that to do so would be to declare his interest in terms he was not even thinking of, and though he was relieved that he had not committed a misstep, he was even more pleased that she had been willing to commit it with him. For, as he told himself as he stood quietly with the lady at the edge of the dance floor, he of all people did not believe in instant rapport, since he of all people could not dare to do so.
“We can’t dance together again tonight, you know,” he said softly then. “It just isn’t done unless you’re prepared to name the day.”
Her head shot up at that, and as she gazed at him the color came and went in her cheeks. But as she still did not speak and would not meet his eye again, he said on the barest whisper, “And if you won’t look at me or speak with me, perhaps you might be interested in stepping out into the garden with me. For there’s only one other thing left to do now that doesn’t require speech, that I know of, at least. And we must do something, or part company, and that I find I do not wish to do at all. Do you?”
He was smiling, she saw. And those pale plum-tinted lips were so near that she could almost feel his warm breath upon her cheek. It was the fact that she suddenly did feel it, and realized that he was drawing closer, that woke her from her inaction. This encounter, she realized, was very real, and not just another phantom one of the thousand or so that she had shared with a fantasy Severne during all the years she had passed alone in the countryside. And even as she knew that the touch of his lips would far surpass anything that she had imagined in the countless times she had envisioned just such a meeting with him, she knew that this, tonight, was too soon, too simple, and too good to possibly be true, in any fashion.
Her annoyance with herself brought her wits back, and so she told him immediately, adding,
“For you see, I feared that saying something to you might lead me into another ghastly misstatement. And we seemed to get on very well so long as I remained mute. But you’re right, of course, so if you’ll promise to understand my difficulty, and not flare up if I commit another gaffe, I think I’ll do very nicely.”
“Ah,” he said sorrowfully, “then there’s to be no rapturous lovemaking in the moonlight for us tonight, then?”
“No!” she said vehemently, a bit too vehemently, for the merest hint of regret had come into her eye the moment after he had done speaking and she very much feared he had caught it, as of course he had.
“Very well,” he sighed, “but I doubt there’ll be anything further for me to forgive, for I’ve discovered that once you own up to such a difficulty, it generally tends to go away forever.”
“You never mentioned noses to your schoolmaster again then, I take it?” she asked.
“Never again. Not so much as even a syllable of a word beginning with “no.” As a matter of fact,” he exclaimed, “I became the most charming scholar he had. It was my answering eternally in the affirmative to every one of his foolish comments which earned me my highest grades that year, I suspect,” he said thoughtfully. “I do wish you had that same difficulty with me,” he added fervently.
It was delicious, she thought, to be able to stand and banter words with him. For he was right, once having admitted to her inability to deal with him, she was as glib as she could wish to be. And she did wish to be facile, to be witty, to be clever with him. Any other way of conversing with him would have been too unnerving. He had a way of looking directly at the person he was speaking with, as if he could see into their souls through their eyes, and for all she knew, he could. It was far better to amuse and be amused by him, in turn. Shared laughter was a rare thing, and easier to cope with for her than any other sort of sharing that she could imagine herself involved in with him.
So they laughed together about their own foolishness, as the dancers formed their sets around them, and they made merry gossip when the musicians rested. He took her in to a late dinner as she laughed about an anecdote from his university days, and he had some trouble managing his dessert plate as she told him of the antics of a local farmer and his errant daughters.
They had asked Annabelle to join them, but she had declined. It was Severne who had spied Annabelle’s hesitation as he had led Leonora to her chair. “Your little companion looks devastated at the way that I’ve dragooned you for the night,” he whispered. “Is it that she particularly disapproves of me? Or could it be that she expects to join us?”
“But she is not my companion, she is a distant cousin, and newly arrived in Town, and I’m sure it is only that she doesn’t know where else to sit,” Leonora declared, clearly appalled, but only because she had so completely forgotten her relative’s very existence. And thus the marquess had gone to ask Annabelle to join them. Annabelle refused the offer with a pretty show of confusion. Leonora might have felt more regretful had it not been for the fact that it was so strangely gratifying to see such an otherwise smooth fellow make such poor work of concealing his relief at Annabelle’s decision. Still, Leonora had paused in their raillery to have a serious word with him about her relative.
“I? ’ he asked in such mock confusion that she had grinned despite herself. “Come, Lady Leonora, you have been in the countryside, to be sure, but not, I think, on another planet I am the last person who might know some earnest, wealthy, decent young chap who is hanging out for a poor, virtuous, portionless wife. Now,” he added consideringly, “I may be able to call a few ‘friend’ who are fortunate enough to be earnest, wealthy, and decent And I might just be acquainted with someone who’d be interested in a female who was unfortunate enough to be poor and portionless. But that ‘virtuous’ you mentioned,” he’d sighed, shaking his head in regret “there’s a formidable stumbling block.”
Even in the midst of her laughter, a glance toward Annabelle, who sat mute and unbefriended, caused Leonora to be half inclined to go and fetch the girl to them despite her refusal, because it was Annabelle for whom she was supposed to be acting. It was Annabelle who had brought her to London in the first place, and thus it was Annabelle who had, in a very real fashion, brought this entire evening about.
But for this one night, she thought, oh just for this one night, she would be selfish and she would laugh and talk and enjoy herself to the fullest. Tomorrow she would doubtless repent having behaved in such giddy fashion, but then by tomorrow Severne would be able to report to her father that he had patched matters up between them, and by the next day he would doubtless have forgotten her as well.
For her father’s sake the marquess might well mend fences, but she knew very well that for her father’s sake he would go no further. She might have tarnished her name by association with notorious gentlemen five years before, and she might well at the very heart of her heart not care if she lost even more in an association with Severne now, but he was still, whatever his history, a gentleman. And a gentleman did not bring about the ruin of
a friend’s daughter. But that was a thought for tomorrow. For tonight, the marquess sat across from her with a quizzical smile and waited for her reply to some sally he had just made. She laughed to cover her involuntary sigh. Tomorrow, she decided, would be Annabelle’s. Tonight, then, was hers.
But it was the future that he spoke about with her, even as she prepared to end the most delightful evening she could remember ever having passed in her life. He stayed her for one moment as she was about to join her father, whom she had been surprised to see emerging at last from the card room. She was astonished at how quickly the night had come to a close, for now that she was aware of the hour, she could see that her mother was already making her farewells to Sybil and Lord Benjamin, and a great many of the other guests had already left At least, she thought with relief, Severne would think that she had only forgotten the hour because as a relative of the hostess, she was expected to stay until the last. But, as usual, he had missed very little of her reaction.
“It seems wrong somehow to end a conversation only because they threaten to close the room up around one, doesn’t it?” He laughed. “But for myself, I wouldn’t mind in the least if they threw a dust cover over me and blew out the candles, so long as they allowed me to continue to stay on here through the night with you.”
Because this was a subject so near to her heart and what he had said so very close to the truth, Leonora could say nothing in reply. But after a pause, when he nodded as though satisfied with what she didn’t say equally as much as he might have been with what she might have said, he went on, casually, so entirely casually that she doubted how easily he said it, “Do you go to Lord and Lady Swanson’s musicale next week, my lady?”