It Happened One Season

by Stephanie Laurens

  He was new.

  And then he half turned and she saw his face.

  Her hands clenched in her lap, her right closing hard about her fan, her left bunching the lace of her gown inside it. She felt as though she were looking down a long, dark tunnel to a distant point of light. The air felt cold in her nostrils. She forgot to breathe.

  Major Gilchrist! Jack Gilchrist, though she had never called him by his given name.

  She had not even known for certain that he was still alive. She had never asked anyone. It had seemed better not to know for certain. But she had feared the worst. She had not set eyes on him since her return from the Peninsula. And he had been horribly wounded when he was invalided home.

  He was the only man, apart from her father and brother, ever to have kissed her. The only one. Including her husband.

  His head kept turning as he looked about the ballroom. And then his eyes alit upon her—before she could recover herself and look down. Then she could not look away, for his eyes held hers, looking puzzled for a moment as though he felt he ought to recognize her but did not, and then lighting up with full recognition and … pleasure?

  He turned back to the Earl of Waterton, who was, of course, his brother, presumably to say something to him, and then came striding toward her, looking only at her, glancing neither to left nor to right, smiling.

  Cleo remembered to breathe again only because her survival depended upon it. She sucked in a deep, ragged breath.

  Oh! He was actually happy to see her.

  She rose to meet him. He held out both hands as he drew close, and she lifted her own and placed them in his. They were large, warm, capable. They closed tightly about hers.

  “Mrs. Pritchard,” he said.

  “Major Gilchrist.”

  “I cannot tell you,” he said, “how intimidating it was walking in here tonight to a roomful of strangers. And then to see a familiar face. Particularly when it was yours.”

  It was one of the loveliest things anyone had ever said to her.

  She was half aware that the orchestra had started playing and the dancing had begun.

  “You did recover from your wounds, then?” she said. “I did not know, but I often wondered. I am so glad.”

  “Thank you,” he said. “I believe my life hung in the balance for a while, but fortunately I was only half aware of the fact while it was happening, and here I am with all my body parts in good working order again. And you—how are you doing? Have you remarried? Did I call you by the right name?”

  “I have remained a widow,” she said. “I am always busy. Among other pursuits, I have nieces and nephews to entertain whenever they are in Town. And this year my younger sister is making her come-out and I am helping our elder sister chaperon her at all the busiest entertainments. I am never idle.”

  She was being too defensive.

  Their hands were still clasped between them. He seemed to realize it at the same moment she did. He squeezed hers once more and released them.

  “I am delighted to hear it,” he said. “I will call on you at home if I may. I really know no one, you know. I was in the army for seven years, and I have been living in the country for five. All this really is intimidating, is it not?” He indicated the room about them with one arm.

  He looked as solidly built as he always had even though he was not wearing a uniform now. He looked more handsome than ever. His face was perhaps a little leaner, but the leanness suited him. His dark eyes had always looked very directly into those of the person to whom he spoke—her in this case. It was something he had learned as a commander of men, she supposed, though it was very attractive. His hair was still thick and dark. He was one of the most handsome men she had known. Perhaps the most handsome, though she could, of course, be biased.

  “One becomes accustomed to it,” she said. “I have grown used to the crowds. I endure them for the sake of my family, though it does sometimes become a little tedious.”

  And now she was overdoing the ennui.

  “You must dance with me,” he said. Then he laughed softly. “You see how my manners have grown rusty over the years? Mrs. Pritchard, would you do me the honor of dancing a set with me? The next one?”

  The next set was Alfred’s. The only one she had promised. The only one she would dance tonight. Perhaps Major Gilchrist would wait for the third if she explained. But the next set was to be a waltz. And Alfred was merely doing her a kindness. He would not mind if…

  “It is to be a waltz,” she said.

  He grimaced and then grinned.

  “I believe,” he said, “I can manage it without putting your toes in any great peril. Will you dance it with me?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Thank you.”

  But instead of striding away, as she expected him to do until the end of this set, he indicated the chair from which she had risen, waited for her to seat herself, and then took the empty chair beside her.

  “My brother will despair of me,” he said.

  She looked across the ballroom to where the Earl of Waterton was in conversation with a few other gentlemen.

  “Will he?” she said, opening her fan to cool her hot cheeks. “Why?”

  “I am supposed to be seeking introductions to eligible young ladies,” he said. “I am supposed to be beginning an earnest search for a bride. The succession needs to be secured, and the countess has produced only daughters. It is why I have been hauled to London when I would have been perfectly happy to remain in my little cottage by the sea. Life can sometimes be tiresome, can it not? The campaign is supposed to begin tonight. But I would far prefer to sit here talking with you, and then dancing with you.”

  Happiness was a treacherous thing. Cleo had been feeling totally, mindlessly happy for … how long? Five minutes? Ten? And yet now she felt as wretched as she had been happy.

  It was all illusion, of course. There had been nothing in seeing an old acquaintance again to cause her anything but a moment’s mild pleasure, as it had caused him. There was nothing now to cause her despair. Nothing had changed. Her life was as it had been fifteen minutes ago, when she had felt neither happy nor wretched.

  “There will still be plenty of the evening left after the second set has been completed,” she said. “You may pursue your quest then and make your brother proud of you.” She smiled and fanned her face. “And you may even begin looking about you at some leisure while we are sitting here and while you are dancing with me.”

  His head turned sharply toward hers, and she could sense that he was looking very directly at her.

  “My manners may be rusty, Mrs. Pritchard,” he said, “but they have not crumbled away altogether. I will do no such thing. Besides, how could I pay any attention to any other young lady while I am becoming reacquainted with you? You are looking well. You have lost weight.”

  She turned her head and met his eyes the moment before they closed and he grimaced.

  “And there,” he said. “My manners have grown very rusty. I do beg your pardon. But you really are in good looks. Which is not to say that you were not when I knew you before.”

  She laughed.

  “You ought to stop now, Major Gilchrist,” she said, “before your tongue is in such a knot that it will take you the rest of the evening to untie it.”

  And they both laughed. Right into each other’s eyes.

  Cleo felt quite dizzy. And happy again. But very aware that after their dance he was going to go in search of an eligible young lady to court.

  Twenty-seven suddenly felt very ancient indeed.

  Jack had forgotten all about her until he saw her again this evening.

  But after his surprised pleasure had abated slightly, he wondered if perhaps the truth was more that he had suppressed the memory of her. For it was a guilty memory. Also embarrassing. And more than a little puzzling.

  He had always liked her though he had never really known her. She had dealt with her life in the Peninsula with the British army with a quiet dignity
no matter what the conditions. And the conditions, he had always suspected, were not just difficult terrain and frequently appalling weather conditions and billets rarely if ever what she must have been accustomed to. Pritchard had always been a brute with his men and was hated and feared in equal measure. The men, Jack included, had guessed that he was a brute with his wife, too. She had never appeared openly timid or cringing, it was true, but the fact that her eyes were always downcast when she was around the men, even the officers, was suggestive of a need to avoid instigating any jealous rage.

  Not that the men had looked much at her. She was a small, dumpy woman with a plain face. But Jack had liked her anyway. He had found himself seeking her out with his eyes more often than he could reasonably explain to himself.

  And then, during the Battle of Bussaco, Jack’s men had brought word that Colonel Pritchard had been killed in a fierce scuffle; though when the fighting was all over, his body was nowhere to be found. It had been assumed he had been burned up in one of the many raging grass fires the guns had caused. There had been enough hopelessly charred bodies to give credence to the theory. It had been Jack’s unenviable duty to take word back to Mrs. Pritchard.

  She had been alone in the colonel’s billet. When she had turned pale and almost collapsed at the news, Jack had stepped forward and set his arms protectively about her and held her tight against his chest while she drew ragged breaths and recovered herself. And then she had tipped back her head and gazed up at him with large, unexpectedly beautiful eyes and …

  Well, then had come the puzzling part. He had lowered his head and kissed her. And she had kissed him back even though he had come to her in all the grime of battle. Before their embrace ended, it had turned hot and passionate and undeniably sexual.

  He had apologized profusely when it was over, promised to send one of the other officers’ wives to bear her company—something which, of course, he ought to have done before calling on her—and left the house without further ado.

  That was all. Word had come the next day that the colonel had been taken prisoner and that the French were willing to ransom him for a large sum. The sum had been paid with some dispatch, and he was back with the regiment within a week of the battle.

  Jack did not believe he had exchanged a word with Mrs. Pritchard since that day. Or seen her eyes since that day. Until now.

  If he had remembered that incident as soon as he saw her this evening, he doubted he would have stridden across the room to greet her with such enthusiasm.

  What must she think of him?

  And yet she appeared as delighted to see him as he was to see her. And he still was delighted despite a slight discomfort. Perhaps it was because she looked so familiar and he was feeling more than a little self-conscious. People were beginning to look his way with recognition, and he suspected that word was spreading that the officer who had deliberately taken a bullet intended for Wellington at the Battle of Fuentes de Oñoro after first distinguishing himself in the action was back in London.

  Time had been kind to her. She was no longer dumpy but had a neat, almost slender figure. And her plain face looked far different when her eyes were raised and she smiled. Her laugh was low and infectious.

  She might as well have worn a veil in the Peninsula for all he or any of the men had seen of her modest attractions.

  They were waltzing, and he was performing the steps with only marginal competency. She was nevertheless following his lead and felt light and supple in his arms. Her eyes were on his and her cheeks were slightly flushed.

  He wondered if she remembered that embrace with as much embarrassment as he did. But he could hardly ask her, could he?

  “You obviously do far more dancing than I do,” he said. “I do apologize for my clumsiness.”

  “You have not stepped on even one of my feet—yet,” she said, giving him one of her transforming smiles. “And I do not dance a great deal. I am a very sober widow, you know.”

  She surely could not have loved Pritchard. Jack was rather surprised she had not remarried by now. But perhaps one experience of marriage had been enough for her. Perhaps freedom brought happiness enough into her life.

  “Then I am honored that you have danced with me,” he said. “What have you done with your life since you returned from the Peninsula? Apart from playing with your nieces and nephews, that is.”

  She had a small house in London not far from Hyde Park that had been her husband’s, she told him. She was involved in a few charities. She had friends among the ladies who were similarly employed. She had learned to play the pianoforte since there was an instrument in the house and she hated to see it go unused. She liked to paint though she had no great skill with a brush. She embroidered and knitted and tatted. She read. She told it all with great enthusiasm, and he marveled that it all brought her happiness. But then his own life for the past five years would sound pathetically lacking in excitement if he were to put it into words.

  “And what have you done with your life, Major Gilchrist?” she asked.

  And there, he did indeed have to put it into words—the walking through the woods and along the beach, the swimming in the sea, the gathering and chopping of wood for the fire, the whittling that had produced pieces of furniture that pleased him and would probably horrify any connoisseur, the reading, the cooking—yes, cooking, he repeated when she raised her eyebrows—the sitting, both indoors and out, merely enjoying the silence.

  “Which, like the color white,” he explained to her, “is not the absence of anything but the containment of everything. I sometimes believe that if only I could understand nothing, I would know everything. And sometimes I feel I am about to grasp it—and then it eludes me.”

  He laughed suddenly.

  “And now you will think me a mad fellow,” he said, “a hermit who has lost his wits.”

  “Not at all,” she said calmly. “I would like to hear more. I will think about white and silence and nothing and try to understand what you mean.”

  “And become mad like me?” he said. “What a strange conversation to be holding in the middle of a waltz.”

  And, grown bold after several minutes of waltzing without any mishap, he twirled her about one corner of the dance floor, and she tipped back her head and laughed aloud.

  He really did like her. He was glad they had met again.

  “May I call on you?” he asked her. “Perhaps tomorrow?”

  “Perhaps tomorrow,” she said, “you will be escorting one of the young eligible ladies now in this ballroom to a garden party or taking her for a drive in the park. You must not procrastinate, must you? It is time you took a bride, Major Gilchrist, and set up your nursery.”

  He grimaced. Good Lord, he had already forgotten his very reason for being here.

  “But I would be delighted,” she said, “to have you call whenever you have a spare moment. I may have questions about nothing.”

  This time when she smiled, her eyes sparkled with merriment, and he thought, with a shock of understanding for his behavior in the Peninsula, She is actually attractive.

  “I may have nothing for answers,” he said, and they both laughed.

  He twirled her again and allowed them both to enjoy the rest of the set without the distraction of conversation.

  And enjoy it they did. Perhaps she did not much care for dancing, but he could feel the pleasure she was taking from this dance. And he enjoyed it because she did.

  He was glad Pritchard had died in the very battle that had wounded him and ended his career in the army. He had never mourned his colonel, whom he had hated as much as any of the enlisted men had, but he had never been actively glad of his death until now.

  Mrs. Pritchard deserved to be free of him. She deserved her quiet, happy life.

  Chapter Three

  It was a beautiful warm, sunny day, and Gwinn was strolling along beside the waters of the Serpentine in Hyde Park with Lord Kerby. And so Elizabeth was strolling there too, a discreet distance b
ehind them, and, since she had not wished to do so alone, she had invited Cleo to accompany her.

  Cleo did not resent the summons even though she had intended to spend the afternoon mastering a Bach fugue that had been tying her fingers in knots for weeks. The pianoforte could wait for another day, when it rained. Besides, she doubted she would have been able to concentrate fully upon a difficult piece of music.

  It was difficult to concentrate upon anything today. Her thoughts had been whirling about inside her head since last night and simply would not be stilled. And the worst of it was that she was likely to see a great deal more of Major Gilchrist in the coming weeks—just as she had been forced to see a great deal of him after that day when they had thought Aubrey was dead. Seeing him had been torture then, and it was going to be torture now.

  She had been forced to pretend even more than usual last evening after the second set was over that she was enjoying her own solitude amid the dancing. And it had all had to be done while she was aware of him being introduced to a series of pretty young girls and smiling at them and conversing with them and dancing with them.

  Soon he would be married to one of them.

  Oh, it had hurt. And it had been no consolation to tell herself with firm good sense that she had absolutely no reason to feel pain. He had been pleased to see her, and he had enjoyed dancing with her. He wanted to continue their acquaintance. He wanted to call upon her at home one day when he was not busy with more important matters.

  All that would change soon, of course.

  And she would be left with another sweet, bitter memory to add to the first.

  A mother sat on the bank of the Serpentine hugging her knees while her three children played about her and their father was crouched on the grass looking intently at something one of the children was showing him. He tweaked the brim of her bonnet and got to his feet, laughing—and revealed himself to be Major Gilchrist.

  “Oh, look,” Elizabeth said, “there is the handsome hero of Fuentes de Oñoro who was good enough to dance with you last evening.”