by Mary Balogh
One false move tonight, Nathaniel decided, eyeing her across the width of the carriage, and he would hint to her the consequences of being rude to his friends.
“It is amazing, Nat,” she said, her fan stopping abruptly in mid-wave, “that any battles at all had to be fought against Napoleon Bonaparte. If someone had just had the wisdom to seat you across from him so that you could glare at him like that, the poor man would simply have folded his tents and gone home to Corsica.”
“But you,” he said, “are made of sterner stuff.”
She smiled again suddenly and quite dazzlingly, reminding him that she was a considerable beauty—one tended sometimes to forget that fact. “Nat,” she said, “you are quite lovely when you are rattled. I am doing you a great favor, you know. All the ladies at the ball, married and unmarried alike, I daresay, will pull out all the weapons in their arsenal in an attempt to attract that stern glance their way. I would wager that you will find a wife long before Georgina finds a husband—not that it will take her a great deal of time.”
Which speech, intended to antagonize him further, merely reminded him of one particular lady, married and widowed, who was going to be at the ball. It still seemed unreal to him that shehad offered himcarte blanche this morning and he had accepted. Sophie, the minx! He felt both awkward and eager at the prospect of seeing her again this evening.
“Well, that silenced him at least,” Lavinia said, bringing his mind back to the present and the slow-moving line of carriages. “Are you dreaming of your future bride, Nat?”
“Actually,” he said, “I was dreaming of your wedding day, Lavinia, and the personal happiness the occasion will bring me.” He raised one eyebrow and grinned at her.
She smiled back, looking genuinely amused. Her fan was fluttering before her face again. Out of the carriage window, he saw a red carpet come into view. The carriage in front of theirs was disgorging its passengers and a liveried footman had appeared outside their door.
Somehow, he thought, despite the myriad frustrations of being Lavinia’s legal guardian, it was quite impossible to dislike her.
He turned his head to smile reassuringly at Georgina, who surprisingly looked to be the calmer of the two.
SEVEN
THERE WAS SOMETHING UNDENIABLY exciting about being at the Season’s first great squeeze of a ball, Sophia had to admit to herself as she stood with her in-laws, looking about her at all the splendidly fashionable and bejeweled guests. She certainly felt like someone’s poor aunt, though she was not ignored. A flatteringly large number of people bowed to her and even spoke to her. Two years after the Carlton House affair she had still not sunk into total obscurity. But perhaps, she thought with wry humor, if she were ever to appear at an evening event in a different gown, no one would even recognize her.
Rex and Kenneth and their wives had arrived before her party. They were in a larger group at the other side of the ballroom. Eden too, she saw after a few moments, was there. He was using those blue eyes of his, the rogue, to charm a particularly attractive young lady, who was blushing and plying her fan.
Sophia looked carefully all about her. The ballroom was already crammed so full of people that it was difficult to see everyone. But there was one person—one man—she did not see. Her heart, she realized, was thumping uncomfortably against her rib cage and even in her throat. He might arrive later, of course, but he was definitely not here yet. Perhaps he would not come at all. She drew a few steadying breaths.
And Nathaniel was not here yet either. But he arrived just minutes after her own group. He was with three ladies, and another gentleman joined them at the door and took the arm of the eldest lady. They must be Nathaniel’s sisters, the husband of the eldest, and his cousin, Sophia guessed. She looked away from them. Tonight he was a family man, the head of the family, responsible for the launch into society of his young charges. But she felt all atremble and breathless—like a young girl with her first infatuation. How ridiculous! He looked extremely handsome tonight—but then, when did he not? While many of the other gentlemen were wearing darker, more fashionable colors for evening, he was wearing a pale blue coat with silver waistcoat and gray knee breeches and white linen. And he was smiling. Ah, that smile. Sophia wondered how many other female hearts were turning over at the sight of it.
The first set was about to begin. She did not, of course, dance it herself—she did not expect to dance at all—but she smiled to see young Mr. Withingsford lead Sarah out and to note with some pride that her niece compared very favorably with all the most lovely young ladies present. She would surely do well despite the fact that it was now clear why she did not approve of her first partner. He was very young, very thin, and undeniably spotty, poor gentleman. He would improve with age. Gentlemen usually did. And of course he was heir to a baron’s title and property.
Sophia noticed that Eden was dancing with one of Nathaniel’s young relatives—his sister at a guess. She looked too wide-eyed and demure and was too conservatively dressed to be the rebel cousin. The other young lady—the one dancing with Nathaniel—must be the cousin. She was extremely lovely with her slim, proud bearing and her flame-colored hair. She was also dressed quite daringly in bright turquoise. But then she was already four and twenty, was she not? Sophia approved of her decision not to try to appear like a young girl.
Sophia tried not to watch them dance. She feared catching his eye. And she was more than ever aware—and hated the fact that it mattered to her—of how terribly dull she looked. She was only four years older than his cousin. She felt at least a century older.
Eden came at the end of the set and smiled and bowed to both Sophia and Sarah. “Sophie,” he said, “will you do me the honor of presenting me to your brother- and sister-in-law?”
She did so, including Lewis in the introductions, and listened with a smile while they all talked briefly about Walter. He would ask Sarah to dance, Sophia thought, pleased. A dance with someone like Eden could do wonders in drawing a young girl to the attention of other gentlemen. And Sarah was gazing almost worshipfully at him. But it was to Sophia he turned when the second sets began to form.
“Will you dance with me, Sophie?” he asked. “You were always the best dancer in the army.”
“If I remember correctly, Eden,” she said, enormously pleased at the prospect of actually dancing, “I had very little competition.” She set her hand in his.
“And with your mother’s permission, Miss Armitage,” he said, inclining his head to Sarah, “perhaps you would reserve the next set for me?”
Sarah curtsied, all smiles. The plumes of Beatrice’s turban waved her acquiescence.
“You have made Sarah very happy,” Sophia told him as they took their places in the set. “But you will remember, Eden, how young she is and how very innocent?”
He chuckled. “Yes, ma‘am,” he said. “I have asked her to dance, Sophie, not to kiss and cuddle with me in some murky corner.”
“I am happy to hear it,” she said, joining in his laughter despite herself before abandoning herself to the exhilaration of performing the steps and patterns of a vigorous country dance.
“Well, Sophie,” he said later during one of the short intervals when they were close enough to converse, “I suffered a fine tongue-lashing on your account this afternoon when I had thought merely to engage in a very civilized social call. Nat was incensed at what I almost said in your hearing last evening.”
“All of you said a lot worse when we were in the Peninsula together,” she said. “I have thick skin, Eden.”
“Which is exactly what I told Nat,” he said. “Not the thick-skin part, of course. But about your good sense and your good humor. But I was given strict orders to make my apologies to you and to look sincere when I did it. I do so most humbly. I certainly meant no disrespect.” He grinned again. “Nat has grown disturbingly respectable, Sophie.”
“It comes of having family responsibilities,” she said. “It is something you have not yet experien
ced, Eden.” She smiled and then laughed as he deliberately winced. “I accept your apology.”
They were separated by the patterns of the dance.
“I feel a definite obligation toward Nat,” he said when they came together again. “I do believe I am going to set up as a matchmaker, Sophie.”
“Heaven help us all,” she said.
“I am going to match him up,” he said. “Oh, not with a bride, Sophie. Is that what you thought? It would go against all my finer principles to marry off the poor fellow. Besides, according to Nat himself, he has had quite enough of females in his home to last him for a lifetime or two. No, what I intend to do is match him up with a, ah ... Oh, Lord, I can feel the necessity of another apology coming on.” He chuckled and used his eyes on her quite shamelessly.
“Your meaning is crystal clear,” she told him before they completed the pattern of the dance with different partners. She gathered that Nathaniel had not told him about last night, then—or about this morning. She had wondered. Men, she knew from experience, loved to discuss their amatory conquests with one another. She could not have borne... but of course Nathaniel would have done no such thing. He was too honorable a man.
“Do you know anyone suitable, Sophie?” Eden asked her a couple of minutes later. “You must know a considerable number of females of suitable age and marital status. She has to be someone respectable, of course. And lovely and lively too. Nat’s own words.”
Oh!
“If you expect me to help you matchmake in such a cause, Eden,” she said tartly, “you must certainly have windmills in your head. I beg to decline. Why do we not discuss the weather?”
He chuckled as they were separated again.
When the set was ended he did not, as she expected, lead her back to her own party. He took her toward Kenneth and Moira, Rex and Catherine, who were in a group with Rex’s brother and sister and their spouses and with Catherine’s brother. Sophia would have preferred to return to Beatrice’s company. But at least Nathaniel was not part of the group.
“We called on you this morning, Sophie,” Moira said, “did we not, Catherine? We were going to drag you off to the shops with us to find some frivolity to buy. But you were not at home.”
Samuel had not told her she had had other visitors. How fortunate that they had not arrived when she had been there alone with Nathaniel. The very thought of her narrow escape turned her uncomfortably hot. What would they have made of it?
“Will you dance the quadrille with me, Sophie?” Kenneth asked. “Or have you promised it to someone else.”
“How foolish!” she said. “Of course I have not.”
“Sophie,” Rex told the group at large, his voice languid, his quizzing glass in one hand, “was always the most conceited lady of our acquaintance. ‘How foolish! Of course I have not.’ ” He did a creditable imitation of her voice.
They all laughed and she felt herself flush before joining in. “Thank you, Kenneth,” she said. “That would be delightful.”
It was too. She would dance two sets in a row—with two of the most handsome gentlemen at the ball. She would be fortunate indeed if her head fit through the doorway by the time she wished to leave. Kenneth was bowing formally and extending his arm for hers.
In the event it turned out to be three sets in a row. Kenneth took her back to his group after he had finished dancing with her because Moira, who had been dancing with Mr. Claude Adams, was smiling and beckoning. She wished to make plans for a shopping trip the afternoon after the one following—most of her mornings and Kenneth‘s, she explained, were set aside for the entertainment of their son. And then Rex asked Sophia for the next set and out she went for yet more country dances.
“I feel young and giddy again,” she told him, laughing and breathless as they danced down the line together.
“You areyoung, Sophie,” he said. “You are younger than I, I believe, and I do assure you that I consider myself young, despite marriage and paternity. But you were never giddy. There was never much chance to be in the Peninsula, was there? Perhaps it is time you were now. Time you enjoyed yourself.” He winked at her when her eyes met his.
Had Nathaniel told him? No, he would not do that to her.
Rex too took her back to his own group at the end of the set just as if she fully belonged there, and indeed the others all received her as if she did. She just hoped that Mr. Adams or Sir Clayton Baird or Viscount Perry would not now feel obliged to ask her to dance. She would feel mortified. But she was saved—if saved was the correct word.
“It still seems somewhat comical to see Nat playing the part of devoted brother,” Kenneth said with a grin, looking over Sophia’s shoulder. She realized, with an uncomfortable lurching of the stomach, that he must be approaching. A glance behind her showed her that he had a young lady on each arm.
Did he know she was here? How dreadfully embarrassing—though why it should be so she would have been unable to explain even to herself. She wished she could duck out of sight, return to her own group. But it was too late.
Nathaniel had noticed her almost from the moment of his arrival in the ballroom. But she did not notice him. Or so he thought at first. After a while it seemed unlikely, despite the great squeeze of guests, that she just had not seen him. She was deliberately avoiding him, then.
Why?
Had she changed her mind? It seemed very possible. Or was it just that she was embarrassed to see him in public after the events of last night, and after the agreement they had come to this morning? She was with her family—Walter’s family. Perhaps she did not want them to suspect. Indeed, it seemed the likeliest explanation for her behavior.
He had expected to be a little embarrassed himself at sight of her. But he was not. She looked so endearingly familiar—not just as last night’s lover, but as Sophie Armitage. Her gown was a dreary color. At first he thought it was black, but it was not. It was a very dark blue. Its high-cut square neck and its shapeless elbow-length sleeves were quite unfashionable—had they ever been fashionable? Her hair had been carefully dressed into a topknot and confined curls, but as always, so many feathery curls had sprung loose from the coiffure that they formed a sort of dark halo about her head. She was smiling her placid, cheerful smile.
Last night seemed unreal again until he remembered that hair loose and wild about her face and shoulders and billowing down her back all the way to her bottom. And her dreamy, passion-filled eyes. And the slim beauty of her body.
Oh, Sophie. Someone had once shown him a picture of a vase—except that the vase had disappeared and two human faces in profile had replaced it when he changed the focus of his eyes. He could see both pictures after that but never simultaneously. There was always either the vase or the faces. His view of Sophie was somewhat like that this evening. He could see dear Sophie, his friend, who warmed his heart and brought an involuntary smile to his lips. And he could see and feet—and smell—last night’s lover and know beyond any doubt that he wished to continue the liaison. But it was difficult to see both women at the same time.
After it had become clear to him that she really was avoiding even looking at him, Nathaniel decided that he must take matters into his own hands. It would be remarked upon if he was the only one of the four friends to fail even to pay his respects to her. Besides, he wished to talk with her. And he wanted Georgina and Lavinia to meet her—he had always intended to take them to call on her. Georgina at least would like her, he was sure. And so between sets he offered an arm to each and led them to where Sophie was standing with Ken, Rex, Eden, and their retinue.
His three friends had already met his sister and Lavinia. Rex and Kenneth had called with their wives during the afternoon, just after Eden had left. Indeed, Rex and Ken had each danced a set with both young ladies. Lavinia had not refused either of them, Nathaniel had been interested—and relieved—to find.
There was a great buzz of greetings and conversation as the three of them joined the group. Catherine took it upon he
rself to present Georgina and Lavinia to her brother and to Rex’s relatives. She seemed to assume they must have met Sophie.
Nathaniel turned to her at last and smiled. If she was feeling embarrassed, she was not showing it. She stood quietly, as she always had, neither pushing herself forward nor cowering away out of sight.
“Hello, Sophie,” he said. “Are you enjoying the ball?”
“Oh, yes indeed,” she assured him. “I did not expect to dance at all, you know. But I have danced three sets in a row—with three of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, no less. I believe I might say that my evening—my whole Season—has been an unqualified success.” She had always had that ability, he remembered, quietly and cheerfully to mock herself.
“May I have the honor of presenting my sister and my cousin to you?” he asked.
“Yes, please,” she said.
“My cousin Lavinia Bergland,” he said, “and my sister Georgina.”
She looked at them each in turn and smiled kindly.
“Mrs. Sophie Armitage,” he continued. “A very dear friend of mine who was in Spain and Portugal and Belgium with her husband during the wars. He was unfortunately killed at Waterloo but not before distinguishing himself in a quite extraordinary fashion.”
“How distressing for you, Mrs. Armitage,” Georgina said, curtsying.
“You followed the drum, Mrs. Armitage?” Lavinia said, her voice bright with interest. “How splendid of you. How I envy you.”
“Sophie, please,” Sophia said. “Yes, I suppose I am to be envied. I was fortunate enough to be able to spend almost every day of my short married life with my husband.”
“Sophie.” Lavinia reached out her right hand like a man and shook Sophia’s hand. “How lovely it is to meet you. I am going to like you. How fortunate that you are one of Nat’s friends. We will meet again, then. There will be someone sensible to talk with.”
Sophie laughed. “I do hope I can live up to your expectations,” she said.