by Mary Balogh
She had been granted permission to waltz at Almack’s the previous Wednesday. Having been utterly contemptuous of the strange rule ever since her first ball, and having threatened a dozen times to waltz whether she had been granted permission or not, she then, of course, had felt obliged out of sheer principle to refuse to waltz even after permission had been granted. But tonight she intended to waltz—it was the set before supper.
She sought out Eden before it began—he was standing with a group of people, mostly gentlemen, but Lavinia did not allow that fact to deter her. She tapped him on the arm with her fan. He turned toward her, his eyebrows lifting in surprise. He was very good at that look of hauteur, as she had conceded before tonight. Though if he expected to cow her with the look, he was going to be disappointed.
“I have been granted permission to waltz,” she told him. Lavinia had decided years before that if there was a bush to be beaten about, doing so was a waste of time.
“Ah.” His hand had gone to the handle of his quizzing glass. He had turned away from his companions to give her a little more privacy. “My most heartfelt congratulations, Miss Bergland.”
“The next set is a waltz,” she said.
“I do believe you are right.” He had the glass halfway to his eye.
“I want you to dance it with me,” she said.
If gentlemen knew how a quizzing glass enlarged one eye while leaving the other incongruously small, Lavinia thought, they would not use it so freely.
“Indeed?” he said. “I am your charity case, ma‘am? You fear I cannot find a partner of my own?”
“Oh,” she said impatiently, “how ridiculous men can be. Have you enjoyed that little piece of revenge?”
“I have been enormously tickled by it,” he said, sounding decidedly bored. “Miss Bergland, will you do me the honor of waltzing with me?”
“If you can perform the steps without treading all over my toes,” she said.
“Hmm.” He dropped his glass on its ribbon and extended an arm for hers. “Are your feet that large, then? I am too well-bred to stare down at them.”
He did not tread on her toes. Indeed, she had the strange feeling as he whirled her about the ballroom during the following half hour, making all the colors of gowns and coats and the glitter of jewels blur into a wondrous kaleidoscope, that her toes did not touch the floor at all. If she had but known that he danced this well, she thought, she she would have danced with him that very first time. No, she would not—he had been far too condescending and far too certain that those blue eyes of his would smite her into dithering incoherence.
They were quite gorgeous blue eyes, of course, but that was beside the point.
“Allow me to escort you in to supper,” he said when the set came to an end—far too soon. “Or are you now about to assert your perfect confidence in being able to find a place for yourself and to fill a plate of your own?”
“I am not hungry,” she said, taking his arm. “Take me into the garden.”
His eyebrows shot up and his hand reached for his quizzing glass again. “Feeling amorous are we, Miss Bergland?” he asked.
“I cannot answer for you, my lord,” she said, “but I am certainly not. I wish to speak with you.”
“Ah,” he said. “Interesting.”
The garden was very prettily lit with lanterns and set about with rustic seats. The evening was a little chilly but at least the garden was deserted, all the other guests doubtless feeling ravenously hungry after the exertions of half an evening.
“I want to know more about Mr. Boris Pinter,” Lavinia said when they were outside.
“I would not if I were you,” Lord Pelham said. “Nat would have an apoplexy or two if you were to develop an interest in the man.”
“Try not to be ridiculous,” she told him. “He is blackmailing Sophie.”
He was quiet for a few moments and his steps slowed. “You know that?” he said. “Has she admitted as much to you, then? She would not admit it to Nat when he returned her ring and pearls to her earlier today. But it would be as well anyway for you not to be involved in this. It might possibly become nasty.”
Lavinia clucked her tongue. “I spent three days with Nat pretending to be besotted with him despite the fact that he had just gambled away his family fortune and could not afford to buy me a new wedding ring or wedding gift,” she said. “I simply must be granted either sainthood or involvement as a reward. I never did fancy being a saint—wearing a halo and plucking the strings of a harp would become a mite tedious after the first century or so.”
“Ah,” he said, “Nat did not tell us you had been his accomplice.”
“Now tell me all you know of Mr. Pinter,” she said.
“So that your indignation against him can increase?” he said. “Nothing can be served by that. Nat wants simply to kill the bast- ‘ Lord Pelham discovered the necessity of clearing his throat. ”But we do not fancy watching him swing. If you have any influence with him, talk sense into him. Though perhaps I am commissioning the wrong person to do that.“
“Nat told me about Mr. Pinter’s cruelty,” she said. “About his trapping men into doing wrong and then ordering them to be whipped—and watching the punishment with great enjoyment.”
“Mmm,” he said noncommittally.
“He blushed and looked horridly embarrassed when I suggested that Mr. Pinter must have arranged all that rather than take a whore,” she said.
Lord Pelham’s cough was getting worse. “I will be eternally thankful,” he said when the spell had passed, “that we are strolling in the dark. Is it just a malicious rumor that you are a lady?”
“Is it true, do you think?” she asked him. “Is he peculiar?”
“I hardly think—” Lord Pelham was using his pokering-up voice and Lavinia was having none of it.
“Yes, yes,” she said impatiently. “But do you not see? One does not deal with a blackmailer by wagging a finger in his face and admonishing him to stop it and be a good boy. Neither does one stop it by killing him and then having to swing for it, as you put it. One stops it by matching fire with fire.”
“Meaning?” he asked her, stopping and turning to face her, though they could not see each other clearly since they were in among some trees from which no lanterns hung.
“Meaning,” she said, “that we find something that he would certainly not wish to come into the light.”
“Blackmail,” he said.
“Of course,” she said briskly. “What do you think I have been talking about? If he carries out any of his threats to Sophie—though what he could possibly have on her I cannot even begin to imagine—but if he does, even in the smallest of ways, then we let the world know about him. But first we let him know what the consequences of his behavior are to be.”
“Good Lord,” he said, “you are pure unadulterated poison, ma‘am.”
“In defense of my friends, yes,” she said. “If it is true that Mr. Pinter derives enjoyment—that sort of enjoyment—from watching men stripped and whipped, and if we can find enough proof to worry him, then we can put a stop to this business with Sophie. Shall we do it?”
“We?” he said faintly.
“We,” she said firmly. “As in you and me. Nat would send me back to Bowood with instructions to the coachman to spring his horses if I made the suggestion to him.”
“No,” he said firmly. “We as in Nat and me and Rex and Ken, Miss Bergland. But I will grant you that it is a brilliant idea and I am ashamed we have not thought of it for ourselves. I daresay we are not devious enough.”
She thought for a few moments. “Oh very well,” she said finally. “But only provided I am given a full account of what happens. I do not want to hear when it is all over that the details are not fit for a lady’s delicate ears.”
“Yours?” he said, raising his quizzing glass even in the near darkness and training it on one of her ears. “I daresay they are made of cast iron.”
She smiled at him. “You
are going to save Sophie,” she said. “All of you. I would not wish to be in Mr. Pinter’s shoes. I think the four of you pokering up all together would be quite a formidable sight.”
They grinned at each other, in unusual accord.
“I suppose,” he said, “if I were to kiss you I would have my face thoroughly slapped and would have to endure the embarrassment of reappearing in the ballroom with five red fingermarks across one cheek?”
She looked at him consideringly. “Do you want to kiss me?” she asked.
“The thought had crossed my mind,” he admitted. “Would I be slapped?”
She thought again, taking her time about doing so. “No,” she said finally.
“Ah,” he said, and bent down and set his lips to hers. But he lifted his head almost immediately. “Child’s stuff,” he murmured, his arms coming about her. “If we are going to do this—and by some mutual madness it appears that we are—let us at least do it properly.”
He did it properly.
Lavinia drew back her head when it occurred to her after some considerable time that perhaps she ought. She frowned at him. “Do all gentlemen kiss like that?” she asked him. She clarified. “With their mouths open?”
“I have absolutely no idea,” he said, sounding surprised. “I have never crept up close and watched. But this gentleman kisses like that. Did you mind?”
“It had a strange effect on my insides,” she said.
“Dear me,” he said. “It was not by any chance your first kiss, was it, Miss Bergland? At your age?”
“Oh, you will not make me ashamed,” she said, “and scrambling to lie and claim that I have been kissed so many times that I have lost count. I have never before wished to be kissed and so I have not been.”
“But this time you did wish it?” he asked her.
She had not really intended to make that revealing admission, but she had talked her way into it and would not deny it now. “I suppose,” she said, “you have had a great deal of practice, and if one is to experience something at least once in one’s lifetime one might as well experience it with someone who knows what he is doing.”
“Ah,” he said. “Shall we try once more? Perhaps this time you might refrain from puckering up and try opening your mouth.”
She followed his advice. And if she had thought the first time that strange things happened to her insides, well, the sensations were beyond thought the second time.
“Much more of this,” he said sometime later, at which point she noticed that he was withdrawing his hand from about one of her breasts and was sliding it out from the low neckline of her gown, “and I am going to have to be paying Nat a formal morning call tomorrow. I am sure neither of us would want that to be happening.”
“The very thought!” she agreed, shuddering and glancing down at herself to make sure nothing was showing that ought not to be showing.
“I will have a conference on that other matter with Nat and the others during our early-morning ride,” he said. “Perhaps we can come up with something.”
“There is to be no perhaps about it,” she said, taking his offered arm in order to return to the ballroom with him—other guests were beginning to appear outdoors again and the members of the orchestra were tuning their instruments. “You must come up with something. Sophie is your friend and mine. Do it.”
“Yes, ma‘am,” he said.
SEVENTEEN
SOPHIA HAD HAD HOT WA ter hauled laboriously up to her dressing room, and she had soaked for all of half an hour in the deep tub after washing herself with the soap he had thought was perfume. She had washed her hair with it too and had then let it almost dry before brushing and brushing it until it crackled and shone. She had picked out her prettiest nightgown. With the dressing gown she had no choice. She had only the one.
She prepared for him as if she were a bride awaiting her bridegroom, she thought rather ruefully. But she was not deterred by the thought. There had been an hour, of course, after his departure when she wondered what madness had her in its grip and had almost dashed off a note to tell him not to come, never to come again.
But she had come to a decision, sitting there with Lass on her lap again. Or rather, before the decision, she had had a vision of herself. She had seen herself as she had become. In a sense she had been a victim ever since her marriage, but at least then she had made the best of circumstances. She had made something of her life. She could not say she had enjoyed those years in the Peninsula, in France, and in Belgium. But she had endured and even prevailed over dreadful conditions. She had had friends. She had been liked and respected. She had respected herself.
And then she had had a taste of real freedom after Walter’s death and the unexpected gifts and pension from the government. She had made a new life, a new circle of friends. She had been happy in a contented, placid sort of way. She had felt in control of her own life and destiny. She had begun to like herself.
Yet now what had she become? She had become a poor cringing thing, afraid to go outside her own house, afraid even to look from the windows lest she see him or his spies watching. She was afraid to attend any social function, especially a ton entertainment. She was afraid even to walk in the park lest she meet someone she ought not to meet—and someone else see her do it. She was afraid of every knock on the door below.
She had given up almost all communication with Walter’s family, though they were puzzled by it and perhaps even hurt—Sarah was hurt. Sophia had refused to attend a garden party with them just the day before. And she had brought to a bitter end four of the friendships she had valued most in the course of her life—as well as the friendships she had begun with the wives of two of them.
She had cut short the spring love affair she had promised herself she would indulge in without any qualm of conscience.
In order to become an abject creature who jumped to the command of a villain and a bully. In order to be constantly afraid, afraid, afraid ...
And why?
Because Walter had betrayed her yet she would not betray him. That was why.
And so her life had been ruined, and soon Edwin’s life and that of the rest of his family would be ruined too, and perhaps Thomas’s as well. And beyond the ruin—what? Scandal and disgrace? Very probably.
It was not only her life that had been ruined, she had realized, turning her head and laughing despite herself when Lass decided to lift her head and lick Sophia’s cheek. It was her very self. Through to the very core of herself she felt worthless.
She would not allow it any longer. She simply would not. She had wondered from the start how far she would allow herself to be pushed. She had wondered if there was a limit beyond which she would not go and had feared that perhaps there was not. But there was. The limit had been reached. She would go no farther into degradation.
And so she had sat on, well after the time she would normally have rung for tea. She had planned what she would do, what she must do—three things. She would discover whether she could sell her house and proceed with the sale if she could. She would find the boxes in the attic that contained those belongings of Walter’s that she had kept. And she would have her last, glorious night with Nathaniel. It would be glorious. She would see to that. And it would be the last.
She had had hot water hauled to her dressing room....
She did not feel as nervous or as self-conscious or as awkward as she had that second time—or not nervous in the same way anyway. She was strung up with excitement, of course. She was ready soon after eleven and after that paced her bedchamber and her dressing room, peering out through the window every minute or so. She could not sit down. And for lack of anything else to do with her hands, she brushed her hair again as she paced.
Lass gave up trotting around at her heels and jumped onto a forbidden chair. She rested her head on her front paws, peered upward at Sophia as if expecting the usual command to get down, and closed her eyes. She heaved one deep sigh.
“Precisely,” Sophia sai
d. “Midnight will never come.”
But he did. Seven minutes early. She flew down the stairs and pulled impatiently and as quietly as she was able at the bolts. Finally she had the door open.
“You are early,” she said.
“Am I?” He stepped inside, removed his hat, and bent his head to kiss her. “Should I have waited outside until the stroke of midnight?”
She smiled at him, brimming over with happiness and excitement. “No,” she said. “I was earlier. I have been waiting.”
“Have you, Sophie?” He took the candle from her hand and lifted it higher. “You look very happy. Happy to see me?”
“Yes.” She beamed at him before turning to lead the way upstairs. “Very.”
She was not going to play any games of pretended indifference tonight. This night was for her and she was going to grasp all it had to offer. For once in her life she was going to be utterly selfish.
He set the candle down on the dressing table when they reached her room, glanced at Lass, who thumped her tail on the cushion and opened her eyes briefly, and turned to Sophia. Perhaps he expected a repetition of that other night when neither of them had known quite how to proceed. But tonight she was not going to allow any awkwardness. She had followed him to the dressing table. She reached up her hands and unbuttoned his coat. She pushed it off his shoulders and down his arms while he stood still, watching her.
“You are not wearing evening clothes,” she said. “These are your riding clothes.”
“Yes,” he said.
She started on the buttons of his waistcoat. “There was a ball tonight,” she said, “at Lady Honeymere’s. Did you not go to it?”
“I went,” he said.
His waistcoat was on the floor behind him, on top of his coat. She pulled his shirt free of his pantaloons and then began unwrapping his neckcloth.
“But you did not stay?” She had to reach behind his neck to complete the unwrapping.