A Novella Collection

by Theresa Romain

  He couldn’t disagree. Her dress was not unattractive, but it was hardly in the first stare of fashion. Still, it was a color, and it was nice to see her in color. He’d got used to seeing her in mourning clothes. Plain and jetty, they bled the color from her face and made her look wan. Or maybe she had truly been wan, and now the idea of finding a new husband was returning the glow to her cheeks.

  Lord Paper Face had played out his hand, and he was looking over at Ellie. Intent, evaluating. Dark eyes and a sharp blade of a nose.

  Nicholas could understand the man’s scrutiny, for Ellie was pleasant to look at, slender and poised. Her gown was high-waisted, a light blue silk with a sash. The bodice was cut low, a darker blue silk that framed her breasts.

  Should one think the word breasts in connection with a friend? Especially a friend one had known since long before that person had been possessed of breasts?

  To hell with it. Eleanor looked damned fine, breasts and all.

  Not that he would put it to her in that way. He had already hesitated too long, and she was eyeing him with suspicion. “What’s amiss?”

  “Nothing, nothing. You look lovely,” he said. “Though your hair looks strange.”

  Her mouth fell open.

  But it was true. Her hair did look strange. And she had asked.

  If there was one feature that had always defined Ellie for Nicholas, it was her hair. Ever since her girlhood, Ellie had cursed her riotous brown curls. They frizzed and twined and kinked and got in her face as she ran, huffing and indignant, behind the older boys.

  She had looked forward to coming out in society, but when she did, she had never looked right to Nicholas. Not with her hair powdered fashionably pale and starchy, tortured into a puff at the front and long stiff ringlets at the back. The restraint of her hair had shortened her steps, shallowed her breath. A girl with such hair could not move with abandon. Until the end of a ball, maybe, or the twirl of a country dance, when he saw her at a distance haloed by candlelight, and she was laughing and her hair was starting to shrug free of its pins and pomades, rioting into springs.

  But that had been more than a decade ago, and fashions had changed. Gone were the hair powder and women’s stiffly boned bodices. France had had a revolution of its own, and once a tenuous peace had returned, no one could be bothered to get dressed again in panniers and powder and patch.

  Nicholas had been more than glad to toss aside his hair powder and lop off his queue. His dark hair was thick and short and tousled.

  And Ellie’s? Tonight it was smooth, as sleek in its crown of plaits as if it were heavy silk, and she was just as much not-Ellie as she’d been in her first Season when she wore a toy boat atop her grandiose powdered hair.

  It was the correct answer, to say her hair looked strange. But he knew it had also been the wrong one.

  “I shall pretend,” Ellie said from beneath her cap of fashionable hair, “that you did not say that. My hair looks perfectly acceptable. I can see it in the glass over there.”

  Turning to face him, she narrowed her eyes. They were green—not that he could see their shade in the candlelight, but he knew it well. He had been glared at by those green eyes many a time—though never, perhaps, with quite so much force.

  “I can’t imagine why you’re being so disagreeable,” she said.

  “I can be far more disagreeable than this.”

  “That is certainly true.” She rolled her eyes. “But Nicholas, you said you were interested in taking a wife. Look about you. Don’t you see anyone you might deem…perfect?” She spoke the last word as though flicking a barb.

  “Nobody is perfect,” he grumbled.

  “Perfect for your purposes, then. Meek and mild and beautiful. If you don’t have any ideas, as I said, I’ve spotted someone who might do.”

  Someone who might do. Hardly romantic, but then, his blue-blooded parents must have chosen each other for no stronger reason than that.

  Not that theirs had been a love story, or even a successful match at all.

  With one hand on his arm, somehow Ellie managed to drag him toward…damnation, yes, toward the table at which Lord Barberry was seated. It was a table for four—and as Ellie and Nicholas approached, all four players sprang to their feet.

  Greetings followed. Besides Lord Barberry, there were a couple of similar age to him—a Mr. and Mrs. Lewis, relations of the powerful Earl of Benwick—and their daughter Lavender. Ellie knew the Lewises and handled the introductions with a friendly ease that made Barberry’s eyes glitter, shadowed and greedy. Ellie didn’t notice. How could she not notice such presumption?

  Mr. and Mrs. Lewis seemed particularly interested in meeting Nicholas. Lord Barberry seemed particularly interested in Ellie.

  Lavender Lewis seemed particularly interested in her toes, blushing and shy as her parents twittered about needing to get refreshments, and would dear Lady Eleanor keep an eye on their darling girl, and would His Grace care to partner Miss Lewis for the next hand of whist?

  And so the four of them—two would-be couples—were left with a deck of cards and a table bare of distracting vouchers and chips.

  “What have you been wagering?” Nicholas asked. “There cannot be a proper game of cards without a wager.”

  Ellie, sitting at his left, kicked him under the table.

  Lord Barberry looked up from handing out the cards, thirteen per player. “We have been wagering information.” His dark eyes were shrewd. With his silver hair cut short and modish, he looked younger than Nicholas had expected.

  “What sort of information?” Ellie asked. “I must leave it to you gentlemen to deliver state secrets unto us ladies. But what could we tell you in exchange?” Her voice sounded higher, breathier than usual.

  Barberry beamed at her. “I could think of many things, Lady Eleanor, that I would be enchanted to have you tell me.”

  “How about favorite flower?” Nicholas blurted. When three sets of eyes flicked his way, he explained, “The winning lady could reveal her favorite flower. Surely we gentlemen could make use of that information.”

  Across the round table, Miss Lewis met his gaze for a moment, then looked away again. She was very young, perhaps twenty, and dressed in pale colors that made her look more than ethereal, almost ephemeral. A promising quality in a wife who would be beautiful and meek: she would simply melt away when one hadn’t need of her.

  Guilt caught him at the thought. Would he be treating his wife, in that case, any better than his father had treated his mother?

  He hoped her favorite flower was not lavender. Though fragrant, it was such a spindly flower. What did it symbolize? His sisters had used to dissect every arrangement given them by beaux, teasing out the secret meanings.

  He couldn’t remember. But no matter. This particular Lavender represented what he said he wanted in a wife, and so as if to atone for his lowering thoughts of a moment before, he bowed over her hand—currently holding thirteen cards—with scrupulous politeness. And then the game began, with clubs the trump.

  For a game of whist, it was indifferently played. Miss Lewis was sloppy and shy, overlooking her hand’s trumps in order to follow suit. Lord Barberry spent as much time looking at Ellie as he did at his cards. And Nicholas had to study them all, to make sure he knew what was what. It was more than a little distracting.

  He played his final card, a low off suit, with a curse.

  “Better for you we didn’t wager any money, Your Grace.” Lord Barberry smiled. “Lady Eleanor, as we’ve won, I believe you owe us a flower.”

  As the older man tidied the cards into a neat stack, Ellie tapped her chin in thought. “It is terribly uncreative of me, but I believe my favorite flower is a rose. I am sorry. I ought to have said something wild and inconvenient, to be fascinating.”

  “You could not fail to be fascinating,” said Barberry.

  Oh, please. A reply more pat could not have been imagined.

  “My ap
ologies, Miss Lewis.” Nicholas had a few manners up his sleeve as well. “I was not a skillful partner to you.”

  “You were perfect, Your Grace.” She fluttered, drawing forth her gloves as if she wanted to cover her hands, then setting them aside again. “I fear I am not accomplished in this sort of play.”

  Was there a double meaning to her words? Perhaps, perhaps. She was blushing again. She really was quite pretty. Like a watercolor.

  “Perhaps a drink before we play again?” offered Barberry.

  “I…no, I’d best not.” Nicholas pressed his temple. “I haven’t slept for a day. Strong spirits would knock me flat.”

  “I thought you had planned to sleep for a week.” Ellie’s brows lifted. “Or at least the afternoon.”

  “So I did, but someone whose name rhymes with Lady Belinor Balmer had a detrimental effect on my proposed schedule.”

  In truth, he had known he would doze for a few minutes at most. The wish to sleep for a week was as vain as any other deeply held wish, such as the one he’d once held for parents as devoted to each other as Sidney and Eleanor’s parents had been before their early deaths.

  Even when he had the chance to sleep, he usually…didn’t. He lay in his bed, thinking of all the things he could be doing, and with whom. His thoughts were a careful wall against the claws of those other thoughts. The alone sort of thoughts, in which he had a city full of acquaintances but few true friends. A dukedom that took away his choices about how to order his life. The memory of a silent dinner in the nursery as his parents dined in cold formality with the people one ought to know, not the people with whom one cared to spend time.

  But damn it all, he was a duke. And those thoughts belonged behind a wall, because in front of it, he could do what he pleased, with whom he pleased, when he pleased.

  “Never mind what I had planned,” he said, taking the cards from Lord Barberry and giving them a quick shuffle. “If you’re all prepared, let’s play another game.”

  Chapter 3

  The following afternoon, Eleanor returned from a visit with Mariah and the sweet-sleeping infant viscount, determined anew to create the sort of family she wanted.

  That morning, Lord Barberry had sent over a clutch of pink roses, little delicate things on fragile stems. When she’d said she liked roses, she meant roses. Big, vivid, lush blooms. Thorny, strong stems. But she hadn’t specified the sort she preferred, and the gesture from his lordship was kindly meant. Pink roses represented admiration, and that was a fine foundation for a courtship.

  She had half hoped Nicholas would send some flowers as well, but nothing had arrived from him.

  She could guess why. He had been wittily ungracious to their hostess the evening before, a trick that often delighted him—but only him. He was probably miffed at Eleanor for pointing out his poor manners. And it wasn’t as though flowers from Nicholas would mean anything more than a friendly gesture at the best of times.

  Ah, well. She handed off her pelisse and bonnet to a footman, batting ruefully at the curls that sprang down from their confinement to tickle her forehead and nape.

  The footman bore the bent nose and flattened ears of a former pugilist, yet wore the dowager duchess’s livery with grace. He was far better dressed than she was, with her drab-colored gown and gloves of plain cloth, but the butler had the staff too well trained to appear to notice this.

  It was odd but pleasant, living in this house. She had done the right thing to leave Athelney Place.

  Except now she would be alone, save for the house’s staff, for the rest of the day.

  Perhaps she’d visit the library and see what sort of books Nicholas’s mother collected.

  “My lady.” The footman spoke in a broad accent. “His Grace awaits you in the front parlor.”

  Eleanor paused in the act of drawing off her gloves. “His Grace? You mean…Hawthorne?” What was Nicholas doing here at this hour? It was too late for callers and too early for tonnish gatherings.

  At the footman’s affirmative, she handed him her gloves and made her way through the entrance hall toward the first door on the right. Before she could open it, Nicholas sprang out of the room with a grin on his face.

  “Finally! You’re here!”

  “I’m here.” His puppyish excitement was disconcerting. “Why are you here? This is my house. You aren’t to be breaking in at all hours.”

  He grabbed one of her hands. “Actually, my dear fusspot, this is my house. And I’m here because your birthday present has been delivered. Come and see!” He all but dragged her through the doorway, her boot tip catching the edge of the room’s stretching carpet and making her stumble.

  As soon as she righted herself, she froze. “That’s not my birthday present.”

  “It is.” He stood next to her, practically vibrating with glee. “What do you think?”

  At the center of the blue-papered room, it shone dark and lovely. Cautiously, hesitantly, she approached the gift. “It’s…but, Nicholas. It’s a pianoforte.”

  This was understating the matter. This was not merely a pianoforte. It was the sort of instrument whose name ought to be written in all capital letters, or pronounced with the formality of the script on the nameboard. A. Pianoforte. A grand one, its finish satin-smooth, its lid open and inviting: let us make music.

  Her vision blurred. “I cannot believe it. It is too much.”

  Even as she said the words, her hand reached for it. She traced the edge of the music stand above the keyboard, the perfect height. Oh, it was all perfect. Even the scent of it, of cut wood and varnish. She breathed in deeply, sinking onto the accompanying bench seat.

  Nicholas stood beside her. “You’ve made your token protest. Now I’ll reply that it’s not at all too much, and Palmer was a beast to sell your pianoforte, and the cost is as nothing to me.” He poked at a key. “I’d rather not have to say all that, because it diminishes the glory of my gift. Could you oblige me by simply saying that you adore the gift and think it’s the best birthday present anyone has ever given you?”

  She wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand, then settled herself squarely before the keys. “Yes. I adore the gift. I ought to protest more, but I don’t want to. I only want to play it.” Her throat caught as she added, “It is truly the best birthday present anyone has ever given me.” She looked up at him, standing so tall by her side. “It is the best gift of any sort.”

  He laughed. “You needn’t go that far.”

  “But it’s true.” She spread her fingers over the keys, not yet pressing them. “Is this what you saw to yesterday morning? You were harassing John Broadwood as soon as the sun came up?”

  “It was at least an hour after the sun came up, but yes, Broadwood needed a little harassing. He was supposed to have it ready for your birthday. He and his son were lucky I didn’t put spies on them.”

  Her last pianoforte had had natural keys of ebony, with ivory slivers forming the sharps and flats. This instrument had reversed the materials of the keys, and the keyboard seemed to stretch endlessly as a result. Eleanor leaned forward to touch the highest and lowest ivory keys with her fingertips. “Look how large it is! What is the span—five and a half octaves? No, it’s fully six!”

  “It is six,” he said proudly. “You shall play the highest and the lowest notes in London. Well, you and everyone else who has a pianoforte of this size.”

  She touched a key at the upper end; it tinkled like the ringing of a high bell. Sliding a forefinger down the keyboard, she pressed each key lightly, stroking the ivory.

  Could she feel the vibration of each struck string crossing the soundboard, or was she only imagining that she could feel the heartbeat of the instrument?

  At the lower end, the notes grumbled and growled in a quiet thunder. Back up again, and the notes rang clear and sharp.

  “It sings,” she said. “Like a person, it sings. I have never played a grand pianoforte before.”

 
Only the small square sort, which hummed along pleasantly. But this? Oh, it opened its heart to her. A heart of woods soft and hard, unfinished and glossy.

  “This really is yours,” Nicholas said. “You’re to have it when you leave.”

  She lifted her hands at once. “Am I leaving?”

  “Well, when you get married.” He leaned closer to her. Today he smelled of soap and clean cloth. She shut her eyes for a moment, breathing deeply. “The butler told me Lord Barberry had sent you flowers.”

  Her eyes snapped open. “He did, yes. They are in my bedchamber now.”

  A falsehood. In truth, they were in the library. The flowers, and the accompanying note of scrupulous politeness: With highest regards, & c.

  Deliberately, Nicholas placed three fingers on low keys and bashed a dissonant chord. “You’ll soon be bored with him.”

  Pale pink rosebuds were pretty. Admiration was a fine sentiment. “Why do you say so? Because he’s not scandalous like you?”

  “Am I scandalous?” Nicholas perked up.

  “Let me think.” She tucked a wayward curl behind her ear. “Bringing a woman into the stairwell at White’s?”

  “I wasn’t in the stairwell myself, you know.”

  “Two women on each thigh at…whose party was it?”

  “Snodgrass’s. And it was only one woman. On each thigh.” He frowned. “Does that sound more interesting than ‘two on my lap’?”

  “‘Interesting’ is hardly the word for it,” Eleanor said dryly.

  “Then I suppose I am scandalous, rather. Here, budge over and let me sit with you if you aren’t too scandalized.” He sat beside her, hip pressing against hers.

  Time and time over the years, they had sat next to each other. But this—hip against hip on a seat almost too small for the two of them—felt startlingly near. Within her boots, her toes curled.

  “Did you send flowers to Miss Lewis?”

  “I did. Lavender.”

  Of course he had. “How unoriginal.”

  He laughed. “Not the flower lavender. Other kinds of flowers that are lavender in color.”