by Mary Balogh
“Have you heard?” she asked him, leaning toward him as if she thought thereby to give them some privacy. Her cheeks had flushed and her eyes had grown anxious. “The Prince of Wales may be coming here this evening.”
“He does not always honor such commitments,” he said “I would not get my hopes up too high if I were you, Miss Downes.”
“My hopes?” Her voice was almost a squeak. “I shall die if he comes, Lord Francis. I shall just die.”
But he was given no chance to deal with her fears himself. There was a chorus of protest and reassurance from her court, though for a while she kept her eyes fixed on him. How could a great heroine—who had saved the life of a child by plunging into an icy river and the lives of four poodles by diving beneath the flashing hooves of a fierce horse—how could a heroine be afraid of meeting Prinny? The group made much mirth out of the idea.
Lord Francis merely took her hand and patted it in avuncular fashion and asked her between the mirth and her departure with Mr. Dalman for the opening set of country dances if she had remembered to reserve the first waltz for him.
Her white gown, which was almost obligatory evening wear during her first Season in town, did not suit her, Lord Francis thought, watching her broodingly while he tapped his finger on the handle of his quizzing glass. She was far too vivid a creature for white. And the evening coiffure, all curls and ringlets piled high, did not suit either. It made her look too girlish, an impression that was incompatible with her height and her figure. He had preferred the looser style she had worn in her boudoir. He rather believed he would like it best unconfined down her back, but that was not a practical idea. Neither was it a wise idea in a room that was already quite stifling hot.
If she were an actress, he thought, or an opera singer—she could easily be an opera singer with that bosom—she would crowd a green room to overflowing every night, even without the attendant heroism. And he rather thought he might be one of the men crowding it.
It was a thought that was not worthy of him at all. And certainly not fair to her. There had been not the slightest hint of loose behavior in her since he had known her. He was ashamed of himself. Damnation, but he liked her. He had no wish to be also lusting after her. He had been without a woman for too long, he thought ruefully. It had seemed somehow disloyal to his broken heart to go seeking out a willing bedfellow for mere sexual satisfaction.
“Not dancing, old chap?” his grace asked. “Are you for the card room?”
“No, I think not,” Lord Francis said. “I am engaged for the first waltz.” She was twirling down the set with Dalman with such enthusiasm that if he should happen to release her hand by some chance, she would go spinning off into space—doubtless with a shriek. His lips twitched. He could almost wish it would happen. Farce had not touched upon her tonight yet.
The duke cleared his throat. “It would not do at all, you know,” he said. “Fairhurst would have your head.”
His brother? Lord Francis turned sharply and looked, startled, at his recently acquired friend. “What would not do?” he asked.
“She is a merchant’s daughter,” his grace said, picking at an invisible speck of lint on his sleeve. “And you are a duke’s son and brother. Not that it is any of my concern, Kneller, but I have heard a few murmurings. And I was the one who asked you to take notice of the girl and help bring her into fashion.”
Lord Francis was not normally given to extremes of emotion. Perhaps that was why he was having such difficulty coping with an unexpectedly broken heart. But he felt a sudden blazing of anger.
“A few murmurings,” he said, his voice as icy as his heart was fiery. “My brother would have my head. It seems to me, Bridgwater, that you do your fair share of being your brother’s keeper. Except that you are not my brother or even any kin of mine.”
The duke took a snuffbox from a pocket, snapped the lid open, seemed to decide that the taking of snuff in a ballroom was not quite the thing, closed the lid, and put the box away again.
Bridgwater had advised him not to wear his heart on his sleeve over Samantha, Lord Francis remembered, still steaming. And now he was advising him against lusting after a merchant’s daughter. God damn it all to hell! Bridgwater had been a mere passing acquaintance until a few weeks ago, before his friend, that damned Carew, decided to play Romeo to Samantha’s Juliet.
For two pins he would pop Bridgwater a good one right here. Serve him right too.
“You are quite right, my good fellow,” his grace said and left without another word or glance.
And damn him to hell and back again, Lord Francis thought. He did not even have the decency to know when a quarrel was being picked with him. The cowardly scoundrel had walked away.
She was weaving in and out of a line of gentlemen in her set, her eyes sparkling, her lips smiling, her feet moving with surprisingly light grace. Those murmurers were damned wrong. So was Bridgwater if he believed them. Never more wrong in their lives. Devil take it, he knew what he must look for in a bride when the time came. The time had not come and perhaps never would. The only woman he had ever loved was married to someone else and was in a delicate way.
His heart weighed down the soles of his dancing shoes again.
“OH,” CORA SAID, “how hot it is in here. I shall expire from lack of air.” But despite her discomfort she smiled. She could not remember being happier in her life, which was surely an absurd thought when all she was doing was dancing with Lord Francis Kneller. Waltzing with him. As she had suspected, he waltzed superbly.
“Do you wish to stop and rest?” he asked her. He had watched her all through the dance but he had spoken little and had not smiled a great deal.
“No,” she said. “Oh, please no. This is so very wonderful. I have never been happier in my life.”
“Have you not?”
He smiled then, gently with his eyes, and she felt a rush of intense feeling for him. A protective, warm, maternal affection. She almost wished that someone would comment—with a sneer—on his pink evening coat, which she really did think rather splendid. She would give that person such a length of her tongue that he would slink away as if whipped and bruised.
“I am so happy that my first waltz is with you,” she said, smiling warmly at him. “It is such an intimate dance, is it not? I would be mortally embarrassed with anyone else and would be treading all over his feet. I can relax with you. I know you are skilled enough to keep your feet from beneath mine.”
“You do yourself an injustice,” he said. “You are an excellent dancer, Miss Downes.”
She felt herself glow at the compliment. Lord Francis was so very graceful himself. “Thank you,” she said.
He was looking at her again in that quiet, unsmiling way. She smiled at him.
“What is wrong?” she asked.
“Nothing,” he said. “I rather believe something might be very right, in fact. Are congratulations in order, by any chance?”
She looked at him blankly for a moment and then threw back her head and laughed aloud before she remembered where she was. “You are referring to Mr. Johnson,” she said. “Oh, I ought not to laugh, Lord Francis. He came calling this afternoon and stammered his way through a very earnest speech. I do assure you I did not laugh at him. Indeed, I was much obliged to him. I let him down quite gently. I did not hurt him, you know. He is not in love with me, only with what I have become for this fleeting moment, poor man.”
“And you are not in love with him?” he said.
“Oh, goodness, no,” she said. “Or with any of them, I am sad to say. Sad for her grace’s sake, that is. She was kind enough to bring me here to find a husband for me and it must seem to her that she has achieved undreamed-of success. Several more of them are going to offer within the next week or so, you see. But I cannot take any of them seriously. I realized that yesterday morning when they were all so silly in the park and all made fun of that poor child and his hat—though he was not a poor child as it turned out, was he? Was he not
a horrid little brat? Anyway, I realized as soon as I ran into you—I almost did so literally, did I not?—that I could not care for any of them. I would as soon stroll in the park with just you than with twenty of them put together. So that is telling me something, is it not?” She grinned at him, remembered their surroundings, and reduced the grin to a smile.
“Yes, indeed,” he said.
She waited for him to make his own comments on the absurdity of the events in the park the day before, but he said nothing. The heat was affecting him, she guessed. And really it was quite overpowering. She looked away from him in order to drink in the splendor of her surroundings. In a few weeks she was going to be back home again, where she belonged and where she wanted to be. But she knew too that she would always remember these weeks and the wonder of the fact that for a short time she had been accepted by the ton and even fêted by the ton. And she would always remember Lord Francis Kneller and his pink and lemon and turquoise coats—and his kindness.
She was about to turn her head to smile at him again when she suddenly froze. A group of gentlemen had appeared in the ballroom doorway. Lord and Lady Fuller were hurrying across the room toward them. The music stopped abruptly. There was a buzz of well-bred excitement.
And then the gentlemen parted so that another could step into the doorway and pause to observe the scene. An enormously large gentleman. A gentleman larger than any other Cora had ever seen in her life, she would swear.
“Oh, dear. Oh, dear,” she muttered and wondered what had happened to all the air in the room—and where she had misplaced her knees.
“There is nothing to fear,” Lord Francis had drawn her arm firmly through his and held it now against his side. “He is only a man, Miss Downes.”
Which was about the stupidest thing anyone had ever said to her in her life. She could hear the sound of teeth clattering and drowning out all other sounds. Only a man! He was the Prince of Wales.
And then she wished she had not verbalized his name in her mind.
All the dancers had retreated to the edge of the ballroom and waited in anticipation of His Highness’s finishing with greeting his hosts and proceeding deeper into the room.
Cora tugged on Lord Francis’s arm. “I have to leave,” she told him. “I have to go.” But she knew even as she said it that in order to leave she was going to have to skirt about that huge mound of royalty standing in the doorway. “Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Let us hide. Find somewhere to hide.”
She thought she saw amusement in his eyes for a moment and felt horribly betrayed—her only friend was turning against her. But it was gentle concern, she saw when she looked closer.
“He is going to promenade about the room,” he said, “and stop to exchange civilities with the chosen few. There are several hundred here who are only too eager for that honor, Miss Downes. We will skulk in the background here and merely bow and curtsy when everyone else does. I can assure you that the royal eyes will not even alight on you. But you will be able to go home afterward to boast that you have been within arm’s length of the Prince Regent himself.”
His voice was calm, matter of fact, almost bored—but a little too kindly to be entirely so. He spoke that way only to reassure her, she knew. She was reassured though her heart thumped and she felt as if she had just run five miles uphill against a stiff wind. Why did someone not pump air into the room?
A great dense mass of persons began to move slowly clockwise about the ballroom. The Prince of Wales was hidden somewhere among them, Cora tried not to tell herself. A wave of bowing gentlemen and deeply curtsying ladies preceded their progress, though every few moments all came to a halt as the hidden prince presumably favored some poor soul with his notice.
Cora cowered back against the wall as they drew closer and tried to worm her way slightly behind Lord Francis while clinging to his arm at the same time. She distorted her face and nibbled furiously at one cheek. If only she could suddenly discover a door at her back. If only she were four feet tall instead of being far closer to six.
And how foolish she was being. She was Cora Downes. If everyone in this room were to line up in order of rank, she would be at the very back of the line. Dead last. She was a nobody. A nothing. The realization was enormously reassuring. She relaxed marginally, though the thought did touch the edge of her consciousness that it would not take a great deal to cause her to vomit. The thought was pushed aside with haste.
“Oh, dear. Oh, dear,” she muttered as the cavalcade drew closer. The Duke of Bridgwater was part of it. In fact, he appeared to have the royal ear. The royal ear and the enormous person to which it was attached hove into sight. A slight tightening on her arm reminded her to sink into a curtsy. Horror of horrors, she had almost been left standing upright five feet above all the persons who surrounded her. As it was, she crouched low and looked down hopefully for trapdoors.
One more moment and they would pass.
“Ah,” the haughty and languid voice of the Duke of Bridgwater said quite distinctly. “Here she is, sir.”
“Where, Bridgwater?” the man mountain asked, and Cora emerged from her curtsy to find a million eyes riveted to her person—at least that many.
“Curtsy again,” Lord Francis muttered to her as a path opened magically in front of them and he led her forward.
She curtsied as he led and almost had her arm yanked from its socket. Fortunately Lord Francis seemed far more in control of his faculties than she and allowed her to dip down where she was before taking her forward to stand before the Illustrious Presence.
She would die. There was nothing left in life to do now but die. Preferably now or sooner. Before the agony could be prolonged.
Everyone was still looking at her. Everyone was also smiling at her. From some distance away there was the faint smattering of applause. She felt the hysterical urge to giggle.
“My dear Miss Downes.” Her hand was in the Prince of Wales’s two hands. He was drawing her to her feet. She had curtsied again. She had lost the support of Lord Francis’s arm. She looked about her wildly, but he was there at her side. “I beg leave to offer you my own personal thanks as well as those of the nation for your act of extreme bravery in saving the life of the Duke of Bridgwater’s nephew.”
“Oh, it was really nothing at all, Your Majesty,” someone said. “I-I mean, your gr—. Oh dear, I do not know what I mean.”
There was a burst of laughter from everyone within earshot and the prince himself shook alarmingly with it.
“Your modesty becomes you, my dear,” he said. “His Majesty and I need more subjects like you. Enjoy the ball.”
And the procession moved on. The dipping and bowing proceeded to Cora’s left.
The people about her were nodding and smiling and murmuring their own congratulations—though whether for her supposed heroism or for the honor that had just been accorded her Cora neither knew nor cared. She grabbed for Lord Francis’s arm
“I am going to faint,” she told him. “Or vomit.”
“Come.” He led her back behind the crowds, who were still standing and watching the royal progress and craning their necks to see whom else he would favor with his personal notice. Cora was gasping. She was in deep distress.
And then blessedly there was a door and he was opening it just wide enough to usher her through and follow himself before closing it behind them.
Fresh air. And darkness. And privacy.
Cora drew a deep breath and then really did faint.
8
ORTUNATELY SHE HAD WARNED HIM. AND FORTUNATELY too it was the first of her predictions of what was about to happen to her, rather than the second, which came true. He caught her sagging body in his arms, looked hastily about in the darkness, to which his eyes had not yet accustomed themselves, spotted a wrought-iron seat not far away on the balcony, and carried her toward it.
Carrying Cora Downes about in his arms was becoming a habit, he thought. An uncomfortable habit, for more than one reason.
He set
her down on the seat and took the empty place beside her. He set one hand at the back of her head and eased it downward almost to her knees. He should, he thought belatedly, have spoken with someone before stepping out of doors, and sent a message to the Duchess of Bridgwater. It was not at all the thing to be out here alone like this with a single young lady.
If that damned Prinny had not decided to put in an appearance, of course, all the French doors would have been wide open all evening and lamps lit on the balcony. There would have been guests strolling out here and his being with Miss Downes would have been almost proper.
But then if Prinny had not come, she would not have fainted. The waltz would have been at an end by now and she would have been dancing with her next partner. He would have been on his way elsewhere.
Oh, yes, indeed he would. “Oh, dear,” she said, addressing her knees, “did I faint?”
“Take some deep slow breaths,” he advised her. “The air is cooler out here. You will feel better in a moment.”
“How very foolish of me,” she said after following his directions. “Thank heaven it was only you who saw me have a fit of the vapors. I never have fits of the vapors, you know. But then I have never been in the presence of royalty before.”
He felt uncomfortable again. As he had while they had waltzed. She had misinterpreted his attentions to her. She was falling in love with him—had perhaps already fallen. Almost every time she spoke to him she expressed a preference for him. But only tonight, after Bridgwater’s words, had he noted the fact. He did not believe she was setting her cap at him. She was far too open and candid for that. Yet she was not even trying to hide her feelings. She must assume that he shared them.
Bridgwater had been right. He had been amusing himself bringing the woman into fashion, introducing her to eligible gentlemen, playing matchmaker, and all the while he had been giving the impression that he was taken with her himself. He had given her the same impression.