For the first time, she realized that Lady Austerley did look rather ill.
Her stomach tilted.
“If you require a reference beyond Lady Austerley, Lord Hastings is in attendance tonight, and he has also recently employed my services,” he continued. “But if you have not yet seen a physician, I would suggest you do so before indulging in the extravagance of the dance you appear to be waiting for. You wouldn’t want to cause further damage.”
Clare found herself battling a far different sort of panic than her initial distress over her empty dance card. Was the gentleman telling the truth? Had she just accused Lady Austerley’s physician of trying to toss up her skirts in a public ballroom? She had insulted this man’s profession, his morals, and his clothing.
Worse, no lurker’s smile had ever affected her so viscerally.
Could this night get any worse?
The first notes of a waltz rang out. Her gaze fell like a loosened arrow on Mr. Alban, walking along the edge of the ballroom. Her heart fluttered in its cage.
And then froze as her future duke stopped in front of Lady Sophie.
For a moment she could only stare in disbelief as Sophie extended her hand. Surely she wouldn’t. Sophie knew her confessed hopes for Mr. Alban, hopes that went far beyond the first waltz of the evening. But as Sophie placed her hand in Alban’s and tossed a telling smile in her direction, it became very clear that such things mattered not a whit.
Sophie’s claws had just come out beneath her kidskin gloves.
Tears pricked Clare’s eyes, hot and unwelcome. She should have known Sophie was up to something. But could she blame Mr. Alban for choosing to dance with a graceful beauty over a lame wallflower? She was wearing mismatched shoes and lingering with a lurker.
If the situation had been reversed, she wouldn’t dance with someone like her, either.
WHAT IN THE deuces had just happened?
One moment he had been feeling his way toward a potential new patron.
The next, tears were spilling out of Miss Westmore’s wide, hazel eyes, dampening a dangerous degree of décolletage.
She stood up without even a word of polite apology, though they’d been locked in something that went a degree or two beyond casual conversation. Daniel caught the faint scent of roses on the air, and then she turned on an unbalanced heel and lurched her way through the crowd. Step-thump-step-thump-step-thump-step-thump.
He watched her retreating form with an inexplicable urge to follow. Whatever ailed the girl, he was no longer sure it was within his capacity to help. Did lunacy run in Cardwell’s bloodline? She’d gone pale as new milk, and toward the end of their exchange, her labored breathing had become more of a pant. Of course, some of those symptoms might be laid at the hands of her corset, the boning clearly visible against the delicate green silk of her dress.
Unfortunately, there was no clear cure for stupidity in the name of fashion.
“Miss Westmore,” he called out. “Wait!”
If she could be credited with any sort of reaction, it was speed.
He set off after her, though he questioned his own motives in doing so. The girl had eschewed his offer of assistance and insulted him in the process. There were at least a hundred other peers he might pursue tonight as potential clients. He ought to be going in the opposite direction of the bewildering Miss Westmore.
Instead, he followed her through the large double doors that marked the rear boundary of the ballroom and led toward the deeper recesses of the house. Here, scattered couples lingered in corners, and the shadows stretched longer. There were no overhead chandeliers to light the way, just a series of wall sconces that flickered in the wake of her headlong path.
She turned left down a hallway, one hand braced against the wall for support. Even the last scattering of people had fallen away now, and the hall echoed with naught but her comically uneven steps. It was the absolute fringe of propriety for a girl without a chaperone, and she had just leaped clean across it in her mad dash from the ballroom.
“Miss Westmore,” he warned. “You risk doing your ankle irrevocable harm if you do not have a care—”
She glanced back over her shoulder. He had the merest glimpse of reddened eyes as she reached a hand for the nearest door. And then she wrenched it open and plunged through, her green skirts billowing out behind her.
Daniel stopped stock-still. She’d entered Lady Austerley’s library, a room he knew well from his regular visits. Did Miss Westmore mean for him to follow, then? He’d been quite serious when he suggested a chaperone accompany them. His financial future depended on the continued trust of the ton, and he had no desire to be caught in an indelicate situation with any young lady, much less one who might or might not be a half-wit.
Perhaps she was trying to trap him, flaunting her injury like a lure, drawing him into her web before she struck like a venomous spider.
A faint scream rent the air.
His feet propelled him forward, sanity and spiders be damned.
He pushed through the door and skidded to a stop amidst the smells of aging paper and leather-bound spines. Miss Westmore stood frozen, one hand clapped over her mouth. Daniel followed her startled gaze to the room’s other occupants, even as his mind sought to catalog his various means of defense. In his left pocket lay a wooden auscultating device that could be hefted as a bludgeon, should circumstances come to that. A book would work equally well, given that they were in a library, for Christ’s sake.
But just who he was to bludgeon remained a bit of a mystery.
The scene was the furthest thing from threatening. There were books, of course. Thousands of them, more than a body could hope to read in a dozen lifetimes, lined with military precision along the walls. He’d even read one or two of them, at Lady Austerley’s invitation. A fire burned in the grate, the orange flames recently stirred to life.
A couple was disentangling themselves in front of the fireplace, where they had clearly been locked in an embrace. The man’s jacket had been removed and tossed aside.
The reality of the situation snapped into place.
“My apologies,” Daniel offered curtly. “We did not mean to intrude.”
Far from being embarrassed, the gentleman—if indeed, such a title could be claimed—laughed. “We’ll only be another moment, old chap. Happy to quit the room when we’re done. Unless you’re here for a turn yourself?”
Distaste for the proceedings made Daniel’s stomach churn. Not that he objected to a bit of consensual bed sport if both partners were unencumbered, free of syphilis, and willing.
But he’d never been one for an audience.
“Miss Westmore,” he said, turning away from the scene and keeping his voice low. “We should go.” He took her by the arm. Her skin felt strong and alive beneath his gloved fingers, and he knew a moment’s surprise as she planted her feet and resisted his gentle tug.
Not so frail after all, then.
He leaned in close to her ear, drawing in a rose-scented breath in the process. “It is not appropriate for you to be here. I did not intend for us to come without your mother as chaperone.”
She came to life, blinking rapidly. Whatever tears had possessed her moments ago had fled, chased into the shadows by the bright wash of color on her cheeks.
“Then how fortuitous,” she hissed, jerking away from his hold, “to find her already here.”
Chapter 5
Oh God, oh God, oh God.
Blasphemous, perhaps, but if ever a situation called for her eternal damnation, this was it. At least in hell she could escape the nightmare of this evening.
Clare’s ankle throbbed in violent protest to the treatment it had just suffered during her headlong rush from the ballroom, but the sick, empty feeling in her stomach did a fair job of pushing the pain from her mind. She had naively presumed her mother came to these events to gossip with the other matrons and to sip lemonade from the shadows.
She’d never before stopped to consider wha
t occupied her mother’s attention every evening while she flitted about the dance floor.
This, then, was the physical embodiment of why she lived in terror of introducing Mr. Alban to her family. It wasn’t just Geoffrey, with his crude language and questionable manners, or Lucy, with her fly-away hair and two left feet. It was not even the fear of being seen in last Season’s walking habit, or being caught tossing stale biscuits to water fowl.
It was because her very life was a house of cards, threatening to come down with a single stiff wind.
Clare glared at the gentleman standing before the fire. He was young. Impossibly so, perhaps even her own age. She had no notion of the stranger’s name, and had never danced with him, thank goodness. Then again, why would she have? With his tousled brown hair and hooded eyes, he was possessed of the sort of Byronic good looks her mother had always warned her against.
“I’ve been looking for you, Mother.” She was surprised to discover her voice was steady. She felt as though the very floor were vibrating beneath her.
“Is something amiss, dear?” Her mother seemed distracted. Distant. Perhaps she was embarrassed, though her face was oddly blank, as though she were having trouble staying upright. But Clare discovered she wasn’t in a very forgiving state of mind, particularly when her mother drifted toward her and said, “It isn’t like you to come in search of me.”
She battled a moment’s dark disbelief. Shouldn’t it be her chaperone’s responsibility to come in search of her?
The nameless gentleman snatched up his coat and gave them all a smart salute as he stalked from the room. As the door pulled shut behind him, Clare settled on the first logical excuse she could find, though it was one she had been running from mere moments before. “I have twisted my ankle. This is Dr. Merial, Lady Austerley’s personal physician. He has offered to examine it for me.”
If the doctor was ruffled by the strange situation, he didn’t show it. “We had thought to conduct the examination in the library,” Dr. Merial confirmed.
Clare’s cheeks heated at that. In truth, she hadn’t known her mother was in the library. She hadn’t even known the room was the library, only that it offered a door that promised escape. But she was ill-inclined to defend her actions, given the circumstances. She gathered her wits into a tight ball and took aim at her mother with an acidity that should have shamed her. “Provided, of course, I can locate a reasonable chaperone.”
But her words fell on deaf ears, because her mother’s bleary eyes were focused on Dr. Merial. “I confess, I am surprised to hear she has injured herself. Clare has always been the most athletic of my children. Now her sister, Lucy, perhaps. We’ve given up any hope for grace with that one, and begun to pray for a miracle instead.”
“Mother,” Claire groaned. Had the word “athletic” really just fallen from her mother’s lips as a suitable description for her eldest daughter? And shouldn’t they be speaking well of Lucy, building a sense of refinement in people’s minds that would help counteract the terrible physical impression her sister was bound to make next year?
Now was not the time to spill such family secrets.
Though, on the scale of calamities, her sibling’s clumsiness paled in comparison to the disaster Clare feared may have just been uncovered in this very room.
She glanced away, and caught sight of her reflection in the mirror hanging over the mantel. Though her world had just been upended and forcefully shaken, she looked the same as she had earlier in the evening, albeit a trifle paler: same dress, same hair. The same clenched smile, with the slightly crooked front tooth she always tried to hide.
But she felt like a fraud.
From the start of her first Season, she had wrapped her self-doubts in tissue paper, carefully cultivating the image she wished to project. She’d draped herself in silk from London’s most sought-after modiste and aligned herself with the most beautiful girls from the most influential families. Through a combination of good fortune and careful choices, she’d reached a pinnacle of popularity most only dreamed of, and had dared to set her sights on a future duke.
And yet, now that she had arrived, she felt that delicate paper slipping away to reveal the tarnished surface below. She battled the constant peril to be found in every potential slight, every snide comment.
Every new, dark secret.
“Sit down on the settee, dear,” her mother said, “so Dr. Merial can examine your leg.”
“It is my ankle, not my leg. And I shall sit where I please.” Clare turned and began to lumber instead toward an enormous leather chair.
A touch on her arm halted her small rebellion. “You do not have to do this, Miss Westmore,” Dr. Merial said, his voice low. “If you aren’t planning on dancing, you could just return home and call on your regular doctor tomorrow.”
Clare cut a glance toward her mother, who was settling herself on the eschewed settee in a froth of red skirts. The doctor was giving her a welcome choice, but the secrets of this room could not be so easily bundled into the coach and sent home. A ghost of an idea swirled, poorly formed but gaining teeth. Merial had said himself that a doctor was required to keep a patient’s confidence. He’d even proven himself trustworthy, refusing to divulge Lady Austerley’s secrets.
Perhaps, if she suffered through this examination, he would be forced to overlook what he had seen here.
“You’ve suffered a shock,” he was saying now. His voice pitched low so her mother could not hear, and his hand fell away from her arm. “Did you even mean to come into the library? I was given the impression that you were fleeing something.”
Someone. Clare swallowed the word into silence.
She refused to admit she’d stumbled in here tonight to escape the image of Sophie waltzing in Mr. Alban’s arms. Her flight from the ballroom had been a careless indulgence. She could not afford such folly, not with so much at stake. And her escape from the ballroom had not only been about Sophie and Mr. Alban. There had been that simmering attraction she’d felt toward the doctor to push her along, and a good dose of fear that he was able to see right through her skin to the secrets she kept well buried.
But her initial reaction to the man no longer mattered. His knowledge of her mother’s seeming infidelity was a threat to her family’s reputation that needed to be defused.
MISS WESTMORE TURNED away.
For a moment Daniel was relieved. She had decided to be sensible, to retreat home and call on her own physician tomorrow. Truth be told, he was no longer sure he wanted to proceed with his earlier offer of an examination. No matter his need to acquire the trust and support of additional well-placed patrons, the entire situation was deucedly strange.
For one thing, Lady Cardwell was swaying on her feet. The woman looked ill. No, that wasn’t quite right. She looked inebriated. He could see it now, echoes of similar souls he encountered on a daily basis, both in the casualty ward at St. Bart’s and again along the route home when his shift at the hospital was over.
Worse, the clock ticking on the mantel served as a harsh reminder of the passage of time. Lady Austerley could be in need of his care at this very moment. But just as he was about to lodge an objection, the slip of a girl who had lured him here with nothing more tempting than her tears limped toward a high-backed leather chair and flung herself down, hiking a frothy confection of skirts and underpinnings up to her knees.
Well then. Apparently she meant to go on.
As far as examinations went, this one already qualified as the most bizarre in his memory. But there was a chaperone—of sorts—in place, clothing being shifted around, and a patient awaiting his clinical assessment.
Might as well see it done.
“Did you choose the chair instead of the settee for a particular reason?” he asked, striding toward her and removing his gloves.
She shrugged. “It is closer to the fire. I thought the light might help.”
“It will,” Daniel agreed as he bent down on one knee. But it also meant they were si
tting an unfortunate distance from their agreed-upon chaperone, and that if voices were kept low, their conversation would remain largely private. Worse, the fire bathed this corner of the library in a delicious degree of warmth, and cast flickering shadows across Miss Westmore’s already arresting face.
She bent over her legs, fumbling about her feet. “I don’t suppose you would consider averting your eyes for this part of it?” she asked, her words infused with a hint of the earlier haughtiness she had displayed in the ballroom.
He sat back on his heels and shrugged out of his jacket. “I assure you, I’ve seen the odd ankle before, Miss Westmore. You’ve no need to be shy.”
She peered up at him, and a slim, dark brow arched upward. “I am resigned to showing you my ankle, Dr. Merial. I simply have not yet come to terms with showing you my shoes.”
Her words pulled a chuckle from his chest. “I might remind you that I’ve already seen them in the ballroom. One brown leather, one beaded silk, I believe?” But his amusement bled into concern as she struggled with the buckle of her right shoe and a hiss of pain escaped her lips. “Would you like assistance?”
“No,” she said, her voice tight. “I will manage at least one thing right this evening.”
Finally the shoe was wrenched free, though she’d sacrificed some color to the effort. She straightened and handed it over to him. Daniel turned it over in his hand, the serviceable brown leather still warm from her skin. He had seen the merest glimpse of it in the ballroom, of course, but now realized that his first impression was a bit simplistic.
His ancestors might have worn such a shoe. No, his ancestor’s ancestors might have, two hundred years ago in their Gypsy wagons. Nothing about this unwieldy shoe, with its scratched silver buckle and scuffed toes, matched the smooth, collected image Miss Westmore projected to the world. “Your father’s, I presume?” he asked, louder than he had intended.
Diary of an Accidental Wallflower Page 4