“Do we have an overnight guest?” she asked, knowing she had to hurry to the receiving line but also knowing that her mother-in-law, who was, hopefully, already in the ballroom greeting guests, would be upset with her if she discovered such a situation and did not bring it to her immediate notice. “Does Lady George know?”
That she did not wait for her first question to be answered before posing the second, more pertinent one betrayed her nervousness. As the wife of the late duke’s younger brother, Lord George Lynes, her mother-in-law was known as Lady George. Although her name was Emma, Claire had certainly never presumed to call her by it, and had never been invited to do so. It was Lady George who was the undisputed mistress of the house, and Claire and Beth were merely her guests. Lady George ruled—or at least tried to rule—everyone within her orbit with a rod of iron. She would expect Claire to run to her immediately with news of an unexpected houseguest.
“Miss Claire, the duke’s home.” Graham sounded excited, an emotion she had never expected to detect in the always stately butler. “His Grace the Duke has come home.”
“The duke?” Claire hoped she sounded no more than politely interested. In truth, she was dismayed. After all, they were holding Beth’s come-out ball in the man’s house. Although Lady George was the official hostess, and had been delighted at the idea of having the ball at Richmond House, Claire suddenly felt presumptuous in the extreme. When the duke was abroad, he was no more than an abstract figure, and the house had felt like it belonged to Lady George and, by extension, David. Now, suddenly, it felt like a stranger’s house. They were using the duke’s house without his permission.
“Does Lady George know?” she added hollowly.
“Yes, Lady Claire. I informed her myself.”
Thank goodness. Claire thought it, but she just managed not to say it aloud. Leaving Graham, she slipped through the adjoining music room to a small corridor that led to a side door opening into the ballroom, thus avoiding the crowds of people already massed in the hall. A few people milled about the refreshment table, but the huge room with its red brocade walls and white moldings and floor-to-ceiling mirrors set between ornate pilasters was still very thin of company. The tall doors that led out onto the terrace were still closed, but they would be opened later, when the dancing started.
“Lady Barbara Mertz and the Honorable Mr. John Mertz.”
The booming announcement was made at the main doorway to the ballroom, where the receiving line, which consisted at the moment of Lady George, David, Beth, and Aunt Augusta, stood. Claire moved a little faster. The musicians were playing, although a dance had not yet been struck up, and the three giant chandeliers overhead sparkled with hundreds of candles. Their brilliance was reflected in the tall mirrors. The heady aroma of the dozens of white flowers massed in the corners filled the room. Claire inhaled deeply, enjoying the scent, as she slipped into the receiving line between her husband and sister.
“You’re late,” David said in an accusatory tone out of the corner of his mouth. He seemed unusually tense, and she wondered at it. Since joining her in London the previous week—he had spent only a few days at Morningtide after her safe return before leaving to once again be about his own pursuits—he had been almost amiable, more amiable than he had been since the early days of their marriage. Of no more than average height and slender, he was looking very handsome with his blond hair combed back from his face and his pale complexion set off by the black of his evening clothes. His eyes were as blue as a summer sky, his features were finely molded and regular, and there was about him an elegant air that was one of the first things Claire had noticed. Giving him a single comprehensive look, Claire thought that she could still quite understand how she had ended up marrying him. The wrappings were extremely attractive. Who would know that the parcel actually had so little inside?
“Your cousin the duke has returned home,” she offered by way of explanation.
“So my mother informs me.” His voice was cold. “I fail to see how that accounts for your lateness, however.”
Claire gave him a long look. His bullying tone was familiar: This was the David he had become in the months before her abduction. She had thought his recent amiability was too good to be true. He had been trying to turn her up sweet—but why? Before she could come up with an answer, or find a reply for him, more guests were announced.
“The Earl and Countess of Wickham, Lord and Lady Arthur Peale, the Honorable Charles Fawley and Mrs. Fawley.”
Called to order by her sister’s sharp elbow to the ribs, Claire turned to smile at her cousins. Lady George, who, with her birdlike build and once blond hair now turned stark white, looked very like David, was resplendent in palest blue crepe. She was the first to greet the guests, shaking hands with Cousin Thomas, who towered over her petite frame. Tall, thin, and balding, Cousin Thomas had taken on a new air of self-importance as he had become accustomed to wearing the title, Earl of Wickham, that had previously belonged to Claire’s father and brother.
“I hear Gabby’s been delivered of a girl,” Cousin Thomas said in a jovial tone as he took her proffered hand.
“Yes, a beautiful little daughter,” Claire agreed with a determinedly welcoming smile. The two families had never been friendly, although they were civil in public, and that didn’t seem likely to change anytime soon.
“No doubt she’ll produce a son next time,” Cousin Maud, his wife, said as if commiserating with Gabby’s misfortune while she pressed Claire’s hand. “Dear Thisby has two boys now, you know.”
She looked fondly in the direction of her daughter, Mrs. Fawley, who was behind her.
Cousin Maud was a wispy blond in the style of Lady George, and the two women, who were much of an age, disliked each other cordially. Of course, nearly everyone disliked Cousin Maud, so that wasn’t much of a mark in Lady George’s favor, in Claire’s opinion. Thisby was fair like her mother, but had never been possessed of much beauty. Age—she was two years Claire’s senior—had not improved either her looks or her disposition. She exchanged a few banal remarks with Claire, then eyed her husband angrily as that gentleman held Claire’s hand for rather longer than was proper, the admiration in his eyes plain for everyone to see. Thankful to be released at last, Claire turned her attention to Desdemona, who was with her new husband as well, and was obviously proud as a peacock on his arm.
“Lord and Lady Jersey.”
“Silence” Jersey, so called because she talked so much, was both a leader of the ton and a great friend of Aunt Augusta’s, and she stood talking to their aunt for rather longer than was proper, holding up the line. Lady Jersey was dressed in deep green satin with ropes of pearls around her neck. Her face was square and rather plain, and her figure, if it had belonged to a less important personage, might have been described as short and dumpy. But there was a twinkle in her eye and a kindness to her smile that made up for these deficiencies. Beside her, Aunt Augusta, who was nearly six feet tall and mannish in build, looked most imposing. As blunt featured as she ordinarily was blunt spoken, she was dressed tonight in a gown of pearl gray satin that almost exactly matched the silver of the braids wound in queenly fashion atop her head. The sparkle of enormous diamonds affixed to her ears and hung around her neck completed a magnificent ensemble. Having feared her at their first meeting, Claire had grown fond of her over the ensuing years. With no children of her own, she’d been very kind to the three nieces she had taken under her wing.
“So you’re Lady Elizabeth, are you?” Lady Jersey said to Beth, having wound up her conversation with Aunt Augusta at last. “Well, you’re very pretty too, but why is it none of you gels look the least bit alike?” After scrutinizing her from head to toe, she stared pointedly at Beth’s bright hair for a moment before glancing from Beth to Claire with a perplexed expression. Then her face cleared, and she answered herself before Beth could reply, which was probably a good thing, because Beth the fiery was starting to frown at her. “Oh yes, different mothers, weren’t ther
e? Well, that explains it all right. My lamentable memory. You must forgive me. And your sister Lady Gabriella is not here tonight?” A quick glance around, as if Gabby might pop out from behind one of the crimson velvet curtains tied back on each side of the ballroom’s arched entrance, accompanied this, and then she again chattered on without waiting for an answer. “Oh, that’s right, I remember you told me, Augusta, that she would stay at home this year. Well, now, Augusta, this is the last of them, isn’t it? She’ll do, she’ll do. I shall send vouchers for Almack’s just as I did for the other two. If I forget, remind me.”
“I certainly will, Sally,” Aunt Augusta said. Then, to Beth in a lowered tone after Lady Jersey was gone, “Well. We accomplished that handily enough. Promised vouchers already! Even though you frowned at her, which was really too bad of you. Sally Jersey may chatter, but she is the dearest thing.”
“She was staring at my hair,” Beth muttered. Claire heard that with alarm. Before she turned to greet the next person in line, she nudged Beth.
“Your hair is beautiful. It makes you stand out. It makes you unique,” she whispered. “Of course people are going to stare at it.”
She and Beth had been over that before. Beth hated having red hair with a passion, and had been known to thoroughly lose her temper just from having its bright hue pointed out to her, something that unfortunately tended to happen a lot.
“You’ve said that so much I’m sick of hearing it,” Beth whispered back with a deepening scowl. “Unique or not, it’s still rude to stare.”
Only the fact that Claire feared Beth had not enough countenance to keep from howling kept her from giving her little sister a sharp kick on the ankle. Frowning at Lady Jersey was not something a debutante did. Not if said debutante wanted to be a success. Frowning at other people was probably not a good idea, either.
And Claire did so want for Beth to be a success. The greater her choice of men, the more likely she was to choose well. An unhappy marriage was more of a burden than any unwed girl could even begin to imagine.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Aunt Augusta muttered. “Don’t be so quick to take a pet, child, and smile.”
A quick glance told Claire that Beth, having apparently recollected her surroundings, was recovering from her snit in the usual quick-to-anger, quick-to-forgive way of hers. Following Aunt Augusta’s advice, she smiled quite brilliantly, and now seemed determined to enjoy her debut, come what may.
By the time she was able to leave the receiving line, Claire’s fingers ached. She had shaken hands with roughly five hundred guests, nearly all of whom were now squeezed into the ballroom that no longer seemed enormous at all. Others, including David and his cronies, had already disappeared into one of the small rooms set aside for cards. Still others were in the ladies’ retiring room, or outside on the terrace enjoying the unseasonably warm night. Indeed, the ballroom was already growing overwarm with too many bodies too closely packed into it, and many ladies were making vigorous use of their fans. Claire had already heard several people describe the evening as a sad crush, which was a sure sign of success.
“I declare, that child has shaped up remarkably well. At Christmas she was plump as a partridge.” Aunt Augusta, who was walking beside her as Claire gave her aunt an arm as far as the chaperons’ chairs, had her gaze on Beth, who was at that moment skipping enthusiastically through a country dance. “Who is that boy she is dancing with? Is it one of the Rutherfords, or . . . ?”
“Claire, dear, I’d like to present my late husband’s nephew, the Duke of Richmond.” Lady George came up behind her, distracting her attention as she slid cool fingers around the crook of Claire’s elbow just above her evening glove. “He was out of the country at the time of your wedding, but at least has had the grace to present himself now, quite two years late, the wretch.”
Claire had never heard quite that same archly teasing tone from her mother-in-law before. Clearly this nephew must be someone she wished to please. Of course, he owned the houses Lady George lived in as if they were her own and, for all Claire knew, provided something in the way of an allowance for his aunt as well. David’s father had not left his wife and son any too plump in the pocket, as she was well aware, and the duke was head of the family, after all. Certainly it would be in Lady George’s best interests to stay on his good side.
Amused by this new and unexpected facet to her mother-in-law’s personality, she turned to meet the prodigal with a slight smile on her lips—and froze in the act of holding out her hand.
She was face-to-face with Hugh.
24
“. . . My daughter-in-law, Lady Claire Lynes.”
Claire was barely aware of Lady George completing the introduction. She was no longer breathing. Her heart had given a great leap in her breast at the moment her gaze met Hugh’s and was now pounding out of control. Despite the heat of the room, she felt suddenly icy cold. Her hand, which she had been in the act of extending before she realized exactly whom it was she was extending it to, was suspended in midair. Her eyes stayed fixed on his face.
For one dreadful moment, she feared she might faint. It required every ounce of willpower she possessed to stay on her feet.
Was she hallucinating? That was her first confused thought. The second was: Could this possibly be an eerily exact look-alike? His black hair was cut short, in the fashionable Brutus style, but nothing else had changed. He was as swarthy as a Gypsy, his lean cheeks clean-shaven, his long mouth smiling rather wryly at her. She knew that smile. She knew those eyes. They were gray as bullet lead, narrowed, watching her carefully, their cool caution belying the smile.
She was not mistaken. There was no possibility of mistake. This was Hugh. Her Hugh.
Dressed in impeccable black evening clothes that suited his tall, broad-shouldered form to perfection, he was bowing over her gloved hand, raising it to his mouth.
Watching him, Claire felt as if she were caught up in a bad dream. The man she had longed for and thought never to see again, the man whose fate had been the stuff of her nightmares, the man she had been breaking her heart over every day for the past three months, was now standing in front of her, kissing her hand as if she were a chance-met stranger and their encounter no more than everyday.
“I’m honored to make the acquaintance of so lovely a cousin.”
It was his voice. Hugh’s voice. There was no mistake. She would recognize it without fail, even in the darkest pit anywhere on earth. Claire exhaled slowly, willing her knees not to give way, willing her hands not to shake. She fought to keep her face impassive, but she was not sure how well she succeeded. Her gaze fixed helplessly on his face as he pressed his mouth lightly to the back of her knuckles, then released her hand and straightened to his full height, looking down at her with distant courtesy. Clearly there was something in her expression that should not have been there, because he frowned at her slightly, and there was suddenly a flicker of what could only be warning in his eyes as they met hers.
Hugh. She was looking up at Hugh. She took another deep, restorative breath, letting her lids drop to veil her eyes even as she reminded herself fiercely that whatever the rights and wrongs of this situation in which they found themselves, there was no possibility of delving into it now: They had an audience. In her initial shock, she had forgotten all about Lady George. Forgotten all about Aunt Augusta. Forgotten all about every other person in the ballroom, in the house, in the world—except the two of them.
Impossible as it seemed, Hugh had somehow walked back into her life. In the guise of the Duke of Richmond, yet. Claire frowned as she remembered that detail of his reappearance. How on earth could that be?
“You’re very kind.” Somehow Claire managed to speak more or less normally, to summon a hard-won smile, to utter the commonplace courtesy that was expected of her, even while a jumble of questions and thoughts and emotions tried to sort themselves out in her head.
“Lud, Duke, this is a surprise. Last report I can remember hearing of you,
you were with the army in Spain. Well. It’s good to have you back among us.” Aunt Augusta was looking him over with approval. As well she might, Claire thought hollowly. In his new incarnation, Hugh was as devastating as he had been in his old one: He was still tall, dark, and impossibly attractive. Only now he was rigged out as befitted a duke. His evening clothes had clearly been made by a master. His coat, of severe black superfine, fit his broad-shouldered form to perfection. His breeches were black too, and hugged the powerful muscles of his long legs almost lovingly. His linen was snowy, his cravat expertly tied. A diamond glittered in its folds. There was, she saw, another diamond in the signet ring on his hand. The duke’s signet ring? Of course. Near-hysterical laughter bubbled into her throat as she finally, truly realized what had happened: Her Hugh, her secret lover, her partner in an impossible adventure that she could never forget, had walked back into her life just as coolly as if they had last talked only the day before—as the Duke of Richmond.
Her mind boggled at the thought.
Those cool gray eyes were watching her carefully from beneath heavy lids, Claire saw, gauging her reaction to his new incarnation even as he responded to Aunt Augusta.
“It’s good to be back—Lady Salcombe, isn’t it?” Hugh’s glance slid to Aunt Augusta, and Claire breathed again.
“That’s right. Lady Claire—your new cousin by marriage here—is my niece.”
“Ah, then I can certainly see where she gets her charm—and her looks.” Hugh’s flattery was charming, his smile more so. Aunt Augusta laughed, and said something about there being no need to turn her up sweet as the gel was already taken. Hugh replied—she completely missed whatever it was he said—and turned that smile on her. It was one of those curling smiles that she so well remembered, and just looking at it was enough to make the short hairs on the back of Claire’s neck stand on end. Could no one but she sense the charge that heated the air between them, feel the undercurrents that ran beneath every word, every glance, they exchanged? Apparently not. A swift look around convinced her that neither her aunt nor her mother-in-law had the least idea that anything was amiss. They were both beaming at Hugh like fond parents at a prodigal son. Claire, who felt as if her face had frozen into a smile, barely managed to keep herself from lapsing into a state of pure shock. By the skin of her teeth, she kept her lips pulled back from her teeth in what she feared must surely be more grimace than smile. But still no one seemed to notice anything out of the way about her response to making the acquaintance of the head of the Lynes family. Aunt Augusta, her rather small blue eyes growing sharper by the second as she surveyed Hugh from head to toe, seemed to be busy assessing his possibilities as a husband for her niece—that would be Beth, of course—and liking what she saw. Lady George, calling a greeting to a passing acquaintance, was focused elsewhere for the moment.
Irresistible Page 24