“That might have been a bit of an exaggeration,” Laurel whispered to the viscountess as Major Melrose escorted them into the brilliantly lit ballroom.
“You shall thank me later,” the viscountess whispered back. “To have indicated otherwise would have consigned you to a host of ungainly partners.”
Laurel sighed. If she hadn’t already learned her lesson about the foolishness of making wishes, she would certainly have wished this night long over.
“Aidan Phillips, you scoundrel. I might have known I’d find you here. Why do you skulk here alone like a Spitalfields footpad? And what the devil have you done with my brother?”
Aidan had escaped into the relative quiet of the tearoom to avoid a certain young lady’s mother who believed he would make a perfect match for her charmingly bucktoothed but regrettably pin-brained seventeen-year-old daughter. But here, at last, was a welcome feminine voice.
“Bea, my darling.” Turning, he closed the space between them and raised her satin-clad hand to his lips. “You grow more beautiful each time I see you.”
“And you, dear sir, deliver flattery with more false sincerity than any other man alive.”
“I practice before a mirror, you know.”
He twirled her in a graceful pirouette. Auburn-haired and generously curvaceous, Beatrice Fitzclarence remained at thirty-two a striking woman, having inherited none of her father’s physical shortcomings and virtually all the charms that had made her mother, Dorothea Jordan, a favorite on the London stage. Tonight her peacock silk gown emphasized her finest assets with devil’s-bargain perfection. Her hair glittered and her skin glowed. Her lips tilted at their haughtiest.
By God, she never failed to make him smile. “Have you only just arrived?” he asked her.
“Yes. Arthur came earlier, but I drove over with the Countess of Fairmont and a new acquaintance.” Using her folded fan, she jabbed at the center of his chest. “You are avoiding my question.”
“Fitz is in the cardroom.”
The corners of her lightly rouged mouth turned down. “Oh, you can’t have left him alone.”
“Never fear, he’s won enough tonight to offset any funds he might relinquish in my absence.”
“Are you quite sure? He very nearly reduced himself to beggary last month.”
“Beatrice, upon my honor, Fitz shall leave tonight’s festivities with heavier pockets than when he arrived.”
She gave a satisfied humph and slipped her hand into the crook of his arm. “Dance with me. Or are you promised for this set?”
“No,” he said as they made their way through the crowded octagon room and into the ballroom, “I’ve been maddeningly evasive all evening.”
“And you call yourself a gentleman.”
“I call myself no such thing. Shall we?”
She placed her hand in his and together they stepped to the center of the dance floor. With an arch look she said, “What an irredeemable bachelor you are. And yet some young hopeful must eventually ensnare you. You must produce an heir.”
He set his palm at her waist and guided her in the whirling steps of the waltz. “I had rather contract the pox than submit to the simpering opportunism of the marriage mart. Besides, I’m afraid you broke my heart when you married Devonlea.”
She let go a bubble of laughter. “Aidan, dear boy, there is nothing the least bit breakable about you. Not your ego, your pride, certainly not your heart. That is what I like most about you. You are never likely to go to pieces in anyone’s hands. Unlike my brother. Tell me, how has he responded to all the fuss over Victoria’s impending coronation?”
“Tolerably well. This new pavilion has proved an obliging distraction.”
“Yes, how very tedious. The Summit Pavilion is all Arthur speaks of these days.”
“Is he investing heavily?”
Looking bored, she shrugged a half-bare shoulder as he moved with her in time to the music. “He believes Bath will suddenly become all the rage again. I have my doubts, but as long as he doesn’t bankrupt us, I am content.”
“And this so-called elixir? Does he credit Claude Rousseau’s promise of eternal youth?”
“A foolish notion, perhaps, but I confess I don’t see the harm in it.” She gave a momentary lift of her brows. “Convincing people they will feel rejuvenated often produces the desired effect. And who knows? Perhaps Rousseau is on to something.”
“Perhaps.” But he doubted it, and Beatrice’s attitude surprised him. He would have predicted much stronger objections on her part, along with a hearty contempt for anyone gullible enough to believe in magical potions.
“Have you sampled it?” he asked, as though the matter were of little consequence to him.
“Not yet. Having only recently arrived in Bath myself, I am not on the list.”
“The list again.” Aidan craned his neck to see over heads. “Is Rousseau here tonight?”
“Goodness, no, darling. He never comes to events such as these. You’ll find him at the theater, concerts, the occasional private soiree. He’s far too scholarly for dancing,” she added with a roll of her eyes. Lifting her hand from his shoulder, she bobbed her closed fan in greeting to someone off to their right. A smile blossoming, she said, “There is that new friend I mentioned. The one with whom I shared my coach on the way here.”
“Oh?” He tried to sound interested, but he hadn’t come to learn about Beatrice’s latest social acquisition.
“There, dancing with Raymond Ashley.” She used her fan to point. “The delicious- looking young lady in the amber gown.”
Aidan rotated with her again and spotted their mutual acquaintance, a thick- limbed, bull-faced man several years his junior. Ashley turned with his partner, and the woman in the amber gown came into view.
The air rushed out of him. Delicious? By heaven, yes, luscious enough to eat. She was golden- haired without quite being blond; her porcelain skin glowed with a country-fresh ripeness, her green eyes with a springtime crispness.
He found himself staring, first out of pure admiration, and then with a vague sense of . . . familiarity.
But surely he would remember encountering a face as beautiful as that. His gaze was drawn to her mouth, to lips as lush as ripe raspberries. Awareness, he’d even call it recognition, danced across his own lips, as if his mouth had once sampled the touch and taste of hers—
“Caught your eye, has she?” Beatrice’s rippling laughter mocked him. “I thought she might, but I fear you would only be wasting your time. She is very recently out of mourning, which makes her highly available on that marriage mart you seem so intent on avoiding. More to the point, I’d say she is rather too inexperienced to be your type.”
“Who is she?”
Beatrice laughed again. “Mrs. Edgar Sanderson.”
“That means nothing to me. Where did you say you found her?”
“I didn’t, but it was at the Pump Room yesterday. You really should stop staring. You’ll crimp your neck.”
But he could not draw his gaze away from her. While her height exceeded that of most of the women in the room, she moved with an effortlessness that somehow reduced poor Ashley to an ungainly jumble of heavy limbs and oafish feet utterly out of step with the music.
Recognition continued to prickle across his shoulders, down his back. Something about the silhouette of her figure and the curve of her slender neck as she glanced up at her partner brought a blaze of certainty that he had once held her in similar fashion, her lovely features tilted just so beneath his own.
A memory, or merely wishful thinking?
“What is her given name?”
“Hmm.” Beatrice pursed her lips. “No, I believe I shall leave that for you to discover, if you can.”
“Challenge accepted. I’ll have her name by the next set.”
“I am afraid not. Her dance card is full. Major Melrose saw to that.”
“Damn the man, but that has never stopped me before.”
“I wish you luck.
” The waltz ending, Beatrice kissed his cheek and went in search of her brother.
Aidan continued observing the mysterious Mrs. Sanderson as she progressed through the next several names on her dance card. He knew each of her partners, had seen each successfully maneuver on many a dance floor. What about this particular woman rendered these men half-lame in comparison?
And yet they kept coming, practically lining up for their chance to trip over their own feet. At the commencement of another quadrille, Mrs. Sanderson joined hands with the balding, pock-faced Marquess of Wentworth, who proved to have no better luck than his predecessors. Their feet all but tangling on several occasions, poor Wentworth looked downright harried as he attempted to match Mrs. Sanderson’s pace.
The sight made Aidan grin; he had never much liked Wentworth. Shaking his head, he looked away, only to glance back to discover a vivid green gaze pinned on him.
The music continued, but for several beats Mrs. Sanderson did not. Wentworth stumbled. Then she was moving again, dancing her way down the line beside Wentworth.
Aidan’s senses buzzed. A flurry of sounds and sights invaded his thoughts: jammed sidewalks, bright bunting adorning the shop fronts, the queen’s carriage making its way across the city amid the cheering of a joyful crowd.
In the midst of that crowd, a woman struggled against a haberdashery window, in danger of being trampled. He remembered that she had knowingly put herself in peril, risking her life to save a neighbor’s child.
Familiar? Yes . . . yes, he remembered her. More important, this delicious young widow of Beatrice’s appeared to remember him.
Rather well, he’d say.
Chapter 5
“Mrs. Sanderson, are you quite all right? Have you grown faint? Perhaps you require a breath of air.”
For a full ten seconds Laurel failed to respond to her dance partner, whose name she could not remember. Nor did she realize, during those heart-thumping moments, that the Mrs. Sanderson he addressed was in fact her.
He was here. The man who had saved her on Knightsbridge Street, whose handsome face had haunted her dreams and waking fantasies these many months since.
How often had she stood at the Emporium window, staring into the night fog and attempting to conjure his muscular physique atop his powerful gray? How many nights had she lain awake, wondering who he was, where he might be, and whether she would ever see him again?
And now he was here, as imposing and breathtaking as she remembered. No, far more so, for only now did she realize how pale a reproduction her imagination had fashioned.
“What the devil makes Barensforth stare with such impertinence?” drawled the man beside her.
Her heart reached into her throat. Barensforth? The Earl of Barensforth?
An individual of the very worst sort, hardly fit to be called a gentleman.
But no, surely Victoria had been mistaken. Certainly a man who risked incurring the wrath of the police to rescue a total stranger must be the very best sort of individual, the most honorable of gentlemen. . . .
Who had left her, with the briefest touch of his lips, simmering, vibrating, besieged by a host of emotions a spinster had no right to feel. Sensual, enthralling . . . and utterly dishonorable.
“Mrs. Sanderson?”
“Yes? Oh. I am quite well, thank you. Or no, I believe I am a trifle warm.”
“You do appear flushed,” the gentleman agreed. “I believe refreshments are being served in the tearoom. Would you care for some?”
“That would be splendid, thank you, Lord . . . er . . .”
“Wentworth.” He placed perplexed emphasis on his name. It was not the first time he had had to remind her. He sucked the pitted skin of his cheeks against his teeth and offered the crook of his arm.
She found the octagon room only marginally less oppressive than the ballroom. Her cheeks felt clammy, her brow both hot and cold. In the blazing glare of scores of candles, faces and fashions blurred into a riot of confusion made all the more intolerable by the combative scents of perfumes and hair tonics. Her airways tightened around a threatening cough she did her best to suppress.
She was not accustomed to such a crush. The closest thing to a ball at Thorn Grove had been the yearly Christmas revelries for the villagers and estate servants. Instead of dancing, she and her sisters had distributed small gifts and served punch and Christmas pudding.
Ah, but it was not the heat or noise or confusion, or even the assault of masculine shoes against her toes, that put her out of sorts. It was he, Lord Barensforth, and what his being here would mean to her mission.
What his being here would mean to her.
“I need some air,” she said to Lord Wentworth. “I . . . do not feel at all well.” Snapping her fan open, she fluttered it in front of her face.
Wentworth’s mouth held a trace of annoyance. He conveyed her to the tearoom and handed her into the first available chair, which happened to be at a table occupied by a half dozen young people of about Willow’s age. “Wait here. I shall attempt to procure you something cool to drink.”
She nodded and continued to fan her face. After initial greetings the others at the table returned to their own lively conversation. Laurel scanned the crowd for Lord Wentworth. Surely he should have returned by now.
Rising and wandering back into the octagon room, she pondered the various doorways and tried to remember Lady Fairmont’s explanations of where each one led. Entering the gentlemen’s cardroom would raise a scandal sure to keep people twittering late into the night. She avoided that door and chose another.
As soon as the frigid air hit her skin, she realized her mistake, yet the stone terrace overlooking the backs of nearby buildings offered a haven she could not resist. The terrace stood empty, and as the din of the ball faded to a muted hum behind her, she welcomed the chilly air against her cheeks. She tugged off her cream satin gloves and leaned her hands on the balustrade.
Behind her, the door opened. “Good evening. It is Mrs. Sanderson, is it not?”
Laurel whirled and pulled up short at the sight of him.
He stood framed in the doorway, the light behind him gilding his silhouette and draping his face in shadow. Nevertheless, she recognized the Earl of Barensforth immediately. No other man stood as he did, tall and solid and steadfast, with broad shoulders and a bearing she could term only . . . noble. However fanciful a description, she could not help thinking it.
Her heart clamored, then stood still, then clamored again as he stepped toward her like the hero of a beloved fairy tale walking off the timeworn pages.
“Yes, it is Mrs. Sanderson.” On his lips, her false name took on a world of meaning, of innuendo. Tingles showered her spine. He raised a hand, the light from inside glinting off an object grasped in his long fingers. “I thought perhaps you could use this.”
When Laurel merely gaped up at him like a fox at the hounds, he reached for her hand and pressed a champagne glass into her palm.
“I thought only tea and punch were served here.”
“Madam, spirits are always available in the cardroom. Drink. It will revive you.”
She obeyed with a small sip. He was right. The bubbles tickled her throat, instantly making her feel more alert and not nearly as overheated.
No, the flush warming her skin now had nothing to do with the sweltering crush inside, and everything to do with how Lord Barensforth’s eyes held her, traveling a leisurely course across her face and her bared décolletage.
“Thank you.” She inhaled, her breath audibly trembling. Why did he make her feel so capricious, so unlike herself? Until this instant, she had even failed to notice a highly pertinent detail. “How do you know my name?”
“We have a mutual friend.” He smiled with a quirk of his lips she remembered from Knightsbridge; now, as then, her pulse leaped at the sight of it. “Beatrice Fitzclarence. She pointed you out to me.”
“Did she?” Good heavens. How ironically inconvenient for Lady Devonlea to bring her t
o the attention of the one person Victoria most wished her to avoid. “If you’ll excuse me, sir, I must return to the tearoom. Lord Wentworth will—”
“I shouldn’t worry about him. His own fault for abandoning you as he did. Any fool could see you were feeling unwell.”
“Lord Wentworth didn’t abandon me,” she clarified. “He went to find me something to drink.”
“It looks as though I have beat him to it. His loss.” His voice dipped. “And my gain.”
Was it? His attentions left her flustered. It had been for George Fitzclarence’s benefit that Victoria had meticulously selected her wardrobe to emphasize her very best features—her blond hair, her slim figure, and, yes, her supposed wealth. Her amber gown was of the finest-quality silk; her slippers, reticule, and fan had been purchased at Bond Street’s most exclusive shops.
For all the bait they had set, had she hooked the wrong fish?
Unless . . . had the Earl of Barensforth followed her outside because he recognized her from that long-ago summer’s day?
Apprehension sent a forced rush of blood to hum in her ears, throb in her temples. She pictured herself as she had appeared to him then: bonnet gone, coif devastated, dress torn, face streaked with dirt. She herself had hardly recognized the image staring back from the glass above her dresser. Surely, then, he did not recognize her now.
Even so, she guarded her face with another sip of champagne, then started to go inside. “Thank you, but I must rejoin—”
He shifted, blocking her path. “Beatrice tells me your dance card is full. A pity. You really ought to dance with me.”
She stopped short, nearly colliding with his chest. “Oh, and why is that?”
“I’d spare your feet a good deal of mistreatment.”
The candid observation made her laugh in spite of herself. “You noticed that? How horribly embarrassing. I’m afraid the fault was entirely my own. I confess to being a hopeless clod on the dance floor.”
“Oh, no, Mrs. Sanderson, I think not. I watched you dance. You were perfection.”
He had watched her? The knowledge made her insides flutter.
Most Eagerly Yours: Her Majesty's Secret Servants Page 6