by Mary Balogh
"I am humbled," Freyja said, "and now understand why at the age of five and twenty I am still unwed. I daresay it is my nose. My mother really ought to have thought twice before bearing my father a daughter. The nose looks distinguished enough on my brothers. On me it is grotesque and has blighted all my matrimonial hopes. I shall not weep here, ma'am-you must not fear that I will draw attention to you. I shall wait until I am in my own room at Lady Holt-Barron's. I brought six handkerchiefs with me to Bath. That should be a sufficient number."
They had come up to the Marquess of Hallmere and Lady Constance Moore by the time she finished speaking. The marchioness smiled sweetly, Freyja bared her teeth in her feline grin, Lady Constance wore no detectable expression at all, and the marquess raised his eyebrows.
"Lady Freyja Bedwyn and I have been enjoying a delightfully comfortable coze together," the marchioness said. "We have been agreeing that you two cousins look delightful together. I trust you have been enjoying your stroll?"
"We have, Aunt," the marquess assured her.
"And now," she said, "you may escort us back to our hotel for breakfast, Joshua. Are you to attend the ball at the Upper Assembly Rooms this evening, Lady Freyja? Joshua has insisted upon dancing the first set with Constance."
"While I," Freyja said with a sigh, "am still anxiously hoping to avoid being a wallflower."
There was a gleam of laughter in the marquess's eyes.
"I shall fetch my grandmother, Aunt," he said. "She is over by the water table with Lady Holt-Barron. May I escort you there, Lady Freyja?"
He offered his arm and she took it.
"Well, sweetheart," he said as they moved beyond earshot of his aunt. "Let me guess. She was warning you off her territory."
"Whether I felt inclined to play there or not," Freyja said. "And I am not your sweetheart."
"You displayed a great deal of admirable forbearance," he said. "I expected every moment to see you haul back your arm and plant her a facer."
"I have never yet struck a lady," she said. "It would be unsporting. My tongue is a far better weapon with them."
He threw back his head and laughed-and drew considerable attention their way from people who doubtless hoped for some renewal of the altercation between them that had so enlivened the morning scene here a few days ago.
"My guess," he said, "is that you routed the enemy quite resoundingly and sent it slinking off the battlefield in mortified disarray. That is a considerable accomplishment where my aunt in concerned. Will you dance with me this evening? May I reserve the second set with you?"
"How dreadfully lowering!" she said haughtily. "Only the second set?"
"Remember," he said, "that I insisted upon the first set with my cousin. Actually I begged and groveled, but my pride does not like to admit that too readily."
"And will you also beg and grovel for the second set?" she asked him.
"I'll go down on bended knee right here and now if you wish," he said with a grin.
"You tempt me," she said. "But these people might put the wrong interpretation on the gesture and your aunt might suffer an apoplexy. I will dance the second set with you. At least it will relieve me of the humiliation of being a wallflower if no one offers to lead me into the first set. I have just been informed that a lady of my years and looks must be careful to cultivate at least a sweet demeanor."
"No!" He grinned at her. "I would pay a sizable sum to have heard your answer."
They had come up to his grandmother and Lady Holt-Barron by that time, and the marquess bowed and took his leave, his grandmother on his arm.
"How very obliging of the Marchioness of Hallmere to stroll with you, Lady Freyja," Lady Holt-Barron said. "She is a sweet-natured lady, is she not? How sad that her health appears not to be robust. I daresay she deeply mourns her husband, poor lady."
Though she had been reminded of her advanced age and less than gorgeous looks, Freyja was inclined to be far more cheerful on their return to the house on the Circus than she had been when they had set out for the Pump Room earlier.
The mood did not last. There was a letter from Morgan propped against her coffee cup in the breakfast room, and since Lady Holt-Barron had several letters too and Charlotte had one fat one from her betrothed, Freyja slit the seal and read it at the table.
There was a long, witty description of a village assembly that Morgan had been allowed to attend with Alleyne, since she was now eighteen and was to make her official come-out next spring. And there was a lengthy discussion of a book of poetry by Mr. Wordsworth and Mr. Coleridge that she had been reading. Sandwiched between the two was a brief, terse paragraph.
"A messenger rode over from Alvesley yesterday afternoon with a note from Kit," Morgan had written. "Wulf read it to us at teatime. Viscountess Ravensberg was delivered of a boy yesterday morning. Both are doing well."
Nothing else. No details. No description of the raptures Kit must have expressed in the note. No comment on what Wulfric or Alleyne had said about the news. No description of how Morgan felt-she had always hero-worshipped Kit, who had been kind to her when she was a child with the double disadvantage of being far younger than all the rest of their playmates and of being the only girl apart from Freyja.
"Bad news, Freyja?" Charlotte asked suddenly, all concern.
"What?" Freyja looked up blankly at her. "Oh, no, no. Absolutely not. Everyone is perfectly well at home. How is your Frederick?"
A son.
Kit had a son. With the oh-so-perfect, oh-so-perfectly-dull Lauren Edgeworth he had married. The viscountess was perfect to the last detail, it seemed. She had produced a son within one year of her marriage. And so Alvesley and the earldom of Redfield had its heirs for the next two generations.
Freyja pasted a smile on her face and tried to pay attention to the contents of Charlotte's letter, which she was reading aloud.
Thank heaven, Freyja thought-oh, thank heaven she was not at Lindsey Hall now. Alleyne and Morgan would be studiously avoiding the topic in her hearing and the neighborhood would be buzzing with the glad tidings. She would feel honor-bound to pay a duty call at Alvesley with her family, and both families would be horribly uncomfortable. The fact that she had almost been Viscountess Ravensberg, first as Jerome's bride and then as Kit's, would have fairly shouted itself into every small silence that fell in the conversation. Consequently, they would all have chattered brightly without ceasing on any inane topic that came to mind.
She would have to smile graciously at the viscountess. She would have to congratulate Kit. She would have to gaze admiringly at the baby.
Thank heaven she was in Bath.
She made an excuse not to accompany the other two ladies shopping. She must write some letters, she explained. But instead she did what she very rarely did. She flung herself facedown across her bed and brooded.
She hated what had happened-and what had not happened-to her life. Who would have dreamed all through her growing years that she would end up like this? Unmarried, unattached, unheartwhole.
She ground her teeth and pressed her fists into the mattress.
If the Earl of Willett were to turn up on Lady Holt-Barron's doorstep at this precise moment to propose marriage to her, she thought, she would probably fly into his arms and drown him in tears of gratitude.
And what a ghastly image that brought to mind.
Please God, let him not do anything so stupid.
It would be far better to go to the assembly tonight and flirt outrageously with the Marquess of Hallmere. He was a far more worthy opponent, and the encounter was far less likely to bear any dire and lasting consequences. It would be worth doing if only to see the marchioness his aunt with smoke billowing out of her ears and nostrils.
Freyja rolled over onto her back and stared at the pleated silk canopy of the bed and remembered the scene in the park, when she had punched him in the nose and ripped up at him, and the scene in the Pump Room the next morning, when he had wreaked his devilish revenge. She thought
of his grandmother's dinner party and their verbal sparring there. She thought of the horse race in which she had beaten him fair and square and of the embrace that had followed. And then she remembered their first encounter in her inn room on the way to Bath and first chuckled and then laughed out loud.
How ignominious it was that she had pined for Kit Butler for three long years after their brief summer of passion and had not been able to shake off her attachment to him in the year since he had spurned her and married Lauren Edgeworth instead. And how ghastly that her family was so well aware of her feelings that Morgan had felt obliged to break the news to her in such a brief paragraph that if she had blinked she might have missed it.
She would get up right now, she decided, and go out for a long, brisk walk. And tonight she would dance her feet off.
Brooding was not in any way a satisfactory activity.
Joshua had enjoyed his few minutes alone with Constance in the Pump Room. She had never been a particularly vivacious or pretty girl. It had never occurred to him to find her attractive. But she had always been sensible and good-hearted. He had been fond of her, and even now he felt the pull of their relationship. They were cousins. Their fathers had been brothers.
She had answered all his questions about her sisters. Chastity, always prettier and livelier than she, was now twenty, but she had no romantic attachment. Prudence-Prue-was eighteen. She was doing well, Constance reported-remarkably well. She had blossomed with Miss Palmer as her governess, and she had made some dear friends in the village. She was happy. But when had Prue not been happy? No one could possess a sunnier nature.
Constance had been reluctant to talk about herself until he had decided to be frank with her and introduce the topic of her mother's hopes and plans. She had admitted to him then that she had a beau-a quite ineligible connection-whom her mother would dismiss if it were in her power to do so.
"Dismiss?" Joshua had asked. "One of the servants, Constance?"
"Mr. Saunders." She had blushed.
Jim Saunders was the steward he had interviewed in London and hired and sent to Penhallow-the one servant who was indeed beyond his aunt's power to dismiss.
"He is a gentleman," Joshua had commented.
"And I am a marquess's daughter," she had said bitterly. "But I love him dearly. I will not marry you, Joshua, even though I may never marry him. You must not fear that I will join with Mama in trying to persuade you. And even if she were to induce you to make me an offer, I would say no."
"I will not," he had said. "You are my cousin and therefore dear to me. But you are not the bride I would choose."
"Thank you," she had said, and they had looked at each other and laughed. She had looked really rather pretty as she did so.
But she spoke a somewhat different story when he led her out onto the dance floor at the Upper Assembly Rooms that evening for the opening set of country dances. She was clearly agitated, though she did not speak until they were well out of earshot of her mother.
There was not a vast crowd in attendance, and many of those who were there were elderly. Nevertheless, James King, the master of ceremonies, had done his job admirably well and had coaxed almost everyone onto the floor who was not confined to a Bath chair. Joshua's aunt was not dancing, of course-she was still wearing her black mourning clothes. But Lady Freyja Bedwyn was. She was looking magnificent indeed in an ivory gown with a gold netted tunic, her hair swept up into an elaborate coiffure and tamed with gold and jeweled combs.
But there was no mistaking the fact that something had happened to shake Constance out of her usual placid demeanor.
"Joshua," she said with considerable urgency in the few private moments before the orchestra began playing, "you must be warned."
"What is it?" he asked, bending his head closer to hers.
"Mama is determined," she said.
He grinned at her. "We will thwart her," he told her. "Never fear. I will be leaving Bath tomorrow morning."
The orchestra, sitting apart on a dais, began playing before they could say more, and for a few moments the vigorous, intricate figures of the dance, which had them twirling about with the couple next to them, precluded further conversation.
"Tomorrow may be too late," she gasped out when next she could.
"Smile," he told her, smiling himself. "Your mama is watching us."
Constance smiled. They clapped with everyone else as the couple at the end of the lines twirled down between them, too far apart to converse privately. Then the figures began again.
"She is going to see to it that we dance almost every set together," Constance said when they came together for a moment again, her voice breathless from her exertions. "And she is going to mention our attachment to everyone within earshot. She is even hoping to have our betrothal announced tonight."
"Preposterous!" Joshua said. "Even your mama cannot force us into a betrothal, Constance."
She twirled away on the arm of the gentleman next to Joshua.
Joshua smiled his most charming smile at the man's partner and twirled her firmly about. It seemed forever before there was a small pocket of privacy in which to exchange a few more words with Constance.
"Oh, yes, she can," she said bitterly as if there had been no interruption. "She is Mama, Joshua. She has spoken of my duty to her and to Chastity-and most of all to Prue. And she told me that you said you would marry me if I were to consent. Did you say that?"
"Dash it, Constance," he said. "Of course not."
They took up their places in their respective lines and clapped again as another couple-Willett and Lady Freyja-went twirling down the set.
His aunt had twisted his words at the White Hart, of course. She had convinced herself that he would bow to her will if only Constance would. And poor Constance was her daughter and had to live with her every day of her life. How could the poor girl resist his aunt when he could scarcely do so himself?
He would wring her neck for her. That would settle the matter once and for all.
Hoping to have his betrothal announced tonight, for God's sake!
"Joshua," Constance said the next time they were close to each other. "Do something. Be firm. I am dreadfully afraid I will not be able to. And if she should succeed in getting us to dance together all night or induce me to admit in public that I am fond of you or some such thing, you will feel honor-bound . . . Oh, I will simply die."
He grimaced.
"I'll think of something," he said. "In the meantime I have at least promised the next set to someone else."
"Thank heaven!" she said fervently.
He should run while he still had a chance, Joshua thought. His aunt could hardly maneuver him into a betrothal with Constance if he was not even here. But, dash it all, was he going to run from a mean, manipulative little slip of a thing?
It was very tempting, he had to admit. But first he must dance with Lady Freyja Bedwyn.
"The next set is to be a waltz," his aunt said after he had led Constance back to her side. She beamed at the two of them and spoke rather loudly, somehow including a whole crowd of people standing within her orbit in the conversation. "Constance knows the steps, Joshua, and I am sure you must. Do dance it together as everyone can see you both wish to do. You make such a very striking couple, and under the happy circumstances of your recent reunion no one will object to your dancing two sets in a row together."
Good Lord, Joshua thought. His cousin had not exaggerated.
"I beg your pardon, Constance, Aunt," he said with a bow, "but I have already solicited the hand of Lady Freyja Bedwyn for the next dance."
A waltz. That was interesting. He looked across the ballroom at Lady Freyja. She really did look very fetching indeed tonight. She looked quite regal, in fact, or at least every inch a duke's daughter. She was standing with Miss Holt-Barron, her chin lifted, her fan slowly cooling her face.
"That was kind of you, Joshua," his aunt said, a sharp edge to her voice. She reduced the volume to a theatrical whisp
er. "She really is remarkably ugly."
He bowed to Lady Freyja a few moments later and led her onto the floor, where other couples too were gathering.
"I was delighted to see," he said, "that you were not a wallflower for the first set."
"So was I," she said. "Doubtless I would have gone home and put a bullet in my brain."
He laughed and set his hand behind her waist as she set hers on his shoulder. He took her other hand in his. Except when he was with her, he always tended to forget how small she was. She was also very shapely.
"How clever of me, sweetheart," he said, "to have chosen a waltz."
"I just hope you can dance it well," she said. "You can have no idea of the peril ladies put themselves in during this particular dance, when their slippers are in such close proximity to their partner's dancing shoes. And I am not your sweetheart."
The orchestra began playing, and for a while he forgot everything but the sheer pleasure of moving with her through the lilting steps of the waltz. He was going to regret not seeing her again after tonight, not matching wits with her. Not kissing her.
She looked up at him and arched her eyebrows.
"No squashed toes yet," she said.
"If I do anything so clumsy and unmannerly," he said, "I will allow you to use your fist on my face without even trying to defend myself."
She laughed.
"How is your courtship proceeding?" she asked him. "Your aunt looks very pleased with herself this evening."
He grimaced. "Parson's mousetrap hovers," he said. "According to Constance, who is about as eager for the match as I am, she is determined to throw us together tonight with such frequency that for very decency's sake we will be obliged to announce our engagement. It might be of interest to add that the woman's will has almost never been thwarted."
"Nonsense!" she said. "I found her quite an unworthy foe when I spoke with her this morning."
"Perhaps Connie and I should let you loose on her then, sweetheart," he said. "I don't suppose you feel like entering into a fake betrothal with me for a day or two, do you?"