Imagine growing tired of this, she thought.
And then she was swept inside with the crowds, exactly as if she belonged.
They burst into the enormous ballroom in a scented, shining little cloud. The Silverton sisters were ton royalty, as it turned out, and out of the corners of her eyes Phoebe felt as though she was running a gauntlet of smiles and curtsies and outstretched hands and fans held up before mouths so others could comment on them as they went by.
They’re likely talking about me, Phoebe thought with dazed amazement. I am the new girl.
Postlethwaite might receive the broadsheets and save them for her, and she could say, “Oh, you can keep them, my dear Postlethwaite. I was there. In fact, page four, paragraph three is all about me.”
“We don’t greet simply everyone,” Marie explained as Phoebe was drawn through the dizzyingly gleaming crowd, while Antoinette nodded in earnest agreement. “That would never do.”
And now she saw how Lisbeth had become the glittering, brittle social creature, all mannerisms. Giddy was the only appropriate mood. Superficial was the only appropriate, or even possible, conversation. And if one was beautiful, one would never be encouraged to display a personality at all, beyond smiling.
The Silvertons drew her through the room, pollinating various little clusters of people with their popularity, extracting the nectar of gossip and attention, and moving on again.
The flower behind Phoebe’s ear was pronounced very original, indeed. Over and over. Until it became clear the word original was becoming nearly synonymous with her.
Eventually they encountered Lord Waterburn and Sir d’Andre, who were already flushed with heat, or drink, or both. They greeted the girls like prodigals.
“You must,” Sir d’Andre said, “I pray thee, bestow one of your waltzes upon me, Miss Vale. It’s all I dream of.”
Phoebe tapped her chin thoughtfully. “Well, what do you think, ladies? Should I?”
“I beg of you, Miss Vale.” He dropped to one knee, and seized her hand, in a pantomime of yearning.
Oh, for heaven’s sake.
“And me, Miss Vale. I am so overcome by your unique loveliness. I yearn to look upon it again for the duration of a waltz. And to compliment your ribbon.”
They were so silly it was difficult not to laugh. What a different man Waterburn had turned out to be from the bored, cold, unpleasant aristocrat she’d originally met. Clearly she’d leaped to conclusions about him the way she’d leaped to conclusions about the marquess.
She batted the thought of the marquess away as if it were a wasp on her periphery and returned her attention to the clowning of d’Andre and Waterburn. She was aware that everyone around them in the perimeter was watching with varying degrees of amusement.
“She says ‘bloody,’ too,” Waterburn confided to d’Andre, on an exaggerated hush. “It’s never sounded better, that word, than when it spills from her lips.”
The two of them dropped to their knees, hands clasped before them in entreaty, to the great delight of the Silverton sisters and to the stiff-smiled suffering of Lisbeth. Phoebe made a great show of consulting somberly with the Silvertons, who pretended to weigh the benefits of waltzing with the two men.
“Now, d’Andre has the finer curls,” Lady Marie reflected.
“But Waterburn, he’s so large one scarcely needs to move at all. He does the waltzing for you,” Lady Antoinette offered.
In the end, Phoebe capitulated, and graciously gave each of them one of the four waltzes. And they launched into paroxysms of gratitude and rose to their feet again, and departed.
And when they moved away, another crowd of men were hovering on the periphery and swelled forth, begging for introductions to Phoebe and for dances from all of them.
“You see? It’s all such great fun,” Marie said to her.
Phoebe couldn’t disagree, though she felt a little winded from all the theatrics.
Ratafia was found for them by the handsome gentlemen and pushed into their hands. And then a gentleman who needed to one-up the others produced champagne, and Phoebe took a sip. Which led to three more sips.
She didn’t mind in the least that she wasn’t the Queen Bee. That role belonged unquestionably to Lisbeth this season, who could have auctioned off her dances and paid the national debt. Because within what seemed like minutes of their arrival, Phoebe’s dance card was entirely full.
She gazed down at it, ran her thumbs over the names of men who wanted to be with her, knowing she would keep it forever, no matter what turn her life took.
And for the first time, a bit of doubt crept in about whether she might want to go to Africa, after all.
When she looked up again, it was to discover that the Silverton twins and Lisbeth had been born away, or had drifted away, like petals on a river of bonhomie. And in Phoebe’s line of vision, just like the bloody North Star, was Jules.
He was quite inappropriately staring at her.
It was no good. No good. Despair and joy tugged her between them. Because in his usual simple black and white, he should have blended into the crowd like shadow and light. Instead, he stood out in stark relief, and everything in the room suddenly seemed like a gaudy prop, all those young men like silly members of a musicale chorus, clowns. He was the only real thing in the room. He would always be the only real thing.
She was almost abashed. She turned her head quickly away, worried that even despite the noise and crowd someone would notice the sheer potency of the beam of the gaze they exchanged. She knew she oughtn’t speak to him alone. Not only was she an unmarried woman, he was the Marquess Dryden, for God’s sake, and his every move was scrutinized and reported to the broadsheets.
She tried to flee. Her body, however, was in complete disagreement with her mind when it came to the marquess.
Jules found himself moving toward her, as surely as he was being furled by a cord.
She looked to him . . . like the moon and the stars. She looked like no one else in the room, and there were hundreds of women in the room, so many of them beautiful by anyone’s definition. What was wrong with him that he only wanted to look at one of them?
And then he stood before her. “I didn’t expect to find you here,” he said finally.
“At the ball or in London?”
“Both, naturally. Given that Africa was your destination. Given that we said goodbye.”
“Well, I was invited, you see. By the Silverton sisters. It seems they were quite taken with me. I decided to seize the moment. And good heavens, they’ve introduced me to so many fine young men, all of whom demanded dances.”
She presented this with ironic defiance. But she couldn’t disguise her own shy pleasure. She was radiant with her own success.
“Have they?” He was ridiculously torn between feeling genuinely pleased for her and feeling positively impaled by jealousy.
“Yes.”
“Fortunate young men, indeed.”
“So they all would have me believe,” she said wryly. “The compliments have thus far centered about this.” She touched the flower in her hair. “They all seem to think it’s very original. And I just pulled it out of a vase in my room!”
He was peculiarly speechless. So full of competing emotions no words could emerge. He took refuge in a mundane question.
“How long will you be in London, Miss Vale?”
“A fortnight, I should think. I was invited for that long, anyhow.”
“Who is minding Charybdis while you’re in London?”
“Oh, I am. I brought him along. Why the interview, Lord Dryden?”
He knew the Silvertons kept a parrot and a small dog that Lady Silverton carried about like a reticule, said a silent prayer, and ignored her question. They stood together for a beat of fraught silence.
“Have you noticed something, Lord Dryden? All of the . . . shall we say, forelocks?”
They were everywhere. Even on a few of the older men who possessed enough hair to adopt it.
“I’d noticed,” he acknowledged grimly.
“I wonder if they were all struck in the head by beaver hats,” she mused.
He shot her a baleful look.
“Perhaps the hairstyle has a name. The Illicit Kiss. Or The Bruise. The Dryden?” she drummed her chin.
“What I like best about you, Miss Vale, is how you remind me of all of my finest hours.”
She tried not to smile, and failed. “I was there for them.”
“Perhaps because you were the cause of them.”
Another statement that contained many layers of meaning.
Suddenly a woman went spiraling like a top across the ballroom, her dress spinning about her, while her partner dropped to his knees. At the periphery of the room, someone gave her a little push, and she went spinning back.
“The Dryden Waltz.” Phoebe was delighted beyond words.
He shook his head slowly to and fro.
“Tell me, my lord, what is it like to be so admired that people attempt to imitate you?”
“Admired? I suspect I’m just the slate upon which they can write their own interpretation. It doesn’t matter what I do. Forgive me, Miss Vale. I have an objective, and I must ask before the music ends. I wonder if you would do me the honor of danc—”
“—oh, I must stop you, my lord. I’m afraid I cannot. You see, I’ve given all of my dances away.”
That gave him pause. “Did you now?”
She was trying to be haughty and failing, because she was in fact in awe of her own success. And he was, in truth, the only person in the world to whom she could confide her wonder. Who would share it and understand it.
It was a peculiar predicament. And yet all irritation and rejection and want dropped away momentarily, and they were friends, and he was proud for her. At some point he’d ceased being the commander of his own emotions. She’d usurped them.
“It was the most astonishing thing,” she confided shyly. “All the gentlemen seemed to want to dance with me in particular. Perhaps because I am new?”
“No. It’s because you are beautiful and special.”
This widened her eyes and flushed her dark rose. She turned her head away from him abruptly.
“You are not a word mincer.”
“No. Nor am I ever dishonest. May I see your dance card?”
“Don’t you believe me?” She presented it to him with a flourish.
He ran his fingers down the list of names.
“Hmm . . . Waterburn? Bastard. D’Andre. Definitely a worthless bastard. Lord Camber, a thoroughgoing bastard. Lord Michaelson? Bastard. Peter Cheswick? Bast—”
She snatched it from him, laughing.
“I wouldn’t dance a waltz with you, anyway, Lord Dryden.”
“No?”
“You might accidentally lock eyes with Lisbeth Redmond, stumble, and fling me across the room to avoid crushing my feet.”
She stared a dare at him.
Because they both knew full well that Lisbeth Redmond would not have him stammering or stumbling. Or diving into hedgerows. Nor would he be undressing Lisbeth Redmond in a courtyard at the Redmond household in the middle of the night. He in all likelihood wouldn’t even seek her gaze from across a crowded ballroom.
“Has anyone ever told you your complexion is very fine, Miss Vale?”
She laughed. Shook her head to and fro.
Another silence ensued. And then at last the gathered tension broke like a storm.
“It feels very wrong to stand here and not touch you.” His voice was a low fervent rush.
“Don’t.” She closed her eyes, shook her head roughly. “Please don’t. You don’t see, do you? You’ve a reputation for preferring the singular, the special, the finest . . .”
“Because I do.”
“Do you see the trouble? And here it was I thought you set the fashion, Lord Dryden. It seems that fashion has outsmarted you. You would set me up in a house in London and make love to me and visit me whenever you can. But you never, never would to have danced with me at this ball, because I never would have been invited. All I have ever wanted is to belong somewhere. And if I became your mistress you would take that away from me forever.”
Weakness and heat washed over him when she said the words “make love.” “It isn’t true, Phoebe,” he said, his voice hoarse. “And imagine what I would give you.”
“It most certainly would have been true had I said yes to your ‘business arrangement.’ And yet now you think you’d like to dance with me because everyone else sees it as acceptable.”
The logic—and the illogic—in this was unassailable.
And yet suddenly he was coldly angry. “Enough. What would you have me do? I have never been dishonest with you. Not once. You knew what my plans are. You’re right, Miss Vale, in that our lives have been very different. And in much the same way as I cannot imagine what it was like for you to endure St. Giles, it’s clear you can’t imagine what it’s like to be part of an ancient family, how important it is to me. My life isn’t entirely my own. I rebuilt my family name and fortune. Marriage can never be a thing of whim for a man like me. My family history. My legacy . . . the people who rely upon me . . . These are not small things, Miss Vale. They are . . . the very roots of my life. They’re my blood. They are . . . everything.”
She’d gone stark white, but two hot pink spots high on her cheekbones betrayed her fury.
“A thing of whim . . .” she drawled.
“I’ll thank you not to mock what you clearly don’t understand.” He was cold, cold. Lord Ice.
“You cannot fit everything neatly into boxes.”
“Oh, is that so?” he gave a short, sardonic laugh. “I cannot tell you how much I appreciate my continued education at your hands, Miss Vale. But here is the thing you, in all your cleverness, fail to recognize. You believe I should compromise everything I am and everything I want because some things don’t fit neatly into boxes. And yet you’re so self-righteously bloody unwilling to do the same for me. Who here is the hypocrite?”
She blinked as if he’d flicked something hot into her face.
He sensed, quite rightly, that if she’d had something to throw, he’d be wise in ducking right about now.
“Do you know what I think?” he drawled it conversationally. “I think you’re afraid. I think you’d rather run away from me, and how you feel, and what you want, to Africa. And why should I endure the company of a coward?”
She reared back as if he’d struck her.
“In all likelihood Isaiah Redmond is keeping a very close count of the number of waltzes you dance with Lisbeth and would take it badly if you should waste more time with the novelty of the hour, the schoolteacher,” she said coldly. “And Lisbeth is in yellow. Like the sun itself. You won’t want to miss that. She looks beautiful.”
“She always does,” he retorted.
Through the crowd an eager looking Lord Camber came, belatedly, to claim her for the dance. And Jules found himself staring at the man as if he could stop him with a mere gaze, as if he stared hard enough the man would never reach her, never. The ballroom would freeze all around them, everyone in it flat as tapestry except for him and Phoebe.
And then he would take Phoebe into his arms and persuade her in a dozen ways, with his arms, his lips, that what she wanted was him, no matter what, no matter how, forever. But he’d never before encountered a force of will quite like hers. It was inconceivable that he would not be getting precisely what he wanted, because he invariably did. His pride was a raw wound. He felt like a bear in a trap.
“Adieu, Lord Dryden.”
She sounded as though she meant it.
She curtsied, and went smiling toward Lord Camber without a backward glance, as if she danced with titled men as a matter of course.
He watched her go. And though he was certain his pride was the wounded party, damned if he didn’t feel as though he were tethered to her, and as if his very heart were being pulled from his chest as sh
e went.
Chapter 22
And since there was at last a lull in the storm of compliments, she decided to visit the ratafia table.
And she wove among the crowd wearing her useful, unspecific smile. Everyone looked familiar now and everyone was a stranger, but none of it mattered when they were united in gaiety, or so went her tipsy thinking. She sipped at her third—fourth?—cup of the evening. As she took a step backward, she bumped into someone, nearly sloshing ratafia onto an oblivious gentleman standing before her.
She turned carefully around. “Good heavens, I’m so sor—”
It was Olivia Eversea.
Phoebe froze, staring.
“Miss Vale, isn’t it?” Olivia looked genuinely pleased. “How lovely it is to see another face from Pennyroyal Green.”
“Oh, I agree!” Phoebe enthused. She’d learned how to gush this evening and it was becoming perhaps a little too second nature, but there was safety in it at the moment. “I do hope you’re having a lovely time, Miss Eversea.”
Phoebe never did know how to talk to Olivia Eversea. She was so lovely and pale and unnerving, Olivia was, though never anything other than pleasant, her manners exquisite. All the Everseas possessed exquisite manners, even, rumor had it, when they were doing things like dangling from the balconies of married countesses or being sent to the gallows. And when her path crossed with Olivia, in town or in church, they were gracious to each other.
But unlike her gentler sister Genevieve, Olivia was somehow fearsome. She was delicately lovely but she was passionate about so many things, so very dedicated to causes, so clever and brittle.
And this was why Phoebe didn’t believe Olivia was enjoying herself. She reached up a hand to adjust her flower behind her ear.
Olivia went motionless. All the color fled her face. And she stared at Phoebe’s arm as though it was a snake.
“Miss Vale . . . Where did you get those gloves?”
Oh.
It was as shocking as a knife attack.
The backs of Phoebe’s arms went cold, and a ringing started up in her ears, as she was pinned, surely as an insect to a board, by Olivia’s brilliant gaze.
How the Marquess Was Won Page 21