by Mary Balogh
“Lady Hallmere?” he said.
“She was Lady Freyja Bedwyn before her marriage,” she explained. “Sister of the Duke of Bewcastle. And then she married the Marquess of Hallmere, who just happens to have his home and estate in Cornwall, in the exact place where Anne Jewell lived before she was recommended to the school as a teacher.”
“I know the Bedwyn family,” he said. “Bewcastle is a close neighbor of my cousin Lauren, Viscountess Ravensberg.” He grinned. “I do not imagine that being Lady Hallmere’s governess would have been a comfortable thing. And I would guess that you had a fortunate escape in not being taken on as her maid. She is a formidable lady. But you think it was she who sent you to Bath? Interesting!”
“I may be wrong,” she said.
And if she had needed any further reminder that he was of a different world from her own, here it was. He actually knew Lady Hallmere and the Bedwyn family. His cousin was a viscountess.
But such knowledge was no longer a cause for intimidation. She and Viscount Whitleaf were indeed friends, she believed, though only for a short while. Soon they would return to their separate worlds.
She withdrew her hand from his, smoothed out her skirt without looking at him, and got up to step outside the grotto and stand on the path looking out on the waterfall. He followed her out.
“I have been very fortunate in my life,” she said. “Once I had settled at the school I was very happy there. And since becoming a teacher I have been happier.”
“In some ways,” he said, “I envy you.”
She looked up sharply into his face to see if he joked. What a very strange thing to say! But he was squinting off toward the waterfall and seemed to be talking to himself rather than to her. He had certainly not been joking. When he looked back at her, he was smiling again.
“Are you preparing to dance the night away at the assembly tomorrow?” he asked her.
“It is a country entertainment, Lord Whitleaf,” she said. “I daresay it will be over well before midnight.”
“One of the first things I noticed about you,” he said, “was that you are literal-minded-hearts as organs in the chest, for example. My poet’s soul still winces over that one. Let me rephrase my question, then. Are you preparing to dance the evening away?”
“I am preparing to enjoy myself,” she said. “I have never been to a ball or even a country assembly.”
“Never?” He looked arrested. “You do not know how to dance, then?”
“Learning to dance is a necessary part of any lady’s education,” she said, “even if she is only a charity pupil. We have a dancing master at the school-Mr. Huckerby. I learned from him. And now I often demonstrate the dances with him while the girls look on.”
“But you have never danced at a ball,” he said quietly.
She felt horribly embarrassed then. That was one pathetic piece of information she ought to have kept to herself.
“We should go back,” she said. “It must be getting late. Everyone will be thinking of going home, and our long absence will be remarked upon.”
“Miss Osbourne,” he said abruptly, “will you dance the first waltz with me at the assembly?”
Oh!
She stared at him, filled with such longing that for a moment she could not even speak. “Oh,” she said then, “there is no need to ask such a thing just because I told you it will be my first assembly and I am in a sense your friend.”
He seized her hand again then, but not just to hold. He raised it to his lips and held it there for a few moments while he looked intently into her eyes over the top of it.
“What does this in a sense mean?” he asked. “How can two people be friends in a sense? Either we are or we are not. I have asked you to waltz with me because I wish to waltz with you and no one else. Sometimes motives are as simple as that.”
She had watched her hand held against his lips, and she had felt it there-not just with the hand itself but with every cell in her body. No man had ever made her such a courtly gesture before. Ah, no one had. And it felt very good indeed. It felt more than just good.
And then his face blurred before her vision and she realized in some horror that her eyes had filled with tears.
She tried to pull her hand away, but he held on to it, his grasp tightening.
“Susanna,” he said, “have I upset you? I do beg your pardon. Do you not wish-”
“Yes,” she said shakily, dashing her free hand across her eyes. “I do. I will. I mean, it would give me the greatest pleasure to waltz with you, my lord. Thank you.”
But her stomach felt as if it had performed a somersault inside her. He had called her Susanna. How foolish to be so affected by that slight breach of good manners-by that wonderful sign of friendship.
He bowed elegantly over her hand and grinned at her.
“The evening preceding that waltz will be dull indeed,” he told her, his free hand over his heart.
Ah, he had seen that she was upset and otherwise discomposed, she realized. And so he was deliberately lightening the atmosphere by teasing her, even flirting with her. Oh, he was a kind man.
“Nonsense, Lord Whitleaf,” she said with a laugh that came out on a strange gurgle. “I have not forgotten that you are engaged to dance at least the first four sets of the evening with other partners. You cannot pretend that the prospect of so much female company is dull.”
He chuckled.
“But I had engaged to dance with them,” he said, “before I even met you. Once I did, I became impervious to all other female charms.”
“Flatterer!” She clucked her tongue and laughed again, with genuine amusement this time, and withdrew her hand from his.
“I am speaking the truth, you know,” he added. “I have found that friendship is far more stimulating than flirtation.”
“The female population of England would go into a collective decline if they heard you say such a thing,” she said. “We must go back.”
“Must we?” he said. “Or shall we run away and stay away forever and ever? Do you ever wish you could do that?”
“No.” But she gazed wistfully at him. Sometimes she did wish it. She had run away once. But in her dreams she could sometimes fly…
“You once told me you were not a romantic,” he said. “Are you not an adventurer either?”
“No,” she said. “My feet are firmly planted on the ground.”
“And your heart firmly pumping away in your chest,” he said, reaching out one hand to brush his knuckles lightly beneath her chin. “I am not quite sure I believe you, Miss Osbourne-on either count. But you are right, I suppose. If we are not to run away together, we had better return.”
He fell into step beside her and they proceeded on their way in a silence that soon became companionable again.
But a nameless yearning grew in her as they descended the path-a yearning perhaps to throw caution to the winds and step out of herself entirely into an unknown…
An unknown what?
Adventure?
Romance?
Neither was being offered her with any seriousness, and she would refuse even if they were. Dreams were all very well as long as one never confused them with reality.
The reality was that she was walking beside Viscount Whitleaf along the wilderness walk at Barclay Court during a lovely summer afternoon. The reality was that she was going to waltz with him tomorrow evening at her first-ever assembly. Even after that there would still be three days of her holiday left.
There was nothing whatsoever wrong with reality. Reality was very close to being perfect.
And even after those three days were over there would be Anne and Claudia waiting for her in Bath and the security of her teaching position. There would be the other teachers and the girls, including several new ones. There would be all the challenge of a new school year to prepare for. And pleasant memories of her holiday.
“A penny for your thoughts,” he said after they were down the steep part of the path
and were drawing closer to the lake.
“I was realizing how many blessings I have to count,” she said.
“Were you?” He looked more closely at her. “In my experience people count blessings only when they are feeling sad. Are you sad?”
“No,” she said. “How could I be?”
He heaved a deep sigh, which he did not immediately explain.
“It beats me,” he said after a short silence. “But I feel melancholy too.”
Mr. Dannen and Mr. Raycroft were coming across the bridge to meet them with Miss Moss, Miss Krebbs, and Miss Jane Calvert. Soon the two groups came together, and a great deal of chatter and laughter ensued.
By the time they reached the picnic side of the bridge, Mr. Dannen had taken Susanna on his arm, and Viscount Whitleaf had offered one of his to Miss Krebbs and the other to Miss Jane Calvert. Mr. Raycroft was walking beside them.
The viscount was telling them that he had thought it was the late afternoon sunlight that was dazzling his eyes at the center of the bridge until he realized that it was their presence there that had been doing it.
The rogue!
But of course they were not taken in by such flatteries for a single moment. The tone of their laughter told Susanna that.
He was being kind to them, bringing happiness and gaiety to their day.
He had also donned a mask of frivolity. Or maybe it was not a mask at all. Maybe he had a gift for spreading joy. And yet he had said just moments ago that he felt melancholy. Could he feel both?
Yes, perhaps so. She was feeling both. She was living through one of the most joyful afternoons of her entire life. And yet…
And yet soon they would go separately back into their own very separate universes.
8
The mood of slight melancholy that had oppressed Susanna after the picnic had disappeared without a trace by the time she arrived with Frances and the Earl of Edgecombe at the assembly rooms above the village inn the following evening.
She doubted she had ever been more excited in her life, though she tried very hard not to show it-without a great deal of success, it seemed.
“Well, Susanna,” the earl said as he handed her down from the carriage, “you are fairly sparkling, I must say. Jewels would be superfluous.”
She was wearing none, of course. But then neither was Frances. Susanna suspected that despite the fact that her friend wore a gorgeous royal-blue satin gown, which was clearly expensive and made by the most skilled of seamstresses, Frances was actually making a deliberate effort not to outshine either Susanna or her less affluent neighbors.
Frances linked her arm through Susanna’s as they stepped inside the inn, leaving the earl to follow them in.
“I know just how you must be feeling,” she said. “I remember how I felt that night in Bath when Lucius’s grandfather and sister had invited me to a ball in the Upper Assembly Rooms. I was half frightened to death and half elated to death. Do you remember?”
“Claudia, Anne, and I noticed at the last moment that part of your hem was down,” Susanna said, “and we were all involved in stitching it up again with you inside it-in the school hallway of all places-when Mr. Keeble let the Earl of Edgecombe in, or Viscount Sinclair, as he was then.”
They both laughed at the memory and there was a low chuckle from behind them to indicate that the earl appreciated the joke too.
The room where the dancing was to take place would probably appear small and plainly decorated in comparison with any London ballroom, Susanna guessed when they entered it. It was certainly smaller and plainer than the Upper Assembly Rooms in Bath, to which she had taken a party of girls from the school on a sightseeing walk one afternoon. But these rooms were full of people she knew and felt comfortable with, and everyone was dressed smartly for the evening. The noise level was high with the excited voices of ladies and young girls and the hearty, booming voices of men trying to talk above them. There was a great deal of laughter everywhere. And the orchestra members were making their own contribution to the noise as they tuned their instruments on a small dais at one end of the room.
It all appeared splendidly dazzling to Susanna.
She was at her first ball-in her mind she called it that even if strictly speaking it was but an assembly. And she was going to dance.
The earl had asked her to reserve at least one set for him, though he had not spoken for any one in particular. Mr. Dannen, at the end of yesterday’s picnic, had solicited her hand for the all-important opening set.
And Viscount Whitleaf had asked her for the first waltz.
She could hardly wait for that particular set-there was to be only one. And yet even as the impatient thought entered her mind she chastised herself. This was sure to be the most exciting evening of her life. She would not wish the first half of it away. She wanted to live every moment of it, from first to last.
Mrs. Raycroft and her daughter came to meet them as soon as they appeared in the doorway, and Miss Raycroft exclaimed with awe over Frances’s gown and admired Susanna’s hair, which Frances had insisted her own maid dress for the evening.
“And is that the ribbon you bought in the village shop?” she asked, surveying the hem of Susanna’s pale green gown, about which the darker green ribbon had been sewn in two rows. “It gleams in the candlelight, does it not? It looks very smart. Viscount Whitleaf told us you had purchased it.”
“My gown needed to be made more festive for the occasion,” Susanna explained. “I have never worn it to a ball before.”
After that all was a whirlwind of activity and excitement as neighbors greeted neighbors and gentlemen searched out their partners for the opening set.
Susanna had been forced to admit in the privacy of her own heart that she found Mr. Dannen something of a bore. They had spent several hours in each other’s company during the past two weeks, but she doubted he knew anything about her except that she was a schoolteacher from Bath. She, on the other hand, knew surely all there was to know about his Scottish ancestors and heritage.
But her lack of romantic interest in him really did not matter at all as he led her out onto the floor and placed her in the line of ladies while he took his place opposite her among the gentlemen for the opening set of country dances. There had surely never been a happier moment. The eldest Miss Calvert stood to her left, opposite Mr. Raycroft, and Rosamond Raycroft stood next to Miss Calvert. Viscount Whitleaf, across from her, smiled indulgently and said something that had her laughing merrily. Briefly he caught Susanna’s eye, but he was too polite to withdraw his attention from his partner for longer than a moment or two.
Just feeling him close filled Susanna with an even warmer glow of happiness.
But soon she had thoughts for nothing except the dance as the orchestra struck up with the music and the line of gentlemen bowed while the line of ladies curtsied.
Music filled her ears as the floor vibrated to the rhythmic thumping of many feet and dancers twirled and promenaded and circled about one another. The air grew warmer and heavier with the mingled scents of perfumes and colognes and flowers. The very candles in the candelabrum and wall sconces seemed to move with a lilting rhythm in time to the music.
And she was a part of it all.
Ah, she was a part of it all.
She would perhaps have felt some disappointment when the set came to an end except that Mr. Raycroft had already asked her before it began if she would dance the second with him. And the earl claimed the third set.
By the end of that she was feeling flushed and warm and breathless-and wanted the evening never to end. Mr. Finn approached and asked for the fourth set, but when he came she was seated beside Miss Honeydew, who was fanning herself and looking rather faint and admitted when Susanna asked that she had not eaten anything since luncheon. Susanna thanked Mr. Finn and asked if he would excuse her and then took Miss Honeydew into the refreshment room, fetched her a cup of tea and a plate of food, and sat with her while she ate, her foot tapping out t
he rhythm of the dance music coming from the other room.
But she did not mind missing the dance. Mr. Crossley had already asked for the next, and the one after that was to be the waltz.
Viscount Whitleaf was looking extremely handsome tonight in a brown tailed evening coat with ivory satin breeches, a dull gold embroidered waistcoat, and white, crisp linen. He was also, Susanna had noticed, a graceful dancer and one who looked as if he were enjoying himself. Whenever she glanced at him, he was smiling, his eyes on his partner. His partners, of course, were ecstatic.
Mr. Crossley led Susanna toward Mrs. Raycroft at the end of the next set and stood conversing with them there while Viscount Whitleaf and Frances, who had been dancing together, approached across the floor. Susanna fanned her hot cheeks and watched him come. How very much she liked him.
“Goodness,” Frances said, “that was a vigorous dance. I am quite robbed of breath. Thank you, Lord Whitleaf.”
“Ma’am?” He bowed. “It was entirely my pleasure.”
“But I simply must recover my breath quickly,” she said. “The waltz is next and I have been looking forward to it for longer than a week. So has Lucius.”
The Earl of Edgecombe was striding across the floor toward them, his eyes on Frances.
Viscount Whitleaf made Susanna a slight bow.
“This is my dance, Miss Osbourne, I believe,” he said.
“It is, my lord.” She curtsied and discovered that the evening really could turn brighter and even more exciting.
“ Do you waltz, Miss Osbourne?” Mr. Crossley asked her, sounding surprised and even perhaps a little disapproving.
“I know the steps, sir,” she said. “I learned them at school-from a dancing master who is a stickler for doing all things correctly.”
“He is indeed,” Frances agreed.
“I have even given permission for Rosamond to waltz with Mr. Moss,” Mrs. Raycroft said, “since both my son and Viscount Whitleaf have assured me that it is danced at Almack’s. And if you are to waltz, Lady Edgecombe, then it must be unexceptionable.”
“We fell in love with the waltz the first time we danced it together,” the Earl of Edgecombe said. “It was in an assembly room not unlike this, was it not, Frances?”