“Rumor can kill a woman’s reputation,” Robert said.
“Or make it,” Lord Henry said, “according to Lady Dalby.”
“I am only glad that we shan’t have to put Elaine’s reputation to that test. There are no rumors concerning her. Not now,” Father said.
Elaine had never quite realized it before, but her father was really quite ham-fisted in elegant conversation. Robert, naturally, was following in his footsteps.
“I don’t believe anything could touch Miss Montford’s reputation. Her character is above reproach,” Roger said.
The look he gave her from across the table and three chairs down sent a shiver down her spine to her toes.
“Thank you, Captain Ellery,” she said.
He nodded, his eyes holding hers, his light blue gaze a magnet that drew her in and would not release her.
“It is not a woman’s character,” Robert said, “but her behavior which must be above reproach.”
Oh, Robert, when did you become such a toad?
“More wine?” Elaine’s mother asked, waving the butler over to pour and keep pouring.
The meat course was removed.
“I do wonder if you shall ever find a woman who can meet your exalted standards, Mr. Montford,” Louisa said. Lord Henry did not intrude. “I do think you set your expectations very high.”
“No higher than my father did, and my mother is beyond reproach,” Robert said stiffly. It should have sounded complimentary. It did not.
“How lovely of you to say so,” Mrs. Ellery said. “I feel the same way about my dear husband, gone these many years. I do hope he would find that I have held the reins well, so to speak, in rearing his son. When one departs, the other must carry on, for the sake of the children, if nothing else. Roger has been a blessing to me in so many ways. I do like to think his father would be proud of the man he has become.”
Elaine’s mother smiled at Mrs. Ellery and said, “I know he would. Your son is a fine man.”
“Tell me, what was the senior Captain Ellery like? Very much like his son?” Lord Josiah asked.
Elaine was nearly certain that the entire company groaned. Josiah Blakesley had clearly not been tutored as to his function at this dinner; namely, to give credence to the rumor that the Ellerys and the Montfords were old friends from Cornwall.
“He was very much like my son,” Mrs. Ellery said, saving them, though she knew it not. “Both of them are devoted in their service to king and realm.”
“And both equally devoted to you, I should think,” Elaine said.
“My mother believes,” Roger said, “that when a woman marries a man who wears the uniform of his king, she understands that his duty to his king is his highest priority.”
“I’m sure the crown appreciates that,” Father said, looking pleased with the direction of the conversation.
Elaine was not.
“And what do you believe, Captain?” she said.
“I believe, Miss Montford, that one’s devotion to duty need not preclude devotion to another.”
“Meaning, your mother,” she said.
“Meaning, a wife, Miss Montford,” he said.
The candlelight glimmered off the braid and brass of his uniform. He looked quite, quite breathtaking.
“Are you in Town to take a wife, Captain?” Eleanor said.
“I believe I am,” he said.
Elaine felt her heart kick against her ribs.
Lady Jordan knocked over her wine, the red stain bleeding onto the white cloth.
Elaine jumped up. “I’ll see to it,” she said, looking at Roger Ellery, silently commanding him to follow her.
Roger stood and, with a murmur, excused himself. When they were in the corridor that led to the servant’s hall, Elaine rounded on him and said, “You must not say such things. We are all here tonight to quell rumor, not incite it.”
“Are we?” he said, studying her.
“Aren’t we?” she said, caught by his gaze.
“A change of tactic, Elaine, for a change of objective,” he said. “Can you not say the same?”
“I don’t know what you mean. I don’t understand you.”
She did not understand herself. She was falling into his eyes like a bird falling from a nest, falling to her destruction. She could not fly. Not into him. He was not the man for her. She knew what she was in London to do.
“I think you do,” he said, taking her hand in his, pulling her to him, brushing a light kiss upon her brow. “Tell me I’m not alone in this.”
A brushing of his lips against her skin, the barest of touches, and yet she trembled. His mouth moved over her skin, her brow, her cheek, her jaw each shivering wherever he touched.
“Please stop. Please, please, please,” she breathed, leaning into him, lifting her mouth up to his.
Everything she had felt in the Park came rushing back, a tide of attraction and longing and desire. It had come from nowhere, from nothing, and she had tried to kill it, to smash it and deny it, and she had. She had. If only he had helped her. If only he would leave her alone.
“Please, tell me that you feel what I feel, want what I want. I can’t lose you, Elaine. I won’t lose you. Marry me.”
“Marry you? I can’t marry you. I can’t. I can’t,” she said, turning her mouth up to his, wrapping her arms around his shoulders, burying herself against him, making a lie of her words and a lie of the whole fabric of her life.
She had to marry into the peerage. She could not marry a soldier, one she barely knew. It was madness to even think it.
His lips settled on hers, devouring her, a bright hot fire of longing that swept her up and away from all the lessons of childhood.
“I am going to war. There is always another war. I can’t marry. I shouldn’t marry,” he said, wrapping his arms around her, holding her fast. “Marry me.”
“I don’t know you. It’s too fast. I don’t know you!” she said, clinging to him.
“Marry me.”
“I can’t.”
“Marry me, Elaine.”
“I can’t. I truly can’t.”
“You can. We must, can’t you see? Can’t you see that we must? Don’t you feel what I feel? Can’t you feel it?”
“Yes,” she said, “perhaps, but that changes nothing. My family depends upon me.”
Roger stepped back from her, holding her by her elbows, holding her away from him so that he could look down into her eyes.
“Don’t you know that families die? I’ve seen death. I’ve seen it right next to me, on top of me, all around me, and I know that death breaks into a family, taking one and another and another, breaking families to bits until they’re gone and all they planned fades into mist. But love doesn’t fade and doesn’t die. Love never dies. Choose love, Elaine. Choose love and choose me.”
The most astounding aspect of the entire affair was that Elaine left the house without so much as a cloak. She walked out into the street with her hand in Roger’s and she had no idea where they would go or were going or if there was a plan or what the plan was. She just . . . left. She walked into her new life without knowing anything about it; she only knew that she was going with Captain Roger Ellery, and that was enough.
They walked to his home, where he gave her a cloak of his mother’s, and then they were set for Gretna Green. She had no traveling clothes, no money, no proper shoes, and no hair brush. He had his kit bag and that seemed to do for him.
She was in the midst of a wild adventure and she was happy.
It was most unlike her.
Roger had everything well in hand, enough money to get them to Gretna Green by coach along the North Road, the only problem being that they had to wait a few hours before the coach was due to leave, and he didn’t want to soil her reputation (any further) by staying without a proper chaperone in his mother’s house, and so they walked along Rotten Row, she in her borrowed cloak, and tried not to regret running out of her house in the middle of supper.
The longer she walked, the more regret dogged her steps.
“It will be all right,” he said. “We shall be happy together. You’ll see.”
“Yes, I know,” she said, clutching his hand. “Did you mean to fall in love with me?”
“Of course not.” She gave him a look. “No man means to fall in love. He just does one day. And then he’s in love and that’s that.”
“How romantic it all sounds,” she said, sarcasm dripping from each word.
“I do not have a poet’s tongue,” he said.
“I’d noticed,” she said, laughing in spite of her nerves.
“I’d kiss you, to prove what skills my tongue does possess, but I don’t want to tempt fate.”
“I think we’ve already tempted fate. I hope fate is kind to us,” she said. “This is very unlike me, you know. I’m not impulsive at all.”
“You’re decisive. That’s not the same thing as impulsive.”
“Am I?”
“Decidedly. The way you killed that bee won me over instantly. I’ve rarely seen such efficiency in action. The Light Dragoons could use you. Tell me, do you ride?”
“Not well. Does that reduce me in your estimation?”
“Hardly,” he said, tucking her against his side. “I shall teach all our children to ride and you shall be so shamed that you will learn and trounce us all.”
“You make me sound nearly vicious.”
“Only determined. Decisive. Well-read. The Iliad,” he said, chuckling. “What else have you read that will astound me?”
“I’m afraid to tell you. My father says that men don’t like---”
“Your father can’t possibly know what I like. He does not speak for all men, you must know.”
“I suppose not.”
But she wasn’t certain about that. Weren’t some things simply true? True and irrefutable?
“There you are! I should have known that Captain Ellery would be the very soul of romance and return to the place of your meeting.”
The voice came from a magnificent coach shining in the starlight. A white-gloved arm beckoned from the shadowy interior. The crest on the door panel was difficult to make out, but it did not look like the Melverley crest, nor did the voice sound like a Melverley House voice.
“Come, come, darlings. I am here to help, only to help.”
And the arm withdrew and a white face poked out and, based solely on her image portrayed in the satires, Elaine recognized Lady Dalby.
“Lady Dalby,” Roger said, bowing, not moving toward the coach. “It is a pleasure. An unexpected pleasure.”
“Yes, darling, I know. Hurry now, we must away if we are to make good on your proposal. You have proposed, have you not? And the lovely Miss Montford has accepted?”
How had she known all that?
Roger said nothing. Elaine did not know what to say, but she did feel she had to say something.
“How do you mean to help us, Lady Dalby? And how did you know to help us?”
“Clever girl, getting right to the meat of it. You are exactly as described, the both of you.”
Which did not answer either question. Roger and Elaine stayed where they were.
Lady Dalby laughed, a light, trilling thing that was like music. “Lady Eleanor is most enthusiastic about you, as you must be aware. She suspected that something regarding an elopement might be in your future. Was she wrong?”
“No. She was not,” Roger said, stepping between Elaine and the coach. “We shall not be deterred, Lady Dalby. We mean to marry.”
“Delightful. Climb in and I shall do all in my power to assist you.”
They approached her coach cautiously, not sure what to expect. Nothing happened except that the door was opened and the steps dropped; they climbed in, facing Lady Dalby, and the coach rattled on with them in it.
She was beautiful, as beautiful as every rumor of her. She exuded elegance and sensuality and humor, such a rare blend of attributes. No wonder she had caught an earl and made him marry her.
Elaine felt a pang of guilt for dashing every dream her family had ever held.
“You are quite as lovely as described, Miss Montford. ‘Tis hardly any wonder that Captain Ellery fell hopelessly in love with you,” Lady Dalby said. “But, darling, where is your luggage? Don’t tell me you made off with her without any manner of trousseau?”
Roger shook his head, looking less sheepish than suspicious.
“I can’t allow it,” Lady Dalby said. “You must come home with me immediately. I will see that you have everything you could possibly require for your journey.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Roger said.
“Darling,” Lady Dalby said on a sigh, “I know it won’t matter to you in the slightest, but a woman does eventually need to change her dress. We become very unhappy wearing the same gown and shoes every day.”
True.
“Miss Montford looks to be nearly the same size as my daughter. She left piles of clothes here when she married and moved to the Westlin estate. I can happily deluge you with lovely articles designed to make you both sigh with pleasure.”
It was the way she said sigh with pleasure that made one think of sighs, and pleasure. Roger shifted his weight and laid a hand on his knee, bracing his foot against the opposite bench. Sophia Dalby smiled in the shadows.
It was into that stretch of silence that the coach stopped in front of Dalby House. The lights were lit. It didn’t look like anything suspicious was going on behind the curtains. But then, when did suspicious things announce themselves?
They would not be stopped. All Elaine’s nerves and doubts disappeared in the face of any possible detour to her plans. She was going to marry Roger Ellery. She would not hear a word against him.
The coach door was opened and Lady Dalby preceded them out, walking up the steps to Dalby House with the grace of a queen. The front door opened and there stood her butler, a most singular looking man with a sort of brute force emanating from every pore. Roger stiffened upon sight of him.
“Hurry, darlings. Do you want to get married or not? Dithering hardly speaks of true romance, does it?” Lady Dalby said.
She and Roger held hands and walked up the steps together, ready, or nearly ready for anything.
There was nothing remotely to be ready for. The house was quiet, empty, and welcoming. Sophia Dalby was already walking up the stairs to the first floor, draping her cloak over the railing, and continuing on, calling, “Follow me, Miss Montford. We shall have you a proper trousseau in minutes.”
She followed. She was at a loss to do anything else.
The bed chamber was luxuriant. Warm pink silk brocade was on the walls and upholstery, a huge burled walnut bed was hung with jade green silk satin, and a wardrobe that stood as tall as the ceiling was open to reveal a collection of gowns that dazzled the eye.
“With your delightful coloring, you can wear anything, Miss Montford. How that must please you,” Lady Dalby said. She waved a hand at the maid and the garments were laid upon the bed. Pale yellow and yellow gold and dark blue and ocean blue and sky blue and iced blue and ---- “I do think blue is your color, Miss Montford. Your eyes, if I may say, are the most remarkable shade of blue, rather like the deepest ocean depths. They present as green on occasion, I’ll wager. Yes, I thought so.” Another wave of the arm and day gowns in ivory, cream, sprigged cotton, rose pink linen weave, forest green velvet—
“Lady Dalby, this is too much, far too much. I cannot possibly take the velvet. Velvet is so dear, and I will be a soldier’s wife.”
“I am not aware of any soldier’s code which restricts a soldier’s wife from wearing velvet, Miss Montford.”
The maid stopped throwing clothes upon the bed. They both, the maid and Lady Dalby, looked at her as if she’d lost her mind. Perhaps she had. How else to explain her behavior over the last few days?
“Are you quite sure you want to be a soldier’s wife?” Lady Dalby asked. “It is all very romantic,
to be sure, but to have to give up a velvet for a lifetime, that is asking far too much of a woman, wouldn’t you agree?”
“I have no particular attachment to velvet, Lady Dalby,” Elaine said, looking at the rug beneath her feet. It was a very fine rug, probably French. Where would she live as Roger’s wife? Would she have a rug?
“That’s a comfort,” Lady Dalby said, “and so very convenient, given your choice of a husband.”
Elaine felt weak, weary, and teary. Not at all like herself. Not one bit like herself.
“May I sit? I think I must sit,” she said, nearly falling into a nicely upholstered chair. The chair was not uneven. That seemed important.
“Darling, you’re exhausted,” Lady Dalby said. She said something to the maid, Elaine did not really listen, and then the maid was gone and they were alone. Roger was still somewhere downstairs, doing what she did not know. Probably pacing. Probably regretting his proposal. Probably regretting saving her from the Indian.
The Indian!
The Indian was Lady Dalby’s nephew.
“I’ve met your nephew, Lady Dalby. In the Park. Just the other day. It was the day I met Captain Ellery. He believed he was saving me.” Elaine started to laugh, and then she started to cry. The last time she’d cried she’d been eight years old.
“How charming of him,” Lady Dalby said, rearranging the clothes on the bed, the colors like rainbows beneath her fingers. “Most men do love to play the hero, to think themselves so very brave and stalwart in the face of the unknown, but not many men actually throw themselves into danger, into heroic action, not knowing what the outcome will be but only knowing that they must do this thing staring them in the face.”
Elaine stopped crying and wiped her eyes, staring at Sophia Dalby as she arranged and rearranged the clothing on the bed.
“Of course,” Lady Dalby said, smiling, “you know all of that. It is likely why Captain Ellery captured first your attention and then your regard. Or was it something else? He is a most attractive man, and there is something so thrilling about a man in uniform.”
“He wasn’t in uniform,” Elaine said. “Not then.”
“Pity. I do think it helps a man’s cause, but then again, he did beautifully all on his own, didn’t he?”
An Encounter at Hyde Park Page 6