The Last Waltz

by Mary Balogh

  But why should there not be a house party? Was he afraid to go to Thornwood? Was that what had kept him from there even though he had been in England for almost three months? Was he really afraid? The idea, when it was brought consciously to mind, seemed absurd. But there was only one way to prove that he was not.

  He would write to Thornwood first thing in the morning, he decided, to give notice of his intended visit. He would go down as soon as all the invitations had been sent out and answered, and he would prepare for his guests himself.

  The three occupants of the drawing room sat close to the fire. It was built high and crackled cheerfully, but it had a large space to heat. The candles had already been lit although it was only early evening. But it was mid-December, a time of year when darkness fell almost before afternoon was out. The two ladies who sat on either side of the hearth stitched away at their embroidery, their heads bent to the task, one gray-haired and wearing a white lace cap, the other dark-haired and black-capped. The youngest of the three, who had drawn her chair as close to the blaze as she possibly could, was doing nothing more productive than drumming her fingers impatiently on the arms of her chair.

  Dinner was late—an unheard-of occurrence at Thornwood Hall, where punctuality had always been considered a moral virtue. And there was no knowing when it would be served since it awaited the arrival of my lord, and his letter had not stated the exact hour at which my lady might expect him. He had written only to announce that he would arrive today.

  Lady Margaret Percy crossed one leg over the other and swung the dangling foot in time with her drumming fingers.

  “It is cold in here,” she complained.

  “You have the draft from the door on your back, dear,” Lady Hannah Milne, her aunt, told her. “Why do you not exchange places with me?”

  “Do stay where you are, Aunt,” the Countess of Wanstead said, looking up briefly. “You should have worn a warmer dress, Meg. And you should have brought down a shawl to wrap about your shoulders. It is December, after all. It is foolishness itself to dress for the evening in muslin at this time of year.”

  She knew why her sister-in-law had donned such an inappropriate gown, of course. She wanted to look her prettiest tonight for my lord’s benefit. The countess could understand that even if she herself had not been similarly motivated. Quite the contrary, in fact. She still wore black even though it was no longer necessary to do so. She might by now have graduated to gray or lavender or even to other colors. Gilbert had been dead for almost seventeen months after all. But in the past week, since receiving his lordship’s letter, she had been glad she had not yet left off her mourning. She would certainly not do so for a while now. She would not have it appear that she was trying to impress him.

  “I am hungry,” Margaret announced. “I do not know why we cannot eat, Christina.”

  “You know exactly why.” The countess smiled to soften the abruptness of her words. “When his lordship has written to announce his intention of arriving today, Meg, it would be ill-mannered indeed to dine without him.”

  “But what if he has changed his mind?” her sister-in-law asked reasonably enough. “What if he is putting up at an inn somewhere for the night and does not come on here until tomorrow? Perhaps at this very minute he is in the middle of his dinner. What if he did not even start out today? Are we to starve until he does come?”

  “I do not believe his lordship would say he is coming and then not come, dear,” her aunt told her. “It would be discourteous to Christina.”

  The countess bent her head to her work again. It was a seductive idea that he might not come until tomorrow after all, but on the whole she hoped he would come today so that this waiting, this suspense, might be at an end. “We will wait one more hour,” she said. “If he has not come by then, we will eat.”

  “Another hour!” The words were a complaint in themselves, but Margaret did not argue further. Her fingers continued to drum on the chair arms.

  If he did not come soon, Christina thought suddenly, she herself would surely explode into a thousand pieces. She had woken early in the morning after a night of fitful sleep, dreading his arrival, wondering how she would possibly face it since there was no avoiding it. And yet as the day progressed she had found herself wishing that he would come—now. If not sooner.

  She wished he had stayed half a world away for the rest of his life.

  “I wonder what he is like now,” Margaret said with a sigh, her eyes on the coals. “I have only dim memories of him. He left Thornwood before Papa died when I was eight years old and never came back. It was good riddance, Gilbert used to say. He said Gerard was wild and reckless. What he meant was that he was a rake.”

  “Meg!” Christina said with sharp reprimand. And yet it was true, she thought, even if it was unladylike to say so. He had been wild.

  “Oh, dear,” Lady Hannah said, “I am not sure he was ever so very bad. Most young men are high-spirited. Not Gilbert, of course, or even Rodney—they were always patterns of propriety, may God rest their souls. But there are plenty of young men who feel obliged to sow their wild oats before settling down to perfectly decent lives when they marry. The time to which your brother referred, Meg, was many years ago. We may expect a different man altogether now. He is Wanstead now.”

  Christina’s lips thinned as she concentrated on her embroidery.

  “I do not care if he is still a rake,” Margaret said. “I do not care if he is still wild. I do not even care if he is vulgar. I daresay he will be, will he not, after spending ten years in business? In Canada of all places. Mr. Evesham says it is a primitive and savage country, not fit even to be visited by a gentleman. Perhaps Cousin Gerard has become a savage himself. Perhaps he paints his face and his body and wears feathers in his hair and beats his breast.” She chuckled merrily.

  “Oh, my,” her aunt commented.

  “I hope,” Margaret said, gazing into the fire, her drumming fingers stilled, “he will be interesting at least. Life has been so dreadfully dull since—since Papa’s death. Not that anything has changed in the last year and a half since my cousin has been my guardian, but perhaps now that he is coming here ...”

  “Whatever he is and whatever he might do,” Christina said firmly—all this speculation about how he might have changed, how he might have remained the same, was making her decidedly nervous again, “we will discover soon enough. Only one thing is certain. He is the earl now. Master of Thornwood.” And of everyone living here, a voice said inside her head though she did not speak the words aloud. She breathed deeply and evenly to quell the pointless panic she felt.

  “Whoever would have expected,” Margaret said, “that Papa would die and Rodney and Gilbert too and that Gerard would inherit? Poor Papa. He had his heir and a spare and all for naught. And I was a mere daughter. Though for all that I think he used to like Gerard well enough despite what Gilbert said afterward. Gilbert, of course, would not allow us even to mention his name.”

  No. He had not, Christina remembered. He had made a particular point of it early in their marriage. Mr. Gerard Percy, he had said, speaking with the sort of pompous formality she had soon learned was customary with him, was everything that was to be abhorred in a gentleman—if the circumstances of his birth allowed him even to claim that title for himself. He was ungrateful for the privileged upbringing his uncle had given him after the death of his own parents, raising him at Thornwood as his own son; he had become a wastrel, a gamer, a womanizer, a drinker, a fortune hunter. And finally he had repudiated his dubious claim to be called a gentleman by taking up business and commercial pursuits. Christina would kindly take note of the fact that his name was never again to be mentioned.

  It was a command she had never felt inclined to disobey.

  But through a bizarre twist of fate the prodigal cousin was now the Earl of Wanstead and had been for almost seventeen months. Gilbert’s father had died before Christina’s marriage. Her brother-in-law had drowned in Italy two years after he
r wedding. Gilbert had died of a sudden heart seizure after almost nine years of a marriage that had produced two healthy daughters and two stillborn sons.

  And now the new—the almost new—Earl of Wanstead was coming home. To gloat? To stay? Merely to pay a courtesy visit before disappearing for another ten years or longer? His letter had provided no answers. They would have to wait and see—all his dependents. Christina found herself having to draw a steadying breath again.

  “I hope there will be some changes here,” Margaret said wistfully. “I hope—”

  But she was not destined to tell them what else it was she hoped. Lady Hannah had held up a staying hand and they all assumed a listening attitude. Margaret leaned forward and gripped the arms of her chair, Christina sat with her needle suspended above her work, and Lady Hannah kept her hand upraised. The rumble of wheels and the clopping of horses’ hooves on the cobbled terrace below were distinctly audible. And then there was the muffled sound of voices, one of them shouting out commands.

  “No!” Christina said sharply as Margaret jumped to her feet. “Please do not look out the window, Meg. Someone might glance up and see you. It would not be at all genteel.”

  Margaret pulled a face, but she slumped down into her chair again without argument. “We should at least go down,” she said, “and meet him in the hall. Oh, do let’s.”

  Christina had thought of it. But it would not be the right thing to do. It would be like meeting and greeting a guest to the house. He was not a guest. He was the master.

  “We will remain here,” she said, stiffening her spine, which was already straight as an arrow, and lowering her needle with a determinedly steady hand to her work. But she felt suddenly breathless, as if she had been running uphill or as if someone had sucked half the air from the room. She could hear the blood pounding like a drumbeat in her ears. He was the Earl of Wanstead, owner of Thornwood and everything and everyone within its gates. And he was no longer safely far away in Canada. He was here—entering Thornwood at this very moment. The feeling of total helplessness that had been assailing her ever since the arrival of his letter washed over her again.

  What a dreadful fate it was sometimes to be a woman. To be dependent. To have to sit and wait. To be helpless to order one's own life no matter how carefully and sensibly one tried to plan.

  “Quite right, dear,” Lady Hannah said. “I daresay he will wish to change out of his traveling clothes and make himself more presentable before paying his respects to us.”

  Margaret sighed audibly and began the finger-drumming again.

  She would simply not be able to bear it, Christina thought as she stitched doggedly on, if he chose to change his clothes before waiting on them in the drawing room. She would not be able to bear it if he delayed even one more minute downstairs. She might alarm her companions by starting to scream. She might—

  The double doors opened.

  Chapter 2

  THE Earl of Wanstead set out for Wiltshire on a gray and chilly December day that matched his mood. He was delayed early in the afternoon by the necessity of having a damaged wheel repaired, with the result that darkness had fallen by the time he arrived at Thornwood. His carriage drove along the deserted village street, once and still so familiar to him, turned to pass between the tall stone gateposts into the park—someone had opened the gates in advance— and proceeded up the long, winding driveway, its lamps beaming feebly ahead, and making looming, ominous shadows of the tall, dense trees of the forest to either side.

  Gloom descended also on the Earl of Wanstead—or rather a darker gloom. And he realized that the ball of something heavy that had sat low in his stomach all day was not his midday meal—it had preceded that reasonably appetizing repast. It was dread. A dread of going back into that other, long-dead life—or what he had thought was long-dead.

  But it was too late to change his mind now, he thought as the deeper rumbling of the wheels and sudden vibrations alerted him to the fact that his carriage was being drawn over the cobbled terrace before the house. The conveyance drew to a halt even as he thought it, and he looked out the window at the curving sweep of the horseshoe steps leading up to the main doors of the house.

  The doors opened as he was stepping down from the carriage. Thornwood Hall, he thought as he climbed the steps rather reluctantly and entered the great domed hall, which he had foolishly hoped might be warm. His home—no, merely his house. There were two people waiting to greet him. He had half expected to find all the servants formally lined up for his inspection. And he had more than half expected the ladies to be waiting there. It was a relief to see only the butler and the housekeeper—he remembered both from his uncle’s time.

  “My lord,” the butler said with pompous formality. “Welcome home. I trust you had a pleasant journey?”

  “A tedious one,” his lordship said, looking about him and shivering. But there was little point in asking why fires had not been lit in the two fireplaces. They would have made little impression on the chill of the great marble hall anyway. They never had.

  He nodded affably to the housekeeper and responded to her speech of welcome.

  “Where are the ladies?” he asked then.

  They were in the drawing room, of course, awaiting his coming. Her ladyship had ordered dinner to be held back until after his arrival, he was informed. They kept country hours at Thornwood. Dinner was already half an hour late. The butler imparted that piece of information with a deferential bow that nevertheless succeeded in putting his master subtly in the wrong.

  His lordship raised his eyebrows and regarded his butler in a silence that lasted just a little too long for the servant’s comfort.

  “It will be held back only a little longer,” the earl said. “Give me ten minutes in which to present myself to the ladies, Billings, and then have it announced, if you please.” He had been removing his greatcoat as he spoke and handing it with his hat and gloves and cane to a footman who had glided silently from the shadows. He caught the butler’s eyes on his traveling clothes, which were certainly not suitable wear for evening dinner at Thornwood Hall—or at any other gentleman’s establishment for that matter. He raised his eyebrows once more.

  “As you wish, my lord,” the butler said and then scurried off toward the grand staircase ahead of his lordship in order that he might be present to turn the handles of the drawing room doors, a feat of strength of which an earl was not expected to be capable. Life as an aristocrat frequently amused, frequently irritated the earl. It was a life not easy to adjust to.

  The feeling of dread returned to his lordship as he stepped inside the drawing room, though he despised himself for his cowardice. Actually he was glad the moment had come at last. Soon now it would be in the past and he could forget about it.

  There were three ladies in the room, two of whom were getting to their feet even as he entered and curtsying to him. But it was on the third that all his attention, all his strange feeling of dread, was focused, though he did not immediately look directly at her. He was looking at the other two and recognizing his aunt, his father’s sister, one of the few figures from his childhood whom he remembered with affection, though she had rarely visited Thornwood. He would not have recognized Margaret though the slender, pretty young lady curtsying to him must be she. She had been just a young child when he had left. She did have the remembered blond curls, though they had been crimped into a mass of ringlets now.

  The other lady remained seated. She was dressed all in black, he saw when he turned his eyes upon her as if with great physical effort, from her slippers to her wrists to her throat. Her dark hair was dressed smoothly over her ears, the rest of it invisible beneath a black lacy cap. Her oval Madonna’s face was pale and expressionless.

  A stranger. A woman without color or youth or vitality. Merely his predecessor’s widow, the Countess of Wanstead. And yet not a stranger. Her dark eyes met his for the merest moment before he turned his own away from them, and somehow the girl she had been was th
ere behind the severe facade—the vivid, bright, lovely girl whom he had hated for ten years and more.

  And hated still with an unexpected and disturbing vehemence.

  He included all three ladies in his bow. “My lady?” he said. “Ma’am—Aunt Hannah, is it not? And Margaret?”

  And then the Countess of Wanstead set aside her needlework, got to her feet with smooth grace, and curtsied deeply to him.

  “My lord,” she said in her rather low, melodic voice.

  She looked quite noticeably older. Thinner, paler—though both impressions might have been attributable to the unrelieved black in which she was clad. She had no welcoming smiles for him as the other two did—had he expected any? There was no sign of recognition, either, and no embarrassment. But why should there be? She looked proud and haughty and had demonstrated her superiority over the other two by remaining longer in her chair.

  This, then, was what he had dreaded so much that he had almost not come to Thornwood at all? Meeting her again after so long? Well, the moment was past, and really there had been nothing to it after all. She was essentially a stranger for whom he felt nothing at all.

  Except hatred.

  His entrance had not been preceded by the butler, as she had expected. He came in alone, though some unseen hand closed the doors behind him.

  Time stood still.

  He looked nothing like what she had been expecting. He must have shed his outdoor garments downstairs, but he still looked somewhat travel-worn in clothes that appeared to have been donned more for comfort than for elegance. He was not a particularly tall man. He was not portly, but he had lost the slenderness of youth. He was solidly built. His fair hair was cut short and in the candlelight appeared to be almost the same color as his bronzed face. His blue eyes looked light in comparison.

  He was not a particularly handsome man. And yet there was something about him—a certain air of assurance and command, perhaps—that would surely turn heads wherever he went, particularly female heads. There always had been something ... But he no longer had a good-humored face, that charisma of charm she remembered so painfully well. There was a hardness about his eyes and his jawline, a certain set to his mouth that suggested a ruthless determination always to have his own way. Perhaps it was a look a successful businessman acquired over ten years.