Someone to Trust

by Mary Balogh

  Then she remembered that he had accused her of driving Desmond to drink with her frivolous behavior.

  “Are you afraid you have acted a bit impulsively?” Colin asked.

  “By agreeing to marry you?” she said. “No, indeed. Even if I had not done so, I would not go back to him. I do feel sorry, though, that he did something he now regrets but cannot reverse. He is not an evil man.” But there had been the spite as well as the jealousy. And apparently he had been saying derogatory things about her at White’s the morning after the ball. She really had never known him at all, had she? A disturbing thought when she had had such a long acquaintance with him.

  “Do you believe,” Colin asked her, “that he would never be jealous again if he were given a second chance?”

  “Fortunately,” she said, “I will never know.” But she did know. She closed her eyes suddenly and remembered Desmond and how time and again he had sworn to her that he would stop drinking, that he would never again abuse her either verbally or physically. People did not change so easily. “But I will write back, if you have no objection. I would rather there be no lasting hostility between us.”

  “If I have no objection?” He stood looking down at her, frowning. “Listen to yourself, Elizabeth. If I had an objection, I would be no different from him. Has no man ever really trusted you?”

  “What does trust have to do with it?” she asked.

  “If you were to write to him without my knowledge and I found out later,” he said, “would I wonder what you had said to him? What you had said about me? Would I think that if you had gone behind my back on that, you might do it with bigger things? Would I begin to be suspicious of you and spy on you and demand obedience and total disclosure? That would be no marriage, Elizabeth. There would be no trust there. You may write to Codaire or not. It is none of my business. It is yours. You do not ever need to ask me to whom you may write. Or with whom you may waltz. Or converse. Or laugh. You are going to be my wife, not my possession.”

  He was angry, she could see. She reached out a hand to rub along one of his folded arms. “You make me understand why I said yes to you yesterday,” she said. “I shall write to him and accept his apology.”

  He unfolded his arms and leaned down to kiss her briefly on the lips again.

  “Tell me,” he said. “Do you plan to hide away until our wedding?”

  “I do not believe I will be allowed to,” she said with a laugh. “Cousin Eugenia and Matilda are going to host an afternoon tea, as is Aunt Lilian. There is the suggestion of an evening at the theater with Anna and Avery and Wren and Alex. And possibly an evening at Vauxhall Gardens with Cousin Louise and Jessica and a party they will put together. There may be a soiree at Cousin Mildred and Thomas’s. There will doubtless be more ways devised for dragging me out to face a carefully selected audience. In the meanwhile I daresay I shall go shopping and looking over a gallery or two with whoever wishes to accompany me, preferably with someone who does not desperately believe that I need protection.”

  “I love to see your eyes twinkle,” he said. “You have lovely eyes, Elizabeth.”

  “But only when they twinkle?” She could feel herself blushing.

  “You need to do something far bolder than gazing at paintings in some gallery,” he said, “or taking tea with a group of matrons or sipping wine at a soiree. We need a ball to attend.”

  “Oh, I think not,” she said hastily. “I do not feel too kindly about balls at the moment.”

  “I seem to remember accepting an invitation to a certain ball,” he said. “For this evening, in fact. Given by the Ormsbridges. They married last summer after she had had a successful debut Season. There is no title in Ormsbridge’s family, but he is enormously wealthy and of impeccable lineage. He is also a good fellow and a friend of mine since our days at Oxford. It is generally agreed that Mrs. Ormsbridge did brilliantly well for herself. It is his private opinion that he did even better for himself. They have organized a lavish ball, I understand, to show the world just how well they both did. I danced with the lady a few times last year and found her delightful and charming. Did you accept your invitation? I daresay you received one. Everyone did.”

  “Colin,” she said, “you cannot possibly be suggesting that we attend it. Tonight?”

  “Why not?” he asked. “Apart from the fact that you are not feeling too kindly about balls at the moment, that is.”

  “Because,” she said.

  “Hmm.” He frowned in apparent thought. “Because is not a reason. Try again.”

  “Colin!” She looked at him in exasperation. “Just consider how the last ball ended. It was less than a week ago.”

  “Have you met Mrs. Ormsbridge?” he asked her. “Do you like her?”

  “I have no personal acquaintance with her,” she said, “though I recall that she was one of Jessica’s friends last year when they made their debut together. I remember her as a pleasant, unaffected girl. I have seen her a few times this year. She seems happy.”

  “Make her happier, then,” he said. “Make her ball the most successful, most talked about of the Season. It is bound to be just that if we attend, you know. We will be the sensation of the hour—probably of the week. Maybe of the month. After this morning’s announcement, the ton will be agog for their first sight of us together as a betrothed couple.”

  “Oh dear,” she said, and bit her lower lip before laughing despite herself. “I am very much afraid you are right.”

  “I often am,” he said agreeably, and grinned down at her. “Are you going to attempt to make yourself respectable again by attending teas and soirees? Or are you going to face the music and dance to it?”

  “Oh dear,” she said again, and stared at him. And she had a sudden memory of Viola when she had come here last year for Alex’s wedding and did not want to be seen by the ton. It had seemed too soon to her after her marriage to Cousin Humphrey had been exposed as bigamous. And Wren did not want to be seen by the ton either because she had worn a veil almost all her life and had only recently begun to leave it off in private. But the two of them had challenged each other and went off to the theater together one evening, brazen and unveiled. What they could do, she could surely do.

  “I will write to Mrs. Ormsbridge to ask if she would prefer that I stay away,” she said. “The last thing I would want to do is ruin her ball.”

  His eyes were smiling into hers and he was looking despicably handsome.

  “This is madness,” she added.

  “Will you reserve the first waltz for me?” he asked.

  Seventeen

  Lady Hodges’s eyes were glittering with gaiety by the time the last of her guests had taken their leave. It had been a merry afternoon during which she had entertained numerous persons, including several young ladies whose mothers knew no better than to allow them to attend one of her afternoon teas without the proper chaperonage, and several young gentlemen who came to pay homage to the goddess and flirt outrageously with her and a little more suavely with the other ladies. Conversation had been lively and had involved much laughter from the men and blushing and tittering from the ladies. A young poet, whose hair was too long and too wild and whose coat was almost threadbare at the elbows while his shirt points wilted from too little starch, had read aloud a sonnet to the curl that brushed my lady’s cheek, claiming afterward that he had composed it upon the spot.

  “I do not doubt it,” Lord Ede had muttered, opening his snuffbox and examining its contents.

  “Be kind, Ede,” Lady Hodges had replied in her sweet voice, offering the back of her hand to the poet as a special favor and smiling graciously upon him.

  She had participated in the conversation, moving among her guests, smiled sweetly upon the blushing young ladies and archly at the gentlemen who flirted with them. She had laughed lightly and preened herself and protested at all the compliments and flattery and
protestations of adoration that were poured upon her. She had slapped a fan across the wrist of one gentleman when he recoiled and expressed astonishment after it was revealed to him that Blanche, Lady Elwood was my lady’s daughter, not her elder sister, as he had assumed.

  “You will apologize immediately to Lady Elwood for the insult,” she had told him. “Though everyone makes the same mistake, or pretends to, when they meet her for the first time. Everyone is a flatterer. Come, admit she is lovely.”

  Lady Hodges sank into her chair when she was at last alone—apart, that was, from her usual retinue. Blanche sat close to her while Sir Nelson Elwood, who had been absent through much of the party, stood behind her chair. Lord Ede was over by one of the windows, though he could not see out since the pink curtains that covered them and filtered a dim and flattering light into the room were not on any account to be touched. Four young men, who did not live at the house and were not officially servants, though they were not considered guests either, hovered about her chair, one taking charge of her peacock fan, another holding a lace-edged handkerchief that she might conceivably need, a third fetching her a glass of lemonade, and the fourth merely hovering because there was nothing much else to do for the moment.

  The lady’s gaiety was brittle. All the occupants recognized that and awaited the outburst of sweetness that must inevitably follow.

  “You read the notice of my son’s betrothal in the morning papers, I daresay, Ede?” she asked.

  But it was a rhetorical question. He could hardly not know about it. Someone had mentioned it earlier and congratulated Lady Hodges. She had smiled dazzlingly upon the speaker, called him kind, and tapped him on the cheek with her closed fan. Any possibility that someone else might join him in his congratulations had died when the other guests had noted the red mark left behind on the unfortunate gentleman’s cheek.

  “I did,” Lord Ede said. “She is a lady to be reckoned with. She did not flee to the country as almost any other lady would have done.”

  “I am curious,” she said. “Why is he betrothed to the widow instead of to Miss Dunmore?”

  “Clearly someone talked who had no business talking,” he said.

  “Perhaps,” she said, “it was you. Perhaps you were careless.”

  “I am never careless,” he informed her. “Perhaps you have met your match in the widow.”

  She looked long and hard at him while the one young gentleman fanned her face. “We shall see,” she said. “How many years older than Colin is she?”

  “At least ten years, my lady,” the hoverer with nothing else to do said.

  She transferred her gaze to him. “You must be mistaken,” she said sweetly. “I would have guessed at least twenty.”

  “At least that much, my lady,” he said.

  “The ton really ought to be made aware that it was she who put that notice in the papers,” she said. “Everyone ought to be able to trust that what the papers tell them is true and accurate. She is clever. It is how widows of no beauty acquire second husbands, I suppose. It is a little pathetic, is it not? But very dishonest. Dishonesty is something I cannot bear. My poor dear Colin. Could he possibly have known what today would bring him?”

  Lord Ede looked at her, one cynical eyebrow raised. “He has been waltzing with her at balls,” he said. “He was waltzing and laughing with her during the ball that put an end to her betrothal. And he was kissing her in Hyde Park the following afternoon.”

  “She is very clever,” she said. “I will give her her due on that. Lady Dunmore, on the other hand, is very stupid and ill-bred, and I am happier than I can say that Colin will not be marrying her daughter. She is an insipid girl, would you not say, Ede? Her beauty is much overrated.”

  “I daresay Lady Dunmore was upset when she wrote you that letter,” he said.

  “And no wonder,” she said, “when she was expecting to see in the paper this morning that her daughter—her second daughter, I might add—had netted the greatest matrimonial prize of the Season. She was presumptuous. And to blame me, Ede, was the outside of enough. I have never said anything to encourage her ambitions. Quite the contrary.”

  Lord Ede was accustomed to her blatant lies and scarcely blinked. So too apparently were the other occupants of the room, who did not blink at all.

  “My dearest Colin is only betrothed to the dowdy widow,” she said. “They are not married yet. I wonder . . .”

  The hoverer with the handkerchief cleared his throat and she turned her attention upon him.

  “It is said, my lady,” he told her, “that Lord Hodges is a friend of Mr. Ormsbridge and has accepted his invitation to the Ormsbridge ball this evening. It is said that it will be one of the grand squeezes of the Season. It would seem possible, even probable, that he would take his newly betrothed with him.”

  “Oh, surely not, my lady,” the hoverer who had fetched the lemonade said, sounding shocked. “Not when the lady is in such utter disgrace with the ton.”

  “I believe,” Lord Ede said, sounding faintly amused, “the lady has backbone.”

  “Indeed?” Lady Hodges said. “She has my compliments. But will she make such a bold move? And will Lady Dunmore and Miss Lydia Dunmore attend the ball too? It would seem more than likely when the Season is already well advanced and the poor girl has no suitor of any significance.” She turned her head to contemplate her daughter, who was sitting silently nearby.

  “Lady Overfield may prove a worthy opponent,” Lord Ede said, drawing his snuffbox from his pocket again and flicking open the lid with his thumb. “So may Hodges.”

  “He is merely being stubborn,” she said with a dismissive wave of one hand. “He is doing this to defy me, the foolish boy—if, that is, he knew about this morning’s announcement in advance. He knows he has always been my favorite and so feels the need to assert his independence of me even if that means doing something as unutterably rash as affiancing himself to a woman twenty years his senior. At least twenty years. He will come to heel. He loves me.”

  He made her a mocking bow as he took a pinch of snuff and sniffed it up each nostril.

  Lady Hodges was looking again at her daughter, who had just been informed that she was not her mother’s favorite.

  “Blanche and Elwood, my dears,” she said, “you must go to a ball tonight. The outing will do you good.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Wren and Alexander, returning from their walk in the park with the baby, thought her mad. And then Wren rushed at her and hugged her tightly and declared that it was just what she might have expected of Elizabeth.

  “I have never known anyone more courageous,” she declared, forgetting the enormous courage that had taken her last year from being a lifelong hermit to becoming the socially active Countess of Riverdale.

  Alexander still thought her mad and blamed Colin for making such a reckless suggestion.

  Elizabeth’s mother, returning from her outing with Aunt Lilian, was aghast, but then caught her daughter up in a hug even tighter than Wren’s had been.

  “It is just the sort of thing you would do,” she said. “Foolish, foolish Lizzie. We must let the family know.”

  Aunt Lilian nodded. “Richard and I did not intend to go even though we accepted our invitation,” she said. “I must return home, Althea, to let him know we will be going after all. I am not sure about Susan and Alvin or Sidney, but I shall send notes around to them without any delay.”

  “It is still madness,” Alexander said. “Even the full force of our two families may not be sufficient to save you from deep humiliation, Lizzie. Colin ought to have known better. I suppose it was his suggestion.”

  “Yes,” she said, smiling at him. “And he held my arm behind my back and twisted it until I said yes.”

  He tutted and shook his head. “What did I do to deserve such a headstrong sister?” he muttered.
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  “Or such a reckless brother-in-law?” Wren asked ominously.

  He sighed and shook his head.

  Aunt Lilian left without further ado, and Elizabeth’s mother disappeared into the morning room to write a few hasty letters.

  She could expect a small army of supporters this evening, then, Elizabeth thought. That did not stop her from breaking out in a cold sweat several times during the afternoon, however, even after she received a short but warm and gracious note from Mrs. Ormsbridge in answer to her own, assuring her that she would indeed be welcome at tonight’s ball.

  She decided upon her turquoise evening gown for the occasion. It was three years old and everything about it spoke of simplicity as opposed to high fashion. The waistline was fashionably high, it was true, and the line of the skirt fashionably slender. The neckline was low enough to be in the mode, though not low enough to draw attention. But there was no scalloping or fancy trim or embroidery at the hem or about the edges of the short sleeves. Its appeal, she had always thought, lay in the expert cut. It hugged her curves to below the bosom and then swirled about her legs and hips in slim folds as she moved. The fabric caught candlelight without exactly shimmering. Her maid dressed her hair high with more curls than she wore in the daytime but not many more, and no ringlets or fussy tendrils to wave over her temples and neck.

  She was satisfied with her appearance, even though her palms felt clammy as she brushed them over the skirt. One of her fears for tonight was that everyone who looked at her—and she was quite sure that everyone would—would be searching for signs that she was trying to appear younger than she was. She was thirty-five years old and was content to look every one of those years. Not more, though. She had been just as careful to avoid appearing in any way dowdy.

  Oh, how could she think of her appearance as one of her fears as though there were only two or three more? There were so many, she could write a book. For several days now she had been painted as the blackest, most depraved of villains. And now, worst of all, she had snared the Season’s most eligible bachelor, a gentleman who was rich and charming and handsome beyond words, and years her junior. Pins and needles were added to the clamminess of her hands. She could not seem to inhale fast enough to keep up with the beating of her heart.