by Mary Balogh
The only question that remained was what did they intend to do?
Mother said you would be pleased, Lady Elwood had just said.
“Lady Hodges was quite right,” Elizabeth said, smiling warmly and returning her unshaken hand to her side. “Lady Elwood, do come and take a turn about the floor with me before the next set begins. We really ought to get to know each other since we are soon to be sisters-in-law.” She slid her arm through Lady Elwood’s, clearly taking her by surprise, and proceeded to lead the way in a stroll about the perimeter of the dance floor together.
It was a huge gamble, of course, for she was offering her future sister-in-law the perfect opportunity to do what she had come to do. Lady Elwood had but to create a scene, even something as slight as pulling her arm away and speaking a few cold and cutting words before returning to her husband’s side. The flames of scandal would leap higher than ever and engulf Elizabeth. But in taking the initiative, she had the advantage, at least for the moment.
They were close in age, Elizabeth knew. They were of a height too, though Blanche was more slender. She was also blond and classically beautiful, her carriage erect and elegant. She was wearing a blue gown that was in the very height of fashion. Ice blue, Elizabeth could not help thinking, to match the woman who wore it.
“Lady Hodges was unable to come too?” Elizabeth asked politely.
“She is dining with Lord Ede,” Lady Elwood said. “She considers balls generally insipid.”
Elizabeth knew the gentleman slightly. He was an older man, tall and elegant and still distinguished looking despite distinct signs of dissipation.
“I am pleased that you and Sir Nelson came anyway,” Elizabeth said. “I have never had the opportunity to meet you socially until now.”
“I have never felt any wish to meet you,” Lady Elwood said coldly, her arm stiff beneath Elizabeth’s as though she had begun to realize how she had been outmaneuvered.
Eyes were almost openly upon them and ears straining to hear them as they passed.
“After Wren married my brother,” Elizabeth said, “I must confess that I had no particular wish to meet you either. But circumstances have changed. I am about to marry Colin. I have a rather large, warmhearted family on both my mother’s side and my father’s. Colin dreams of having such a family of his own, albeit smaller. Colin and Wren are very close, and he has a good relationship with your sister, Ruby, and her family in Ireland, though he does not have a chance to see them as often as he would like. I know it grieves him that there is no closeness with his mother or with you and your husband. What grieves him necessarily grieves me. It would please me more than anything if the situation could be put right.”
She smiled at Cousin Susan and Alvin Cole, who were beaming encouragement at her as she passed them.
“It is he who left at the age of eighteen as soon as we had buried our father,” Lady Elwood said. “No one forced him to leave. Neither my mother nor I have sent anyone away.”
“Except Wren,” Elizabeth reminded her, perhaps unwisely. But she could not let the untruth pass unremarked upon.
“No,” Blanche said. “Rowena was taken away by our aunt. Or sent away by my father. Whichever you prefer. Just as it was my father who sent Colin away to school as soon as he was old enough to go and then to Oxford. That was not Mother’s doing. It was done as a deliberate cruelty to her.”
Elizabeth turned her head to look at Blanche. She knew almost nothing about Colin’s father. She had never asked and he had never volunteered any information. Was there any truth in that last remark?
The sets were beginning to form for the next dance, she could see. They had almost completed the circuit of the floor. Now what? So far she had averted disaster, but was it enough?
“You must love Colin,” she said, “to have gone to his rooms yesterday morning to warn him of the trick that was about to be played on him. With your help he was able to evade it and betroth himself to me instead. Is there any possibility of peace between us, Blanche? And may I call you that since we will soon be sisters-in-law? I care deeply for your brother. I am not your enemy. Or your mother’s.”
“What you are,” Blanche said, “is a clever opportunist. We all know—the whole of the polite world knows—why you are about to marry my brother, Lady Overfield. And you know nothing about my feelings for him or my reasons for calling upon him yesterday. My mother will never recognize you as his wife. If you marry him, she will make your life hell. It is no idle threat. My mother does that sort of thing superlatively well, and she does not like you. That is, in fact, a massive understatement.”
Her words were chilling. But Elizabeth continued to smile. Colin was still standing with Sir Nelson. Uncle Richard Radley and Cousin Sidney were with them.
“Blanche,” Colin said, reaching out a hand toward his sister as they drew near. “You have returned just in time to join the set with me. Elizabeth must join it with Nelson.”
Elizabeth was not sure exactly how the two of them had planned to cause trouble tonight. Probably they had intended very publicly to give her the cut direct and to say something suitably nasty in the hearing of a sufficient number of ball guests that everyone would be sure to hear of it within minutes. It would not have taken much. Her name had already been very thoroughly dragged through the mud. They had surely been hoping to make it impossible for her to continue with the betrothal or even to remain in London. But whatever their intention had been, it was thwarted, partly by Elizabeth’s presence of mind in linking her arm with Blanche’s and walking and conversing with her before Blanche could realize how she had been outmaneuvered, and partly by what followed, courtesy of the Westcotts and Radleys. No sooner had that particular set come to an end than Alvin Cole solicited Blanche’s hand for the next and Cousin Louise and Elizabeth’s mother and Aunt Lilian arrived together to converse with Sir Nelson while Elizabeth danced with Mr. Parmiter and Colin danced with Jessica.
Blanche Elwood did not have the skill of her mother, Elizabeth thought, and her husband seemed to lack sufficient interest to take any initiative. At the end of that set, they left the ball. Elizabeth watched them go from her mother’s side and wondered how their appearance here tonight would be interpreted. As a stamp of approval upon Colin’s marriage, perhaps, acting on behalf of his mother? Quite the opposite of what they had intended, in fact?
“Well,” her mother said, “that was interesting. Did they come to wish you well, Lizzie? But poor Wren.”
Wren had stayed well away from her sister. The appearance of the Elwoods in the ballroom must indeed have been distressing for her. She approached now with Alexander. She was smiling.
“Did they come to make trouble?” she asked. “If they did, you handled the situation superbly, Elizabeth. So did Colin. Let us hope they will cause no further trouble. You two have had enough unpleasantness to last a lifetime. Yet you bear up so well beneath it all.”
“I am quite determined,” Elizabeth assured her, “to have some sort of amicable relationship with your sister, Wren, and with your mother too. I must. For Colin’s sake, since his position as head of the family and owner of the homes where your mother lives compels him to try to make peace with them. But I do understand how disloyal that forces us to be to you. Is there any possible way—”
But she was interrupted by a touch on her shoulder, and she turned to find a gentleman of her acquaintance standing there.
“Lady Overfield,” he said. “Is it too much to hope that you are free to dance the next set with me?”
“Thank you,” she said. “I am, and I would be delighted.”
Colin, she saw, was leading a young lady whose name she could not recall onto the floor.
Could they relax now? Was the worst over?
Would the evening never end?
* * *
• • •
Time must have slowed, Colin thought as the b
all proceeded. He had never known such a long evening. It had been worth coming, however. They had used the endless time productively. Elizabeth had employed her poise and charm to show people that the caricature of Lady Overfield with which they had been presented during the past few days was nothing but nonsense. She had walked and danced and conversed and smiled and at no point clung to her family, as she might have been forgiven for doing. And he had been awed at the way she had handled Blanche and averted what might well have spelled disaster for her return to society.
He had spent the evening mingling with as many fellow guests as possible, shamelessly charming the ladies and chatting with the men. When some of his friends expressed amazement over this morning’s announcement, he laughed and told them he had been trying since Christmas to persuade Lady Overfield to marry him and had finally succeeded. It was very nearly the truth. He added that he was the most fortunate of men, and that really was the truth.
Long before a waltz was announced, however, depression threatened to sneak in under his guard. His mother had tried to trap him into a marriage to which he had quite explicitly not consented merely because she had wanted Miss Dunmore as her daughter-in-law and minion. Having failed at that she had sent Blanche and Nelson this evening to destroy the betrothal he had chosen and publicly announced this morning. It did not matter to her that she could do it only by destroying Elizabeth, who had done nothing to deserve such cruel treatment. His mother would not approve of Elizabeth because she was thirty-five years old and not beautiful in the only sense that was important to her, and because she must sense that she could not dominate Elizabeth as she would have been able to do with Miss Dunmore or most of the young girls who were currently in search of husbands. And Blanche, though for reasons of her own she had defied their mother yesterday, had come to do her bidding tonight.
They were his mother and his sister.
He thought about Mrs. Westcott and Alexander—Elizabeth’s mother and sibling. But the comparisons—or, rather, the contrasts—were too painful to dwell upon.
He ought perhaps to have encouraged Elizabeth to withdraw to Riddings, her home in Kent, until the scandal had blown over, as it inevitably would as soon as his mother had believed she had won and did not need to expend any more energy on finding truths and half-truths from her past with which to blacken her name. Perhaps he had done Elizabeth no favor by persuading her to marry him.
Perhaps it had been selfish of him.
One thing he knew for certain. He was going to call upon his mother tomorrow and have a proper confrontation with her. She was difficult, almost impossible to deal with, as everyone who had ever crossed her path had discovered. She always had her own way. But it could be allowed to happen no longer. And merely turning his back upon her and ignoring her existence would no longer serve either. Tomorrow he would assert himself once and for all and . . . Well, his mind could not quite grasp what might be accomplished.
He was just going to do it. There was no alternative.
He was bowing to Elizabeth then as couples made their way onto the floor. “This is my waltz, I believe, Lady Overfield,” he said.
She smiled at him in that twinkling way that always warmed him from his head to his toes and set her hand on the back of his. “I believe it is, Lord Hodges,” she said.
Even now, of course, they could not relax. For there would surely be scarcely a person in the ballroom who would not be remembering what had happened during the waltz in Netherby’s ballroom less than a week ago. Was it possible that had happened so recently? It felt like forever ago.
They faced each other on the floor, and he took her in his arms when the music was about to begin.
“I really never expected to be notorious again,” she said with a sigh.
Again. That broke his heart.
“This is why we came tonight,” he reminded her. “To face the ton at one of the grand squeezes so that afterward we can put all the nonsense behind us. So that you can. But in order to complete the plan we must waltz.”
So the ton could see exactly how they had looked just before scandal broke. So they could see how trivial and ridiculous it had all been.
The music began and he led her into the steps of the waltz, his eyes upon hers. He twirled her around one corner of the ballroom floor. She was gazing back at him and noticed he wasn’t smiling.
“What is it?” she asked.
He raised his eyebrows.
“You are not smiling,” she said.
Ah.
“With so many eyes upon us,” he told her, “I am counting steps for fear of tripping over your feet or my own.”
Her eyes laughed. His heart warmed and his feet somehow danced of their own volition, and they waltzed on, their eyes still upon each other.
And somehow the music and the dance wove their magic and seeped into every pore of his body and soothed his soul, while the colors of flowers and ball gowns and the light of innumerable candles swirled about the periphery of his awareness along with the hum of conversation and laughter. And he forgot for a few blessed minutes that they were on display, their every look and move food for speculation and possible censure.
Her cheeks were flushed and her lips slightly parted. Her eyes were dreamy. And she looked . . . Ah, Elizabeth.
“May I tell you something?” he asked her, and she raised her eyebrows. “You looked quite gorgeous in your gold and bronze gown last week with your elaborate hairstyle. But in your turquoise tonight with your hair dressed more simply, you are . . . Elizabeth.”
And what sort of asinine comment was that?
Her eyes smiled and then laughed again. “Is that a compliment?” she asked.
“I used the word gorgeous of the other gown,” he said, “and thus deprived myself of a greater superlative.”
The laughter spread to her whole face.
“So I used the word Elizabeth,” he said. “A superlative to outdo all superlatives.”
Laughter bubbled over. “Oh, well done,” she said. “Very well done.”
“Language is the damnedest thing,” he told her. “It lets one down just when one needs it most.”
“But it did not let you down this time,” she assured him. “I might have been pleased if you had used other superlatives like stunning or glorious or incomparable. But I like best of all being Elizabeth.”
“Incomparable, yes,” he said. “I did not think of that one. But I can never forget that you are Elizabeth.” He grinned at her and then laughed. “You must be wondering if this is the quality of conversation you may expect of me for the next few decades.”
“Is it?” she asked him, widening her eyes.
“Well,” he said, “you will always be Elizabeth, you know.”
“And you will be saying it for the next few decades,” she said softly.
“Yes,” he said, his eyes holding hers.
She smiled again and they waltzed on in a world that encompassed only the two of them.
The music ended far too soon. They stopped dancing and gazed at each other. And because there was a certain degree of familiarity in the moment, he was aware again of the attention that was still focused upon them from all parts of the ballroom. He moved his head a little closer to hers and was very tempted to kiss her. She made no move to pull away from him.
“Let us show everyone that we did not kiss, shall we?” he asked.
“Yes.” And there was laughter in her face again and color in her cheeks and a twinkle in her eyes.
“Allow me,” he said, stepping back from her and extending one hand while he made her a courtly bow, “to escort you back to your mother’s side.”
“Thank you.” She set her hand on the back of his.
And quite suddenly and unexpectedly he wanted her. Good God, he wanted her.
Nineteen
Elizabeth waited until almost noon the next
day before leaving the house, though it was irksome to have to wait so long. She was angry, a rare emotion for her. She was angry for herself, as who would not be? But even more she was angry for Colin. And for her family on both sides, all of whose members were using up their time here in town on her behalf, when they ought to be relaxing and enjoying themselves.
It simply was not fair. And it must not be allowed to continue. It would not be.
“No,” she said to Wren when her sister-in-law offered to accompany her on her outing, though she had been deliberately vague about her purpose and destination. “No, thank you, Wren. It is just a quick errand. I will be back in no time.”
“No,” she said when her mother asked if she was at least going to take her maid with her. “No, it is quite unnecessary. I am a grown woman, Mama, and have been for many years. I do not need a chaperon dogging my heels wherever I go.”
She had probably offended both of them, she thought as the carriage made its way along the street. It was unlike her to be so abrupt and ungracious. Both had looked at her with a slight frown, as though they would like to say something more but dared not. It was unlike her to come anywhere near to snapping. That Elizabeth had been left behind a long time ago.
They had all agreed at the breakfast table, Elizabeth included, that the ball had gone very well indeed. The Ormsbridges had received them with a particularly warm welcome and most of their guests either had been happy to see them from the start or else had thawed during the course of the evening. There had been a few who had not, of course, most notably Lady Dunmore and the rather large group of followers she had gathered about her and her daughter, but that was at least understandable and they had not made any sort of unpleasant scene. The unexpected appearance of Sir Nelson and Lady Elwood had surely been a good thing, even if the pair of them seemed lacking in obvious charm and had surely not smiled even once.