by Mary Balogh
Her hand touched his shoulder and she was dancing with him, her eyes locked on his.
“How dare you,” she said.
“I’ll explain to you how I dare,” he said. “But not within earshot of everyone who dances by us, Elizabeth, and not in view of anyone who has the skill to read our lips or our expressions. Somewhere private.”
“You have to be joking or insane,” she said. “Do you know what will happen to you with just one word from me?”
“Why have you not yet spoken that word?” he asked. “I understood from the message you left with Nancy that your father would have me arrested if I dared show my face in London. Martin said much the same thing. I showed my face here several days ago yet am still a free man. You did not even tell your father, did you?”
“Because I did not think you would dare follow me here,” she said.
“Didn’t you?” he said. “You don’t know me very well, then, Elizabeth, do you? But then you never did.”
“I want you to leave immediately,” she said. “Now, even before the end of the set.”
“I shall leave when I am ready to leave,” he said. “That will be after you and I have had a private talk.”
“You must be mad if you think I will talk privately with you,” she said.
“Very well, then,” he said, “we will talk publicly here. But I warn you, Elizabeth, that we are likely to be quarreling rather more vehemently than we are doing now. Are you sure you want that witnessed by such a large audience? It does not matter to me.”
“I am here with my betrothed,” she said, and there was a whiteness about her mouth that proclaimed her anger. “We will be marrying this summer. It would not be at all the thing for me to go off somewhere private with another gentleman.”
“Especially when that gentleman is your ex-husband?” he said.
“And the man who abducted me from my own wedding and then used me most shamefully,” she said.
“The readers of lips are doubtless rubbing their hands in glee,” he said. “Your father is not the only one to have been kept in the dark, is he? I will wager that you have not told Poole who I was or how we spent those weeks. Or Aston either. Surely either one of them or both would have slapped a glove in my face at the very least by now. I think it is time for that private talk, don’t you?”
She fixed her eyes on bis waistcoat for a while and said nothing. “Everyone will see us go,” she said. “Do you not realize what that will do to my reputation when it is already on shaky ground? Do you not understand what an ordeal this evening is to me even without this? It is my first appearance in public since—”
“Since your private idyll with me,” he said. “No, don’t give vent to your fury. Look, we are almost at the doors. There must be some private room in the house, surely. We will find it, Elizabeth.”
“If you are planning to abduct me again,” she said, her voice shaking slightly, “you will not find me such a docile prisoner. Not as long as I have my memory.”
“I want to talk with you,” he said, setting his hand at the small of her back when they reached the doors and guiding her through them. He looked about him grimly. If there was one private corner in this sad squeeze of a ton entertainment, it would be a minor miracle. “Downstairs. Perhaps there is a room there that has not been opened up for public use.”
She did not resist the pressure of his hand.
Chapter 16
“WHAT the devil?” John said. He looked at the woman in his arms and at Elizabeth and her partner already dancing away from them. He looked back at his new partner. “Nancy? It really is you, isn’t it?”
“I am so sorry,” she said. “This was not my idea.” She wondered if she would be able to continue dancing or if she would suddenly give in to panic and run. His hand was warm against her back. She had not noticed the heat of Christopher’s hand.
“That is Atwell with Elizabeth?” he asked. “Or Trevelyan. Did someone tell me that your father had passed away?”
“Last year,” she said. She did not believe she had ever felt quite so humiliated. She had forgotten how his eyes seemed always to smile and how his mouth seemed to curve upward at the corners. She had forgotten the way his fair hair curled against his neck. There was a long scar along his jaw that had not been there before. She had never before seen him in uniform. She felt as if she might suffocate.
“He is back, then,” he said. “Poor devil, he should not have gone in the first place. He should have stayed and brazened it out. This is going to give the tabbies enough to talk about to last a month. Did she know he was back? She has not said anything to me.”
Nancy said nothing. And then his eyes returned to her and roamed over her face and her dark hair smoothed back from her face and dressed in ringlets at the back of her head, and down over her almost bare shoulders and the dark green silk gown that had been finished and delivered to the Pulteney only that afternoon.
“Nancy,” he said, smiling at her, “I believe I told you once that I would never see anyone more lovely than you. Romantic nonsense, you might have thought. But now I know I was right. Where is your husband? Point him out to me so that I can challenge him to a duel.”
“I am not married,” she said.
“You are not?” He looked at her in some surprise. “Then you must have been beating suitors away with a club. I find the thought consoling. I thought perhaps it was just me. You were the first woman I ever offered for, you know. And the only one too. Though I did not exactly offer, did I? I asked you without ever thinking of speaking with your father first. For very pride’s sake I was glad of that after you had said no and fled home the next day. Was I so very terrifying?”
He was smiling and his tone was light, but he was looking searchingly into her eyes.
“No.” She shook her head. “I was just homesick as I said at the time.”
“Well,” he said, “I believe I even shed some tears over you, Nancy. You are in town for the Season? Was it the victory celebrations that drew you? The Prince of Wales is going to milk this victory for all it is worth, I do believe.”
“Yes,” she said, grasping at the explanation he had suggested, “that is why we came. We are at the Pulteney.” She thought of all the tears she had shed—for days and weeks and even months. Secret tears, on the beach and far down the valley. She had not thought that she could ever reconcile her mind to having to live inside her soiled body for perhaps years and years. But she had had no choice beyond suicide. She had even considered that briefly.
He raised his gaze from her then and looked about the ballroom. “Where did they go?” he said more to himself than to her. “But she will be safe with your brother, of course. He always worshiped her, didn’t he, even though it turned out that he had other interests and responsibilities too. I am just a little nervous when she is not in sight. She was kidnapped less than a month ago and disappeared for several weeks. Had you heard? I believe it is the latest on dit.”
“No,” Nancy said, “I did not know.”
“The music will be at an end soon,” he said quietly, returning his eyes to her. “You cannot wait to get away from me, can you, Nancy?”
She had not expected that he would sense her terror. His hands seemed to hold her prisoner even though they were just lightly in waltz position. His body heat and the smell of his cologne were making it difficult for her to breathe. She was fighting panic and had thought she was succeeding rather well. The panic had taken her a little by surprise. She had danced with other gentlemen and this had never happened. Not after the first year or so anyway. But it was happening now.
“You do not like men at all, do you?” he said.
Her eyes widened in shock as the implication of his words hit her. “Oh, no,” she said, “it is not that. That is not it at all. I am not like that.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “It really is none of my business why you have not married. After all, I am not married, am I, and I am only a few years older than you. Perhaps mal
e pride sets us men sometimes to inventing satisfactory reasons for a lady’s rejection. The music is ending at last. Doubtless we will meet again in the course of the next few weeks.”
“Yes,” she said. But his words, she knew, were a polite way of saying good-bye. If they saw each other at other entertainments, they would merely nod distantly to each other. She was safe.
She felt a sudden longing for Penhallow. She could remember falling as quickly and as deeply in love with John as Christopher had with Elizabeth.
“Thank you,” she said when they had reached the edge of the dance floor. He hesitated, realizing that she had no one to return to, then bowed to her and made off across the room. There was no sign of either her brother or Elizabeth.
Martin had been feeling sorry that he had warned Trevelyan not to follow Elizabeth to London. At the time, of course, he had thought that he was taking her to Kingston. But when she had decided to go to London instead, Martin had seen that there might have been some advantage to be gained from Trevelyan’s following her there.
His surprise, therefore, when he suddenly spotted Christopher in Lady Drummond’s ballroom with his sister and actually taking Elizabeth from John was not altogether unpleasant. Something could surely be made of the situation. The easiest course would be to denounce Trevelyan and watch Elizabeth destroyed with him in the ensuing scandal. But she would never forgive him for doing that—nor would several other people.
No, Martin thought, watching the two of them disappear from the room after a few minutes, patience had always been one of his stronger points. He would wait and see how the situation could be manipulated to his own advantage. With a little patience he could rescue Elizabeth from all the men who flocked to her and cared not one damn about her deep down. And then he could keep her safe for the rest of her life.
“Was that who I thought it was?” he muttered, frowning, so that Lord Poole, who had been talking to someone on his other side, turned to look at him. “No, impossible.”
“Who were you looking at?” Lord Poole asked, glancing about him.
“No, no,” Martin said, shaking his head. “He took Lizzie out of the ballroom for some air. For one moment I thought it was Trevelyan. Foolish, eh? He has been in Canada for years.”
“Trevelyan?” Lord Poole frowned. “She was dancing this set with Aston. She must have been feeling faint. It is devilish hot in here.”
“But John is dancing with someone else,” Martin said. “By Jove, do you see who it is?”
Lord Poole looked. “I've never seen the woman before,” he said.
“Lady Nancy Atwell,” Martin said, amazement in his voice. “Trevelyan’s sister. Can I have been right, Poole? Would he dare?”
He had the satisfaction of seeing Lord Poole’s jaw tense and his nostrils flare.
There were a few rooms downstairs that were not in use for the ball. Christopher guided Elizabeth to one of them and opened the door despite the dubious look cast on him by a footman, who did not like openly to object. It seemed like a small reception room. There was a branch of lit candles on the mantelpiece despite the fact that the room had been closed to public use.
Elizabeth crossed the room to the fireplace and stared down at the unlit coals for a while, collecting herself. Christopher closed the door behind them and stood with his back against it, his arms crossed over his chest. She turned eventually to look at him.
“Make it brief,” she said. “I wish to return to the ballroom and my betrothed.” It felt strange to be seeing him again with her memory intact. He looked different. It was hard to believe that for those weeks at Penhallow she had trusted him, believed that she knew him. Now he looked grim, unknowable.
“What is her name?” he asked.
It was the last thing she had expected him to say. But she did not misunderstand him or pretend to do so. She remembered what she had said to Nancy before she left Penhallow, and was still not sure whether she had spoken deliberately or whether it had been a slip of the tongue. Without consciously doing so had she wanted him to know? Had she always wanted him to know?
“Christina,” she said.
“Christina.” He regarded her silently for a few uncomfortable moments. “That must not have been a popular choice with dear Papa. He must have been thankful that it was not a son and could not therefore be called Christopher.”
“She was my baby,” she said. “I named her what I wanted.”
“She was our baby,” he said quietly.
“I’m sorry,” she said, stung. “I could not consult you. You had taken yourself off to Canada and had made it clear that you were never coming back.”
“You had left me, if you will remember,” he said, “and had let me know in no uncertain terms that you were not prepared to see me again. Your father was admirably firm about enforcing that. Do you blame me for leaving? You would not have believed me even if I had found a way to talk with you again. There are only so many ways of protesting one’s innocence.”
“Innocence!” she said scornfully.
“Even if I had been guilty,” he said, “the crime hardly merited the hysterical reaction it got, Elizabeth. Most of the respectable married men in this city have mistresses, and many of them have children too. If all adulterers were divorced, there would be scarcely any marriages left.”
“You have shifted ground,” she said. “Now you are trying to convince me that what you did was not so bad after all. I do not care about other men and their way of life, Christopher. I will not stand for such behavior in any man who is to be my husband. I would rather live with the stigma of being a divorced woman.”
And yet she had thought she would die—she had wanted to die—when her father had insisted on the divorce. She had scarcely known what divorce was until he had explained it to her. And foolishly, until that time she had expected that someone would come along to wave a magic wand and make all well again with her marriage.
Christopher looked at her broodingly for a while. “It is rather ironic,” he said, “that you married that rare phenomenon, a male virgin, and yet believed three months later that he had been conducting a long-term affair since his Oxford days and had fathered a year-old child.”
“I saw you with her,” she said. “Do you forget that?”
“Hardly,” he said. “But you will not believe, will you, that the same malicious person—whoever he or she may be—who sent you to that house had also sent me. We were a couple of lambs to the slaughter, Elizabeth. A couple of foolish innocents.”
She had so wanted to believe that at the time. But he had been in embrace with the woman, and had she been half naked. His coat had been almost off already. Besides, who would have done such a thing to them? It did not make sense. No one had hated them enough to try to break up their marriage. But oh, how she had wanted to be convinced. How she had wanted him to break through to her when Papa had guarded her far more carefully than she had expected him to do. Instead, Christopher had gone to Canada.
“Adultery,” she said, “gaming, cheating, cruelty, murder. Did that same malicious person arrange all of those, Christopher?”
He stared at her with a totally unreadable expression. He had always been good at masking his feelings. Or it had always been his problem, perhaps. That was what he had used to say when they first married. He found it hard to relax and to smile and to speak from the heart. She would have to be patient with him, he had used to say, usually when she had been upset and bewildered at some imagined harshness of his. She had loved him to distraction; she had also been a little afraid of him.
“There have been hints,” he said, “since I arrived back in England that that woman and child were not the only issues at play in our divorce. Perhaps I left too soon, Elizabeth. Perhaps I do not know the whole sordid story. Of what exactly was I guilty altogether? I would be interested to know.”
“Did you think the rest of it would all remain hidden?” she said. She could feel the old pain and despised herself for allowing it still to hu
rt. But how she had loved him! And how those feelings had returned at Penhallow when she had not remembered just who and what he was. She could remember telling herself over and over again when she had begun to realize that there was something terribly wrong with their marriage that when she knew or when she remembered she would not stop loving him, no matter what. But how could one love someone so lacking in principle and conscience?
“Obviously it did not,” he said. “You had better tell me just which of my villainies came to light, Elizabeth. Perhaps some of them remained hidden after all. Murder, did you say?”
“That dancer,” she said.
“Ah, yes, that dancer,” he said. His voice was harsh with sarcasm. “A delicious little redhead, I believe? I assume I was being unfaithful to my mistress by sleeping with her? But who can resist such spritely beauty? I killed her? That was rash of me. I smothered her with a pillow, if I remember correctly.”
“She was beaten,” she said, “until she fell and struck her head. You were the one who took her away from the opera house, the last person to be seen with her. Next morning her body was discovered.”
“I see,” he said. “Why was I not arrested before I could sail to Canada? Or did this happen the night before I left and I escaped in the nick of time?”
“Mr. Rhodes saw you leaving the opera house with her,” she said. “He was afraid to come forward until after you had gone. But then he told Martin. Martin tried to hush it up, but Papa found out anyway. I was glad you had gone when he told me about it, Christopher. And I was glad he had told me though Martin was very upset with him for doing so. Up until that time I was foolish enough to believe that perhaps I had done you an injustice. Or that perhaps I should have forgiven you.”
“Rhodes,” he said. “Well, it is as well to know the full truth before judging another person, isn’t it? It must have been a comfort to know that you were being divorced from an unconscionable villain.”
She said nothing. She was trying not to remember that this harsh, sneering man standing against the door at the other side of the room was the same man who had loved her and held her close and made her feel marvelously safe for all those nights at Penhallow—so very recently.