The Secret Mistress

Chapter 5

ANGELINE HAD ALWAYS been impulsive. She had always had a tendency to act before she thought, usually with less than desirable results. Her governesses had habitually, and unsuccessfully, attempted to teach her the wisdom of a lady’s always pausing to consider what she was about to say or do before actually saying or doing whatever it was.

She had done it again. Acted, that was, before thinking of the consequences of what she was about to do.

Her ankle was not damaged. It was a little sore, perhaps, but only with the sort of pain that diminished to nothing at all within minutes and was really not worth the bother of fussing over. But …

Well, this was her come-out ball. Worse, this was the opening set of her come-out ball. All eyes were upon her. That seemed to include even the eyes of her fellow dancers. And of the orchestra members. She had turned her ankle, though not the ankle belonging to the leg she had broken last year, and she had stumbled awkwardly, and she had gasped with pain, and …

Well, and the world gasped with her and converged upon her from all corners of the globe. The music stopped abruptly, and dancers and spectators came dashing, all presumably in the hope of catching her before she hit the floor.

The Earl of Heyward reached her first and wrapped an arm about her waist and held her firmly upright so that she could not possibly tumble to the floor even if that had been her intention, which it had not.

It was a distracting moment, or fraction of a moment. For he was all firm, muscled masculinity, and Angeline would have liked nothing better than to revel for at least a short while in the unfamiliar delight of being held in a man’s arms—well, almost in his arms, anyway. And not just any man’s arms. And what was that absolutely wonderful cologne that clung about his person?

But voices all about her were raised in alarm or concern or puzzlement.

“Lady Angeline!”

“You have hurt yourself.”

“She has hurt herself.”

“Set her down on the floor. Don’t try moving her.”

“Carry her over to the French windows for some air.”

“What happened?”

“Hand me my vinaigrette.”

“Send a servant to fetch a physician.”

“Did she faint?”

“The music was too fast. I said it was, did I not?”

“The floor is too highly polished.”

“Have you sprained your ankle?”

“Has she broken her ankle?”

“How dreadfully unfortunate.”

“Oh, the poor dear.”

“What happened?”

“Trip over your own toes, did you, Angie?” This last in the cheerful voice of Ferdinand.

And those were only a sampling of the myriad exclamations and comments Angeline heard. This, she thought, had not been one of the best ideas she had ever conceived.

“Oh, dear,” she said, feeling the heat of a very genuine blush rise in her cheeks, “how very clumsy of me.”

“Not at all. Are you hurt?” Lord Heyward asked her with flattering concern.

“Hardly at all,” she said, laughing lightly.

But that was no answer, especially for a large audience, all of whose members were now hushed in an attempt to hear what she had to say. She winced as she set her foot back on the floor, and the guests winced with her.

“Well, perhaps just a little,” she said. “We had better sit out what remains of this set so that I will be able to dance for the rest of the evening. I am so sorry for causing such a fuss. Please ignore me.”

She smiled about at the gathered masses and rather wished it were possible to be sucked at will into a great hole.

“Thank you, Heyward. I shall take Angeline to a withdrawing room to rest for a while. The dancing may resume.”

It was Tresham, cool and black-eyed. In control. Taking charge.

Lord Heyward’s arm loosened about her waist but did not entirely drop away.

“Lady Angeline is my partner,” he said, sounding as cool as Tresham. “I shall help her to that love seat over there and sit with her, as is her wish. She may then decide if she is fit to dance the next set or if she would prefer to withdraw for a spell.”

It was an exchange that did not even nearly qualify as a confrontation, Angeline thought, looking with interest from her brother’s face to Lord Heyward’s. And yet … And yet there was something there, some ever so minor clash of wills. And, just as he had at the Rose and Crown, the earl won the day with quiet courtesy. Tresham stared back at him for a fraction of a second longer than was strictly necessary, raised his eyebrows, and turned to nod at the leader of the orchestra.

The whole incident had lasted for a maximum of two minutes, probably less. The earl offered his arm this time rather than just the back of his hand, Angeline linked hers through it and leaned upon him with just enough of her weight to look convincing, and he led her to the love seat he had indicated, which was wedged in next to the orchestra dais and was therefore somewhat isolated from the other seats in the ballroom.

The orchestra struck up its lively tune again and the dancers danced. Angeline glanced at them a little wistfully while Lord Heyward rescued a brocaded stool from half under the dais and set it before her to support her injured foot. She rested it on the stool and sighed.

“Ah,” she said, “that is better. Thank you, my lord.”

He inclined his head to her and seated himself beside her. Close beside her since the seat was narrow. Even so, he kept a very correct sliver of air between their two bodies.

“I adore dancing,” she said as she opened her fan and plied it slowly before her face. “I daresay you do too. I do apologize for depriving you of the pleasure of participating any further until the next set.”

“Not at all,” he said. “Besides, I do not enjoy dancing.”

She could feel the heat from his body and smell that very enticing cologne again. She would not mind at all, she thought quite scandalously, if he accidentally touched her arm or kissed her hand. Or her lips, for that matter. She had never been kissed. She had wanted to be for some time now. And who better …

The ballroom was surely exceedingly warm.

“I suppose,” she said because she did not want him to suspect that she had guessed the truth, poor man, “you have been dancing for so many years that you have become quite jaded.”

“Not at all,” he said again. “I have always been clumsy at it. I have been able to avoid dancing until this year. I was insignificantly positioned as the younger brother of an earl who was married and beginning to set up his nursery. When he died last year, my life changed.”

Ah, an honest man. One who was willing to admit that he was a clumsy dancer. There were not many honest people in this world, Angeline suspected, especially on the subject of their own defects.

“And now you are expected to dance all the time,” she said, smiling at him. “You were forced to dance with me.”

“I was not forced, Lady Angeline.” His eyebrows rose, and she noticed that they arched very nicely indeed above his eyes without unduly creasing his brow. “It was my pleasure.”

Ah, not always honest. Her smile deepened.

“You were in mourning all last year, then, were you?” she asked him. “I have been in mourning too, though not last year. It was the year before. For my mother. I ought to have made my come-out last year. Is that not strange? If I had, I would not have encountered you at that inn outside Reading or in Hyde Park this morning. And I would have had a different partner with whom to dance the opening set of my come-out ball. You would have been away somewhere mourning for your brother. How random a thing fate is.”

Perhaps he did not see their meetings as fate. Or not as a happy one, anyway. If he did, he had nothing to say on the subject. And when she glanced at him, she could see that his lips were rather tightly set.

It really was a fast and vigorous dance, she thought as her eyes strayed beyond his shoulder. Tresham was dancing with the widowed Countess of Heyward and Ferdinand with the small, blond-haired, very pretty Lady Martha Hamelin, with whom Angeline had chatted at great length at St. James’s Palace this morning. Trust Ferdie to single out the loveliest girl in the room.

She really hoped Lady Martha would be one of those close friends she craved.

“I ought to have made my come-out last year,” she said again, resuming her story, “but I broke my leg.”

She glanced down at it. Her foot was reclining on the brocaded stool. Her left foot. It was the right foot she had turned on the dance floor a short while ago. Oh, dear. It was too late now, though, to make the correction. He would surely notice. So, perhaps, would half of those gathered in the ballroom. She was not unaware of the fact that many eyes were turned their way.

“You are accident prone, Lady Angeline?” he asked.

“I fell out of a tree,” she said. “I was crossing the bull’s meadow because I was late and needed to return home quickly and because there was no sign of the bull. I did look, for one does not wish to come face-to-face with two tons of annoyed bull in the middle of a meadow, does one? I still do not know where he could possibly have been hiding, but he was there right enough. He was hiding deliberately, I daresay, lying in wait for just such an opportunity as that with which I presented him. I went up the tree like a monkey when he came charging after me, and I sat up there for what seemed like an hour, though I daresay it was no longer than ten minutes or so, while he prowled about down below trying to devise a way of getting at me. I have never been more thankful for the limited attention of bulls. I might have been up there for a week. He lost interest eventually and wandered away, and I was so relieved and so frantic to get away before he returned and because I had invited visitors and it was becoming more and more probable that they would be at the house before me, that I did not pay the descent of the tree my full attention and missed my footing on a lower branch and fell to the ground. I landed on my left leg and actually heard it crack. I was very vexed with myself, but it might have been worse. I might have landed on my head. And by some miracle the bull did not return while I moved to the fence and scrambled beneath it as quickly as I could on my bot—Well.” She fanned her face briskly.

He was looking fully at her and it struck her foolishly that she could well drown in his blue eyes if she gazed into them for long enough.

“I hope,” he said, “you learned to be more punctual for appointments, Lady Angeline, so that in future you need not be tempted to cross forbidden and dangerous meadows.”

She tipped her head to one side and regarded him thoughtfully.

“I told the story to make you smile,” she said. “Other men slap their thighs when I tell it and roar with mirth. Ladies titter behind their fans and look merry.”

“I wonder,” he said, “if they would all laugh so hard if it were Tresham telling the story about his deceased sister.”

“Lord Heyward,” she said, “are you perhaps just a little bit stuffy?”

And there, she had done it again. Words before thought. But it was too late to recall them.

His nostrils flared slightly. She had annoyed him, which was really hardly surprising.

But she had not meant her observation to be an insult or even a criticism. She did not mind in the least if he was a little stuffy. Not under the circumstances. It had probably never occurred to anyone else whose ears she had regaled with that particular story that it might just as easily have been a tragic one.

Perhaps she ought to have used the words serious-minded rather than stuffy. They had a more positive connotation.

“According to your definition of the word, Lady Angeline,” he said, “no doubt I am. I do not find stories of charging bulls amusing. Or stories of unescorted ladies being accosted by impudent fellows in inn taprooms, though I daresay such incidents could be made to sound uproariously amusing. Or stories of daredevils racing their curricles along a narrow road used by other innocent and unsuspecting travelers, though I daresay such incidents have entertained many a gathering of men who admire sheer daredevilry. I make no apology for being stuffy. Life is too serious a business for idle persons to endanger themselves and others by being hoydens or rakehells.”

Angeline gazed at him.

And had a thought.

Had his brother died in a curricle race? Had he been a daredevil?

Did he blame her for what had happened at the Rose and Crown, even though he had defended her so gallantly? Because she ought to have been chaperoned or not there at all?

He certainly blamed her for the bull incident. Because she had been late for an appointment.

She might have bristled with anger at the implied criticism, as she undoubtedly would have done if it had been Tresham delivering the scold, or Ferdinand. Or Miss Pratt.

But she stopped to think—a rare occurrence—and plied her fan slowly as she did so.

She might indeed have died if that tree had not been in that particular spot in the meadow or if she had indeed fallen on her head instead of her left leg. Or if the bull had come back. That handsome red-haired gentleman might have done her considerable harm in the inn taproom if there had been no one there to speak up for her—though she did not think she would have been in any real danger. Or, if the man had refused to apologize to her, Lord Heyward might have been beaten to a pulp out in the yard—though she did not think so. But even if he had sustained just a black eye, it would have been at least partly her fault. She ought not to have been where she was.

She must seem like a careless, unladylike, frivolous chatterbox to Lord Heyward. And a hoyden to boot.

Was he wrong?

Miss Pratt would agree wholeheartedly with him.

But even if he was right, was that all that could be said of her? Surely not. There was all that part of herself that was … Well, that was herself. All those things about her that were too muddled or confusing or, well, simply too deep to be put into words. She was not even sure she knew them all herself. Sometimes she believed she did not know herself at all. But she did know that she was not just a thoughtless, garrulous hoyden.

And then, of course, there was her appearance. How could she possibly compete with the likes of Martha Hamelin? She could not. She could only be herself.

Oh, goodness, she could not think of all this now.

And her fan was whipping up a veritable hurricane.

“You do not approve of me,” she said, which was probably a gross understatement. It was also a depressing realization when she was head over ears in love with him. And then she had a sudden thought, which came from nowhere, a sudden memory of the way he had looked in Hyde Park. “Did I splash you with mud in the park this morning? I went there for a gallop because I have done nothing but shop for weeks before today and had simply oceans of energy pent up inside. And I was feeling really quite nervous at the thought of meeting the queen and perhaps tripping over the train of my court gown. Even now I turn cold at the very thought, though fortunately it did not happen. I went to the park to find Tresham, but he had gone somewhere else to ride, provoking man. It was very fortunate indeed that Ferdinand was there. I would have been obliged to ride directly home if he had not been, and Marsh would have known that Tresham had not really arranged to meet me. He would have looked reproachfully at me, and I would have felt three inches high. Did I splash you?”

“It was of no moment,” he said, which, of course, was merely a polite, roundabout way of saying yes. “Mud brushes off clothes once it has dried. And I hope I have not been ill-mannered enough to give the impression that I dislike you, Lady Angeline. I would not presume to pass judgment upon any lady.”

She fanned her face and smiled ruefully at him.

“If you did not dislike me,” she said, “you would have denied doing so quite vehemently instead of merely saying I would not presume to pass judgment on a lady. I shall persuade you to alter your opinion of me. I am out now. My hoydenish youth is over, and today I have become a lady—elegant, refined, discreet, quiet, and everything else a lady ought to be. I shall be the perfect lady for the rest of the spring—indeed, for the rest of my life. Beginning this evening. Well, at this moment of this evening, anyway.”

He looked at her, and suddenly his lips curved upward slightly at the corners and his eyes twinkled with amusement—and a small dimple made its appearance in his right cheek, close to his mouth. It was an absolutely devastating smile—or almost smile. If Angeline had not already been seated, her knees would surely have buckled under her.

“Well,” she said, “perhaps I ought not to be too rash. I shall be almost perfect, and you will be forced to admit that you misjudged me at the start.”

“I hope, Lady Angeline,” he said, “I will never misjudge you or, indeed, judge you at all.”

“How wretchedly unsporting of you,” she said. “That would mean you do not care at all.”

The almost smile was gone without a trace.

There had been a suggested intimacy in her words. And why should he wish for any sort of intimacy with her? She looked like a dark beanpole, she had been rashly alone in that taproom, she had splashed him with mud this morning while galloping and whooping along Rotten Row, she had made a spectacle of herself on the dance floor just now, and she had told him the story of the bull and her own foolish behavior. And she looked like a swarthy beanpole. Had she already listed that one? And, if she might add something else, he was doubtless wealthy enough and well placed enough socially—good heavens, he was an earl—not to care a tuppenny toss that she was the enormously rich daughter of a duke.

Her prospects suddenly looked rather gloomy.

No, they looked challenging.

But at the moment she was horribly embarrassed, for he did not respond to her unwary words. Neither did he look away from her.

She was saved by a flicker of movement over by the ballroom doors, to one side of the line of dancers. New arrivals. Apparently there were always people who arrived hopelessly late for a ball. The receiving line had broken up ages ago.

The new arrivals were three gentlemen, all of them quite young and quite presentable. There would be three more partners for all the young ladies present, then, Angeline thought. It had not escaped her notice that there were more young ladies here than there were young gentlemen. It was always thus, Cousin Rosalie had told her when she had remarked upon it earlier, though the situation would probably improve as the evening went along. This is what Rosalie must have meant.

And then Angeline’s eyes widened, and her closed fan came down with a thump on the Earl of Heyward’s sleeve. One of the three gentlemen, the tallest and most handsome, had dark red hair and—though he was not close enough for her to see them clearly from where she sat—eyes that were hooded beneath slightly drooped eyelids.

“Well, will you look at that,” she said. “The nerve of the man.”

He turned his head to look in the direction of the ballroom doors.

“Windrow?” he said. “I daresay he does not know who you are, Lady Angeline, any more than I did until an hour ago. Perhaps he will be embarrassed when he does know. Though perhaps not.”

“Windrow?” she said.

“Lord Windrow,” he said. “I believe you will discover that he is one of your brother’s friends.”

“Which brother?” she asked.

“The Duke of Tresham,” he said, turning back to her. “But friends are required to treat one’s sister with the proper respect. If you wish to see him punished, I daresay a word in Tresham’s ear will secure your wishes.”

She lifted her fan from his arm and focused her attention back on him.

“Punished?” she said. “He was very effectively punished at the time, I believe. He would have enjoyed a fight, even if he had lost, which I daresay he might have done as he surely made a grave error in judging you a weakling and a coward. He would still have felt like a man. But you challenged him as a gentleman, and you forced him to apologize. I daresay he felt thoroughly humiliated by the time he left despite the bravado of his final words.”

And his wink.

The set was drawing to an end. So was Angeline’s precious half hour with the Earl of Heyward. She did not doubt that it would be the last with him for this evening anyway. What a shame. How sad.

Except that the whole of the rest of the most exciting evening of her life stretched ahead. And she had the rest of her life to secure the earl’s interest and his courtship and his proposal of marriage.

“I shall return you to Lady Palmer’s side,” he said, getting to his feet and extending a hand for hers—a hand rather than an arm this time. “You will wish to be at her side for your next partner to claim you. I daresay you are eager to dance again—with someone who can dance, that is. You may set your left foot back on the floor if you wish. I suppose it is well rested by now. One hopes your right foot is feeling better.”

Oh, he had noticed. How mortifying! And he knew what she had done. But had he misunderstood her motive? Did he believe she had feigned a stumble in order to avoid having to dance with such a clumsy, wooden fellow? She could hardly ask him, could she?

“I will surely dance all evening,” she told him as she got to her feet and took his offered arm. “I shall do so because a number of gentlemen have already expressed an interest in dancing with me. And because I adore dancing, of course. But I can assure you, Lord Heyward, that I will not enjoy any other set even half as much as I have enjoyed this one.”

And how was that for blatant flirtation?

“I am delighted to have been of service to you, Lady Angeline,” he said, a hint of sarcasm in his voice.

Ah, he had misunderstood. And now he thought she was lying.

His hand was warm and steady beneath hers.

His cologne wrapped about her senses.

Being in love was an altogether pleasant sensation, she thought, even if bringing it to a happy conclusion was going to be the biggest challenge of her life.

Was something worth having, though, if it did not present a challenge?