Dark Angel / Lord Carew's Bride (15 page)

She would determinedly avoid the Earl of Thornhill for the rest of the Season. She felt ashamed now of the ease she had felt in his company just this afternoon and the feeling she had had that there was indeed a certain friendship between them. She felt more discomfort than ever over the fact that she had allowed him that kiss at the Chisleys’ ball. Knowing what she now knew of him, she would not find it at all difficult to snub him quite openly if necessary. His own stepmother! He had done
that
with his father’s wife.

She closed her mind quite firmly to twinges of guilt
over the fact that she was no longer making allowances for the possibility that he had finished sowing his wild oats and was now trying to make amends. Some things were unforgivable. Besides, he had abandoned his stepmother and their child and left them alone somewhere in a foreign land. He was not making amends at all. He was quite despicable. Quite loathsome.

“A
ND SO YOU SEE
,” Sir Albert Boyle said as he sat over an early afternoon dinner at White’s with his friend, the Earl of Thornhill, “I have been caught. Past tense, it seems, Gabe. Not even present tense, and certainly not future.”

The earl looked at him keenly. “But you have made no declaration yet?” he asked.

“Good Lord, no.” Sir Albert gazed gloomily into his port for a moment before taking a drink. “I said it would happen, Gabe. Appear one too many times in a ballroom and dance one too many sets, and someone will get it into her head that you are out shopping when in truth you are just browsing. Rosalie Ogden!”

“I thought that if you fell victim to anyone this year it would be to Miss Newman,” the earl said.

“Ah,” his friend said. “The delectable blonde. Every red-blooded man’s dream.” He looked down into his glass. “And the plain and ordinary and rather dull Miss Ogden, with whom I have danced and whom I have taken driving because Frank said she had not taken well, poor girl.”

“And she is expecting a declaration? And her mother is expecting it?” The earl frowned. “You don’t have to do it, Bertie. You have not compromised the girl, have you?”

“Lord, no,” Sir Albert said. “She is not the type of girl one goes slinking off into grottoes with, Gabe. I thought about calling tomorrow actually. Before my nerve goes.”

The Earl of Thornhill dabbed at his mouth with his napkin and set it down beside his empty plate. He wondered what he was missing. He and Bertie had been close friends for years—since their schoolboy days.

“Why?” he asked. “You are not in love with the girl by any chance, are you?” He could not imagine any man being in love with Miss Rosalie Ogden, though the thought was unkind. She seemed so totally without any quality that any man might find appealing. Bertie, on the other hand, was young and good-looking and wealthy and intelligent and could surely attach the affections of almost any lady he cared to set his sights on.

Sir Albert puffed out his cheeks and blew air out through his mouth. “It’s like this, Gabe,” he said. “You dance with a girl because you feel sorry for her and imagine how sad and humiliated she would be going home and to bed knowing that she had been a wallflower all evening while the prettier girls had danced. And then you take her driving for the same reason, and walking and boating at a garden party and then dancing again at Almack’s last evening. And then you start to realize that there is someone hiding behind the plainness and the quietness and the—the dullness. Someone sort of sweet in a way and someone who—well, who would bleed if
she cut herself, if you know what I mean. Someone who loves kittens to distraction and cries over chimney sweeps’ climbing boys and likes to slip up to her sister’s nursery to play with her nieces and nephews instead of sitting in the drawing room listening to the adults converse. And then you realize that she is not quite as plain or as quiet or as dull as you had thought.”

“You
are
in love with her,” the earl said, intrigued.

“Well, I don’t see stars whirling about my head,” Sir Albert said. “So it can’t be that, Gabe, can it? It is just that I am—well, a little bit fond of her, I suppose. It sort of creeps up on you. You don’t notice it and you don’t particularly want it or welcome it when you discover it. But it’s there. And there seems to be only one thing to do about it. No, two, I suppose. I could leave London tomorrow—go visit my aunt in Brighton, or something like that. But I would always wait for word of her marrying some oaf and then I would always wonder if he was allowing climbing boys into their house and keeping kittens out. And if he was giving her children for her own nursery. Gabe, I think I must have been touched by the sun. Has it been hot lately? I have known her for less than a week. I cannot even realistically talk about anything creeping up on me, can I? Creeping is a slow process. Galloping, more like.”

“You are in love with her,” the earl said again.

“Well,” Sir Albert said. “Whatever name you care to give it, Gabe. But I think I am off to call tomorrow. Brigham is her uncle and guardian. I’ll have a word with him first. And with her mother too. I’ll do the thing
properly. I’ll probably even go down on one knee when the moment comes.” He winced. “Do you think I will do anything so unspeakably humiliating, Gabe?”

The earl chuckled.

“There is nothing for a dowry, by the way,” Sir Albert said. “Or so Frank says, and he should know since his sister is a friend of her sister’s. So I cannot be accused of acting in such haste out of any greed for her fortune, can I? Besides, it must be well-known that my own pockets are well enough lined that I don’t have to snatch at dowries.”

“It will never be known for anything other than what it is,” the earl said. “A love match, Bertie.”

His friend grimaced and drained off his glass of port. “I have to be going,” he said. “I am to drive her with her mother to the Tower this afternoon. I shall have to see how I feel afterward. Perhaps I will change my mind and be saved. Do you think, Gabe?”

The earl merely smiled.

“Are you coming?” Sir Albert got to his feet.

“No,” the earl said. “I think I’ll stay and drink another glass of port, Bertie. I shall drink to your health and happiness. Go and make yourself pretty for your lady love.”

Sir Albert grimaced once more and took his leave. The Earl of Thornhill did not drink another glass of port, but he did sit alone at the table for a long while, turning his empty glass absently with the fingers of one hand, his pensive manner discouraging both acquaintances from joining him and waiters from clearing the table.

And then you start to realize that there is someone hiding …
someone who would bleed if she cut herself … it sort of creeps up on you
.

It was something entirely between him and Kersey, he thought. He had taken the fall for Kersey’s evil, and he had watched Catherine suffer as a result of it. And now he saw a chance for a little revenge and had found himself consumed by the desire to accomplish it. Kersey knew it and had issued his own challenge. It was just between the two of them.

Except that Jennifer Winwood was caught in the middle. She was the pawn he would use to upset Kersey’s life, to bring scandal and humiliation to his name. Very publicly. There was no better arena for this particular type of revenge than London during the Season.

Jennifer Winwood was unimportant. She would find someone else more worthy of her than Kersey. In fact, as he had told himself before, he was doing her a favor. If he could bring about an end to her betrothal, he would have done her a favor even if she did not realize it. Not that it really mattered. Having some measure of revenge on Kersey was all that was important.

Except that …

… someone who would bleed if she cut herself
. When he had apologized for having kissed her in the Chisleys’ garden, she had admitted that it had disturbed her.
It did cause me some distress
, she had said.

… you start to realize that there is someone hiding …
She enjoyed emotion and sentimentality in literature as well as humor and satire. She had a collie whom she missed, one that yipped and demonstrated wild and undignified
enthusiasm when a walk was imminent. She had never had a gentleman friend. She had lifted her hand and touched his cheek when he had pretended sadness over the fact that her engagement made it impossible for them ever to be friends.

… someone who would bleed if she cut herself
.

Damnation! He had no wish to hurt the girl. None whatsoever. And no wish to deceive her. And yet he had done nothing but deceive her, pretending to friendly and even tender feelings for her when he felt none.

Except that …

It sort of creeps up on you. You don’t notice it and you don’t particularly want it …

The Earl of Thornhill got abruptly to his feet and had to reach back a hasty hand to stop his chair from toppling backward. He needed air and exercise.

He needed to steel himself for the costume ball at Lady Velgard’s this evening. He needed to remind himself how all-consuming the desire for revenge had become to him since seeing Kersey again.

“D
O YOU SUPPOSE THERE
will be any waltzes tonight?” Jennifer asked. Although it was a warm day outside, she was sitting on the floor of the sitting room she shared with her cousin, her back to a fire, drying her long hair. Her arms were clasped about her knees. She had the kind of beauty that Samantha had always envied. She could have been an Amazon warrior or a Greek goddess or a—or a Queen Elizabeth I. It was as Queen Elizabeth that
she was going to the costume ball this evening. Samantha, on the other hand, saw only a milk-and-water miss when she looked in her own mirror, and she was to dress up tonight as—of all things—a fairy queen.

“I believe there almost certainly will be,” she said. “There usually are, so I have heard, except sometimes if it is someone’s come-out ball.”

“I hope so.” Jennifer rested one cheek on her knees. “Sam, was it not wonderful beyond belief to be granted permission to waltz at Almack’s last evening? It was the happiest moment of my life—well, one of them, anyway.”

“And I was stuck dancing it with Mr. Piper,” Samantha said. “To say he has two left feet is unduly to insult left feet, Jenny.”

Her cousin laughed. And looked wonderfully happy, as she had been looking for a few days now. Their roles seemed almost to have been reversed. Jenny was the sunny one, always on the verge of laughter. Samantha, on the other hand, was having to force her mood, to try to convince everyone else as well as herself that her first Season was all she had expected it to be.

“That was a pity,” Jennifer admitted. “Whom would you have liked to dance it with, Sam? If you had your choice of any gentleman?”

Lionel, Samantha thought treacherously and quelled the thought instantly. Out on the river at Lady Bromley’s garden party Lionel—Lord Kersey—had apologized for what had happened at the Chisley ball. He had been out of temper, he had claimed, and had forgotten that he was
a gentleman. And then he had rowed her silently on the river, his eyes occasionally becoming locked with hers. When he had handed her out onto the bank, he had retained her hand in his for a second or two longer than was necessary and had squeezed it so hard that she had almost cried out in pain and had whispered hastily and fiercely to her.

“I wish,” he had said, “I could forget again that I am a gentleman. Samantha, I wish …” But his voice had trailed off and his eyes had gazed into hers with dismay and remorse.

“Oh, I do not know,” she said now with a shrug. “Sir Albert Boyle, maybe. Or Mr. Maxwell. Or Mr. Simons. Someone with both a left foot and a right foot and some feel for music.” She laughed lightly.

Jennifer’s eyes were steady on her. “Is there no one special yet, Sam?” she asked. “It is strange. Somehow I expected that you would fall wildly in love with some impossibly handsome gentleman with forty thousand a year after our first ball. You have a large court of admirers. Indeed, it seems to grow every day. But you seem to favor no one in particular.”

“Give me time,” Samantha said airily. “I intend to settle on no one less handsome than Li—than Lord Kersey.”

“Or the Earl of Thornhill,” Jennifer said, and then she flushed and turned her head to rest the other cheek on her knees. “I mean, someone as handsome as he.”

If only the earl did not have that dreadful reputation, Samantha thought, her treacherous thoughts breaking free again. And if there was not the betrothal. He seemed
to like Jenny and she … Well, she had been alone with him on two separate occasions. If only … If only Lionel were free. But she jerked her mind back to reality.

“He was not at Almack’s last night,” she said. “I wonder if he will be at the ball this evening.”

“I hope not,” Jennifer said. “Did you know that what that unspeakably stupid Claudia Simons said about him at the garden party was true? He did run off with his stepmother. She was increasing, Sam. And then he abandoned her and the child to come back here alone.”

“His own father’s wife?” Samantha felt genuine horror. “Oh, Jenny, we were right about him that very first time. Lucifer. The devil. He really is, is he not?”

“Except that he does not seem evil when one talks with him,” Jennifer said. “He seems warm and friendly. But I suppose that is the nature of the devil, is it not? Oh, but I do not want to talk about him, Sam. I hope there are waltzes tonight. I want to waltz again with Lord Kersey and feel his hand at my waist. I want to dance just with him for half an hour.” She had her eyes closed, Samantha saw. “I can hardly wait.”

Samantha’s spirits had sunk so low that she felt as if definite physical leaden weights were pressing down on her. Lionel, she thought. Oh, Lionel. How she too would love to be waltzing with him tonight. And … Oh, thought was pointless.

She hated her cousin suddenly. And then she turned her hatred against herself. And against Lionel. If he had tender feelings for her—and she was sure that he did—how could he be contemplating marriage with Jenny?
But he was trapped into that by an unwritten agreement made five years before, when he had been only twenty.