Dark Angel / Lord Carew's Bride (16 page)

Only Jenny could break the engagement. It would be horribly scandalous even for her to do it, but it would be impossible for him. An honorable gentleman just did not break such a promise. But Jenny had no reason to break off her betrothal. She would never do so, unless—unless she knew that he loved someone else.

Samantha tried to break the trend of her thoughts.

“Oh, Sam,” Jennifer said, hugging her knees more tightly, her eyes still closed, “you really must find someone soon. You must find out for yourself what this happiness feels like.”

Samantha rested her head against the back of the chair on which she sat and closed her own eyes. She felt suddenly both dizzy and nauseated.

S
HE WORE A GOLD MASK, BUT IT DID NOTHING TO hide her identity. Nor was it meant to. It was a mere convention of a costume ball. She was all in gold and white and unmistakably dressed as Queen Elizabeth I. The rich, heavy gold and white brocade of her dress and the stiff ruff that fanned out behind her head were carried with a suitably regal bearing. Her dark red hair was set severely back from her face and curled all about her head.

She would have drawn eyes even if she had stood alone. But she stood with an Elizabethan courtier whose clothes matched her own in color and splendor. His own gold mask gleamed pale against his blond hair.

They were by far the most attractive couple in the ballroom.

The Earl of Thornhill, watching them after the courtier had joined his queen and her cousin and aunt after their arrival at Lady Velgard’s costume ball, was not sorry about the fact that they drew such universal attention despite the presence of other clever and attractive costumes on other guests. And he was not sorry that they were so easily recognizable. It would all work to his advantage.

“Bertie is not coming tonight,” Lord Francis Kneller said at the earl’s elbow. “Do you know why, Gabe?” His tone suggested that he certainly did even if his friend did not.

She was glowing, Lord Thornhill thought, gazing across the room—as many other people seemed to be doing. Her mouth was curved into a smile. Something about the whole set of her body and head suggested that she was excited and happy. Happy with her partner. In love with him. Damnation. “Why?” he asked.

“Because Rosalie Ogden’s mama thinks a costume ball too racy an event for her daughter to attend,” Lord Francis said, emphasizing the girl’s name. “Rosalie Ogden, Gabe. Bertie is not coming because she will not be here.”

“He took her sightseeing to the Tower this afternoon, I believe,” the earl said.

“Good Lord,” Lord Francis said. “Good Lord, Gabe, is he touched in the upper works?”

“I believe,” the earl said, looking at him at last and grinning, “it is called love, Frank.”

“Well, good Lord.” His friend seemed to have been rendered inarticulate.

“I suppose,” the earl said, “it is only natural that we feel a twinge of alarm when one of our number turns his mind toward matrimony, Frank. It reminds us that we too are getting older and that responsibility and the need to be setting up nurseries are staring us in the eyeball.”

“The devil!” Lord Francis said. “We are not even thirty
yet, Gabe. Or even close to it. But Rosalie Ogden! He is seriously thinking of offering for her?”

“I have it on the best authority,” the earl said, “that there is rather a sweet girl hiding behind the plainness and the quietness.”

“There would have to be,” Lord Francis said. “There is not even anything much for a dowry. Ah, a waltz. The opportunity to get my arm about some slender waist is not to be wasted, Gabe—I hope you noticed the pun. The fairy queen, do you think? No, she is swamped by her usual court. Cleopatra, then. I was presented to her at Almack’s last evening so I can just stroll along and ask.” He walked away without more ado, Roman toga notwithstanding, to claim the set with the lady of his choice.

The Earl of Thornhill stood where he was and watched. And assured a few fellow guests, who approached him in mock terror, that no, his pistols were not loaded. He was dressed as a highwayman of bygone years, all in black, including his mask. He wore a powdered wig, tied and bagged with black silk at the neck, and a tricorne hat.

Ah, he thought, so she had been granted permission to waltz. She was dancing it now with Kersey and smiling up at him, her attention wholly on him. And Lord, she was beautiful. Every time he saw her he seemed to be jolted anew by her beauty, as if he had forgotten it since his last sight of her. He was glad she was able to waltz. And if one was being danced this early in the evening,
there must be several more planned for the rest of the night.

He intended to dance one of those waltzes with Miss Jennifer Winwood. It might not be easy to get past the defenses of Lady Brill and Kersey. And even the Countess of Rushford, Kersey’s mother, was present tonight and keeping a proprietary eye on her son and his affianced bride. But somehow he would do it. He had no real fear of failure.

I
F
L
IONEL WAS IRRESISTIBLY
handsome as a gentleman of the present age, Jennifer thought, as a gentleman of Queen Elizabeth’s court he was—well, there were not words. He was irresistibly handsome. She waltzed with him and felt that her feet scarcely touched the floor. It was surely the most divine and the most intimate dance ever invented. He was drawing all eyes just like a magnet, of course, as he always did. She basked in the fact that it was with her he danced and to her that he was betrothed. She felt that she was somehow picking up some of his reflected splendor.

He
was there—the Earl of Thornhill. At first she had thought he was not. Most of the guests were recognizable despite ingenious costumes and masks. But he was not easy to recognize, except for his height, which first drew her eyes his way. His hair was white and long and tied back beneath his hat. He made an alarmingly attractive highwayman, she thought. She was sure it was he when he stood beside a pillar instead of dancing the first
set—and when he watched her the whole while. He was, of course, wearing a wig, she realized. A powdered wig, old-fashioned like the tricorne and the skirted coat and the long topboots.

She wished he had not come. Although she did not look directly at him, she saw him constantly nevertheless and was aware of him at every moment, as she always was. And yet there was a certain horror in the fascination she felt for him, knowing what she now knew of him. His stepmother! He was a father. He had a child, abandoned somewhere on the Continent with the child’s mother. She wondered if he had left them quite destitute or if at the very least he had taken some measures to support them.

And she tried not to think about him at all.

It was easy to avoid him. Lionel, although he danced with her only once, hovered close between sets, and Aunt Agatha kept careful watch over her choice of partners and Samantha’s. She did not, as so many of the chaperones did, find a cozy seat in a corner and while away the time gossiping with other ladies. And Lionel’s mother engaged her in conversation between each set. It was like having a small army of bodyguards, Jennifer thought in some relief. She was not going to have to face the embarrassment of refusing to dance with him.

But then he made no move toward her, either.

It was unalloyed relief she felt, she told herself, refusing to recognize a certain feeling of inexplicable depression.

And then, well into the evening, events became so
strange that Jennifer was left feeling bewildered and exposed and not a little frightened. The Earl of Thornhill had moved closer. She sensed it without having to look to be sure. But Lionel looked long and consideringly in the direction where she knew the earl stood, though he said nothing. He would redouble his watch over her, she thought in some relief. But instead, he turned to his mother and to Aunt Agatha with a smile, commented on the heat in the ballroom, and suggested that they go to the dining room in search of a drink. He would do himself the honor of watching over their charges until their return.

They went.

Samantha, close by, was surrounded by her usual court of admirers. Some of them were talking with Jennifer too, though Lord Kersey continued to stay close beside her. But then he was gone, without a word or a sign, and he was smiling warmly at Samantha and taking her by the hand and leading her onto the floor for the waltz that was about to begin.

No one had yet asked Jennifer to dance, and it seemed that every gentleman turned to watch in chagrin as Sam was taken from beneath their very noses. In a moment, Jennifer thought afterward, one of them would have turned back and solicited her hand. Lionel must have thought that one of them already had. He must have thought that it was safe to leave her side, even though his mother and Aunt Agatha had left the ballroom.

But there was that moment when she stood alone, bewildered and exposed and a little frightened.

And in that moment a gentleman did indeed step forward and bow and reach out a hand for hers. A tall, black-masked highwayman in the fashion of the previous century, his long, powdered hair and tricorne hat making him look quite devastatingly attractive.

“Your majesty,” the Earl of Thornhill said, “will you do me the honor?”

It was so much easier to tell oneself that one was going to issue a cold snub than actually to do it, Jennifer found. That, of course, was why she had been content to be hovered over all evening. She found it almost impossible to look into his eyes and refuse him.

“I—I—” she said.

He smiled at her. His hand was still extended. She felt as if eyes were on them but could not look about her to see. She felt doubly exposed and bewildered. She had promised Lionel. But it was merely a dance. A waltz. If she refused the Earl of Thornhill, she would not be able to dance it with any other gentleman.

She set her hand in his. “Thank you,” she said.

But she would not leave the ballroom with him. The French windows were open, as they had been at the Chisley ball, and the ballroom was warm. But she would not set one toe out onto the balcony.

She had thought the waltz intimate when she had danced it with Lionel. It seemed even more so with the earl. It was his superior height, she decided. And his hand, warm and strong against the back of her waist, was holding her a little closer than Lionel had done—and a little closer than her dancing master had done. He
was holding her just a little too close. If she swayed toward him even slightly in the course of the dance, she would touch him—with her breasts.

She should have said no, she thought, now that it was too late. A very firm, chilly no. She darted a look up into his eyes. They were looking steadily back, as she had expected they would. They looked even darker than usual and more compelling through the slits of his mask. She looked down sharply.

“I thought we were almost friends,” he said quietly.

“No.” She drew breath to say more, but left the one word to stand alone.

“They have been warning you against me again,” he said. “I should not have taken you into the cool seclusion of the orchard, should I? Was he very angry with you? Would it help if I explained to him that nothing improper happened?”

“Is it true,” she asked, and she blushed, knowing what she was about to say, “that you fled to the Continent with your stepmother?”

“Ah,” he said, “they really have been busy. I would not use the word
fled
. It gives the impression of running in panic or guilt. But yes, I accompanied the Countess of Thornhill, my father’s second wife, to the Continent.” He was watching her keenly, she saw when she looked up briefly again. His head had bent slightly toward hers. People were watching. She could feel them watching.

“She had your child,” she said. She did not know how she got the words past her lips. She did not even know why she would want to say them.

“She gave birth to a daughter in Switzerland,” he said.

“And you abandoned them there.” She was breathless. Her voice was accusing. She wished—oh, she wished she had said no. Why had Lionel been so careless after protecting her all evening and after telling his mother and Aunt Agatha that he would look after her?

“I left them in their new home there,” he said, “while I came back to mine.”

Another couple twirled close to them and his arm tightened about her, drawing her even closer. He did not relax it after the couple were safely past.

“Do you have any other questions?” he asked.

“No.” She was being almost overpowered by that same feeling she had had when he kissed her in the Chisleys’ garden. At a totally inappropriate time. When he had just admitted … “Please do not hold me so close. It is unseemly.”

She raised her eyes unwillingly to his as his hold relaxed just a little. And then found that she could not look away again.

“You should not have asked me to dance,” she said. “Not that first time or any time since. It is not right. You should have stayed away.”

“Why?” His voice was very quiet. It sounded like a hand would feel slowly caressing its way up her back. “Because I am not respectable? Or because you find it impossible to say no?”

She bit her lip. “You just admitted—”

“No,” he said. “That is a poor choice of word. I just gave you a few facts. Gossipmongers love to take facts
and twist them and squeeze them and sensationalize them until they are almost unrecognizable as truth.”

“But you cannot deny the facts,” she said.

“No,” he said, and he smiled.

“Are you saying, then,” she said, “that the facts do not mean what they appear to mean?”

“I am saying no such thing,” he said. “I will leave the facts with you and the interpretation of those facts that Kersey and others of your family or acquaintances have put upon them in your hearing. But you have liked me, have you not? We were almost friends at the garden party, were we not?”

His eyes held hers, and his voice beguiled her. She wanted to believe in his innocence. When she was with him, she could not believe him the villain everyone else thought him and that even she had concurred with. When she was with him, he was … her friend. And something else—something more. But she was afraid of the direction her thoughts were taking and brought them to a stop.