Isabella (13 page)

Yes, with his own dogged pursuit of a proper mama for Lucy, he'd betrayed Miss Latham to the enemy. He should have gone with his first instincts; that night, when he'd seen Basil hovering over her, he should have warned her—and then done everything in his power to frustrate his cousin of his prey.

Well, there was no undoing what was done. But he might snatch victory from Basil—if only she would cooperate. And therein lay the problem. He could warn her. He could bribe or threaten Basil. But it was very likely things had gone too far for that. To rescue her, he must offer for her himself.

His throat was raw, his head spun, and something furry seemed to have grown on his tongue. Fighting back the nausea, he forced himself to sit up, and poured a glass of water from the pitcher on the nightstand. Doing so, he caught a glimpse of himself in the cheval glass. His curly dark hair was disheveled, having been cruelly and repeatedly raked with his fingers. His eyes were red, with dark rings around them. A dark shadow of beard had sprouted on his face.
What a pretty prospect for a bridegroom,
he told his reflection.
Miss Latham's bound to be bowled over at the sight of you; bound to throw herself into your warm—not to say humid—embrace. Must smell like a French dungeon. If that good.

But tomorrow he would be repaired and refreshed. And tomorrow he'd present himself to her languid mama. And then, to the lady herself. One way or another, by fair means or foul, he'd rescue her from his cousin.

He struggled with his garments and eventually managed to remove most of them before falling onto the bed once more. This time, sleep came to meet him, and as he drifted off, he fervently hoped the lady would consent to be rescued.

***

He'd been forced to repeat his request three times before the much-harassed butler had finally comprehended that it was
Mrs.
Latham he wished to see. And now, as Lord Hartleigh surveyed that delicate creature, gracefully posed among her numerous cushions, he found himself wondering how she'd ever summoned up the energy to bring a child into the world. She seemed to have barely the strength to keep her own heart pumping.

"I assume, My Lord, that you have some matter to discuss? For I'm certain you realise that I never
entertain."
She made it sound as though she were referring to a rigorous callisthenic activity.

He quickly reassured her on that count, remembering to add some compliments as to her very presence being reward enough—or some such nonsense—and was alarmed to hear himself stammering.

"Yes. Quite so. And I trust it is not about horses?"

His Lordship, whose head was not of the best this morning, wondered for a moment if the alcohol had permanently damaged his brain.

She looked past him at the ormolu clock on the mantelpiece. "I find horses tiresome," she explained to the clock.

Dazed, he assured her that he would not mention horses.

"It's about your daughter," he added, growing more uncomfortable by the second.

Slowly, her glance drifted back to his face. "Ah."

Now he rather wished she would stare at the clock again, for it was difficult to maintain his poise under her gaze. Despite that vacant air of hers, he had the sensation that she was measuring him. Forcing himself to meet her eyes, he began his rehearsed speech.

"I have come to ask your permission to pay my...my addresses to her," he said, faltering. The blue-green eyes continued fixed, almost absently, on his face. "I realise that ours is but a short acquaintance, but in that brief time I've come to regard her with the greatest admiration and esteem. She has a superior understanding—"

"My dear sir," Maria interrupted, "you needn't catalogue her virtues to me. I am her mother, after all, and know all about them. Besides which, I find it thoroughly exhausting to contemplate her accomplishments."

"I only wished to assure you—"

A delicate white hand waved away his protestations. "Pray do not exert yourself on that account. I rarely need to be assured."

He had no idea how to get on with this conversation, and his head was beginning to throb dreadfully. After what seemed like hours of silence (but were actually only seconds), while the lady thoughtfully examined the diamonds on her finger, he managed to ask whether, then, he might suppose he had her approval?

"Why, of course, My Lord," she replied, perfectly calm. "What possible objection could I have to so eminently suitable a young man as yourself?"

"It is very kind of you to say so."
Confound the woman! What did she mean by that?
He was overcome with a sudden urge to wrap his fingers around her throat and choke her when a soft, low chuckle escaped from that very throat.
That sound! So like, and yet not the same at all.

Meeting his bewildered look, Maria chuckled again.

"My dear Lord Hartleigh," she began, "pray excuse me. Isabella is right; I am an incorrigible tease. But you see, I cannot help it. And you look so solemn that one would think you were asking permission to commit some grievous crime. In my experience, lovers are wont to look rather more cheerful, perhaps even idiotically so."

The earl turned away from those suddenly intelligent eyes, feeling somehow unmasked.

"Perhaps," he replied quietly, "it is because I am not entirely sanguine concerning my prospects." He didn't know why he'd told her, but her soft "I see" reassured him.

"I
do
care for her," he confessed, as though the words were being pried from him, "a great deal. But I did not realise it until very recently."

"Yes. I understand how that can be. But I must tell you frankly, sir, that I wish you'd realised it somewhat sooner. Isabella has always been a clever, sensible girl, but in the past day or so...Ah, well. Time is always the enemy." She looked at him—rather sadly, he thought—but did not enlighten him further. "Nonetheless, I shall wish you success."

As he rose to take his leave, she added, "I'm afraid you'll not find her at home this morning. But we shall see you tonight?"

He nodded.

"Good." And, giving him a graceful white hand, she bid him
adieu.

After one last go-round, to see that all was as it should be, Isabella slipped away to a temporarily isolated comer of what a great deal of money and a great many servants had turned into a ballroom. Her face ached with the effort of smiling, but it was nothing to the aching of her head and heart. Basil's words had done their poisonous task. Yes, of course she'd been discontented at times in London. And she'd been unhappy at times at home. But there had been nothing in her life—not Papa's death, certainly, for he was a stranger to her—to prepare her for this utter misery of spirit.

And of course it was all her own fault. What business had she becoming infatuated with an earl, for heaven's sake? An earl who had—if one simply looked at what was under one's very nose—already found himself an entirely suitable countess, thank you. See, wasn't he smiling appreciatively at one of Lady Honoria's witticisms? She was reputed to be very clever. And certainly, she was the most beautiful woman in the room.

Isabella gave a small sigh, manufactured a benevolent smile, and gazed out over the multitude. For multitude it was, despite Lady Belcomb's ominous predictions. Mrs. Drummond Burrell might scold about "carryings-on," and refuse to honour the proceedings with her presence; but the vast majority was not such high sticklers. And they were curious to see for themselves Isabella and Basil in action. For the sad truth was, a great deal more had been talked about than had actually been seen, and London Society was eager to learn whether Isabella would outdo even Caro Lamb in making a public spectacle of herself. To society's disappointment, Miss Latham was the perfect lady, and Mr. Trevelyan's behaviour was punctiliously correct.

But Isabella was far less concerned with the ton's interest in herself than with their utter lack of interest in Alicia. The dowagers were coldly polite when they weren't outright rude, and the debutantes ignored her altogether. That Alicia was wealthy and devastatingly beautiful made her crime—a cit's daughter trying to elbow her way into Society—all the more heinous. Thus the early part of the evening had been an agony for Isabella.

Few gentlemen asked Alicia to dance, and those few were the same indigent gentlemen who'd made up Isabella's admiring circle in recent weeks.

Lord Tuttlehope had arrived rather late, on account of changing his clothes fourteen times and ruining two dozen cravats. And when he finally did arrive, he was so mortified at his tardiness and so convinced of having sunk forever in Alicia's esteem on this account that he was afraid to speak to her. It thus took him some time to notice that Veronica was surrounded by admirers and Alicia was not. Gradually, it penetrated his wits that his golden-haired darling was being snubbed. This made him mightily indignant, and he forgot his imagined disgrace as he bravely strode up to her.

Somehow Alicia managed to comprehend and accept his incoherent request for a dance, her face becomingly suffused with blushes. These having effectively routed his embarrassment, though causing him the most exquisite pain, he was able to keep both from treading on his fair one's toes and from stumbling over his own.

The next dance was claimed by Lord Hartleigh, who, if truth must be told, would never have noticed Alicia's plight on his own. But more than once he'd noted the concern on Isabella's face and her worried glances toward her attractive cousin. When the dance was over, he lingered a moment longer than necessary, as though he found Alicia's conversation utterly fascinating. The moment was just enough, however, to raise a flutter in the fair Honoria's breast and to kindle the competitive spirit of all the fine gentlemen in the immediate vicinity. After all, Alicia Latham was beautiful and rich, and if the Earl of Hartleigh, with his immaculate breeding, did not object to this cit's daughter, why should they? Within a quarter hour, Alicia found herself forced to break at least a dozen hearts because there were not dances enough to go round or hours enough to go round in.

Lord Tuttlehope, however, for his astounding act of courage, earned the promise of a second dance, and was allowed the unlooked-for privilege of escorting Alicia in to supper. Emboldened by this honour, the baron declared that he personally would speak to Lady Cowper in the matter of obtaining Alicia a voucher for Almack's.

"But Lady Jersey has already refused me," Alicia gently reminded him.

"Her own grandfather was a banker. Don't know where she gets her notions. But no one shall refuse
you
,"
her hero replied, and blinked so hard at his own audacity that his eyes watered.

Alicia had found a moment to hurriedly relate this interesting exchange to Isabella before an eager young major swept her back to the dance floor.
So,
Isabella thought,
Lord Tuttlehope had a spine after all.
But would his family accept his choice? Though they might not be able to influence the young man, they certainly might contrive to make Alicia miserable. Immersed in her thoughts, Isabella did not hear the two young ladies approach, and as she caught the drift of their conversation, she backed away into the shadows.

"Well, I wondered at it myself, but Lord Hartleigh has unusually high notions of duty. And he has always been the most chivalrous of men. How can one be surprised at his acknowledging the little merchant princess when he's taken in that nameless orphan child?"

"That is true, Honoria. And he thinks the world of the little girl, does he not?"

"Yes" was the tart reply. The rest Isabella did not hear, for the ladies slowly moved on.

Of course. Basil wasn't the only one to see it. "Unusually high notions of duty." She'd wanted to think it was for her own sake he'd asked Alicia to dance, but it had been chivalry, plain and simple. Another maiden in distress, and there was the Earl of Hartleigh, to the rescue.

"Ah. So here you are. I feared you'd gone off with your sketchbook and pencil—for a change, you know."

Still caught in her unhappy meditations, her gaze stuck at the intricate folds of his neckcloth for a moment before she looked up into Lord Hartleigh's face. He was smiling, but there was an intensity she'd never seen before in his dark eyes. Her heart beat a little faster as she forced a smile in return.

"I...we...had not expected such a crush—"

"Yes. This affair is an obvious success. But all the same, the role of hostess can be wearisome."

"You give me too much credit. My aunt is hostess, and more deserving of your sympathy—"

"Your aunt has assumed the rights of office, but it's clear you have its responsibilities; not that you need have any anxieties. Your cousins have obviously taken…” He spoke as though he understood her mind, as though he genuinely cared what she felt. And
he
had been responsible for Alicia's success. The ton respected him.

"Yes, My Lord, I think you are right. And I believe I owe you some thanks—"

But he sensed what she was about and wouldn't let her finish. "Your cousins are lovely, and Alicia has a genuine warmth and good nature which is tremendously refreshing. But I did not come to talk of your cousins. I have come for a dance. To command you to dance, if need be, for here you have been having all the responsibility and none of the fun."

She took his proffered arm, wishing she had the willpower to gracefully decline. But of course she could not. His muscular arm was a comfort, as were those warm brown eyes, as was that low, calm voice. While he spoke to her, all the gossip and snobbery receded into a distant background. And now, as they danced, even the bleak picture Basil had painted seemed a little brighter. What if he did love Lady Honoria? Wasn't it better to take whatever crumbs he might offer than to go on suffering as she had since that morning in the park? Even if in time, after they were married (she flushed at the thought), he came to resent her, he would be too much the gentleman ever to show it. But his next words called her back.