“It doesn’t look as if it will rain today,” she said. “You are quite safe.”
“I brought it for you. I would rather experience the expert valeting of your cousin’s butler. My jacket had never been so well pressed before. Or since.”
“You look fairly well turned-out, just the same.” She noticed by sunlight, however, a thread on his sleeve. “May I?” she asked, abating her steps and lifting her hand to it.
Bret bowed his head in assent. Roma flicked the wisp away and found her hand caught in his. “I can find nothing whatever amiss with you. You are perfection.”
She raised her eyes to his then, recalling the touch of his lips on hers, couldn’t resist letting her gaze fall to his firm and well-shaped mouth. Perhaps he noticed, for his grasp suddenly tightened. “Roma ...” He turned his head to one side, reaching out to touch her throat, to draw her closer. The kiss was already in his eyes.
Roma hesitated, but she was no parlor maid to be kissed on the street for all eyes to see. She slipped out of his light hold, shaking her head, unable to look anywhere but at the walkway beneath her feet. Two working men passed by, muttering an apology as they passed between Bret and herself.
“We should walk on,” she said. “We mustn’t block the path.”
“
Yes
.
Besides, my aunt need only glance out her window to see ... everything.”
She quickened her pace, walking on alone for a few feet until he caught up to her. Very deliberately, he took her hand and passed it through the crook of his elbow. “We needn’t run today,” he said in an intimate tone, smoothing the glove over her skin. “We can take all the time in the world.”
Oh, but she knew how far this infatuation had gone when so idle a touch could send thrills chasing through her. When she’d been hardly sixteen, she and her father had gone to spend the summer in Chichester. One glance from the local vicar’s son, dark of eye and hair, all of twenty-one, and home from Cambridge, could send her giddy for days. Perhaps she was suffering from some sort of second spring now. But could one have spring fever so late in the year?
“I wanted to tell you what Jasper said to me. I was up half the night talking with him,” Bret said in a more conversational voice.
“What is it?” she said, hoping to hear some promise of renunciation.
“He’s holding a grand ball at his home in a few days’ time. He wondered if you’d care to go. Some small recompense, he says, for last night.”
“Is that all?” Roma asked.
“What else? Oh, you mean the pretty scene he and your cousin enacted for us last night. I don’t mind confessing I was fairly disgusted. I had thought better of Jasper. He’s a very honorable fellow as a rule. I would have trusted him with my last ration of pork out in Spain, let alone my life.”
“It was only a kiss,” she said, knowing what arguments Dina was likely to advance. “After all, you kissed me,” she added, softly enough to hope he hadn’t heard her clearly.
“But you aren’t married, Roma.”
“No, I’m not.” Once again, she felt it was wiser to observe some graffito on the wall across the street, to admire a bolt of pale gray velvet at a draper’s, to smile at strangers, rather than meet his brilliant eyes.
“Jasper needs to find himself a bride who is young, sweet, and unencumbered by scandal. If he is to achieve his ambitions, he must be careful.”
“My cousin is very presentable,” Roma said.
“Would she continue to be so with a divorce in her past? You know society better than I, Roma. Do you think they’d accept Mrs. Derwent’s new husband? Five years younger than she is at the least, and she formerly married to an extremely punctilious and well-liked man. And I cannot believe she is the sort of woman not to make a bad situation worse if the opportunity presents itself.”
The last thing Roma wanted to discuss with Bret was Dina’s absurd romance. If she were to be coldly honest, she’d admit that all she really wanted was to hear him go on talking to her with that intimate intonation, telling her that he found her perfection, telling her that this was no mere infatuation on his part. Such talk gave her both courage and hope. Nevertheless, she could not let his comments on Dina, whom he hardly knew, to pass unchallenged.
“You are speaking of my cousin, Mr. Donovan. She has her faults—who does not?—-but she is a good friend to me. She may well be turned from her infatuation with this young man. Indeed, I am as fully aware as you are of the disaster awaiting them if they continue. Even more so, as you have said. Though I have never taken a great interest in the
ton,
having little patience for such frippery, I believe they would be accepted nowhere except at the lowest sort of entertainment. And I don’t for a moment believe that Dina would be either happy or pleasant to live with if she couldn’t enjoy London society. Love wouldn’t last long under those conditions.”
“Wouldn’t it?”
“How could it? She’d always want things he couldn’t provide, not because they cost money but because they are not his to give. Even the wealthiest families in town have to sue for certain favors from certain personages. If Dina were divorced, especially if she were spectacularly divorced, those doors would close, and not all Mr. M’s ingenuity, fortune, or love would serve to open them again.”
“But if she truly loved him,” Bret said, keeping her from proceeding with his hand on her arm.
“If you
truly loved someone, would society and the jeers of former friends matter so much?”
“They must matter. To someone like Dina, they are what my father calls ‘heaven, earth, and Ultima Thule.’ “
“To someone like Dina Derwent, yes. What about someone like you?”
“We were not speaking of me,” Roma said. She looked around as if waking from a dream to find that she’d reached her destination. She moved away from Bret and gave him her hand to shake. “Thank you for escorting me. I hope we will meet again soon.”
“If you attend Jasper’s party, I shall certainly see you.”
“Not before?” Roma asked shamelessly.
“I promised I’d spend the next several days with him and his mother at their home.”
“I see. May I wish you a pleasant journey? Good day.”
“Good day.” She’d climbed a few stairs when he called after her. “Wait.”
He stood below her, looking up like an acolyte in a church. She didn’t like it. He did not tower over her like so many men. She’d become used to being able to look straight into his eyes, when she could bring herself to do so. Roma came down step by step until she was only a single one above him. His eyes were laughing again. “Will you save me a few dances?”
“Certainly.”
“And will you walk with me? There’s a stone terrace that goes three-quarters of the way around the house.”
She found the balustrade to be of absorbing interest. “Yes, I will.”
“That’s a promise,” he said, lifting her hand as if to kiss it. Roma’s breath caught, but he only looked up at her with a smile so wicked that she couldn’t keep back a gurgle of laughter. She stood outside her cousin’s house and watched him walk away.
Bret looked back twice, walking backward for several yards the last time until he bumped into an old gentleman. Roma looked on in alarm until, after a very brief conversation, Bret’s charm induced the man to forgive him and even send him on his way with a laugh. Bret lifted his hand to her, and she returned his wave with a flourish.
* * * *
Dina Derwent, it seemed, was lying down to recruit her strength for a card party this evening. “Pray remind Mrs. Derwent that she very much wished to see me today.”
The grave butler bowed and carried the message up. After a brief space, he arrived to escort her to her cousin’s room. Dina was up, sitting before a mirror while her French maid dressed her hair. The face in the mirror appeared sallow and disgruntled, the hair swept up from her forehead in a stiff pompadour aging her badly.
“
You
wanted to see me, Dina?”
“Thank you for coming. I suppose you know what it’s all about. What a fool you must think me!”
Roma cast a glance at the maid, placidly continuing with her duties.
“Never mind her. She pretends not to understand English, but I know for a fact she listens at doors. But she’s a wizard with hair and maquillage.”
“Not today, she isn’t. She’s making you look a perfect fright,” Roma said, slipping the brush from the maid’s fingers. “I will see to my cousin’s toilette.” The maid mimed a curtsy, giving a tiny sniff of disdain.
“I can’t think why you keep such a pert servant.”
“I should hardly be known for my clothes if it were not for her. What she doesn’t know about fashion hasn’t been invented yet. But that’s not why I wanted to see you.” She stirred idly among the bottles and pots on her table. “Have you tried this perfume? I don’t think it suits me,” she said, pulling the faceted stopper from a crystal flagon and dabbing it on her collarbones.
“In fact,” Roma asked, “Why did you want to see me?”
“You know perfectly well why. You’d better see if that wretched girl is listening.” As Roma verified that she was not, Dina pulled the pins from her hair. When Roma returned, Dina demanded, “Are you going to tell Derwent what you saw or thought you saw last night?”
In the light that came through the window, Roma could see the slightest signs of decline at the corners of Dina’s eyes. Not wrinkles, yet, merely the tiniest loss of freshness marked the places where one day lines would be carved by time. Her jawline, too, had softened, though not yet slipped while the bracelets in her throat were only just noticeable but already permanent.
“Saw or thought I saw? Dina, you and your paramour admitted that you were in love.”
“Yes, well, let us not quibble over such matters. Are you going to tell Derwent?”
“It’s not my place to tell him anything.”
Dina breathed out a sigh. “Thank heaven. You don’t know what a sleepless night you gave me.”
“You weren’t alone in that,” Roma said under her breath. She started brushing her cousin’s softly waving hair.
“I’m sure you are right,” Dina said, misunderstanding her. “Poor Jasper. He’s dreadfully hidebound, you know. Not like Derwent with his everlasting principles, but little things bother Jasper so much. He is quite ridiculously afraid that his friend Mr. Donovan will think the less of him now. But as I told him, what difference does it make what he thinks? He’ll be going back to Ireland one day, and then this military friendship will peter out naturally. Don’t you think so, Roma?”
“I suppose it may, though they seem fast friends. I am rather less concerned about Mr. Morningstreet’s friendship with Mr. Donovan than his friendship with you. It won’t do, Dina; you know it won’t do.”
“Why will it not do? Oh, you are thinking that I am too old for him. He says what does age matter to a goddess?”
“No, I was not thinking that. If there is a disparity in your ages, what of it? Other couples have a greater,” Roma said, thinking of her father. “But you are married, Dina. Nothing can come of this friendship, and while Mr. Morningstreet fancies himself in love with you, he cannot find a suitable bride.”
“I don’t see why not. He doesn’t have to be in love with her.”
“Dina...”
“Oh, I’m not serious. What will you do to my hair?” she asked, now that it was all brushed out and lying like silk over her shoulders. “It’s a pity we can never wear it long. It takes quite five years off one’s face.”
“Are you going to wear a cap?”
“I thought this blue kerchief I bought in town. Unless it’s too fast for Bath?”
“No, it’s charming. Would you like the point in front, a la Marie Stuart?”
Dina nodded, gazing at her reflection, enraptured. “Besides, it would break his heart if I refused to see him anymore.”
“Unless you give him his marching orders now. You could blame it on me if you like.”
“Oh, I couldn’t do that. I adore him, you see, and must have him to flatter me and escort me and... Well, if you’d ever been in love, you’d know what I mean.”
“You forget that I was engaged once,” Roma said, refusing to give her the satisfaction of making her display unseemly anger. Her hands moved as gently as ever amid the waves.
“Yes, that’s right. To your precious Elliot. The love match of the century... if you only knew.”
Roma pretended that she’d not heard.
Dina repeated what she’d said, with greater emphasis. “I said, ‘if you only knew.’“
“If I only knew what, Dina?” Roma asked, though an instant later she wished she had not. But her weakness had betrayed her. There was a gleam of satisfaction in Dina’s eyes at achieving her reaction.
“Everyone knew that Elliot Brownlow was just waiting for someone high born enough to suit his notions of his own consequence, though what he had to be so proud of I’m sure I cannot guess. His precious father wasn’t a real knight, merely someone who loaned the Prince Regent money and accepted a knighthood in place of repayment.”
“I knew Elliot was ambitious ...”
“Ambitious? He was quite mad on the subject. He traced your bloodline before he’d even met you. If you’d been wall-eyed, butter-toothed, spotty and twenty-two stone, he still would have offered for you. It wasn’t you he loved; it was your family tree.”
“How do you know?” Roma asked, placing the pins just so to hold both curl and kerchief.
“He told me so. Of course, he used me, too. Or did you honestly think it was just a coincidence that you met?”
“Do you mean you had a hand in our meeting?”
“You’d written to tell me where you were, what you were doing, and even that your maid had been ill. I told him all that as lovers will discuss the smallest details of their lives. The next I heard from him was a letter telling me that you two were engaged to be married. Oh, your Elliot was a prize. He plotted and planned; he’d make use of any stratagem, break any heart, to get what he wanted.”
“I know.”
“What?” Heedless of her coiffure, Dina swung around in the backless chair to gape up at her cousin.
“I knew what Elliot was. He used to joke that nothing so important as love should be left to chance. Or he’d hint that he’d taken great pains to woo me. But I was dazzled, I suppose, that anyone so handsome and charming—he was that as I’m sure you’ll agree. I was young and thought I’d been touched by God.”