Mary Balogh (35 page)

“I shall be ready,” she said. “Thank you.”

And he bowed to both ladies and took his leave.

“Well,” Penelope said, looking closely at her friend’s flaming cheeks after the door had closed. “Mary?”

“How could I have refused him?” Mary asked. “Could I have refused him, Penny?”

“You could have been expecting other visitors,” Penelope said. “You could have had another appointment. You could have been indisposed, though of course you had just said that you took no harm last night. You could have simply said no.”

“But he showed me a kindness last night,” Mary said.

“Did he, indeed?” Penelope said. “What exactly did happen last night, if I may be so bold as to ask?”

“Nothing,” Mary said. “Nothing happened.”

“Nothing.” Her friend looked at her curiously again. “And yet you blush more scarlet than scarlet and feel obliged to take a public drive with London’s most notorious rake. Mary!”

“And that will be the end of it,” Mary said. “I shall thank him for staying close to me and talking to me all through the storm, and he will be satisfied that indeed I took no harm. And then this whole nasty situation will be at an end.”

“He is an attractive man,” Penelope said. “I know that many women find him so. And to many his reputation is just an added attraction. You are in a vulnerable position at the moment, with the Earl of Clifton gone. You were very fond of him, I know. I think you were perhaps in love with him, though you would never admit as much. I insisted you come to Vauxhall last evening mainly because you were in low spirits. You will not turn to Lord Edmond, will you? Oh, anyone but him, Mary. There must be any number of perfectly respectable gentlemen who would be only too pleased to befriend and even court you. You are only thirty years old.”

“Turn to Lord Edmond Waite? Penny, please!” Mary looked expressively at her friend. “The very thought of him makes me shudder.”

“We are talking about his person, not the thought of him,” Penelope said. “I am more sorry than ever about not asking Mrs. Rutherford who her other guests were to be last evening and about the unfortunate chance that put you in Lord Edmond’s company just when the storm began. But I do believe that like everyone else, he could have predicted its start and hurried you back to our carriage.
It was just like the man to trap a lady into a forced
tête-à-tête
. He did not try anything, Mary?”

“No,” Mary said firmly. “He did not try anything, Penny. Do you think I would have allowed it?”

“No,” Penelope said without hesitation. “Of course you would not. And among all the bad I have heard of the man, ravishment has never been part of the list. Enough of that unpleasant subject. Who is coming to your salon the evening after tomorrow? Anyone of special interest?”

Mary was relieved at the change of subject, relieved not to have to be telling more and more lies.
What would Penny say if she knew the full truth?
she wondered. The full truth did not bear thinking of. The more her mind touched on it, the more incredible it all seemed. It could not have happened, surely.

But it had.

Penelope stayed for half an hour before rising to take her leave.

“I shall look forward to the evening,” she said. “I always enjoy listening to Mr. Beasley’s theories on reform and to all the animated argument that his radical views inevitably arouse. If Sir Alvin Margrove does put in an appearance, there are sure to be sparks flying. It was courageous of you to invite them both on the same evening, Mary.”

“When a person holds such extreme views,” Mary said, “it is always desirable to have someone who holds the opposite, just so that the rest of us ordinary mortals can form a balanced opinion ourselves.”

“Well,” Penelope said, “I must be going. Shopping tomorrow? Can we possibly persuade ourselves that we need new bonnets or silk stockings or cream cakes?”

Mary laughed. “Definitely not cream cakes,” she said. “But I am sure we can find some purchase that we cannot possibly live without. My carriage or yours?”

And then she was alone again, with an hour and a half to kill before Lord Edmond Waite was to return for her. An hour and a half in which to develop pneumonia or typhoid or something equally indisputable. If only she could put the clock back twenty-four hours, she thought, closing her eyes briefly, and find an excuse—any excuse—not to go to Vauxhall. If only she could.

But she could not. And that was that.

L
ORD
E
DMOND
W
AITE
had not gone back to bed after taking Mary home. He had gone to his own home, saddled his horse, and gone for a brisk gallop in the park, there being no one else there at that time of the morning to object to his speed. Not that a few objections would have slowed him anyway. And then he had gone to Jackson’s Boxing Saloon and sparred for a few rounds.

He would normally have gone to Tattersall’s or the races in the afternoon, and then sought out a decent card game at Watier’s. Dinner at White’s and a visit to the theater or opera house to see what new talent if any had arrived fresh from the country—there had been a dearth of good talent lately. A look-in at some
ton
entertainment if there were no interesting prospects to pursue at the opera house. A perusal of all the young things at the Marriage Mart and a sneer at all their mamas, who would inevitably note his arrival and his raised quizzing glass with some alarm.

As if he were interested in bidding at the Market for a gauche and innocent little virgin.

The life sometimes became a trifle tedious. But then, there was no other that he knew of. He might have been happy with Felicity—he
would
have been happy. He would have taken her all about Europe and the British Isles. He would have wanted to show her off to the world. He would have wanted to give her the world.

Well, he wished her joy of her country swain. She would doubtless settle down with him to a life of dull respectability and half a dozen children and never know what she had missed with the man she had jilted.

But devil take it, he missed her and the chance at happiness he had glimpsed for the merest moment. He might have been happy. But he would not have been. It was not in his nature, not in his fate, to be happy.

One fact about his planned elopement with Felicity he would never regret, anyway. It had enabled him to get rid of Dorothea. Ignobly, it was true. His reputation would probably never recover from the blot he had put there by abandoning her. The note he had sent her had been very stark and to the point. He had not let her down gently.

Well, he thought as he climbed to the driver’s seat of his curricle late in the afternoon, at least he was about to embark on a new adventure in his life. It would brighten the dullness for a while at least. Lady Mornington! Who would have thought it? If anyone had told him twenty-four hours before that by this time today she would be his mistress and that he would be more than eager to repeat his bedding of her, he would have laughed with the loudest scorn. Lady Mornington?

But he had seen her with new eyes when he had called upon her briefly earlier in the afternoon. Her small, slender figure had looked pleasing to him because he knew what she looked like without the clothes and what she felt like beneath him on a bed, her legs twined about his. And her eyes had looked lovelier because he had known what they looked like when she was making love. Her hair had looked pretty because he knew how softly the warm curls twined about his fingers. Long hair would not suit such a small lady.

And he had no longer been afraid of her—had he really
been afraid? She might be a bluestocking, she might be intelligent. But she was also a woman—his woman.

Lady Mornington—looking as dignified and prim as ever, and looking totally different than she had ever looked to him before. He had almost laughed aloud, and probably would have if her friend Penelope Hubbard had not been with her. It was a shame, that. He had been looking forward to being alone with her.

She was coming down the stairs when he was admitted to the hall of her house. She wore a spring-green dress with a matching pelisse and an unadorned straw bonnet. She would, of course, be outshone by a hundred ladies on fashionable Rotten Row. But it did not matter. He had been infatuated with Felicity because she was the loveliest woman he had ever known. Perhaps he was ready now for the opposite. Though not quite the opposite, either.

She smiled at him. “Some fresh air will feel good,” she said.

“You have not been out today?” he asked her. “I suppose you slept the morning away.”

She did not answer, but concentrated on drawing on her gloves, and waited for her manservant to open the front door.

Outside, he helped her up to the high seat of his curricle. “I hope you would not have preferred a carriage or barouche,” he said. “But I always believe that during a drive in the park one must both see and be seen. It is the nature of the game, is it not?”

She smiled again. “This conveyance is fine,” she said. “Is it new?”

They conversed so politely on the way to the park that Lord Edmond almost laughed. They were behaving like strangers. Who would have thought that only a matter of hours ago they had been in steamy embrace in his
scarlet room? He could hardly believe it. He could hardly believe that she was the same woman.

“You slept well this morning?” he asked her.

She stiffened.

“I am afraid I did not allow you much sleep before you returned home,” he said.

“I would prefer not to talk about that,” she said.

“Would you?” he said. “Do the memories embarrass you? They need not. You were magnificent.”

“Last night was a strange out-of-time experience,” she said. “The storm made me lose my mind. I am grateful for the comfort you offered. I just wish it might have taken a different form.”

“But there was no storm,” he said, laughing, “when you told me that you liked it slow, that you liked both the foreplay and the main event slow. And you proved to me more than amply that you had not lied. You did indeed like it—as I did.”

Her jaw hardened, he saw, and she gazed very rigidly ahead of her. “If you are a gentleman,” she said, “you will forget last night, or at least keep your memories strictly to yourself. But of course, you are not a gentleman, are you?”

His eyebrows shot up. “You do not mince words, do you, Mary?” he said. “That was a blistering setdown.”

“I am Mary only to my intimates,” she said.

“Then I am glad I did not call you Lady Mornington,” he said. “I am nothing if not your intimate, Mary.”

“Hush,” she said. “May we please change the subject?”

He had turned his horses’ heads between the gateposts leading into Hyde Park, and almost instantly they were among other carriages and horses and pedestrians. It was right on the fashionable hour.

He considered her in silence for a moment. She was rigid with anger or embarrassment or something. He supposed that he might have guessed she would not accept
the situation as easily as he had. She was doubtless embarrassed to know that she had revealed her passionate nature so early in their relationship.

“I hope you do not expect me to discuss Virgil or the Elgin Marbles or any such thing,” he said. “Shall we discuss bonnets? What do you think of Miss Hodgeson’s—she is the lady in blue with the sharp-nosed dragon seated beside her.”

“It is elegant,” Mary said.

“Do you think so?” He set his head to one side and stared at the bonnet. “If all the fruit is real, I suppose there is practical value to it. She and the dragon can have some tea without having to go home for it. If it is not real, then I would have to say that she is imposing a great deal of unnecessary weight on her neck and it is in danger of disappearing into her shoulders. Wouldn’t you agree?”

“I am sure the fruit weighs nothing at all,” Mary said.

He chuckled. “You have no sense of the absurd, Mary,” he said. “Do you ever laugh?”

“When something is truly funny, of course,” she said.

“Ah.” He winced. “Another setdown. Do you specialize in them?”

She did not have a chance to reply. Colonel Hyde, one of her acquaintances, signaled to his coachman to stop his barouche alongside the curricle. Clearly he intended to talk. Lord Edmond inclined his head to the man and touched his hat to Mrs. Hyde, who sat hatchet-faced at her husband’s side.

“Ah, Mary, my dear,” the colonel said. “So you are taking the air, too, are you? Waite?”

“Hello, Mary, dear,” Mrs. Hyde said. “Are you quite safe up there?”

“I am taking good care of her, ma’am,” Lord Edmond said.

But the colonel’s good lady chose to ignore his very
existence. Just as if Mary had decided to take a ride in the park in the passenger seat of a curricle with only the horses for company.

“Quite, thank you,” Mary said. “Have you recovered from your cold?”

“Who is to be at your salon the evening after tomorrow, eh?” the colonel asked. “Dorothy wants to go listen to that Madame Paganini or whatever her name is at Rossford’s, but the woman screeches. I would prefer to enjoy some intelligent conversation at your house. Who is it to be?”

“Mr. Beasley for certain,” Mary said. “And Sir Alvin Margrove has said he will look in if he can.”

“Ha.” The colonel barked with laughter. “I would not miss it for worlds, dear. There will be a duel at dawn the following day, for sure. I’ll have to bring Freeman with me. He will shoot himself if he finds out later that he has missed such fun. Will you be there, Waite?”

“Beasley and Margrove?” Lord Edmond said. “They can set the House on a roar, I have heard. They may just be too much for Lady Mornington’s salon. I shall be there to protect her if it should come to fisticuffs.”

“Marvin,” Mrs. Hyde said frostily, “we are blocking the thoroughfare. We must drive on.”

The colonel touched his hat and gave his coachman the signal to drive on.

There was a short silence in the curricle.

“Your literary—or political—evenings are not invitational?” Lord Edmond asked. “You hold open house?”

“Anyone is welcome,” she said, her voice stiff.

“Then I shall be there,” he said. “If you have no objection, of course.”