Indiscreet (9 page)

He grinned at her reflection. “That is the spirit,” he said. “You look good enough to eat. I suppose I am not allowed a few nibbles yet?” He lowered his head to kiss the back of her neck.

“I wish,” she said, “there had been a polite way of not inviting Mrs. Winters.”

He lifted his head and looked closely at her reflection. “Mrs. Winters?” he said. “What has she done to offend you, Clarissa? Apart from having been born beautiful, that is.”

“She is getting above herself,” she said sharply. “She is putting on airs. She is looking too high.”

“Doubtless,” he said quietly, “you intend to continue.”

“Rawleigh is interested in Ellen,” she said. “That is plain for all to see. And they are a perfect match. But Mrs. Winters is flirting with him. She had him alone in the music room last week. And when I called yesterday to inquire after Mrs. Downes's health, Miss Downes came out to the carriage and happened to mention that Mrs. Winters was at their house when Daphne and Rawleigh called the day before. And then they escorted her home and
went inside with her.
”

“I am sure, my dear,” Mr. Adams said, “that with Daphne present all was proper. Indeed, it was probably all her suggestion. Are you imagining something that is just not happening? You know my opinion of the so-called courtship between Rex and Ellen.”

“I planned this evening for a purpose,” she said. “I thought it would be the perfect occasion for an announcement, Claude. Or at the very least for everyone to see what was in the wind. I will
not
have it ruined.”

“Clarissa,” he said, a note of firmness in his voice, “Rex is not our puppet. Neither is Ellen. Or Mrs. Winters. I am sure all of them will behave with perfect good breeding tonight. We cannot
demand more than that. We cannot orchestrate a courtship for which the participants feel no enthusiasm. And we cannot forbid Rex and Mrs. Winters to look at each other. Or even to dance with each other if they feel so inclined.”

She got to her feet and turned to look at him. “I will not have it,” she said. “I will not have that woman smiling at him and batting her eyelids at him and distracting him. We do not know who she is, Claude, or what she is. For all we know—”

“We know,” he said sternly, “that she has leased a cottage from me in the village and that for the past five years she has conducted herself in exemplary fashion. We know that her every word and action have proclaimed her to be a lady. We also know that she is to be an invited guest in our home this evening. She will be accorded as much courtesy as any other guest, Clarissa.”

“Oh,” she said, “I hate it when you set your jaw like that and allow your eyes to turn hard. You look more like Rawleigh than ever. Don't, Claude. You know how anxious I am—”

He set his arms about her and drew her against him. “Yes, I know,” he said. “You are anxious about tonight and anxious about your sister's future. All will be well with both if you will just relax. Why not enjoy the evening? And save the first waltz for me. I insist. Husband's privilege and all that. I do not care if it is not the fashion for a husband and wife to be seen together when they are hosting an entertainment. You will dance with me.”

She sighed. “You are crushing me, Claude,” she said. “Oh, I wish I could dance every set with you. You smell good. A new cologne?”

“Purchased with my wife in mind,” he said, “and worn with
the lecherous hope that there will be enough of the night left when this is all over for me to put it to good use.”

“As if you need cologne for that,” she said. “Rawleigh has asked Ellen for the first set. That is promising, is it not?”

He chuckled. “It means that neither of them will be wallflowers at the start at least,” he said, drawing her arm through his and turning toward the door. “Time to go down to greet our dinner guests, my love.”

Mrs. Adams wished again, though silently this time, that Catherine Winters was not one of their number.

•   •   •

LORD
Pelham and Mr. Gascoigne were planning to leave next week. They would not wish to outstay their welcome, they had explained. They were not quite sure where they would go or even if they would spend the spring and summer together. Only London seemed off-limits to both of them. They might go down to Dunbarton in Cornwall, the Earl of Haverford's country seat. He had been there since before Christmas and it would be good to see him again.

They were bored at Bodley, Lord Rawleigh knew. He could hardly blame them. Clarissa's guest list could more accurately be called a gathering of friends and relatives than a house party. Certainly there was not much to hold the attention of single and
healthy gentlemen. He had fleetingly considered leaving with them. Leaving would be one way of convincing Clarissa that she was backing the wrong horse entirely where her sister was concerned. And he believed that Ellen Hudson herself would be relieved if he took himself off.

But he could not bring himself to leave. Not just yet. Not until he was convinced beyond any reasonable doubt . . .

His pursuit of a handsome widow to fill the temporary position of mistress had been conducted with alarming indiscretion, of course. Daphne was the latest person to have become aware of his interest. Not that she was at all alarmed. Quite the contrary. She heartily approved. She did not know, of course, the nature of his interest, as Catherine Winters herself had put it. Daphne thought he was beginning a courtship of the woman.

“If you wish to come riding with Clayton and me tomorrow,” she said to him when they were walking back from Catherine's cottage, “we will take pity on your lone state and call to see if Mrs. Winters will join us, Rex. But she does not have a horse. Hmm. A walk, then. All the better. You can fall a short distance behind us as you did a few afternoons ago, when I first noticed the way you have of looking at her.”

But yesterday it had rained, and though Daphne and Clayton had gone trudging off for destinations unknown, he had declined accompanying them. He would probably have done so anyway. Good Lord, he was not going to court a mistress under the indulgent—and uncomprehending—eye of his sister.

But tonight was the night of the ball. He dressed with care, choosing a black coat and knee breeches with white linen and
lace. Black was becoming perhaps a little too commonplace in town, it was true, but it was still rarely seen in the country. He placed a diamond pin, his only adornment, in the center of his neckcloth. He scorned dandyism as a rule. Tonight he would have avoided it at all costs. He would not look more gorgeous than his lady.

He was glad of his forethought when he saw her—from a distance across the drawing room before dinner. She was dressed as she had been at dinner when she had been a guest there. She wore her simply styled green dress with only a string of pearls at her throat. There were no plumes or other adornments in her hair.

As on that occasion, she outshone all the other ladies present, including Clarissa, who was sparkling in the diamonds that had been a wedding present from Claude. Catherine was smiling and talking with Mrs. Lipton, an unknown couple, and a man Lord Rawleigh recognized as the tenant he and Claude had called upon a week or so ago. A single man and not a day over thirty-five at the outside. Damn his eyes, which he had better learn to keep to himself if he knew what was good for him.

She caught his eye across the room and half smiled at him. He wondered if she had mistaken him for Claude again. But it was not a bright smile. Perhaps a quarter smile would be a more accurate description. He was going to dance with her tonight, he thought. He hoped she had no plan to avoid the two waltzes he had reserved with her. He was going to steal a kiss tonight too, by hook or by crook. The one on the bridge could hardly be
described as a kiss, but it had awoken a hunger in him that had to be satisfied. Even if she was not to be bedded, she was going to be kissed, by God. She was not going to deny him that.

“I have not seen you gaze even at the enemy with such burning zeal, old chap,” Lord Pelham said, moving into his line of vision. “She continues obdurate?”

“Perhaps you and Nat will change your plans to leave after tonight,” the viscount said, looking about him with his customary mixture of hauteur and boredom. “Clarissa seems to have turned out a number of passably pretty females for the occasion.”

“Nat already has his eye on the redhead,” Lord Pelham said, nodding his head in the direction of the far corner of the room, where a pretty young girl stood in a group, looking about her with wide and interested eyes. “But he is understandably nervous, Rex. He is trying to ascertain how many parents and cousins and uncles etcetera—you know the old litany—are present and likely to converge on him to demand his intentions if he should happen to so much as smile at the girl.”

Viscount Rawleigh chuckled.

S
HE
had had pleasant dinner companions, Mr. Lipton on one side and Sir Clayton Baird on the other. Although Mrs. Adams's greeting had been noticeably cool, everyone else had been courteous and even amiable. She pushed to the back of her mind the knowledge that she looked far plainer than any other lady present. She wore the same green gown she had worn to every evening entertainment for the past two years. And her mother's pearls. She rarely wore those now except on very special occasions.

It did not matter that she was plainly and unfashionably dressed. She had not come in order to be noticed. Merely to enjoy an evening in company. And of course when they adjourned to the ballroom and were joined there by other guests, who had not
been invited to dinner, she found that she was no more plainly dressed than several of the wives and daughters of tenant farmers.

She danced the first set of country dances with one of the tenants. She smiled at him and set herself to enjoy the evening. She had always loved a ball with all the rich sounds of an orchestra and all the perfumes of flowers and colognes and all the swirling splendor of colored silks and satins and the glitter of jewels in the candlelight.

She hoped Viscount Rawleigh would change his mind about the two waltzes he had said he would claim. Surely he would. It would be a very public setting in which to single her out for any dance, much less a waltz. And twice? Surely he would not. He had made no move to approach her in the drawing room before dinner. He had been seated almost as far from her at table as he possibly could be. He had not approached her in the ballroom. He was dancing now with Ellen Hudson in a different set from her own.

He had said that he was to dance the opening set with Miss Hudson. What if he meant to keep to his other plan too? Catherine's breath quickened.

There was no mistaking him tonight for his twin. Mr. Adams looked extremely handsome in varying shades of blue. Lord Rawleigh looked suffocatingly elegant and—satanic in black and white.

Mr. Gascoigne asked her for the next set, a quadrille. He set himself to charm her and succeeded. She liked his smiling eyes and handsome figure and wondered again why it was that one man could be quite as handsome as another and far more
charming and easy in his manners and yet could stir her to no spark of anything beyond warm liking. Whereas the other . . .

Well, perhaps it was just in her nature to be attracted to the wrong men. The two gentlemen who had offered for her during the past three years had both been perfectly eligible and would have been good to her. But she had never been willing to marry for anything less than love.

Never. That had been half the trouble. . . .

Lord Pelham danced another set of country dances with her.

“After all, Mrs. Winters,” he said, bowing to her before the set began and favoring her with the full force of his very blue eyes, “why should Nat be allowed to get away with being the one to dance with the loveliest girl in the room?”

“Ah,” she said, smiling at him, “a flatterer. A man after my own heart, my lord.”

He was easy to talk with and laugh with. Not that there was a great deal of time or breath for talk or laughter—it was a vigorous dance.

“I do believe there is to be a waltz next,” he said conversationally as he returned her to her place at the end of the set. “I am happy that Mrs. Adams is enlightened enough to bring it to the country. There is no dance for which I prefer taking the floor. Do you know the steps, Mrs. Winters?”

“Oh, yes,” she said. “It is a lovely dance. Romantic.”

But her heart was pounding and she wished she was carrying a fan. Suddenly the room seemed very hot and airless. Perhaps, she thought in foolish panic, she should hurry away to the ladies' withdrawing room and hide there until the set was in progress.
He had danced only with Miss Hudson, Mrs. Adams, and Lady Baird. It would seem very strange for him to dance the first waltz with someone who was not even one of the house party.

But then, he probably did not intend to dance it with her at all. Perhaps that was part of her reason for wanting to run away and hide. There would be some humiliation in watching him lead someone else onto the floor.

And then Sir Clayton Baird was at her side and it was too late to run. He talked with her for a minute or two before asking her for the waltz. Oh, dear. But yes, at least this would cover the humiliation. She opened her mouth to reply and half lifted her hand to place in his.

“Sorry, old chap,” a bored and haughty voice said from behind her. “I reserved this set well in advance of this evening. Perhaps Mrs. Winters has the next one free for you.”

She turned rather sharply and placed her hand in Viscount Rawleigh's outstretched one and allowed him to lead her onto the floor without even a backward glance at Sir Clayton. And she knew without a doubt—even though they were one of the first couples to take the floor and even though most eyes must be upon them—she knew that she was glad. That this was why she had come. That this was what she had waited for all evening.

“You were within a hairbreadth of giving away my waltz to my brother-in-law, Mrs. Winters,” he said, his dark eyes holding hers. They were standing facing each other, though not yet touching since the music had not begun. “I would have been very annoyed. You have never seen me annoyed, have you?”

“It would be better if I did not?” she said. “I would be reduced
to a mass of quivering jelly? I think not, my lord. I know you were a cavalry officer during the war, but I am not one of your raw recruits.”

“I never engaged any of my raw recruits to waltz with me,” he said. “I would not so blatantly court scandal.”

She laughed despite herself and was rewarded with an answering gleam of amusement in his eyes.

“Ah, this is better,” he said. “You laugh all too rarely, Mrs. Winters. I wonder if there was a time when you laughed more freely.”

“One would be thought either insane or very immature if one went off into peals of glee at every suggestion of wit, my lord,” she said.

“I believe,” he said, ignoring her words, “there must have been such a time. Before you came to Bodley-on-the-Water. In God's name, why this place? You must have been little more than a girl then. Let me guess. You had a strong romantic attachment to your husband and swore on his passing never to laugh again.”

Oh, dear Lord. Let the music start. She wanted no one playing guessing games with her past.

“Or else,” he said, “your marriage was such an unhappy experience that you retreated to a remote corner of the country and still have not learned to laugh freely again.”

She had come here tonight to
enjoy
herself. Her lips compressed. “My lord,” she said, “you are impertinent.”

His eyebrows shot up. “And you, ma'am,” he said, “try my patience.”

It was not an auspicious manner in which to begin a waltz,
the dance she had just called romantic. But the music began at that moment and he moved a little closer to set one hand behind her waist and take her right hand in his. She set her left on his shoulder. He twirled her into the dance.

She had waltzed before. Many times. It had always been her favorite dance. And she had always imagined that it would be wonderful almost beyond bearing to waltz with a man who meant something to her. There was something so suggestive of intimacy and romance in the dance—there, that word again.

It was not romance she felt dancing with Lord Rawleigh. At first it was awareness, so raw and all-encompassing that she thought she might well faint from it. His hand at her waist burned into her. She felt his body heat from crown to soles, although their bodies did not touch. She could smell his cologne and something beyond that. She could smell the very essence of him.

And then she felt exhilaration. He was a superb dancer, twirling her confidently about the ballroom without missing a step and without colliding with any other dancer. She matched her steps to his and felt that she had never come so close to dancing on air before. She had never felt so wonderfully happy.

And finally she felt self-consciousness. She caught Mrs. Adams's eyes fleetingly and unintentionally as that lady danced with her husband. There was a smile on Mrs. Adams's face and steel in her eyes. And fury.

She had been waltzing, Catherine realized, as if no other moment existed beyond this half hour and as if no one else existed but her and the man with whom she danced. She suddenly became aware that they danced in a ballroom filled with other people and
that there was indeed time beyond this half hour. A whole leftover lifetime to be lived here among these very people—with the exception of Viscount Rawleigh, who would go away very soon.

She wondered what her face and the motions of her body had revealed during the past fifteen or twenty minutes. And she looked up to see what his face revealed.

He was looking steadily down at her. “God, but I want you, Catherine Winters,” he said. The heat of his words was quite at variance with the languor in his eyes.

This was what those people who objected to the waltz meant, she thought. It was a dance that aroused passions that had no business being aroused. And she was to waltz with him again before supper?

“I do believe, my lord,” she said, “that you begin to repeat yourself. We have dealt with that matter before now. It is a closed book.”

“Is it?” he said, his eyes dropping for a brief moment to her lips. “Is it, Catherine?”

She knew that he was an experienced and masterly seducer. A rake. He was not the first she had met. He knew all the power the sound of her given name on his lips would have over her. And of course he was quite right. She felt touched by tenderness.

Which was quite ridiculous under the circumstances.

Instead of answering, she fixed her eyes on the diamond pin that was winking among the elaborate folds of his neckcloth and danced on.

“I am glad,” he said when the music finally drew to an end and he was returning her to her place, “you did not answer my
last question, ma'am. I would have hated to be compelled to call you a liar. The supper dance. Do not grant it to anyone else. You would not enjoy having me annoyed with you.” He raised her hand to his lips and kissed her fingers before turning to stroll away.

She was going to have to leave before the supper waltz, she decided. She could take no more of this. All the careful work of years was being undone. It might take her five more years to regain the poise and peace she had known just a couple of weeks ago. Perhaps she would never regain them at Bodley-on-the-Water. There would be constant reminders. But she could not leave. The very thought was frightening—starting all over again with strangers. But even if she wanted to try it, she could not. She had to stay here for the rest of her life.

She had come to Bodley House with Reverend and Mrs. Lovering. Perhaps, she thought, they would be ready to leave early, as they sometimes were, though it was unlikely that they would forfeit supper for the sake of an early night. She looked for them without a great deal of hope. But they were nowhere to be found.

She discovered eventually, when she asked the butler, that the rector had been called away to the bedside of Mrs. Lambton, who was very low, and had left to take Mrs. Lovering home before going with Percy, Mrs. Lambton's son, the five miles to their farm. They had left without her, Catherine realized, either because they had forgotten her or, more likely, because it was still early and they had assumed that she would want to stay and would find someone else to give her a ride back to the village at the end of the evening.

Anyone would, of course. Any number of the neighbors would be going through the village on their way home and would be happy enough to set her down at her cottage gate. Mr. Adams would call out a carriage in a moment to take her home. She had no reason to feel stranded. It was not even very far to walk, though it was a cloudy and dark night. Anyway, she did not like to walk alone at night. But she could not possibly ask anyone to drive her home this early unless she could invent some dreadful ailment in a hurry.

She was stuck at the ball until the end, it seemed.

She smiled as Sir Clayton approached to claim his set.

•   •   •

HE
burned for her. He could not remember having been at the mercy of a tease before—if that was what Catherine Winters was. He was more inclined to think that she did not quite know her own mind. But however it was, it was having all the effect she could have desired if she really was teasing.

He had to have her.

He was not at all sure he would be this obsessed if she had become his mistress after that first visit, as he had fully expected she would. He could not believe so. Surely if he had had her then and for the two weeks since then, he would be satisfied. Still desirous of her, perhaps. She was unusually lovely and appeared to have character to go along with the looks. But surely he would not still be as hot for her as he was now.