Mary Balogh - The Secret Mistress

Being in love was an altogether pleasant sensation, she thought, even if bringing it to a happy conclusion was going to be the biggest challenge of her life.

Was something worth having, though, if it did not present a challenge?

“I DO HOPE Lady Angeline did not seriously hurt her ankle,” Edward’s mother said after their set was over. “But she was very brave and dignified about it and very eager to remove herself from the floor so that the dancing could resume. Most young ladies would have made much of the moment and wailed and swooned and made quite a fuss before demanding to be carried off the dance floor.”

“And she is not silent and insipid as so many girls are these days, is she?” Alma added. “She engaged you in what appeared to be a lively conversation, Edward. It is important for the wife of an important man to be able to converse sensibly.”

Sensibly?

“She is beautifully tall,” Lorraine said with a sigh. “I am envious to the point of jealousy. She is actually prettier than I thought at first. I think it is in the expression more than in the features alone. She fairly sparkles. She is going to be besieged by suitors and not just because she is the sister of the Duke of Tresham.”

“Edward,” Juliana said, tapping his arm with her fan, “Mrs. Smith-Benn is making her way toward us with her daughter. The mother is the daughter of Lord Blacklock, you know.”

His life had indeed changed, Edward realized before the ball was even an hour old. Freedom and relaxation did not come as he had hoped once the opening set was at an end. For of course, he was now very eligible indeed, and this was the great marriage mart. And anyone who did not make a move now, when it was early in the Season, might find later that all the best prizes had already been snapped up. Or so he had been warned. And it worked in both directions, of course. Men were not the only ones seeking spouses.

His mother and sisters and sister-in-law did not even have to make any effort to seek other partners for him. He did not have to look dutifully about him to choose some for himself. He did not have a chance to find Eunice. Or to slink off to the card room. Young ladies, escorted by their mamas, came to court him. They came usually and apparently to speak to his female relatives, who then introduced them to him, and he did what was expected of him—he asked the young lady to dance. It was all rather alarmingly easy.

He danced the second set with Miss Smith-Benn, who was a blond, blue-eyed, delicate little beauty, the third with Miss Cartwright, a handsome brunette with slightly protruding teeth, and the fourth with Lady Fiona Robson, who smiled a great deal and was passably pretty despite the fact that she had freckles. He acquitted himself well enough on the dance floor, even if that meant only that he did not make an utter idiot of himself. And each of the three was polite enough not to feign injury in order to avoid dancing with him. None of them chattered on about charging bulls or called him stuffy when he failed to be amused at irresponsible stupidity.

Really … stuffy.

Lord Heyward, are you perhaps just a little bit stuffy?

The fact that she was right did not excuse her breach of good manners. Especially when she had preceded it with a fake injury that she could not even disguise well enough to remember which ankle she was supposed to have sprained.

It was, then, the supper dance before Edward could maneuver matters more to his own liking and find time to seek out Eunice. He did it by returning Lady Fiona to her mother’s side and then neglecting to return immediately to his family’s side. He had done his duty for long enough. He needed a break. And no one would be able to fault him. He was still in the ballroom. He was still taking a partner.

He had seen Eunice dance once. But she had spent most of the evening sitting with her aunt and conversing with a group of older ladies, all gorgeously decked out and plumed and sparkling with jewels. They all turned identical gratified expressions toward him when he approached.

“What a fine evening this is, Lord Heyward,” Lady Sanford said. “It is quite a triumph for the Duke of Tresham, who has never been known to host a ball here before, you know, despite the splendor of his ballroom. Such a waste! And Lady Angeline Dudley appears to be taking very well indeed even though she is unfortunately tall, poor lady.”

“And with a complexion one can describe only as swarthy,” Mrs. Cooper added. “Her looks would have been a severe trial to her poor dear mama had she lived.”

“We will be offending Lord Heyward,” a lady whom Edward did not know said, smiling archly at him. “He danced the opening set with Lady Angeline and perhaps has a particular interest in her.”

“I do find her quite remarkably beautiful,” he said. “However, she is not the only beautiful lady in the room. Miss Goddard, would you do me the honor of dancing the next set with me?”

Eunice got to her feet while her aunt looked at her with triumph and the other ladies looked with interest. She set her hand along the top of his.

“Poor Edward,” she said as they walked away. “I will not hold you to your offer. I will not expect you actually to dance with me. It is quite unbearably stuffy in here, is it not?”

“You will stroll with me on the terrace?” he asked hopefully. “I cannot tell you how grateful I would be.”

She chuckled softly.

“And were you implying back there,” she asked, “that I was one of the other beautiful ladies in the room? Being the Earl of Heyward has given you a flattering tongue.”

She was wearing a light blue gown that was neither fashionable nor unfashionable, neither new nor old, neither pretty nor ugly. It was the kind of gown one purchased, he thought, when one did not intend to buy a dozen and did not want the chosen one to be so distinctive that it would be recognized wherever she went. It was not inexpensive—her father, though not extraordinarily wealthy, did not lack for funds either. She wore no jewelry or other adornments. Her brown hair was dressed in a knot high on the back of her head with a few ringlets curling over her temples and along her neck to soften any suggestion of severity. She was of medium height and slender, pleasing figure. She had a pretty face made more so by the bright intelligence of her gray eyes.

“I was not just implying,” he said. “I was stating.”

“Then thank you,” she said as they stepped through one set of open French windows onto the terrace beyond. “You were quite right about Lady Angeline Dudley, though. She is indeed beautiful, even though I suppose it is possible to list all sorts of defects if one considers her person piecemeal. As is true of everyone. There is no such thing as pure beauty. Her beauty comes more from within than from without. I see her only through a woman’s eyes, of course, but it seems to me that she is the sort of lady who is far more attractive to men than to other women. Am I right?”

He looked down at her as they began to stroll. With almost any other lady he would suspect an ulterior motive in her question, a plea to be assured that indeed he did not find Lady Angeline attractive at all, but that he found her irresistibly so. Eunice, he knew, had no such motive.

“I do consider her lovely to look at,” he said. “But she is oh so frivolous, Eunice. She turned her ankle deliberately so that she would not have to dance with such a clumsy fellow as I. I wonder how many people noticed that she rested the wrong foot on the stool I fetched for her.”

“Oh,” she said, and when she looked back at him there was a hint of amusement in her eyes. “I did not. But how very careless of her.”

“And then she proceeded to regale my ears,” he said, “with a tale of how she broke her leg last year after climbing a tree to avoid the attack of an angry bull. She had been knowingly crossing his meadow because she was late for some visitors who were coming. She expected me to laugh at the story.”

“You must admit,” she said, “that it is rather droll.”

He had a sudden mental image of Lady Angeline Dudley dashing across a meadow and straight up the trunk of a tree with a bull in hot pursuit. It was rather funny, he supposed, when translated into pictures rather than just words. And he had to admit one thing in the woman’s favor. She did not mind laughing at herself. It was the very last thing most people were inclined to do.

“Oh, I suppose so,” he said, “if one ignores the fact that she might have been killed, either by the bull or by her subsequent fall from the tree.”

“But then she would not have been telling the story to you or to anyone else,” she said very sensibly, “and the question of its humor or lack thereof would not have arisen.”

“I suppose not,” he said. “She was in Hyde Park this morning, Eunice, when I was riding there early with Headley and Paulson. She arrived there alone, or with only a groom to accompany her, anyway, and met her brother quite by accident—the other brother, Lord Ferdinand Dudley, not Tresham. He was there with some other men, and she proceeded to gallop along Rotten Row with them despite the mud, whooping as she went. And she was wearing the most garish hat I have ever seen. If there was a color yet invented that was not in it, I would be surprised.”

“At least she did take a groom,” she said as they came to a stop against the stone balustrade and turned to gaze down into the garden, which was dimly lit by a few lamps swaying from tree branches.