Mary Balogh - The Secret Mistress

Cool night air. Warm, steady, very male hand. The most delicious contrast in the whole wide world.

And then she felt her hand being raised until it was against his lips.

Angeline, eyes still closed, thought she might well die. Of happiness.

“I must return you to the ballroom,” he said.

Must you?

But she did not say the words aloud. Thank heaven! She had been quite forward enough tonight as it was. She got to her feet and drew her hand from his to straighten her skirt.

“This has been a memorable day,” she said brightly as she looked up to find him standing only a few inches away from her. “Has it been as happy a one for you as it has for me? Despite the fact that you have had to dance? I will never forget a single moment of it.”

“It has been a happy day,” he said.

She tipped her head to one side. He had spoken with a remarkable lack of enthusiasm.

“But the happiest part is that it is almost over?” she said, smiling ruefully.

“You are pleased to put words in my mouth,” he said. “I would not be so ill-mannered as to suggest any such thing, Lady Angeline.”

But he had not denied it.

“I hope,” she said, and her voice sounded breathless in her own ears, “it will be a happier day in retrospect than it has been in the living. I do hope so.”

And she whisked herself about and strode back along the path in the direction of the terrace and the ballroom beyond, her hands clutching the sides of her gown. She could almost hear Miss Pratt calling after her to stop striding like a man and remember that she was a lady.

She did not want him to catch up to her and offer his arm. She did not want to touch him again.

Not yet.

She would suffocate.

Tresham and Ferdinand had both used to tell her that she never did anything by halves—whether it was galloping her pony hell-bent for leather, diving into the lake at the deepest part as though she meant to dive right down to China, or climbing the highest tree as though to reach the clouds. It had always been said with a certain degree of affectionate admiration.

They would not admire her now.

For she did not fall in love by halves either.

She was an absolutely hopeless case, in fact.

No, not hopeless.

One day he would love her too.

Passionately.

If one was going to dream, one might as well dream big.

EDWARD ENJOYED MORE than half a day of relative freedom. He rode early in Hyde Park again with a group of friends—there were five of them this time—and encountered no one he did not wish to see. No one with the last name of Dudley, in other words. He spent an hour or so in the study with his secretary, looking over some important papers, dictating a few letters, deciding which of a flood of invitations he ought to accept and which he would decline, with regrets. He attended the House and even spoke up during one of the debates that interested him. He was to meet Headley and another friend later at White’s, where they were to dine together. They would probably linger there over their wine and their port until it was time to return home to bed.

It was only a relative freedom, of course, for his mind would not remain focused just upon the day’s business.

He must find time to call upon Eunice soon. He could not help feeling that he had abandoned her last evening when Windrow had asked her to dance. He ought to have objected, to have put a firm stop to the man’s insolence. Not that he owned Eunice, of course, or had any claim upon her at all, in fact. She would undoubtedly have been vexed with him if he had interfered. And she was still insisting that he marry someone more suited to his station, even though she had admitted that the ending of their agreement had left her feeling unsettled.

Dancing with Windrow had actually had a positive effect upon her fortunes. She had had partners for each set afterward. It was true that she professed to despise dancing and all the frivolities of ton entertainments, but even so, she surely did not enjoy being a wallflower either.

Anyway, he must call upon her.

But even apart from that obligation his sense of freedom was only a very temporary one. For he must still marry. He must still choose a bride. Perhaps Eunice. Definitely not Lady Angeline Dudley.

He could not simply dismiss the latter from his mind, however. She kept popping into it at any odd moment of the day. It was usually in a thoroughly negative way. She was bold, talkative, frivolous. Good Lord, she had talked with great enthusiasm about her thirteen new bonnets. But he was forced to admit—grudgingly—that she could also be amusing, especially on the subject of her own shortcomings and foibles. And he had had the feeling with the hat story that her chosen topic had not been an idle one. He had suspected that she was trying to cheer him up, that she was deliberately trying to coax a smile out of him.

Which only meant, of course, that she saw him as an old sobersides, to quote Maurice’s habitual description of him.

Why had she persuaded him to take her outside, then, first onto the terrace and then down into the garden? She had denied being instructed to court his favor. And why would Tresham give such instructions anyway—or countenance Lady Palmer’s giving them? Tresham despised him.

He tried not to think about her. He tried to enjoy the illusion of freedom offered by the day.

But he kept remembering, more than anything else, that moment when she had set her hand upon his. Or rather, he remembered the moment immediately following that one, when he had been assailed by a powerful and totally unexpected tidal wave of lust. He ought not to have been surprised. He had experienced it before—in the taproom of the Rose and Crown Inn. And he had acted without even a trace of his usual caution and discretion. He had first turned his hand beneath hers, then closed his fingers about it, and then raised it to his mouth.

It was a dashed good thing she was an innocent, albeit a flirtatious one. She could not otherwise have failed to notice …

Fortunately—very fortunately—his mind had got a grip on his body soon enough for him to be struck by the oddity of her flirting with him. He was not the sort of man with whom women flirted. Not women like Lady Angeline Dudley, anyway. Actually, not any kind of woman. Even Eunice had never flirted with him. And he had realized that Lady Angeline could have only one possible motive for flirting.

He still believed it to have been her motive, even though she had denied it quite vehemently, and it made no real sense anyway. But for very pride’s sake she had been forced to deny it.

Every time Lady Angeline Dudley popped into his head—and it was far too often—he firmly quelled the thought. It was too deuced uncomfortable, and she was too deuced … Well, if he tried to think of a type of lady he most definitely did not want to marry, she would be at the very top of the list. Head and shoulders above every other type.

He would meet someone else even if Eunice would not have him. There were already a few distinct possibilities, in fact—Miss Smith-Benn, Lady Fiona Robson, Miss Marvell, for example.

He enjoyed his day of freedom as far as he was able, then—his partial day, that was.

He arrived home late in the afternoon and was informed by his butler that his grandmother was taking tea in the drawing room. Edward went up there to see her. She was with his mother and Lorraine. Susan was sitting on her lap. The child wriggled down, though, when the door opened and came flying across the room, arms spread wide, face alight with welcome.

“Uncle Edward!” she cried in her very precise three-year-old voice.

Edward scooped her up, and she cupped his cheeks with her hands, puckered her lips, and kissed him on the mouth.

“You said you would take me for an ice the first nice day,” she said.

Ah. Cupboard love.

“And so I did.” He grinned at her.

“It is a nice day,” she said. “Your whiskers are rough.”

“So what should I do?” he asked her. “Take you for an ice or ring for my valet to come and shave me?”

“Ice,” she said.

“Five minutes, then,” he told her. “Give me a moment to greet your mama and your grandmama and great-grandmama.”

He set her on the floor and bent to kiss his grandmother’s cheek.

“You grow more handsome every day, Edward,” she said. “Your grandfather and I would have attended the Tresham ball last evening, but doubtless we would both have fallen asleep within the first hour. I am delighted to hear that you danced both the opening and the after-supper sets with Lady Angeline Dudley, though apparently you did not dance either one. That is all to the good as you had more opportunity to engage her in conversation and get to know her. Adelaide tells me she is a handsome girl, and Lorraine tells me you think her the most beautiful creature you have ever seen.”

Edward winced. An exact quote, if he was not mistaken.

“I enjoyed the evening, Grandmama,” he said. “I did have other partners too, though.”

She waved a dismissive hand.

“I have already invited Lady Palmer to take tea with your grandpapa and me tomorrow afternoon,” she said, “and Lord Fenner, her brother, at Lorraine’s suggestion. I used to know their grandmother on their mother’s side, you know, though she was older than I. Lady Palmer is to bring Lady Angeline Dudley.”