Heartless

by Mary Balogh

  “I do not doubt it,” he said.

  “It must be wonderful,” she said wistfully, “to live in Paris. Is it?”

  “If you enjoy a life of glittering frivolity,” he said, “there is no place on earth to compare with it. Do you?”

  She laughed. “I have no idea, your grace,” she said. “I have lived in the country all my life and am but recently arrived in town. I am what one might call a country bumpkin.”

  Ignoring the food on her plate, she had set an elbow on the table and rested her chin on the back of her hand. She smiled at him. She was deliberately fishing for a compliment and felt no doubt that it would come. She had never before done anything nearly so shamefully brazen. It felt wonderful.

  “If that is true, madam,” he said, “then it seems I have been spending my days in the wrong place. Perhaps I too should have been in the country.”

  “Ah, but,” she said, “’twould have been a different part of the country, your grace. That is the problem with the country. It is too vast.”

  “Yes.” He paused in his gentle fanning of her face for a moment. “After all, madam, it appears that I did the fortunate thing in coming to town on my arrival in England instead of going into the country.”

  She had had her compliment and tingled with the joy of it right down to her toes. He closed his fan and they began to eat. But though she knew that her godmother was sitting some distance away with Lord Quinn and that Agnes was seated with one of the dancing partners Lady Sterne had selected for her, she was not fully aware of her surroundings. The Duke of Harndon talked exclusively with her, telling her about Paris, amusing her with details of fashion and anecdotes of gossip, and it seemed to her that his attention was as fully focused on her as hers was on him. There was something in his manner—she found it impossible to identify what it was—that made her feel special, that made her feel almost cherished.

  It was an exhilarating game that she played—something entirely uncharacteristic of her and beyond her experience. It was something she would have thought herself incapable of even a few hours ago. It was a game for one evening only—until, that was, supper was at an end and guests around them began to drift back in the direction of the ballroom.

  “I shall do myself the honor of calling on Lady Sterne tomorrow afternoon,” the Duke of Harndon said, “if I find from enquiry that she is to be at home. Perhaps, madam, if the weather is favorable, you would care to walk with me in the Mall of St. James’s Park afterward. It is the strolling grounds of the fashionable world, as you are probably aware.”

  She was not. But it was an invitation she could not—must not—accept. She must not try to carry the fantasy beyond this one night. Doubtless it would mean nothing to him to dance with her tonight and walk with her tomorrow; there would be no declaration of attachment in his doing both. But it might well mean something to her. She was already in love with him in much the way all females are in love with Prince Charming while reading “Cinderella”—in a warm, detached way that would bring sighs but no real pain tomorrow. But if she walked with him . . .

  She did not wish to fall in love. Indeed, she dreaded doing so. Life, which had been barely supportable for several years past, would be finally and totally unbearable if she were indiscreet enough to fall in love. All her instincts and all her common sense told her that it would be so. She must not be tempted to continue this flirtation beyond tonight.

  “Then I must pray fervently tonight, your grace,” she heard someone—herself—say, “that the weather tomorrow afternoon will be favorable.”

  He pushed back his chair, got to his feet, and reached out a hand to assist her to hers. He bowed over her hand as she rose and set his lips lightly against her fingers. She barely restrained herself from snatching them back as if she expected to be burned.

  Five minutes later she was back in the ballroom, dancing a quadrille with someone else. And still smiling. And still feeling that welling of happiness that had carried her through the evening. Much as she tried to scold herself for the answer she had given the duke in the supper room, and much as she tried to tell herself that she would be sorry, she could not feel regret. Just a few days ago she had promised herself a couple of months of enjoyment, though she had not expected enjoyment to be quite this vivid or all-encompassing. Why, then, had her vision narrowed to just one evening? Why should she not give herself longer? One more day? Perhaps even the two months? It would be wonderful to live this fully for two whole months.

  Would life in the future, when she had returned home, be any more dreary if she allowed herself to live now when she had the chance? Yes, a little demon somewhere in her mind told her. It would be unbearable once she knew that life could be so very different. And yet perhaps if she denied herself now, she would be forever sorry that she had not grasped more tightly the jewel she had discovered tonight.

  And perhaps life in the future would be only dreary. She would be thankful if that was all it was. It might be so much worse if he returned from America. Surely he would not. There was panic in the thought that he might—he had promised to come back. She would not be able to bear it. She would want to die.

  The Duke of Harndon was not dancing. He was standing near the door in conversation with two gentlemen and the Marquise d’Étienne. But he was watching her. Anna, catching his eye, gave him a dazzling smile before concentrating her attention on her partner and the quadrille once more.

  • • •

  Luke was up early the following morning, as he always was, regardless of the time he went to bed. He had been out for a lengthy and vigorous ride and had breakfasted before his unexpected visitor arrived, unfashionably early.

  But then there was nothing fashionable about his visitor, instantly recognizable despite the gap of ten years since they had seen each other last. He was a little more ruddy of complexion and a little more portly about the middle so that he looked every one of his nine-and-twenty years, but he had not really changed. He wore a carelessly powdered bob wig, loosely curled, a somewhat ill-fitting frock coat, a waistcoat that was unfashionably long, and stockings rolled over the tops of his knee breeches instead of the more fashionable breeches buckling over the stockings. He was clearly a man who lived in the country and cared not a fig for town styles.

  “Will!” Luke said as William Webb, Baron Severidge, strode into the morning room hard on the heels of the butler, who announced him. “My dear fellow.”

  Lord Severidge stopped abruptly and gaped inelegantly. “Luke?” he said. “Egad, man, is that you?” But he must have been convinced of the identification for he grasped his former friend heartily by the hand and pumped it up and down several times. “What the deuce has Paris done to you?”

  “Ah, this, apparently,” Luke said, looking down at the silk morning robe he had donned after returning from his ride.

  “Zounds!” William said. He reached into an inner pocket. “We heard that you had come to England. I am a messenger boy, Luke, though I had business that forced me up to town for a couple of days anyway. It brings me here about twice a year, which is twice a year too many for my liking. I have a letter from Henrietta.”

  “Ah,” Luke said, ignoring the feeling that a heavy fist had collided with his stomach and taking the offered paper from his friend’s hand. He slipped it inside a pocket of his robe. “That was good of you, Will. How is she? And how are you? Married with half a dozen hopefuls in your nursery already?”

  William’s already ruddy complexion flushed. “Not married,” he said, “and not really looking. The only place to do that properly is London, and I cannot bear the thought of spending time here and trotting off to balls and such all done up like a painted maypole. Oh, sorry, Luke.”

  Luke motioned to a chair and rang for refreshments as Lord Severidge seated himself. “I appear like a . . . ah, painted maypole to you, Will?” he said. “Goodness me, and I am not even dressed in all my finery.”


  William looked distinctly uncomfortable. “Henrietta is well,” he said abruptly, answering an earlier question.

  Luke sat down and crossed one leg over the other. It had seemed incredible to him even as a boy that William and Henrietta could be brother and sister. Henrietta was exquisitely small and slender. He wondered if she was still as slender.

  “She was never happy,” William said. “She lost the child, as you doubtless heard. They never appeared close and he changed—became more morose.” He paused to cough. “You do not want to hear this, do you?”

  Luke’s hand was opening and closing on the arm of his chair. “’Tis old news, Will,” he said. “Very old news.”

  His friend was mopping at his forehead with a large handkerchief. “She has been restless since we heard you were back in England,” he said. “She thinks perhaps it is she who is keeping you from coming home.”

  “Ah,” Luke said quietly. “No, Will. I have as great an aversion to the country as you do to the city. I belong in Paris, or at the very least in London. No, she is wrong.”

  They sat in silence while a footman carried in a tray and poured them each a drink—wine for William, water for Luke.

  “I do not know what she has written in the letter,” William said, nodding his head in the direction of the pocket into which Luke had put it. “Though it looked to be long enough. Pox upon it, but women can ramble on when they have a pen in their hands, Luke. I point the quill at the air when I try to write a letter while my mind draws a total blank, and I end up squeezing out two stiff sentences in an hour if I am lucky.”

  “I shall read the letter later,” Luke said.

  “But she would insist on my bringing it in person,” William said, “and delivering it into your own hand, Luke. She would have me tell you in words, too, that Bowden is yours, that you belong there, that she is pleased you do, and that it would hurt her to feel she is keeping you from what is rightfully yours.”

  “She is not,” Luke said. “You may tell her that, Will.”

  “It hurts her to know that you are in England but have made no move to go to Bowden,” William said. “She might have come here with me, Luke, but she would not force you to meet her again. She seems to feel that perhaps you blame her . . . Ecod, but this sort of thing is not to my liking. As I live, this will be the last time I carry messages for anyone.”

  “If you will give me time to change,” Luke said, “we may proceed to White’s together, Will. Are you a member? I have been newly accepted there.”

  “Aye.” His friend was visibly relieved at the changing of topic. “There is frequently good conversation to be had there.”

  “Land and crops and cattle and such?” Luke asked. “One shudders at the very prospect. Give me half an hour, Will. I will rush for your sake.”

  “Half an hour?” William asked, frowning. “What the deuce is to do, beyond throwing on a coat and taking up a hat?”

  “We painted maypoles take a little longer about our toilettes,” Luke said as he left the room.

  He did not need all of half an hour. But he did need to read Henrietta’s letter. Ten years of silence and now he held a part of her in his hands again. The temptation was to tear it up, to keep the distance of ten years between them. But he knew he must read it, that he could not even wait until later in the day.

  She had made a mistake, she had written, coming straight to the point. Her handwriting looked startlingly familiar. Even after what had happened, she should have married him, not George. She had been promised to him, after all, and she had loved him. And he had still wanted her to marry him. She had made the wrong choice, believing at the time that it was the only possible one. She had been wrong. She had been very unhappy.

  Well, Luke thought, pausing in his reading. Well. But he could not blame her for the decision that had changed the course of several people’s lives, including his own. She had been carrying George’s child, however unwillingly, and she had married George. She had been little more than a child herself, only seventeen years old. But what she wrote was all pointless now. She was George’s widow and was now free again to pursue happiness and to marry whomever she chose—except him. A woman could not marry her dead husband’s brother.

  But she wanted him to come home. He was needed there, she wrote. The affairs of the estate had not been running smoothly since George’s death and neither she nor his mother knew anything about the running of an estate. Laurence Colby appeared to be doing much as he pleased and was glorying in his power as steward of an absentee landlord. And as for the running of the house . . .

  Henrietta, it seemed, wished to change almost all the furnishings and draperies of the house. What was there was old-fashioned and dreary. But her mother-in-law held with tradition and opposed all change. Yet she, Henrietta, was merely trying to carry out the renovations that George had approved before his death.

  Luke must come home. It was where he belonged. He had always loved Bowden Abbey. Did he not remember? Did he not remember their growing up there together? Did he not wish to see it all again?

  She sent him her duty and her love.

  Luke folded the letter deliberately into its original folds. He wished Will was not waiting downstairs for him. He wished he had left the letter to read later.

  He had killed deep feeling inside himself long years ago. He had killed his love for her, his misery over his loss of her, his agony over the life she must lead through no fault of her own. He had put it all from him. They had loved each other. They had been going to marry, young as they both were, and she was to go with him when he took up his first church living. And then George had come home from the two years of his Grand Tour and had seduced and impregnated Henrietta. She had wailed hysterically in Luke’s arms while telling him. George, when confronted, had been tight-lipped about the whole thing, neither denying nor confirming the story Henrietta had told Luke—though he had made haste to offer for her. She had chosen to marry her seducer rather than the man she loved, though Luke would still have married her.

  And so there had been the duel, fought with pistols, and George ostentatiously deloped, shooting into the air, then watching unflinching as Luke, who had never before shot a pistol, aimed with shaking hand. He had aimed to miss by six feet—and ended up hitting his brother in the shoulder and almost killing him. They had all thought that he had shot to kill. In those days he had been an even worse marksman than they had given him credit for. They had accused him—and convicted him—of trying to kill for the heirship to the title and the fortune and for Henrietta. They had not known the true story: they thought that Henrietta had preferred George to him and had been indiscreet with him, ignoring her promise to marry Luke. They had assumed that the challenge had been made out of jealous rage. In reality he had issued the challenge for the mere sake of making a point. For the sake of honor.

  And because he had been devastated by a sense of betrayal. George, four years older than he, had always been his idol. And he had returned from his Grand Tour looking very grand and dashing. George had always been extremely handsome—as Ashley was now. Luke had spent time with him, drinking in the accounts of his brother’s travels, reveling in the pleasure of his company again. And then George had stolen his woman in the cruelest possible manner.

  No, it was not a memory to be revived. Luke was not surprised that he had suppressed it so ruthlessly. But Henrietta had been forced to live with it for ten years—or for eight, rather, until George’s death. She had found no happiness with him—both William and her letter told him that.

  But she was still the Duchess of Harndon. And she had plans for sweeping renovations at Bowden Abbey, plans of which his mother disapproved. He was being invited home so that he could take sides. So that he could take Henrietta’s side. He hated the thought of becoming involved in such a dispute.

  He did not care what they did with Bowden. They could burn the hous
e down and lay waste the land for all he cared. And yet, unbidden, the memories came back of the home he had loved as a boy. He did not know quite what Henrietta had in mind, but he could not picture Bowden renovated. There was a fine air of antiquity about the old abbey even though architectural changes down the centuries had almost totally obscured the ecclesiastical origins of the house. He feared that if he must take sides, he would take his mother’s.

  And clearly Colby was not doing a good job and must be replaced. Yet how could he replace the steward unless he observed for himself what the man was doing or not doing? Would it be fair to discharge him on hearsay evidence or on the evidence of the books for which he was planning to send? Or even on a personal visit by his steward to London?

  He was going to have to go down there himself, Luke thought with a dull certainty. Devil take it all, he was going to have to go.

  If he went home he would be caught in the middle of a petty squabble, the duchess, his sister-in-law, on one side and the dowager duchess, his mother, on the other.

  Unless . . .

  He held the completion of the thought at bay while his valet helped him into his coat and he picked up his tricorne hat and his cane.

  Unless he took home with him a third Duchess of Harndon. A wife.

  His mind shifted to the evening before and the ball he had attended. She was fresh and charming and innocent despite the flirtation she had engaged in quite boldly. There was a sparkle about her and an unmistakable enjoyment of life—qualities to which he was unaccustomed in a woman. He had been unexpectedly dazzled by them. He had stopped at a florist’s on his way home from his ride this morning and arranged to have a dozen red roses delivered to her. And he was to take her walking in St. James’s Park this afternoon. He had thought about it throughout his ride and at breakfast and had looked forward to it more than he could remember looking forward to anything for a long time.