Managing a careless air, he presented her with his signature smile. “Possibly, Miss Fleming. Quite possibly.”
Gracing him with a look that clearly stated that she wasn’t the least bit satisfied with his answer, she rolled her eyes. Once again, he was surprised that she was so astute. Impressed even. Or perhaps she was simply a lucky guesser.
“Thank you for the dance, Lord Bridgeton.”
“You are very welcome, Miss Fleming. It was my pleasure.” Christopher truly despised dancing, but he could have danced with Sara Fleming all evening without a moment’s hesitation. After guiding her back to where her cousins had gathered near the refreshments, he released her with great reluctance.
Christopher then spent a good portion of the evening chatting with his friends, playing a little cards, and dancing with ladies who made no secret of the fact they had designs on an eligible earl. All the while he couldn’t help watching the lovely Sara Fleming as she danced with other gentlemen, a pretty smile on her face. However, his mind kept going back to the message he’d had from Griggs, his estate manager. It could only mean bad news. The worst possible news. As long as he had tried to ignore it, Christopher would have to face it all tomorrow.
At one point he wandered outside for a bit of fresh air, thinking to clear his head. While breathing in the cool May air, he walked along a garden path, his shoes softly crunching the gravel beneath him. Lady Abbott had wonderful gardens.
To the outside world he knew he presented a façade as a carefree and young lord, wealthy and eligible, from a long and distinguished family lineage. Part of that was true. Part of it was a lie. Christopher had no choice but to lie, and to keep up the charade of being happy and wealthy.
Sighing, he thought how ridiculous his life had become. The complications from his father’s death last year were more than he’d expected. Instead of freeing him as he’d always dreamed of, the death of his father only seemed to make his own life worse. And more confining.
Christopher smiled ruefully into the night shadows. Self-pity was not becoming on any man. And definitely not on him. There were plenty of men who would give their own lives to switch places with him. Oddly enough he often wished he could trade with any one of them and go off and live a life of simplicity and freedom. Live his own life.
Now that was it. His own life . . .
What a tempting thought that was! What would living his own life entail?
Suddenly Christopher stopped, in disbelief at the sight in front of him. No, it couldn’t be.
But there she was.
The lovely Sara Fleming sat alone on a marble bench under a tree, staring up at the stars. Her pretty face was illuminated by the moonlight on her soft, ivory skin, and her pale blue silk gown shimmered around her. He watched for a moment while she was unaware of his presence, transfixed by the expression of longing and sadness on her face. This was not the flirtatious and careless American girl he had danced with earlier this evening. There was a tangible aura of sadness around her now.
What could have this beautiful girl looking so melancholy, when earlier she was vivacious and bubbly, the very picture of happiness? If he had to guess, it would certainly have to do with her mysterious gentleman in New York. He couldn’t ignore the slight pang of jealousy he felt in his chest at the sight of her so clearly longing for this man. He was quite certain that no one had ever missed him that much in his life.
“Miss Fleming?” he said as softly as he could, hoping not to startle her.
She gasped at the sound of her name, clearly disquieted. She peered up at him. “Lord Bridgeton?”
“Yes,” he responded, walking nearer to her. “I’m very sorry to intrude. Are you well?”
Sara gave him a half smile and nodded her head.
She should not be alone out here in the garden. A young lady could easily lose her reputation this way. He asked, “Can I escort you back to the house?”
She shook her head and surprised him by patting the bench beside her, inviting him to join her there.
“What are you doing out here all alone?” he asked, but he did not sit down. “You should return to the ballroom with the others.”
“Yes, yes, I know,” she said softly, gazing up at him with her blue eyes reflected in moonlight. “I just needed a moment or two to myself.”
“You were looking far too serious just now.”
She arched an elegant eyebrow. “Using my own words against me, are you?”
He smiled wryly. “They fit the occasion.”
She sighed, but made no move to rise from the bench. On an impulse he accepted her earlier invitation and sat down beside her. She obviously wished to talk to him. Who was he to deny her?
“Well, Miss Fleming, if you don’t mind my asking, why are you out here looking so terribly sad?”
She looked at him knowingly. “I have a feeling you may have already guessed, Lord Bridgeton.”
“Would I be correct in assuming it has to do with a certain gentleman in New York?” he asked with a raised brow.
“Yes . . .”
“Has he broken your heart?” For some reason the idea of any man hurting her made him irrationally angry.
“Oh, no!” She shook her head. “Quite the opposite. In fact, I fear I may have broken his heart, although through no fault of my own.”
Something she had said earlier suddenly made sense to him. “Your parents? They brought you here to separate the two of you?”
“Yes, and I miss him dreadfully,” she confessed, her voice tinged with longing.
So the man had not willingly let her leave. Then again, what man would? But Christopher wondered what it was about this man that had prompted her parents to take her away. He had met both Mr. and Mrs. Fleming and they seemed like very reasonable and likable people. The fault had to lie with the man in New York. He mustn’t be good enough for her. But looking at Sara Fleming right now, he doubted any man was good enough for her.
Christopher said, “I can only imagine it’s not half as much as he misses you.”
“That’s very kind of you to say.”
“I’m certain it’s the truth. And I’m just as certain that he must love you very much.”
“Thank you,” she whispered. “I simply wish to return home to him. I hope I don’t sound ungrateful, since everyone has been so lovely to me since I arrived, including you, Lord Bridgeton. However, I left my heart with him so I cannot be truly happy until I am with him again.”
“That’s quite understandable,” he said to comfort her. Yet he suddenly wished he could pull this beautiful woman into his arms and make her forget all about the man in New York.
Very slowly she placed her gloved hand over his and looked into his eyes. “Lord Bridgeton . . . I would beg your discretion in this matter, for I’ve told no one else and I’ve no wish for this to be known. I don’t know why I even spoke of it to you. I suppose you caught me at a weak moment.” She paused, gazing at him. “Although we just met and I barely know you, for some reason I feel as if I can trust you.”
Oddly touched by her confession, he said, “You have my word, Miss Fleming. I shall keep your secret.”
“Thank you,” she murmured softly.
A silence fell upon them, and her small hand still covered his. They stared into each other’s eyes. As they sat in the moonlight, alone in the garden, he felt his heart thudding wildly in his chest. Such an unusual sensation this girl evoked in him.
“You have your own secrets as well, Lord Bridgeton, haven’t you?”
He nodded. “It seems we share a similar predicament. To others we have every reason in the world to be happy, outwardly. Yet there are things no one knows about that prevent us from being so.”
“That’s remarkable, is it not? That even the people closest to us have no idea how we truly feel . . .” Her voice was sad.
“Yes.”
“What is it that troubles you?” she asked in a whisper. “A woman?”
“No, it’s not a woman.�
� He sighed. “I wish it were that simple, actually.”
She looked at him in understanding. It felt as if her eyes peered into his very heart. Completely unnerved by it, his walls went up.
He cleared his throat. “Miss Fleming, it is past time you went back inside. It wouldn’t help your situation at all if we were discovered out here alone together. Besides, your cousins must be wondering where you are by now.”
Suddenly the intimate spell they’d been under was broken. Sara promptly removed her hand from his and stood up. “You are quite right. I should go inside.”
He rose from the bench, feeling strangely bereft. “You go ahead first. I’ll wait here.”
Nodding, she turned to leave. Suddenly she spun around, whispered, “Thank you,” and placed the lightest of kisses on his cheek.
Stunned, Christopher watched her walk away, a shapely figure in pale blue silk fading away in the night.
4
Charting a Course
“So you simply packed up and left? Just like that?”
Paulette Hamilton Reeves, the Countess of Cashelmore, asked in amazement.
“We had no choice. As soon as we suspected the man’s true intentions and that he planned to propose to her, Harrison made up his mind to leave the next morning. I barely had time to pack for either of us,” Juliette Hamilton Fleming explained to her four sisters as they gathered in Colette’s private sitting room later that same evening.
“It’s a terrible reason to have you visit us, but I’m still glad you’re all here,” Lisette Hamilton Roxbury offered sweetly, her smile somewhat rueful. The third of the five sisters was the busy wife of Quinton Roxbury, a leader in Parliament, and the mother of three children, including twin boys.
“My question is this: Does Sara know the real reason you decided to leave New York?” Colette asked. The eldest of the five Hamilton sisters had taken on the role of matriarch of the family since their mother had passed away. Although her coffee-colored hair held the slightest touch of gray, her unlined face would never lead anyone to guess she was the mother of two fully grown and very handsome sons.
Juliette shook her head with determination. “Not yet. Harrison is waiting for some way to prove it to her, show her evidence, so that she will believe us. All we have now are our suspicions based on what Harrison’s friend told us about him. Just before we left, Harrison hired an investigator to get to the bottom of things. As soon as the investigator sends us something, we will explain everything to her. It was bad enough that we took Sara away from him to keep her safe. But it will break my daughter’s heart when she learns the truth about the man she thinks she’s madly in love with and destined to be with. I wish I knew a better way, but for now she’s terribly angry with us.”
“Yes, I’m sure she is, as any young girl in love would be,” Yvette Hamilton Eddington, the Duchess of Rathmore and the baby of the family, agreed, her stylishly coiffed head bobbing. “Sara doesn’t want to believe anything ill of the man she loves and she’s too young to understand that you are only doing what’s best for her. And as the mother of three girls, I hope we are never in such a position, but if we were, I know Jeffrey and I would do whatever we had to in order to protect them from an unscrupulous suitor.”
Paulette added with a touch of humor, “Oh, Juliette, I just shudder to think what you would have done had Maman done such a thing to you when you were Sara’s age!”
“Maman never would have cared enough to stop me, even if she could have,” Juliette said with unflinching honesty.
The sisters grew somewhat somber at the truth of Juliette’s words, and at the memory of their melodramatic and manipulative mother. Of course, Genevieve La Brecque Hamilton, with her French manners and flair, loved her daughters but she had made their life together far more difficult than it needed to be in their little rooms above Hamilton’s Book Shoppe. There was no disagreement that the girls had done more for one another than either of their parents had ever been able to do for them.
The family had been on the brink of destitution before Colette’s sheer determination had made their bookstore a success. Eventually her marriage to Lucien Sinclair, now the Marquis of Stancliff, had provided the Hamilton sisters with another level of financial stability and safety at Devon House.
“I still miss Maman,” Lisette said in a wistful tone. “And Papa too.”
“We all miss her and Papa,” Juliette continued pragmatically, “and we loved them both very much. But it doesn’t mean we can forget how trying Maman could be or how she had little to no interest in anything we did or thought. Paulette and Yvette, you were both a little too young to remember just how dreadful things were. Or how desperate our situation was when we were about to lose the shop and had nowhere to go and no one in the family to help us. You may not recall the many late nights that Colette and I worked our fingers to the bone redesigning the bookshop after Papa died, while Uncle Randall threatened to marry us off to the highest bidder. Maman cared about herself first, us second, and Papa and the bookshop not at all. It was just how she was. Can you even imagine her coming after me when I left for New York with Harrison? Or forbidding me to go? For my own good?”
Slowly the other four women shook their heads. They knew their mother all too well. She had passed away many years ago now, and as much as they loved her, they still vividly recalled her dramatic fainting spells and French-laden diatribes, and her reluctance to deal with reality.
“You did as any mother would do,” Yvette stated firmly, breaking the thoughtful silence. “You protected your daughter, Juliette. She may be angry with you now, but one day Sara will see that you only had her best interests at heart. I would do the exact same thing with any of my three girls, I promise you that.”
“Jeffrey wouldn’t settle for anything less,” Colette said with a meaningful smile. “He’s the most overprotective father I have ever seen.”
“It’s been an endless source of amusement to me, Yvette, that our darling Jeffrey Eddington, the Rogue of All Rogues, was blessed with three beautiful daughters to torment him!” Juliette said with a wicked glint in her eyes.
Paulette agreed heartily, “Truly. It’s just altogether too perfect.”
Yvette laughed in acknowledgment. She was quite aware of her husband’s reputation with women before their marriage, but he was also the most devoted, the most protective, and the most charming of men. One by one, Jeffrey had managed to play an instrumental part in each of her sisters’ path to the altar. But Yvette had been the one to marry Lord Jeffrey Eddington, the very handsome and illegitimate son of the Duke of Rathmore, who turned out not to be illegitimate after all. Although the Hamilton sisters had practically adopted Jeffrey as their very own brother right from the start, while he was still a reputed rake and rascal, Yvette had fallen in love with him and Jeffrey had reformed his ways to have her.
Now little Yvette Hamilton, the baby of the family, was the Duchess of Rathmore and the mother of three adorable daughters. “Oh, believe me, I derive a great deal of pleasure out of watching him squirm. And the girls haven’t even had their debut yet! They shall lead him on a merry chase, indeed. Especially little Vivienne.”
“Poor Jeffrey,” Lisette lamented, as she was always the most sympathetic of the sisters. “He’s never been anything but wonderful to all of us, and here you all are, taking great delight in his misery as a worried and caring father.”
“Oh, Lisette!” Juliette taunted her younger sister. “Jeffrey was always the kindest to you! You’ve no idea the teasing and torture he heaped upon me!”
“But you deserved it!” Paulette pointed out. Now the Countess of Cashelmore and the proprietor of several bookshops, the fourth youngest Hamilton sister divided her time between her husband’s ancestral home in Ireland and her bookstore there and raising their daughter, Mara, and son, Thomas, in London.
“That’s very true. I was a bit outrageous at times, wasn’t I?” Juliette admitted with pride, and then her expression grew dark. “Unfortuna
tely, I fear that my daughter has inherited my willful streak. Perhaps Harrison and I raised her too permissively. We may have brought her to safety in London for the time being, but if she is anything like me . . . I don’t trust her not to do something reckless to win him back.”
“Like sneaking off in the middle of the night to stow away on a ship bound for New York?” Colette asked with a raised brow. “And scaring her family half to death with worry, wondering where she was?”
The five sisters grew thoughtful at the memory, for they all recalled Juliette’s wild and headstrong nature and how she ran off in the middle of the night to stow away on Captain Fleming’s ship bound for America simply for a bit of adventure. It turned out to be the ship of her future husband and it all worked out wonderfully in the end. But at the time, the entire family had all been sick with worry over her. And it had been Jeffrey Eddington who had gone to search for her.
Colette’s pointed reference to Juliette’s reckless past hit its mark.
“Exactly!” Juliette declared, but her pretty face was lined with worry. “You’ve no idea the sleepless nights I’ve had over this. I’m terrified she will try something as foolish as I once did to get back to New York.”
“Oh, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, does it?” added Lisette, her eyes dancing with merriment.
“Yes, yes, I know. This is my punishment for my past behavior and the anguish I put you all through,” Juliette said. “But honestly, girls, I have to say, aside from sailing off to America, I wasn’t any more outrageous than each of you. Think about it. We Hamilton sisters did not follow the most conventional paths.”
“You have a point there.” Paulette actually laughed aloud. “I for one cannot deny that.”
Each of the sisters nodded knowingly, thinking back on their pasts, before they were married.
The Heiress He's Been Waiting For Page 4
