The Gilded Web

by Mary Balogh

  “And now,” she said, “you make a mockery of me.”

  She had a low, sweet voice even when she sounded indignant. She was small in stature and very slender, though she was curved in all the right places, by Jove. He wondered how well she controlled a class of girls, most of whom undoubtedly wished themselves anywhere else on earth but at school. Did they give her a rough time? Or was there steel in her character, as there appeared to be in her spine?

  He would wager there was steel—and not a great deal of tenderness. Poor girls!

  “I fear,” he said, “that with a few foolish words I have forever condemned myself in your eyes, Miss Osbourne. Shall we change the subject? What have you been doing with your school holiday up until now?”

  “It was not really a holiday,” she said. “Almost half of the girls at the school are charity pupils. They remain there all year long and some of us stay too to care for them and to entertain them.”

  “Us?” he asked.

  “There are three resident teachers,” she told him. “There used to be four until Frances married the earl two years ago. Now there are Miss Martin, Miss Jewell, and I.”

  “And you all give up your holidays for the sake of charity girls?” he asked.

  She turned to look at him again—a level, unsmiling look in which there might have been some reproof.

  “I was one of them,” she said, “from the age of twelve until Miss Martin made me a junior teacher when I was eighteen.”

  Ah.

  Well.

  Extraordinary.

  He was walking and talking with an ex-charity schoolgirl turned teacher. It was no wonder they were having a difficult time of it communicating with each other. Two alien worlds had drifted onto the same country lane at the same moment, none too happily for either. Though that was not quite true—he was still enjoying himself.

  “There is no question of giving up our holidays,” she continued. “The school is our home and the girls our family. We welcome a break now and then, of course. Anne—Miss Jewell—has just returned from a month in Wales with her son, and now I am here for two weeks. Occasionally Claudia Martin will spend a few days away from the school too. But in the main I am happy—we are all happy—to be busy. A life of idleness would not suit me.”

  She was a prim miss right enough. She had nothing whatsoever to say about the weather, and had only brief reproaches to offer when he would have spoken of hearts and sensibilities. But she could wax eloquent about her school and the notion of teachers and charity pupils being a family.

  Lord help him.

  But she was more gloriously lovely than almost any other woman he had set eyes upon—and the word almost might even be withdrawn from that thought without any great exaggeration resulting. He had often thought fate was something of a joker, and now he was convinced of it. But the apparently huge contrast between her looks and her character and circumstances had him more fascinated than he could remember being with any other woman for a long time—perhaps ever.

  “The implication being that idleness suits me very well indeed?” He laughed. “Miss Osbourne, you speak softly but with a barbed tongue. I daresay your pupils fear it.”

  She was not entirely wrong, though, was she? His life was idle—or had been for all of five years anyway. It was true that he intended to reform his ways and put idleness behind him in the very near future, but he had not really done so yet, had he? Thinking and planning were one thing; doing was another.

  Yes, as he was now, today, Miss Osbourne was quite right about him. He had no defense to offer.

  He wondered what it must be like to have to work for a living.

  “I spoke of myself, sir—my lord,” she said, “in answer to your question. I made no implication about you.”

  She had small, dainty feet, he could see—which was just as well considering her small stature. He had noticed during tea that her hands were small and delicate.

  Miss Susanna Osbourne disapproved of him—probably disliked him too. In her world people worked. What had it been like, he wondered, to be a charity girl at the school where she now taught?

  “Do you like teaching?” he asked.

  “Very much,” she said. “It is what I would choose to do with my life even if I had myriad choices.”

  “Indeed?” He wondered if she spoke the truth or only said what she had convinced herself was the truth. “You would choose teaching even above marriage and motherhood?”

  There was a rather lengthy silence before she replied, and he regretted the question. It was unmannerly and might have touched her on the raw. But there was no recalling it.

  “I suppose that even if I could imagine myriad choices,” she said, “they would still have to be within the realm of the realistic.”

  Good lord!

  “And marriage would not fit within such a realm?” he asked, surprised.

  He did not realize until he found himself gazing at the tender flesh at the arch of her neck that she had dipped her head so far downward that she must have been able to see nothing more than her own feet. He had embarrassed her, dash it all. He was not usually so insensitive.

  “No,” she said. “It would not.”

  And of course he might have known it if he had stopped to consider. How often did one hear of a governess marrying? Yet a schoolteacher must have even fewer opportunities to meet eligible men. He wondered suddenly how the countess had met Edgecombe. He had not even known before today that she had been a schoolteacher at the time. There must be an interesting story behind that courtship.

  In his world women had nothing to hope for or think about but marriage. His sisters had not considered their lives complete until they had all followed one another to the altar with eligible mates in order from the eldest to the youngest, at gratifyingly young ages—gratifying to them and even more so to his mother.

  “Well,” he said, “one never knows what the future holds, does one? But you must tell me some time what it is about teaching that you enjoy so much. Not today, though—I see we are approaching Barclay Court. We will talk more when we meet again during the next two weeks.”

  She stole a quick glance at him again and he laughed.

  “I can see the wheels of your mind turning upon the hope that such a fate can be avoided,” he said. “I assure you it can not. Neighbors in the country invariably live in one another’s pockets. How else are they to avoid expiring of boredom? And I am to be at Hareford House for the next two weeks just as you are to be at Barclay Court. I am glad now that I decided not to return to my own home tomorrow as I had originally planned.”

  He spoke the truth and was surprised by it. Why on earth would he wish to extend an acquaintance with a woman from an alien world who disliked and disapproved of him? Just because she was dazzlingly beautiful? Or because he could not resist the unusual challenge of coaxing a smile and a kind word from her? Or because with her there might be a chance of actually conversing sensibly—about her life as a teacher? His conversation—and his life—had been far too trivial for far too long.

  “I daresay,” she said, “you will be busy with Miss Raycroft and the Misses Calvert.”

  “But of course.” He chuckled. “They are delightful young ladies, and who can resist cultivating delight?”

  “I do not believe,” she said, “you expect me to answer that.”

  “Indeed not,” he agreed. “It was a rhetorical question. But I will not be busy with them all the time, Miss Osbourne. Someone might misconstrue my interest in them if I were. Besides, with them I have felt no moment of magic.”

  He smiled down at her bonnet.

  “I would ask you,” she said as their feet crunched over the gravel of the terrace before the house, her voice as cold as the Arctic ice, “not to speak to me with such levity, my lord. I do not know how to respond. And moreover I do not wish to respond. I do not wish to have you single me out on any future occasion. I wish you would not.”

  Dash it all. Had he offended her more than
he realized?

  “Am I to look your way whenever we are in company together during the coming weeks, then, and pretend that I see only empty air?” he asked her. “I fear Edgecombe and his lady would consider me unpardonably ill-mannered. I shall bow to you each time instead and remark upon the fineness or inclemency of the weather—without drawing any comparisons with your person. Shall I? Will you tolerate that much attention from me?”

  She hesitated.

  “Yes,” she said, ending their conversation as monosyllabically as she had begun it.

  Edgecombe must have observed their approach and was coming out through the front doors and down the horseshoe steps to greet them, a smile of welcome on his face.

  “You did persuade him to come, then, Frances,” he said, setting one hand at the small of the countess’s back and smiling briefly and warmly down at her. “Raycroft—good to see you again. And Whitleaf is staying with you? This is a pleasure. Do come inside. Did you enjoy the walk, Susanna? And did you find Mrs. and Miss Raycroft at home?”

  He smiled kindly at the schoolteacher and offered her his arm, which she took without hesitation.

  “We met Miss Raycroft at the fork in the road,” she said. “She was out walking with her brother and the Calvert sisters. We walked back to the village together and then on to Hareford House, where we took tea with Mrs. Raycroft. It was indeed a pleasant outing. There can be nowhere lovelier than the Somerset countryside.”

  Her voice was light and happy. Peter smiled ruefully to himself as he followed them up the steps and into the house, the countess between him and Raycroft.

  By the time he stepped over the threshold, Miss Osbourne was already moving off in the direction of the staircase without a backward glance.

  “You will wish to entertain Mr. Raycroft and Lord Whitleaf in the library, Lucius,” the countess said. “We will not disturb you.”

  “Thank you,” he said, setting a hand at her back again. “The vicar called. I daresay by now you know all about the village assembly the week after next?”

  “Of course,” she said.

  “I said we would attend,” he told her, “on condition that there be at least one waltz. The vicar has promised to see to it.”

  He grinned at her and she smiled back, her face alight with amusement, before turning to follow Miss Osbourne up the stairs.

  “Right.” Edgecombe turned his attention back to his visitors, rubbing his hands together as he did so. “Shall we step into the library? We will have some refreshments, and you can both tell me everything I missed in London during the Season. I have heard that you are finally betrothed to Miss Hickmore, Raycroft. My felicitations. A fine choice, if you were to ask me.”

  Read on for an excerpt from

  The Secret Mistress

  by Mary Balogh

  Available from Delacorte Press

  Chapter 1

  LADY ANGELINE DUDLEY was standing at the window of the taproom in the Rose and Crown Inn east of Reading. Quite scandalously, she was alone there, but what was she to do? The window of her own room looked out only upon a rural landscape. It was picturesque enough, but it was not the view she wanted. Only the taproom window offered that, looking out as it did upon the inn yard into which any new arrival was bound to ride.

  Angeline was waiting, with barely curbed impatience, for the arrival of her brother and guardian, Jocelyn Dudley, Duke of Tresham. He was to have been here before her, but she had arrived an hour and a half ago and there had been no sign of him. It was very provoking. A string of governesses over the years, culminating in Miss Pratt, had instilled in her the idea that a lady never showed an excess of emotion, but how was one not to do so when one was on one’s way to London for the Season—one’s first—and one was eager to be there so that one’s adult life could begin in earnest at last, yet one’s brother had apparently forgotten all about one’s very existence and was about to leave one languishing forever at a public inn a day’s journey away from the rest of one’s life?

  Of course, she had arrived here ridiculously early. Tresham had arranged for her to travel this far under the care of the Reverend Isaiah Coombes and his wife and two children before they went off in a different direction to celebrate some special anniversary with Mrs. Coombes’s relatives, and Angeline was transferred to the care of her brother, who was to come from London. The Coombeses arose each morning at the crack of dawn or even earlier, despite yawning protests from the junior Coombeses, with the result that their day’s journey was completed almost before those of more normal persons even began.

  The Reverend and Mrs. Coombes had been quite prepared to settle in and wait like long-suffering martyrs at the inn until their precious charge could be handed over to the care of His Grace, but Angeline had persuaded them to be on their way. What could possibly happen to her at the Rose and Crown Inn, after all? It was a perfectly respectable establishment—Tresham had chosen it himself, had he not? And it was not as if she was quite alone. There was Betty, her maid; two burly grooms from the stables at Acton Park, Tresham’s estate in Hampshire; and two stout footmen from the house. And Tresham himself was sure to arrive any minute.

  The Reverend Coombes had been swayed, against his better judgment, by the soundness of her reasoning—and by the anxiety of his wife lest their journey not be completed before nightfall, and by the whining complaints of Miss Chastity Coombes and Master Esau Coombes, aged eleven and nine respectively, that they would never get to play with their cousins if they had to wait here forever.

  Angeline’s patience had been severely tried by those two while she had been forced to share a carriage with them.

  She had retired to her room to change out of her travel clothes and to have Betty brush and restyle her hair. She had then instructed her drooping maid to rest awhile, which the girl had done to immediate effect on the truckle bed at the foot of Angeline’s own. Meanwhile Angeline had noticed that her window would give no advance notice whatsoever of the arrival of her brother, so she had left the room to find a more satisfactory window—only to discover the four hefty male servants from Acton arrayed in all their menacing largeness outside her door as though to protect her from foreign invasion. She had banished them to the servants’ quarters for rest and refreshments, explaining by way of persuasion that she had not noticed any highwaymen or footpads or brigands or other assorted villains hovering about the inn. Had they?

  And then, alone at last, she had discovered the window she was searching for—in the public taproom. It was not quite proper for her to be there unescorted, but the room was deserted, so where was the harm? Who was to know of her slight indiscretion? If any persons came before Tresham rode into the inn yard, she would simply withdraw to her room until they left. When Tresham arrived, she would dash up to her room so that when he entered the inn, she could be descending the stairs, all modest respectability, Betty behind her, as though she were just coming down to ask about him.

  Oh, it was very hard not to bounce around with impatience and excitement. She was nineteen years old, and this was almost the first time she had been more than ten miles from Acton Park. She had lived a very sheltered existence, thanks to a stern, overprotective father and an absentee overprotective brother after him, and thanks to a mother who had never taken her to London or Bath or Brighton or any of the other places she herself had frequented.

  Angeline had entertained hopes of making her come-out at the age of seventeen, but before she could muster all her arguments and begin persuading and wheedling the persons who held her fate in their hands, her mother had died unexpectedly in London and there had been a whole year of mourning to be lived through at Acton. And then last year, when all had been set for her come-out at the indisputably correct age of eighteen, she had broken her leg, and Tresham, provoking man, had flatly refused to allow her to clump into the queen’s presence on crutches in order to make her curtsy and her debut into the adult world of the ton and the marriage mart.

  By now she was ancient, a verita
ble fossil, but nevertheless a hopeful, excited, impatient one.

  Horses!

  Angeline leaned her forearms along the windowsill and rested her bosom on them as she cocked her ear closer to the window.

  And carriage wheels!

  Oh, she could not possibly be mistaken.

  She was not. A team of horses, followed by a carriage, turned in at the gate and clopped and rumbled over the cobbles to the far side of the yard.

  It was immediately apparent to Angeline, however, that this was not Tresham. The carriage was far too battered and ancient. And the gentleman who jumped down from inside it even before the coachman could set down the steps bore no resemblance to her brother. Before she could see him clearly enough to decide if he was worth looking at anyway, though, her attention was distracted by the deafening sound of a horn blast, and almost simultaneously another team and another coach hove into sight and drew to a halt close to the taproom door.

  Again, it was not Tresham’s carriage. That had been apparent from the first moment. It was a stagecoach.

  Angeline did not feel as great a disappointment as might have been expected, though. This bustle of human activity was all new and exciting to her. She watched as the coachman opened the door and set down the steps and passengers spilled out onto the cobbles from inside and clambered down a rickety ladder from the roof. Too late she realized that, of course, all these people were about to swarm inside for refreshments and that she ought not to be here when they did. The inn door was opening even as she thought it, and the buzz of at least a dozen voices all talking at once preceded their owners inside, but only by a second or two.