by Mary Balogh
She opened her silver silk fan and plied it gently before her mouth, laughing over the top of it at Aunt Marjorie and Lord Quinn.
“Lud, child,” Lady Sterne said. “Those eyes are deadly weapons.”
“There will not be a gentleman present who will not be slain by them, by my life,” Lord Quinn said. “Ladies?” He offered them each an arm after making them an elegant bow.
In truth, Emily found a scant half hour later, as their carriage inched its way forward for a chance to deposit its occupants before the well-lit doors of the house on Berkeley Square, this was not going to be quite as easy as she had anticipated. Her heart was beating painfully with excitement and fear. How could she meet a whole ballroomful—a whole houseful—of strangers? But it was too late now to turn back.
She looked about with wide eyes when she entered the house on Lord Quinn’s arm and ascended the stairs slowly to the ballroom and the receiving line. And she had thought the ball at Bowden a crowded and splendid affair! This ballroom, she discovered when she was finally inside it, was surely too crowded to allow for dancing. There were people conversing in groups, couples promenading about the edge of the space kept clear for dancing, people—mostly gentlemen—standing and looking. She felt dizzy and frightened. This was more than madness.
And soon there were people converging on her own small group—ladies come to greet Lady Sterne, gentlemen come to wish Lord Quinn a good evening. And gentlemen come with the express purpose of being presented to her. Emily suspected after the first few moments of surprise that it had been arranged thus, that both Lady Sterne and Lord Quinn had been busy ahead of time seeing to it that she would have partners, if not for dancing, then at least for strolling and conversing. Certainly none of the gentlemen who came seemed surprised to find that she could not speak and could hear them only when she could see their lips.
Emily smiled and nodded and shook her head in appropriate places and even laughed. She plied her fan against the heat of the ballroom and smiled over the top of it. And when a young gentleman came and talked with Lord Quinn and was then presented to her and showed surprise at her handicap, she knew that finally she had attracted someone who had not been persuaded ahead of time to take notice of her. She smiled all the more brightly.
Viscount Burdett secured her hand for the first set and directed her toward a sofa that was just being vacated by a couple who intended to dance.
It was the beginning of a strange, delirious sort of evening. The sofa became the place from which she conducted her court, to use the phrase that Lord Quinn used in the carriage on the way home. She did not know quite what the attraction was, but gentlemen sat beside her, stood beside her, hovered in her vicinity. All had secured introductions through either Aunt Marjorie or Lord Quinn.
They talked with one another. Sometimes they talked to her, using such precise lip movements that she laughed at them. They seemed amazed when she nodded or shook her head at appropriate times and they realized that she really had understood. She suspected that they saw her as some sort of amusing curiosity. She did not care. They were amusing curiosities. She was amused. She was wildly happy—or wildly enjoying herself at least.
“’Tis hardly to be wondered at that you are a success, child,” Aunt Marjorie said in the carriage, patting her hand. “You were not only beautiful, child—you sparkled, I do declare. And gentlemen can never resist sparkle. All those poor girls who are instructed to look bored lest they be accused of rustic enthusiasm are badly advised.”
“Egad,” Lord Quinn said, “’twould be strange indeed, m’dear, if you did not acquire a large and permanent court. Burdett asked if you and Marj intend to be at home tomorrow afternoon. And a dozen other young bucks listened avidly to the answer.”
Emily laughed.
“Theo,” Aunt Marjorie said, leaning forward to set a hand on his knee, “shall we tell Emily?”
Emily looked across the carriage at him. She was still smiling.
“You will be the first to know, m’dear,” he said, catching Aunt Marjorie’s hand as she was about to remove it and bringing it back to his knee. “Marj here has done me the great honor of accepting my marriage offer. We are to be married, here in London, as soon as the banns have been called. At St. George’s, with half the world present.”
Emily bit her lower lip. She did not know which one of them to hug first. She looked from one to the other with shining eyes. She had known them both for a long time and loved them both. And she had always thought that there was a fondness between them stronger than mere friendship.
“I daresay all your family will come to town for the occasion,” Aunt Marjorie said. “My only relationship to any of you is as Anna’s godmother, but you have all been kind enough to call me aunt. I want you all present when I marry.”
She would see Anna, Emily thought. And Anna would see how happy she was. She had been so worried that London was not at all the place for her youngest sister.
“And all my family too,” Lord Quinn said. “Doris and my sister are already in town. Luke will come from Bowden and Ashley will come from Penshurst.”
Emily’s insides performed a complete and uncomfortable somersault.
“You may think it quite unseemly at the age of fifty, Emily,” Aunt Marjorie said, patting Emily’s arm with her free hand, “but ’tis going to be the happiest day of my life.”
Ashley would come from Penshurst. As soon as the banns had been called. For the wedding. Within a month. She would see him again.
Ashley would come.
Emily closed her eyes and rested her head against the cushions. Her eyes ached. Did other people’s ears ache from incessant conversation the way her eyes sometimes did? She longed suddenly for solitude and the sweet, undemanding companionship of nature.
But she had stepped out of that life into the real world. She had come to enjoy herself. She was enjoying herself.
She opened her eyes determinedly and smiled, first at Lord Quinn and then at Aunt Marjorie, both of whom were regarding her silently but rather intently.
Ashley would come.
14
THERE was no separate breakfast parlor at Penshurst. All meals were taken in the huge dining room, with its gilded paneled walls and its coved and painted ceiling. The massive oak table had been made especially for the room.
Ashley sat in lone state at the head of the table, eating his breakfast and reading his mail. There was nothing from Bowden. He had leafed through the pile first to ascertain that. Of course, the news, if and when it came, might not come from Bowden. She had gone to London with Lady Sterne. Luke had already mentioned that in an earlier letter. Emmy in London, with the very sociable Lady Sterne. It was difficult to imagine. Poor Emmy!
He had been at Penshurst for almost three weeks. She would probably know by now, or at least suspect. Would she tell anyone immediately? Would she even understand? Emmy was such a curious mixture of wisdom and innocence that it was impossible to know. But the suspense was weighing heavily on him. And he could not at all decide if he wanted it to be so or not. Emmy with child—with his child—and forced after all to marry him.
Part of him hoped fervently that it would not happen. He did not want her in that way, and he did not want her forced into doing something she so clearly did not want to do. But part of him wished that she would be forced into allowing him to do the decent thing.
And part of him longed just for her, for her closeness, her companionship, her unconventionality, her—but he could never put into words exactly what it was about her that he longed for.
And part of him longed for a child. Son or daughter—it would not matter. A child of his own body. His first.
There was a letter from London, but it was from his uncle Theo and not from Lady Sterne. Theo would hardly be the one elected to send for him. Sometimes he considered going on his own. To London. It was the Season. He was newly returne
d to England. It would be easy to excuse his going there for a week or two. Just to see that she was in good health and good spirits. Just to see if she needed him.
He had always been the one to need her, not the other way around, he realized. It was quite the contrary to what an outside observer might have been led to believe. Emmy had always been the strong one, the independent one. Right to the end.
He looked down at his uncle’s bold handwriting when he had broken the seal of the letter. He read the short note twice and then smiled and chuckled. The old rogue! It was an open family secret that Theo and Lady Sterne had been lovers for as far back as Ashley could remember. Finally they were to be married. And they were not going to creep quietly off to the nearest clergyman with a special license. They were going to have a grand wedding at that most fashionable of all London churches, St. George’s, in the presence of as many members of the fashionable world as could be packed within its pews.
He wished them well. He had no doubt that they would be happy together. They knew each other well enough—in all possible ways, Ashley did not doubt. It would never be said of them that they had rushed into marriage after a mere few weeks of acquaintance. The smile faded from Ashley’s face.
And then the implication of what he had read struck him. The letter was more than an announcement. It was an invitation.
Ashley folded the paper and set it down. He drummed his fingers slowly on it. He had told himself that he would not go to London. She would not wish to see him. There was work to do here—he was still in the process of getting to know his new estate and of gradually taking charge of its administration. And there were invitations to honor from the neighbors who had been calling on him.
But the temptation to go had been strong even before the arrival of Theo’s invitation. He found the house oppressive despite its still very new splendor. It was a feminine house. There were signs of Alice in every flounced drapery and every frilled cushion, in every delicate landscape painting and in every porcelain ornament. He was reminded powerfully of how she had transformed his own very comfortable home in India and of how she had raged against his habit of leaving books and garments and snuffboxes lying around. And here at Penshurst there was one particular set of rooms that drew him like a magnet though he hated setting foot inside them. And yet he found himself unable to give the order to have them cleared out. Alice’s rooms, still full of her personal possessions, still with the distinctive perfume she had always worn clinging to the clothes in the wardrobes.
If only she had died naturally, he had thought one day, standing in the middle of her sitting room, his eyes tightly closed, or if only she had died in an accident for which he could not possibly feel personal blame, perhaps he would not feel so fettered by all this. She had been no wife to him. She had never even tried to deny that she had lovers. She had given birth to a red-haired child fourteen months after the only time she could possibly have conceived the child with him. She had told him they would be from home the night of the fire.
But nothing he had been able to say to himself in more than a year of mental torment had ever been able to convince him that he must not blame himself. While they were at home alone, dying in that fire, he had been taking repeated and delighted pleasure in the bed of a married woman—ironically his only foray into adultery.
And so, as Roderick Cunningham had predicted, he punished himself with the house which almost breathed her presence—and longed for an excuse to be away from it.
There was another reason for wanting to be in London. An illogical reason, perhaps merely the exchange of one form of self-punishment for another. Lady Verney, his closest neighbor, had called on him with a couple of other neighbors. She was a lady of late middle age. She talked of her son and daughter, both of whom were in London for the Season. She referred to them several times as Henry and Barbara. He had dreaded meeting Sir Henry Verney—Alice’s lover, the man she had loved almost fanatically. Verney, Ashley believed, had blighted her life. If she had not loved him, if he had not for some reason abandoned her, perhaps she would not have been so driven by self-hatred. For that was what had motivated Alice. He was convinced of it. Though he had often hated her, he had pitied her too.
He did not want to meet Verney, he had thought. And yet now, finding the man absent, he discovered that part of his reason for coming here must have been to see Verney, to try to piece together exactly what had happened here five years or so ago, to try to wrest some meaning out of the turbulent events of the past three years. He was still seeking that peace he had blindly sought on his return, he realized, though with his rational mind he knew that he would never find it. He was too wrapped about with his own sin and guilt.
His steward was doing a quite capable job on the estate, even though Ashley had his own ideas for change and improvement. And the housekeeper and butler were managing the house perfectly well. His neighbors would understand his reason for canceling or postponing his promised visits. There was no reason not to go to Theo’s wedding.
And if he went, he would escape the house for a while. He would be able to call upon the Verneys. And he would see Emmy.
He would see Emmy. He rested his hand flat on his uncle’s letter and closed his eyes. He could picture her sitting cross-legged on the soaked grass at Bowden, the front of her dress dark with wetness and clinging to her, her bare feet covered with grass, her hair loose and untidy and damp and brushing the ground behind her. She was frowning in concentration and touching her fingertips to his throat. He could hear her strange, low, curiously attractive voice saying yass.
Emmy. He would see her if he went to London—when he went. There was really nothing to decide. He could not possibly absent himself from the wedding. And he had no wish to do so.
He would see her again.
• • •
It was a warm night, fortunately. She had hoped for it for all of the week past, a week during which the weather had been cloudy and somewhat chilly. But tonight was perfect. There were moonlight and starlight to sparkle off the surface of the River Thames as they crossed it by boat. She raised her face to the light for a few moments and was aware of the vast mystery of the universe.
And then they stepped out of the boat—Viscount Burdett took her hand and held it firmly and smiled at her while Lord Quinn helped Aunt Marjorie and the Earl of Weims helped Doris. A few moments later they were standing inside the entrance to Vauxhall Gardens, and she was looking around at the place she had been told about and had dreamed of seeing. The famous pleasure gardens, the great rival of Ranelagh Gardens, which she also longed to see. Both were said to be magical by night.
To their right, extending away into the distance, was a long colonnade with an arched, Gothic roof, hung with golden and red lamps. Ahead were the trees she had heard about, the grove, and the numerous shady walks. The trees were hung with festoons of lamps. Along the wide central path, farther in among the trees, she could see a brighter blaze of light. That would be the rotunda, the place where orchestras played and famous singers performed and people danced, the place where the more wealthy patrons sat in boxes and ate and drank while they enjoyed the spectacles around them. Viscount Burdett had hired a box there tonight.
“Lady Emily.” Her arm was resting on his satin sleeve. He touched his fingers briefly to hers. “Do you find it pleasing?”
It was magical, spectacular. It was hard to believe that this was a park, with trees and grass, with sky above. She wondered briefly what it must be like in the daytime, when there would be no lamplight to mask reality, or what it would be like with the lamps unlit and all the crowding masses gone. But she pushed the thought aside. She did not want to know.
She smiled dazzlingly at the man who had conversed with her at several balls during the past weeks and had called upon her at Aunt Marjorie’s and walked with her in the Mall of St. James’s Park. He was the most constant among a startlingly large number of gentlemen who p
aid her attention wherever she went. She did not know what the attraction was, unless perhaps there was novelty in paying court to a woman who could only smile and nod no matter how outrageous their compliments or how tedious their conversation. Almost always there was a group of them, who spoke with one another and did not therefore find her silence tedious. The crowds also released her from the necessity of concentrating every moment of every evening on other people’s lips.
Lord Quinn said the attraction was that she was the loveliest young lady in London—or in England, for that matter. Emily laughed at him. Aunt Marjorie said it was that she sparkled and doubled her beauty with each smile. Emily laughed at her.
The almost reckless sense of freedom and gaiety that had taken her in its grip as soon as Aunt Marjorie had made her unexpected proposition in the garden at Bowden had not released her in the weeks since. She had not lived until now, she told herself. She was happy. And she knew now that she would never have to relinquish that freedom and that happiness. She had been a little afraid for herself when she learned that Aunt Marjorie was to marry Lord Quinn. But both had assured her that they had every intention of staying in London until the end of the Season and that then they would probably travel and wanted her to go with them. A lady needed more company than a man could provide, Lord Quinn had said. Gentlemen needed sometimes to be alone, Aunt Marjorie had said, as did ladies. But ladies did not have the freedom that men did to be quite alone. They needed companions. She would need Emily.
They were sitting in their box at the rotunda a few minutes after their arrival. They were just in time to watch the ballet, the viscount explained. He had deliberately chosen a night when there would be visual entertainment for Lady Emily as well as just music. She smiled at him. But before the ballet began, some gentlemen called at their box to pay their respects to her and to try to guess what message she was sending tonight by the design and positioning of the black patch she wore on one cheek. There had been much hilarity last night over the small heart she had worn close to the corner of her mouth. Tonight she wore a star high on her cheekbone, near the outer corner of her eye. There was no message, of course, but it amused her to see how inventive the gentlemen could be and how much they enjoyed themselves at her expense. She always laughed with them. Sometimes she even stopped listening and looked about her instead. They did not seem to notice her inattention. None of them, she realized, though she never dwelled on the thought, were really interested in her. None of them knew her or realized they did not. She did not care.
