by Mary Balogh
“Sam?” Jennifer called after her. But she was left alone in the middle of the staircase. Feeling wretchedly miserable and as much like eating breakfast as she felt like jumping into a den of lions.
It had really not seemed like such a dreadful indiscretion at the time. Had it been? Why had the French windows been open and lanterns lit both on the balcony and in the garden if guests had not been expected to stroll out there?
But guilt prevented her from feeling indignation against everyone who was condemning her—even Sam. For of course it had turned into an indiscretion. They were right and she was wrong. She had allowed a man who was not even her betrothed to kiss her in the garden.
SAMANTHA THREW HERSELF ACROSS her bed and sobbed into the pillow she held with both hands against her face. It had taken her a long while to erase all traces of last night’s tears. Now she would have to begin all over again—after she had stopped crying again, that was.
She felt wretchedly guilty and wretchedly something else too. She would not put that something else into words.
She had a number of admirers already. She determinedly stopped sobbing and turned her head sideways so that she could breathe. She began to list them and picture them in her mind. There was Sir Albert Boyle. He was very ordinary, very kindly. There was Lord Graham, who was very young but quite dashing too. There were Mr. Maxwell, who made her laugh, and Sir Richard Parkes and Mr. Chisley, all quite worthy of her consideration. Perhaps a few of her new partners from last night would show further interest and become regular admirers too. Perhaps soon one or two of those admirers would turn into definite beaux. Perhaps soon she would be involved in a courtship. Perhaps Jenny would not be the only one married by the end of the summer.
But the thought of Jennifer distracted her.
He really had been very upset. Very angry. She had felt it as soon as supper was over and he had asked her for the next set. She had been annoyed, wondering why she should be expected to dance with him and smile at him and spend half an hour in his company when his eyes were so cold and his lips so compressed and his mind so obviously distracted. There were other gentlemen she could have been dancing with who would actually have looked at her and appreciated her.
She had been even more indignant when Lord Kersey had made it clear that he was not going to dance with her but expected her to step out onto the balcony with him.
“I am not sure, my lord,” she had said to him, “that it is proper for me to leave the ballroom without a chaperone.” She had suspected that he was doing it in order to punish Jenny. She did not want to be caught in the middle of a lovers’ quarrel—if, indeed, that was what it was. If she was going to walk on the balcony instead of dancing, she would have preferred to do so with one of her admirers.
“It is quite proper,” he had assured her. “You are the cousin of my betrothed.”
And so she had allowed herself to be led outside—and straight down the steps to the garden below, where he took her to sit on a wrought-iron seat that was out of sight of the balcony and the ballroom.
“What a mess,” he had said. “What a bloody mess.”
She would have felt more shock at the word he had used in her hearing if she had not been in the process of removing her hand from its resting place on his arm and if his own had not come shooting across his body to hold it where it was. She had felt remarkably uncomfortable—and still angry at being drawn into something that was none of her concern.
“Does she love me?” he had asked abruptly. “Do you know? Does she confide in you?”
“Of course she loves you,” she had said, shocked. “She is your betrothed, is she not?”
“Yes,” he had said. “Forced into it five years ago when she was no more than a child. When I was no more than a boy. She seems remarkably interested in Thornhill.”
“She danced with him once at our ball and once at this,” she had said, being drawn against her will into this quarrel or whatever it was between her cousin and her betrothed. She was still feeling angry that she was missing half an hour of the ball.
“Except that here they did not dance,” he had said.
“They came out here,” Samantha had said. “Or perhaps only out onto the balcony. There is no great indiscretion in that. We are out here. We are committing no indiscretion.”
“No,” he had said. “There is nothing even remotely indiscreet about a couple’s being outdoors unchaperoned during a ball, is there?”
And as if to prove his point, which he had made obvious through the sarcasm of his tone, he had drawn his arm from beneath hers, circled her shoulders with it, raised her chin with his free hand, and kissed her.
Samantha had been so shocked that for a moment she had sat rooted to the spot. And then she had struggled to be free. She pushed at his shoulder, her palm itching to crack across his face. She was furiously angry.
But he had not let her go. He had used his superior strength to imprison her hands against his chest and had drawn her closer to him with both arms. His head had angled more comfortably against hers and he had kissed her again—with greater heat.
She had stopped struggling. And then she had stopped being passive. She had kissed him back. And somehow one of her arms had worked its way loose of its prison and was about his neck. For perhaps a minute she had mindlessly reveled in her first kiss.
He had looked down at her silently, his eyes glinting in the moonlight, when he finally lifted his head, and she had gazed back, only gradually realizing what had just happened, with whom she had shared her first kiss. Only gradually remembering that she had never greatly liked him, that she had always thought him cold.
“My lord,” she had said uncertainly. She had wanted to be angry again, but anger had seemed inappropriate after her minute of undeniable surrender.
“Lionel,” he had whispered.
“Lionel.” She had spread one hand over his chest. She had not been able to think what to say to him.
“You see,” he had said, “why chaperones are such a necessary evil?”
She had stared mutely back at him. Had he merely been demonstrating what might have happened between Jenny and the Earl of Thornhill? Was that what this was all about? But her mind refused to work quite clearly.
“Samantha.” He had touched the backs of his knuckles lightly to her cheek. “I could wish that you had gone to live with your uncle a year or two sooner than you did. Perhaps he and my father would have chosen me a different bride. One more congenial to my tastes.”
“I think you should take me inside,” she had said, feeling a little sick suddenly.
“Yes,” he had agreed. “Oh, yes, indeed I should.”
But he had not immediately got to his feet. He had lowered his head and kissed her again. And to her everlasting shame, she had allowed it to happen even though this time she could not plead the shock of the totally unexpected.
They had climbed the steps to the balcony and strolled there in silence for the rest of the set. But his free hand had rested the whole time on her hand as it lay along his arm.
All night Samantha had not known what to make of the encounter. Except that he did not love Jenny and regretted the promise that had led him into the betrothal that was so soon to be announced. She did not know what his feelings were for her or even if he had any at all.
All night she had been tortured by guilt. She had allowed herself to be kissed—twice—by Jenny’s betrothed. Worse than that—he was the man Jenny loved to distraction and had loved for five years. And Jenny, as well as being her cousin, was her very dearest friend.
Perhaps the kiss had meant nothing to him. Undoubtedly it had not.
Samantha wished the same could be said of her. If it had meant nothing, if she could shrug it off, perhaps she could feel simple anger and simple sorrow over the fact that Jenny’s betrothed did not love her.
But the kisses had meant something. She had lain awake all night, and cried through much of it, fearing that she was in love with Lord Kersey�
��with Lionel. That perhaps she always had been and had protected herself from what had seemed so very undesirable and improper a passion by looking for faults in him.
But perhaps she was not, either. Perhaps she was merely reacting in a thoroughly silly and predictable way, falling in love with the first man to kiss her. As if kisses and love were synonymous terms. Yes, that was it, of course. She did not love him or even like him. She was angry with the way he had behaved to her last night. What he had done was unpardonable.
“Lionel,” she whispered, closing her eyes and hugging the damp pillow to her bosom. “Lionel.” Oh, dear Lord, how she hated him.
THE EARL OF THORNHILL rather wished over the coming days that he had not conversed with Miss Jennifer Winwood at the Chisley ball. She was a beautiful and a very desirable woman. He wanted to know only those facts about her—the only sort of facts one needed to know about any woman. He had never felt in any way guilty about any of the women he had hired for casual sexual encounters or about any he had employed for longer periods of time as mistresses. When a woman was only a beautiful sexual object one did not have to have feelings for her beyond the physical.
He had no intention of even trying to make Miss Winwood his mistress, of course. He was not quite that base even if he had allowed the desire for revenge rather to obsess him. But he did intend to lead her astray, to compromise her, to cause her to break off her betrothal or, failing that, to cause Kersey to end it. Either way the resulting scandal and humiliation to Kersey would be marginally satisfying to himself.
It would have been far better to have seen to it that she remained to him just the luscious long-legged redhead whom he had dreamed of bedding from the first moment he had seen her—long before he had known of her connection to Kersey. And to have concentrated his mind on the numerous attractions of her person between that red hair and those long legs.
It had been foolish to allow her to become a person to him. She saw her life as one of privilege. She felt that she owed something in return. She felt that she had some responsibility to her father’s dependents and would have to her husband’s after she was married. She preferred the country to town. She felt that was where real life was lived. She did not often envy other people. She considered herself a happy person.
Damnation! He did not want to know any of those things.
Except that he could use them to soothe his conscience, he supposed. He could convince himself that he was about to do her a favor. She deserved better than Kersey. But perhaps after the scandal of a broken engagement she would be able to get no one else.
He had been surprised at her reaction to his kiss—though it could scarcely be called that when he had merely touched his lips to hers for a few seconds and had kept both his hands and the rest of his body deliberately away from hers. Even so he had been surprised that she had neither drawn away nor scolded afterward nor burst into tears. She had accepted the kiss, even pushing her lips back against his own for those brief seconds. And afterward she had behaved as if nothing untoward had happened between them at all.
It was gratifying. It had all been very easy so far.
He just wished that in order to soften her up, to make her comfortable with him and susceptible to his advances he had not had to converse with her. He just wished that he did not know she had taken that book of Pope’s poetry to read just because she did not want to be narrow in her reading tastes.
He saw her the evening after the Chisley ball at the theater and bowed to her from his own box when he caught her eye. He had the impression that she had known for a long time that he was there but had deliberately kept her eyes averted. He did not make any attempt to call at Rushford’s box, where she was seated with her party.
He saw her again the following afternoon in the park, where she was driving in a landau with Kersey, Miss Newman, and Henry Chisley, and touched his hat to her without either stopping to pay his respects or looking at any of the four of them except her. And he saw her the same evening at Mrs. Hobbs’s concert. He sat on the opposite side of the room from her and Kersey and the Earl and Countess of Rushford and watched her for much of the evening though he did not approach her at any of the times when there was a break in the recitals and the other guests were generally milling about.
But at Richmond the next afternoon, at old Lady Bromley’s garden party, he decided that he had left her alone for long enough. He was fortunate, he supposed, to have been invited to such a select gathering, but Lady Bromley was Catherine’s grandmother and knew that he was not the father of Catherine’s child—though clearly she did not know who was, or Kersey would doubtless not be among her guests.
Lady Bromley took his arm and strolled with him down by the river, which she was fortunate enough to have as one boundary of her garden. She walked very slowly, but he was quite content to match his pace to hers. The sun was shining, there was not a cloud in the sky, and somehow he intended before the afternoon was over to get Miss Jennifer Winwood alone again. To move one step closer to achieving his revenge—to winning the game, as Kersey termed it.
“I had a letter from Catherine just yesterday,” Lady Bromley said. “The child is well and she is well. The climate seems to agree with her. And the company. She is doing well there, Thornhill?”
“She seemed remarkably contented when I left there two months ago, ma’am,” he assured her quite truthfully. “Indeed, I would say she has found the place in this world where she best belongs.”
“In a foreign country,” she said with a click of the tongue. “It does not seem right somehow. But I am glad. She was never happy here. If you will pardon me for saying so, Thornhill, my son-in-law, the impecunious fool, should never have married her off so young to a man old enough to be her father.”
Yes, the earl thought. Catherine was four months younger than himself. She had been his father’s wife for more than six years before fleeing to the Continent with him. Yes, it had been criminal, especially given his father’s ill health even at the time of his marriage and his consequent ill humor.
“Who is the German count?” Lady Bromley asked.
“German count?” The earl raised his eyebrows.
“With an unreadable and doubtless unpronounceable name,” she said. “Mentioned twice in the course of the letter.”
“I do not believe I met him,” the earl said with a smile. “But it was only a matter of time before someone was taken into Catherine’s favor, ma’am. She attracts a great deal of interest.”
“Hm,” she said. “Because Thornhill—your father, that is—left her a small fortune. And the child too.”
“Because she is lovely and charming,” he said.
Lady Bromley looked pleased, though she said no more. They were down by the river and three boats were out on the water, three gentlemen rowing them while their ladies sat at their ease looking picturesque. Jennifer Winwood, in a boat with Kersey, trailed one hand in the water and held a parasol in the other.
“A handsome couple,” Lady Bromley said, seeing the direction of his gaze. “Recently betrothed, so I have heard, and to be married at St. George’s before the Season is out.”
“Yes,” the earl said, “I had heard. And yes, a handsome couple indeed.”
Kersey pulled the boat in to the bank a few minutes later and handed his lady out. She looked younger than her twenty years this afternoon, the earl thought, with her delicate sprigged muslin dress and straw bonnet trimmed with blue cornflowers and the frivolous confection of a blue parasol.
“Miss Newman?” The viscount smiled at his betrothed’s cousin, the small blonde, who was standing close by in company with a few other young people. “Your turn. May I have the pleasure?”
It looked as if Miss Newman did not want the pleasure at all, the earl thought. Poor girl. But she stepped forward and set her hand in Kersey’s. At almost the same moment Colonel and Mrs. Morris engaged Lady Bromley in conversation, and the Earl of Thornhill took advantage of the moment, perhaps the best the afternoon w
ould provide.
“Miss Winwood,” he said before she had had a chance to move from the bank to join the group with which her cousin had been conversing. He held out his arm to her. “May I escort you up to the terrace? There are cool drinks being served there, I believe.”
The situation could not have been more perfect. There were several people observing them, including Kersey, who was powerless to do anything about it, short of making a scene. And she was powerless to refuse without seeming quite ill-mannered. She really was looking incredibly lovely—a point that had no particular relevance to anything.
She hesitated for only a moment before taking his arm. But of course she was a gently bred young lady and quite inexperienced in the ways of the world. She really had no choice at all.
“Thank you,” she said. “A glass of lemonade would be welcome, my lord.”
The Earl of Thornhill, looking down appreciatively at her, wondered with some interest if he was playing the game alone this afternoon. Had Kersey not seen him on the bank with Lady Bromley? If so, why had he not kept Miss Winwood out longer? Or failing that, why had he not relinquished the boat to someone else and kept his betrothed on his arm?
It seemed almost as if Kersey had conceded this round of the game.
Unless somehow he was a more active participant in it.
Fascinating! It truly was fascinating.
But what, he wondered, was the game exactly?
7
SHE HAD BEEN AWARE OF HIM STANDING ON THE bank of the river and had willed him either to move away by the time Viscount Kersey had brought in the boat or else to continue talking with Lady Bromley. But she saw Colonel and Mrs. Morris move up to join them and she remembered that when Lionel had taken her out he had kindly offered to take Samantha next, though Sam had protested strangely that she was not very happy on water. She was certainly happy swimming, something she did a great deal of at home during the summer.
