The Wood Nymph

by Mary Balogh

The earl sighed. “Such a thing could happen only to Helen,” he said. “The dancing has not even begun yet.”

  “It was a minor matter, Papa,” said Emily. “Here she comes now.”

  William Mainwaring turned to watch with interest the approach of the elusive youngest daughter. He saw a small girl, much shorter than her sisters and lacking their straight-backed poise. She swung her shoulders as she moved, and strode along rather than walked, although her movements did not lack grace. She wore a pink gown, lace over silk, high-waisted, perfectly fashionable. Yet neither the gown nor the color suited her. Her tawny hair had been piled and curled into a style that might have been becoming if numerous rebellious wisps had not insisted on forming a sort of halo around her head. She had a rather full, almost round face, pretty perhaps had her jaw not been clenched quite so tightly and had not the heightened color of her cheeks outdone the shade of her gown.

  “It seems absurd that you have not met our youngest daughter, Mr. Mainwaring,” the countess said in her grand manner. “May I present Helen to you?”

  Mainwaring smiled with something more than mere politeness. So this was the skeleton in the closet. The girl was so very different from her very proper mother and sisters. He held out his hand for hers and prepared to bow over it. And it was only at that moment—he could never afterward imagine how he could have looked at her for what must have been almost a whole minute without realizing—that he knew her.

  For one moment he was caught in a feeling of unreality—almost the feeling one would get if one walked out of a room only to find that one was walking into it. The girl who was raising that clenched jaw and staring with such controlled fixity into his eyes was Nell! She raised her hand and placed it in his.

  “I am pleased to meet you, sir,” she said. The sound came through her teeth. It was her voice indeed, yet different. The accent was more clipped. She curtsied, a stiff, ungraceful gesture.

  William Mainwaring had missed his cue by perhaps only a couple of seconds. No one seemed to have noticed. He bowed over her hand, which still lay in his. “It is my pleasure, ma’am,” he said.

  * * *

  Robert and Elizabeth were entering the ballroom to begin the dancing. It was time to excuse himself in order to claim his first partner. He bowed to the family as a whole and turned away.

  The Marquess of Hetherington took his wife’s arm and linked it through his. He led her in the direction of the adjoining room, where the refreshments were set out.

  “Come and have some lemonade,” he said. “I do not much care if you are thirsty or not, my love. My only objection to balls—and unfortunately it is a major one —is that one rarely so much as sets eyes upon the person with whom one would wish to spend the whole evening. I have not spoken with you since the opening set, and that was a country dance.”

  She laughed. “I seem to remember that you used to go and sulk in the library when such a thing happened,” she said.

  “Ah, but one cannot be so rag-mannered, my love, when one is the host,” he said. “One must smile and smile and pretend that the desire to dance with one’s own wife is the furthest thought from one’s mind.”

  “Robert!” she said, glancing through her dance booklet as he took a glass of lemonade from a footman.

  “You have reserved the second dance after supper with me, and it is a waltz too. You have a mere two hours or so to wait.”

  He pulled a face and then waggled his eyebrows at her. “My main consolation must be that after all these people have left, I shall have you alone for the rest of the night,” he said.

  She tapped him on the arm with her fan. “That is at least four hours in the future,” she said. “We will just have to be patient, Robert.”

  “We?”

  “We,” she repeated, smiling conspiratorially at him. Then her expression sobered. “Robert,” she said, “the next set will be starting soon and I promised myself, that this time I would see that that dreadful little Wade girl was partnered. I am not sure, but I could almost swear that she has not danced even once. For the last two sets she has been sitting among the chaperons, her chin in her hand.”

  “I had noticed,” Robert said. “In fact, I asked for the last set myself. Do you know what she said? She said her feet were sore from wearing new slippers. She has not been on her feet long enough to develop even the smallest blister.”

  “Oh dear, I must go and see what I can do,” Elizabeth said, depositing her half-empty glass on a tray and walking determinedly back toward the ballroom. “What on earth can be wrong with the girl?”

  William Mainwaring reached Helen a few paces ahead of his friends. The set that was forming was the first for which he had not previously solicited the hand of some other lady. He bowed formally before Helen, who was still sitting, one leg crossed over the other, foot swinging, one elbow resting on her knee, her chin in her hand.

  “May I have the honor of this dance, Lady Helen?” he asked, his voice sounding strained to his own ears.

  She raised her eyes to him without lifting her chin or slowing the motion of her foot. “No,” she said, and looked out across the ballroom again.

  “May I fetch you something?” he asked. “A glass of lemonade perhaps?”

  “I am not thirsty,” she said, not bothering to look up at him.

  Mainwaring hesitated and glanced at the empty chair beside her. “If you will not dance,” he said, “may I sit and talk to you?”

  She too glanced at the empty chair. “I cannot stop you from sitting beside me,” she said. “I do not own the chairs here. But if you do, I shall move away.” She looked up at him then and smiled. Her foot still swung slowly back and forth.

  Mainwaring bowed, looked at her intently as if he were about to say more, and moved abruptly away.

  Elizabeth Denning, several feet away, looked indignantly up into her husband’s face. “Oh,” she said. “Oh, I am lost for words. If it would not cause a dreadful scandal, Robert, I would order that horrid little girl from my house. Her manners are quite, quite uncouth. I am so angry I could scream.”

  Hetherington smiled. “Later, my love,” he said. “You can scream and throw things at me in the privacy of our room. For now, smile! I believe your next partner is approaching, and Miss Fitzpatrick will be thinking that I am about to make a wallflower of her.”

  * * *

  Helen knew that she was behaving quite shockingly badly. She seemed powerless to control herself. She never did behave with the smooth good manners of Emmy and Melly, of course. She was labeled at home as rather strange. But she had never before been so openly bad-mannered. Mama would have a thousand fits if the girls had noticed and told her about it later. And Papa would bluster at her and threaten all sorts of dire consequences. It was a relief to her that for the moment at least they were not present in the ballroom. Papa was doubtless playing cards and Mama was either doing likewise or had discovered some old cronies and was having a comfortable coze with them somewhere.

  It was a relief to know, too, that the worst was over. She had dreaded this evening more than she had ever dreaded anything in her life—no, there was one thing she dreaded more, but she would not think of that yet. For days she had schemed to avoid the ball. A headache would not work, she knew. She had even considered taking a tumble from her horse and contriving to break a leg, but she had turned craven when it came to the point. She might just as easily break her neck, and she would not have liked that at all.

  Anyway, she had told herself finally, she could not put off the meeting forever. Even a broken leg would heal before the winter was over. Meet William she must. She might as well get the ordeal over with. So she had resigned herself to attending the Hetheringtons’ ball and to coming face to face with her faithless lover.

  Not that the decision had made the ordeal any the easier. She had almost missed the ball despite herself. By the time the family was ready to leave, she had felt physically sick. She had come so close to fainting in the hallway of the Charles Street ho
use, in fact, that Mama had remarked on her paleness and had offered her vinaigrette. Helen had declined, but Papa had laughed at her and had actually pinched her cheek, something he had not done for years. He had teased her about being nervous on the occasion of her first London ball.

  She would never know how she had succeeded in walking without aid into the ballroom after her hem had been sewn up. She had known that he must be there already. He was the guest of honor, the Marquess of Hetherington had said the week before, and they were late arriving. But she had not really expected that he would be close to the doorway in conversation with her family. Her heart and every pulse in her body had hammered against her as she had walked the short distance toward them. She had no idea how she had kept her face or her legs under control.

  But it had been done. She had even spoken to him and she had felt a hysterical kind of exultation when she realized that he had not immediately recognized her. She had felt his shock and believed now that she had even smiled. She hoped so. She wanted above all for him to believe that she cared every bit as little as he did. She was glad that the sight of him had aroused such hatred in her. She hated him now far more than she had in the more than two months since she had seen him last. She was well aware that the feeling was caused as much by the reminder of her own guilt that the sight of him brought as by his own bad behavior. But she determinedly focused all her animosity against him. Hatred would carry her through this interminable evening and through other such evenings for the months—no, weeks—ahead.

  Helen had not meant to be so completely unsociable. She had intended to dance with anyone who asked her. She had intended, in fact, to have a wildly good time, to show Mr. William Mainwaring that she was not in any way dependent on him for happiness. She knew that she did not look good. Formal clothes never had suited her, and the pink gown that Mama had insisted on was a worse disaster than usual. She knew that in the last few months she had lost the few good looks she had had. She had not fooled herself into imagining that she might be the most popular girl at the ball. But she would make the most of the invitations she would have. So she had resolved.

  But in the event she had found herself in the power of a massive lethargy. She was totally unable to bring herself out of the black mood that had swept over her as soon as the moment that she had lived for in such dread for the last week was over. As soon as William had turned away to claim his first dance partner, she had felt her whole being sag. No one had asked her for the first dance. They had arrived too late for the necessary introductions to be made. Melissa suffered a similar fate. And after the first set, she had started to refuse prospective partners, using a succession of different excuses, heedless of the possibility that two men might compare notes and realize that she had lied to at least one of them.

  She could not dance. Her attention could only be focused entirely on the man she so hated. He was devastatingly handsome. She had never seen him dressed formally before. She was quite sure that every female in the room was watching him, either openly or covertly. He was at least twice as attractive as the next-most-handsome man. And he looked so much more distinguished than anyone else, dressed in black, with startlingly white linen, while the other men were almost all in pastel shades.

  Handsome and entirely ruthless and heartless. She could not understand why she had not seen it before. No man of such good looks could possibly be kind and sincere. He could hardly avoid being conceited. Such an unimportant commodity as a woman’s heart would mean nothing to such a man. He would crush it beneath his heel without even realizing what he did.

  She watched him, without appearing to do so, as he danced with one lady after another, conversing with them in his rather stiff and aloof manner. Toplofty, thinking himself better than anyone else. She saw him approaching her when a new set was already forming. Why was he coming? Out of curiosity? Out of a desire to gloat? Did he imagine that she would swoon at his feet out of gratitude? That she would feel honored to be so singled out by the most distinguished man at the ball? By the time he stopped in front of her, she could cheerfully have spit in his eye.

  She was not unaware of the proximity of the Marquess and Marchioness of Hetherington as she dealt with William. And she was glad that they overheard. She resented them too. She was not exactly sure why she did so, unless it was the fact that they were his friends. And so handsome a couple and so charming and self-assured. And so happy. Yes, she resented them, especially the marchioness, who was now dancing with William and smiling into his face and talking animatedly. She was not in any way jealous, of course. She did not even wish to see William Mainwaring again, and she had totally given up the idea of marriage, happy or otherwise.

  Helen looked stonily downward and watched her pink slipper as it swayed back and forth in front of her.

  CHAPTER 10

  H elen was depressed. It was scarcely noon and she had still not fully persuaded herself that there was another day to face. She had been out of bed for a couple of hours despite the lateness of the night before, but she had not breakfasted or dressed. She was in her room reading Mr. Wordsworth’s Prelude when her father sent for her. Not that she was really concentrating on the poetry. She found it so difficult these days to concentrate on anything or to feel any enthusiasm.

  She sighed and rang the bell for her maid. Was Papa still cross with her? Were the scoldings of the night before to resume? They had been very late home and she had felt utterly dispirited, but both Mama and Papa had felt it their duty to take her to task over her behavior at the ball. She could not really blame either Emmy or Melly. It was Mama who had discovered her sitting glumly among the chaperons. The girls had merely confirmed her suspicions that Helen had been doing so all evening.

  They had prosed on for so long that Helen had finally broken down in tears, something she hated to do in public. But Papa was not satisfied, it seemed. She changed into a day dress of her maid’s choice and submitted to having her hair brushed and twisted into some sort of a style. Then she descended to the morning room, wishing that she had some food inside her to fortify her against the lecture that was coming, though she knew that food would not sit comfortably in her stomach at the moment. She blew out a breath silently through puffed cheeks and opened the door.

  William Mainwaring stood facing her across the room, his hands behind his back, his legs slightly apart. He was looking pale, his expression even more austere than usual. Helen stared at him incredulously, closing the door behind her without conscious thought.

  “You!” she said. “What are you doing in my father’s house?”

  “I came to speak to him and to you, Lady Helen,” he said. His voice sounded strained.

  “Indeed?” she prompted haughtily.

  He seemed to be having trouble with his breathing. “I have asked your father if I may pay my addresses to you,” he said at last. “He has given his consent. I would be greatly honored, ma’am, if you will consent to be my wife.”

  Helen continued to stare at him from her position just inside the door. “Have you completely taken leave of your senses?” she hissed. “How dare you come here with such a suggestion?”

  He had not moved. His expression was still stern and controlled. “I can understand that you are angry with me,” he said. “I did not know who you were.”

  “Angry,” she said. She strode across the room suddenly, color flooding into her face. “Angry? Why should I be angry with you, sir? I am only incredulous at your temerity. I cannot imagine how you could have nerve enough even to come here this morning. But to talk to Papa! And to make me this offer! You can take your offer, sir, and chuck it in the Thames.”

  “Nell—” he began.

  “My name is Helen, sir,” she said, glaring at him from a few feet distant. “Lady Helen to you.”

  He took a deep and ragged breath. “I am sorry,” he said. “I have not meant to insult you. I have lain awake all night thinking how I might make amends. I have much explaining to do, I know, and even then much of my b
ehavior is beyond excuse. Please, ma’am, believe that I deeply regret what is past and wish to do something to put matters to rights.”

  Helen put her hands on her hips and laughed, a short, mocking laugh. “And you believe that matters can be put to rights, as you put it, by marrying me,” she said. “I would consider marriage to you only further punishment for my own wrongdoings. I could think of no worse fate than to be sentenced to spend my life with a man of such low principles.”

  Mainwaring winced noticeably and turned paler, if that were possible. “I have ruined you, Nell . . . ma’am,” he said quietly. His voice was almost pleading. “The least I can do is to offer you the protection of my name.”

  “I would prefer my own name and any ruin that goes with it, sir,” she said. Her jaw was clenched as it had been the night before. She was finding it increasingly difficult to relax enough to speak clearly.

  “Why did you not tell me?” he asked, searching her eyes with his.

  Helen smiled unpleasantly and tapped her foot on the floor. “Would it have made a difference, William?” she asked. “If you had known I was Lady Helen Wade, would you have treated me with the proper respect? Don’t answer that, please. I fear you might say yes, and then I would despise you even more than I do now. Are you one of those men who think it quite acceptable to tumble a girl of no social position, while you almost fear to touch the fingertips of a lady? I despise such double standards, sir.”

  He hesitated. “You do me some injustice,” he said.

  “Do I?” she asked. She looked him contemptuously up and down. “I did not notice you breaking a leg to find my fictitious father in the village to offer for me.

  In fact, you ran in the opposite direction. It was time to find someone new in Scotland, was it? You should be in your element now, sir. I hear that London is simply crawling with whores and lightskirts.”

  For the first time Mainwaring looked angry. “Such words and ideas do not become you,” he said. “I see that I have made an error in coming here today. I apologize, ma’am. I shall not take any more of your time.”