Chapter Nine
Nicholas reached them in a moment. Apparently realizing what a spectacle she was presenting, Sarah stepped away from the soldier. “Sinjin, ’tis marvelous to see you! Why didn’t you write you’d gotten leave?”
Then she saw Nicholas, and with a smile, led the officer over. “My lord, let me introduce my neighbor and dear friend, Captain St. John Stafford, Viscount Sandiford. Sinjin, this is Nicholas Stanhope, Lord Englemere, my husband.”
The captain stopped short, friendliness draining from his face. “Husband?”
Her glow dimmed. “Yes, we’ve been wed this month and more. I wrote you, Sinjin. Did you not get the letter?”
In the ensuing silence, polite words of greeting stuck in Nicholas’s throat. The best he could manage, his pulse still pounding and every nerve alert, was to twist his lips into what he hoped might be taken as a smile.
For a long, uneasy moment, the captain stared at him, his sunburnt face unreadable. Then he looked down at Sarah. “You know how uncertain the mails are. The last letter I had from you said you’d gone to London, for—urgent reasons. I demanded leave immediately, but we had some nasty set-tos with Soult before I could get away.”
“Oh, Sinjin,” Sarah murmured.
Finally managing to force the ritual of civility, Nicholas stuck out his hand. “Pleased to meet an old friend of Sarah’s. I’ve heard of your gallantry, Captain.”
“You have?” Sarah looked startled.
“Colton particularly lauded his abilities under fire.”
Seeming to recover as well, the captain gripped Nicholas’s hand. “Forgive my deplorable soldier’s manners. Your servant, my lord. I’m sure whatever account you got from Colton was highly exaggerated.” He tossed Sarah an amused glance. “The scamp’s army-mad.”
Nicholas found the captain’s easy familiarity grating. And must the fellow be so tall, well-muscled and handsome? He looked across into blue eyes that, behind the smile, were as frosty as he suspected were his own.
“You’re on leave from your regiment, then, Captain. Do you make a long stay in London?” He pushed the conventional pleasantry through tight lips. “You must call on us.”
“Yes, do, Sinjin,” Sarah echoed. “I should like you two to become acquainted, and we have—much to discuss.”
For another long moment the hussar studied Sarah. A ripple of emotion crossed his face.
His tone, when he at last replied, was unexceptional. “So it seems. Yes, I shall certainly call upon you.”
Lady Jersey descended on them in a flutter of pink satin. “Sarah, dear! Who is this dashing stranger you induced to visit my ball—and greeted with such warmth?”
“’Tis my wife’s neighbor, Captain Lord Sandiford, just returned to London from the Peninsula,” Nicholas answered.
The captain made her an elegant bow. “Forgive me, Your Ladyship! Even in the wilds of Portugal, my army mates traded tales of your beauty, wit and fascinating entertainments. How could I help but present myself? Raff Peterson assured me you’d greet an old soldier kindly.”
Lady Jersey tinkled a laugh and preened herself. The captain had taken her measure at a glance. Nicholas wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or annoyed at his perspicacity.
“Marcus Rafferty Peterson, that devilish scapegrace? Well, if you are one of Raff’s friends—as well as Lady Englemere’s,” she added with a penetrating look at Sarah, “then certainly I must bid you welcome.”
Chloe Ingram stepped out of the crowd, startling Nicholas. Drat the woman, she must have trailed him.
She startled him even more by boldly inserting herself between her hostess and the newcomer. “You must present him to me, your ladyship,” Chloe said. “I have a brother in the army, Captain. Mayhap you know him.”
Someone gasped. The small circle about Nicholas seemed to hold its collective breath. Would the great queen of society punish or tolerate this intrusion?
Lady Jersey chose to be amused. After an ironic glance from Sarah to Nicholas to the hussar, she turned to Chloe. “Captain Lord Sandiford, may I present Mrs. Chloe Ingram. Certainly one of our, ah, loveliest London widows.”
The captain bowed, and Chloe swept him a curtsy. “Chat with me, Captain. I believe we have much in common.”
Lady Jersey trilled another laugh. “Oh, without doubt. Mrs. Ingram will lead you to…refreshment, Captain. Sarah, dear, let me steal your handsome husband. ’Tis my own ball, and I’ve not had a dance with him all evening.”
The musicians were striking up a waltz. Avid curiosity lit her ladyship’s face, and Nicholas knew he was about to be mercilessly quizzed. Bowing to his hostess and the inevitable, Nicholas offered an arm.
“I’d be honored, Sal. You must promise, though, if the gallant to whom you’ve bespoken this waltz calls me out, you’ll leave flowers on my grave.”
“Rogue,” Lady Jersey reproved, and turned to Sarah. “I’ll send him back intact, my dear. As for you,” she said, placing her hand on Nicholas’s sleeve, “should it come to grass for breakfast, I’d wager my blunt on you.”
Nicholas cast a narrowed glance at a retreating blue-coated back. Fury sizzled through him. He felt a primitive urge to strike down the handsome captain here, now, in this very ballroom, to prevent with a preemptive blow even the possibility that the soldier might seek to wrest from Nicholas what was his.
The intensity of that battle instinct shocked and disturbed him. Like a blind man groping his way through unfamiliar landscape, he struggled to remember the place and time, to recover the normal pattern of behavior.
The matter of the dashing Captain Viscount Sandiford’s untimely return couldn’t be settled by fisticuffs in a ballroom. Though deal with it he must, and soon.
At a very late hour, Nicholas escorted Sarah back to Stanhope House, where a yawning footman admitted them.
The rest of the ball had passed uneventfully. The captain danced with Sarah only a proper two sets, after first honoring Chloe, his hostess and several other ladies. When Nicholas claimed Sarah’s hand for the second waltz, she chatted amusingly and not once mentioned Sandiford.
He was thus unsure whether to be pleased or sorry when she asked if he would come speak with her before he retired. Though a discussion of the captain was undeniably necessary, once out of the man’s troubling proximity Nicholas had half hoped to postpone it.
He smiled ruefully as he knocked at the dressing room door. He should know if difficulties loomed, in Sarah-fashion she would want to attack them head-on.
Sarah stood warming her hands at the hearth, her hair, in a loose braid down her back, gleaming in the firelight.
Nicholas tangled his fingers in the plait and leaned to kiss her. “Later,” she murmured. A gleam of promise in her eyes, she urged him onto the settee behind them.
“What did the children tell you about Sinjin?”
His ardor vanished. “Does it matter?”
“I just wondered, that I might not bore you repeating what you already know. After my rather—demonstrative greeting tonight, I thought you entitled to an explanation.”
“It did seem a trifle excessive,” he said dryly.
To his surprise, she flared up. “I’ll not apologize for that! For forgetting myself in such a place, I do beg pardon—that was not well done. But Sinjin has been my dearest friend for as long as I can remember. His regiment is fighting in the Pyrenees, the journals say, and I knew he’d be in the thick of it. I was overjoyed to see him return uninjured. Just as you would be, should someone dear to you escape from that action.”
“Probably,” he admitted. “I wouldn’t kiss him in a ballroom, though.”
She laughed, her heat dissipating. “I didn’t kiss him, merely gave him a hug. Let Sally Jersey make what she likes of it! The children told you, I expect, that his land marches with ours and the families have long been intimate.”
She looked up at him, waiting. With resignation, he prepared to offer up what else he’d learned.
“Y
es, they said as much. After Cecily voiced her approval of your choice in husbands.” He grinned.
“That child needs a curb bit,” Sarah said, shaking her head. “What other indiscretions did she let slip?”
“Apparently Lady Sandiford kept them informed of your, ah, progress in London. Cecily claimed the viscountess disliked you—” Sarah groaned “—but Emma insisted she had a fondness for you all.” He paused, watching her.
“So much so that she favors a union between her son and your sister Elizabeth—now that she has a dowry, of course.”
If pain crossed her face, he didn’t see it. “’Twould be a good match. He would make her a kind husband. And he could wish for no finer a wife.”
“Could he not?”
She studied her fingers. “Not any longer.”
After a moment she continued. “’Tis true, we expected to marry, though his mama never truly approved.” A brief smile touched her lips. “How could I blame her? She wished a beautiful heiress for her son, and I was hardly that.”
Nicholas instantly extended his dislike to encompass the captain’s mother.
Sarah sighed, her gaze on the dancing firelight. “In any event, our fathers were fellow gamesters. By the time I was old enough for a come-out, both estates were heavily in debt. We knew duty compelled us to marry elsewhere.”
“Did you? Sandiford seemed shocked to find you wed.”
“I had vowed never to marry. But one does what one must.” She looked up at him, her eyes warming, then took his hand and kissed it. “Never has a woman been so bountifully rewarded for doing what she must.”
A tightness gathered in his chest and he drew her into his arms. He’d been about to ask if she had loved her soldier friend. Why, he couldn’t imagine. It didn’t matter now, and quite frankly he would rather not know.
Despite these self-assurances, the tension in his gut continued to build. He discovered with dismay that it did matter, rather desperately, whether his wife had cherished a tendre for another man. Damn, he vowed, he’d bite off his tongue before he’d ask such a useless, green-sick question.
“I did love him,” Sarah admitted. “As the eldest of so many girls, Papa treated me almost like a son, and it was always Sinjin who challenged my skills at riding, shooting, hunting. The change from tomboy companions to youthful lovers came as natural as breathing, I suppose.”
I did love him. He barely prevented himself physically recoiling. Prickling shards of memory gouged at old wounds.
“I had hoped you were happy with me, Sarah.”
Her eyes widened. “I have been happy! How could you think otherwise?”
The pressure in his chest eased a little. “I’m glad for that. It has been a splendid month. But…now?”
“I’ll not receive him, if you prefer.”
The offer, freely given, loosed the tension still further, and he was vastly tempted to accept it. But he knew society too well.
“That wouldn’t serve. Too many people observed us tonight. ’Twould be better for us all to be on cordial terms, as befits old friends.” His smile twisted. “But only cordial. Though I would suffer much for your happiness, there are some things I simply could not allow.”
She didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “You must not worry the sudden reappearance of a former—friend—would make me forget my place, or my duty. Before ever I came to London, I set old loyalties aside. And now—you have treated both me and my family so generously, how could I think to look elsewhere?”
Her avowal helped, but couldn’t completely reassure him. “Duty is a rather cold companion,” he said gruffly.
Before he could look away, she reached up to cup his face in lavender-scented palms. “We may not be able to choose our fate, but we can make our own happiness. If I ever doubted that, this past month has convinced me.”
Swiftly she encircled his neck, surprising him with a kiss. It was one of her best Sarah kisses, starting soft, then deepening as she parted his lips to tease his tongue and stir the smoldering embers of desire.
“You have brought me so many blessings,” she murmured. “I only hope I may bring you half as much.”
His turmoil flamed into another need. Mine, it said. Now and always mine.
“You will,” he promised, and pulled her into his arms.
Sarah sat at the dressing table, inspecting herself in the glass. Her morning gown of deep blue, with its slashed rouleau puffs at the shoulder and gold military braid, was perhaps the most stylish of all her new gowns.
After their appearance last night, the news that Lord and Lady Englemere had returned from their honeymoon would by now have swept the ton. She expected a steady stream of the curious to come calling on his lordship’s new bride.
When they breakfasted, Nicholas told her he must meet his solicitor over some matter that could not wait, and asked her to make his excuses to any callers. With his usual perception, Nicholas must have taken Sinjin’s measure and known he would lose no time seeking her out for a full explanation. How thoughtful Nicholas was, to have arranged so unexceptional an excuse to allow them a private meeting.
How understanding as well. Until Sinjin’s unexpected return shocked her into that emotional greeting, she’d not thought it necessary to inform Nicholas of her unhappy love affair. ’Twas past, and in no way affected him.
Last night she’d known she must acquaint Nicholas with the bare facts and reassure him of her commitment. After all, any husband must feel unsettled by such a public demonstration of his wife’s feeling for another man. Even one, she thought with a sigh, whose heart was not engaged.
Some men might have berated their errant wives for such a lapse, but he barely reproved her. He even said, she recalled, that he wanted her to be happy. And demonstrated his trust by allowing her to meet her former love. Gambler though he were, she could not have asked for a more generous, considerate husband.
At the idea of meeting Sinjin her nervousness returned. Though the hour was too early for callers, she knew her childhood friend well enough to suspect he would call when he could anticipate finding her alone.
Almost upon the thought, a knock sounded. The footman announced a caller below.
Her stomach fluttered as she caught up a shawl. Downstairs she would see Sinjin alone for the first time in three years. ’Twas the moment she’d dreaded ever since steeling herself to the necessity of London, and marriage.
He said he’d gotten the letter detailing her plans, yet he’d clearly been shocked to discover her wed. She feared he was not going to be as understanding as Nicholas.
Sinjin was gazing out the window, sunlight glinting on the gold of his epaulets, when Glendenning announced her.
“Some sherry for the captain,” she instructed the butler. “And let Lord Englemere know we have a caller, that he might join us when he returns.”
Betraying not a flicker of the curiosity he must be feeling at leaving his mistress alone with this stranger, Glendenning bowed. “As you wish, my lady.”
Not until the butler departed did she turn, palms moist and heartbeat quickening, to greet her former love.
He had turned toward her as well. The bright light from the window illuminated every feature as the wavering candlelight last night could not. Her polite words of welcome dried on her lips.
He looked achingly familiar and yet changed. His tall frame was thinner than she remembered, his skin bronzed by a harsher sun than England’s. A jagged scar running from temple to cheekbone showed whitely against the mahogany of his face. Tiny lines webbed the corners of his blue eyes and the edges of the firm, taut lips.
He’d left a boyish young man, but naught of youth remained. An aura of command surrounded him, the air of a man accustomed to giving difficult orders and being obeyed. His once-laughing eyes were hard, as if he’d met danger, privation and suffering, and conquered them all.
Then he smiled. Dimples creased the lean cheeks—the same dimples she traced with a finger before she kissed them, that happy
summer she planned to be his bride.
“God, but you’re beautiful, Sarah,” he said huskily.
A bolt of pure joy shot through her, and she instinctively stepped toward him. At the last moment, some shred of sanity penetrated. She stopped just short of once again flinging herself into his arms.
Her heart pounding, she turned aside, aghast at the intensity of her emotions. After long bitter years, she thought she’d tamed the tumultuous love she once felt for him, toned it down to the limits permissible between friends. Yet it took every ounce of her control to keep her hands at her sides and her feet motionless. A great gash of pain tore through her heart.
Mercifully he made no move toward her. She thanked God for that and for Glendenning’s swift return with the sherry. Uttering what she hoped were appropriate words, she went to pour, willing her hands not to rattle the glass.
By the time she dispensed his sherry she was calmer. Careful not to touch his hand, she gave it to him.
“You’re looking well, too, Sinjin,” she said, relieved her voice was steady. “Older, of course, but very handsome and commanding.”
He raised his glass, took a sip and sat silent, twirling the fragile stem in his fingers. With a twisted smile, he looked over. “Obviously not handsome enough.”
She winced as another shaft of pain lanced through her. “Surely you were expecting as much. I clearly remember writing you I could no longer honor my vow. That I must find a wealthy husband with all speed, lest we lose Wellingford—lose everything. You did get that letter.”
“Yes, I got it. Indeed, I reread it so often I can still recite it, long after the paper fell to shreds. ‘I have racked my brain, but can come up with no honorable way to meet our obligations save marriage to a wealthy man. Thus, I must break my vow and go to London. Repugnant as the idea is to me, the alternative is to lose Wellingford, and that I can never permit….’”
He turned to the window. “Was the idea truly repugnant? Or after three lonely years did you begin to yearn for marriage after all?”
She stared at him, not comprehending. “No, I had no wish to marry elsewhere! How can you think that?”
The Wedding Gamble Page 13
