But that just was not true.
Charity was far too level-headed to honestly believe that she could be in love with Mr. Harding on the strength of three very brief encounters. She was precisely the kind of person who would have scoffed at such a notion if it had been presented to her.
And yet, though the word ‘love’ did not feel wholly appropriate as a description of her feelings, she could not simply dismiss the idea.
“I like Mr. Harding very much,” she said slowly. “I like the way that I feel when I speak to him, and I would very much like to know him better.”
At this, her face fell.
“Not that there is any opportunity for that,” she said, beginning to think aloud. “Either he will be disinherited, in which case a sensible man would marry money, or he will become the Duke of Mornington, in which case he will move in circles that are very unlike yours and mine.”
She sighed. “I realize, Esther, that it is only because of Mr. Harding’s predicament that he and I have come into contact with one another. If everything that I wished for him came to pass, then I would have no reason ever to speak to him again.”
“Perhaps, therefore, you should see his current situation as an act of Providence,” Esther suggested gently. “Perhaps meeting him is the good that must come of all of this unpleasantness.”
Charity nodded, so as not to hurt her friend’s feelings, but in truth, she did not believe in such things as Providence to any significant degree. As far as she was concerned, it was by far the most likely outcome that all her fascination with Adam Harding would come to nothing. She feared, in the meantime, that the encounter would have a brutalizing effect upon her heart.
“I do not wish to be hurt, Esther,” she said, in a voice so soft that it was barely above a whisper. “I do not wish to turn my mind any further to Mr. Harding. I do not care to have my heart broken.”
Esther looked back at her friend with a tender and sorrowful expression. “I do not want to see you suffer, either,” she said quietly.
“So perhaps we should speak no more of this,” Charity said. “I have done what I intended to do and spoken to my father about the matter. Perhaps the wisest course of action now would be to resolve to think of him no more.”
“Perhaps that would be wise,” Esther agreed, taking her friend’s hand consolingly. “And after all, there are plenty of other things to attend to. For one, I simply cannot decide which gown I had best to wear to the dance at the assembly rooms tomorrow evening.”
Chapter 12
Adam had received notification that there was going to be a country dance in the village the following evening, but it had not so much as occurred to him that he might go.
As a younger man, he had sporadically attended such functions with his father.
“There is more pleasure to be had in a country dance than in half a dozen balls at St. James’ Court,” his father had always said.
Adam had duly attended such functions in order to be obliging and enjoyed them well enough, but he had always felt a little uncomfortable. The young ladies of the village had always smiled at him a little too eagerly, and he had always been uncomfortably aware of the way that they must have perceived him as a prospect to be conquered.
Now, he did not suppose that anyone would be greeting him with such eagerness believing him to be a blackguard of the worst kind. However, there was one thing that made the idea of attending the assembly appealing in the extreme — so appealing, in fact, that he might have been prepared to risk the icy stares of most of the village.
He marveled that he had never seen Miss Miller at any of these assemblies. He was not sure it was that she had not been out when he had attended them, or perhaps her father had guarded her very jealously and prevented her from attending.
He feared that the latter was the case. Nonetheless, that did not stop him from entertaining the hope that he might meet Miss Miller there.
Even after he had dressed for the ball, he stood before his looking glass, wondering whether he was doing the right thing in attending. Was it a pretense too far, a grab at normalcy that he had no right to claim? Worse still, would it be seen as an insult to the memory of Mary Warwick?
Though he was not guilty of her death, the idea that he might be seen to be disrespecting her memory pained him greatly. He actually reached up to his throat to start removing his cravat, telling himself that his presence at the assembly would be unwise, and he would be far better to abandon the plan.
But something stopped him.
To be more precise, that something was the thought of Miss Miller’s face.
He had recorded the memories of their handful of encounters as carefully as if he had been taking her likeness, committing to memory the quality of the light, the arrangement of her hair, the color of her dress.
Yet, this little collection of impressions was feeling ever more sparse. He longed to see her, to gather some more impressions of her that he would later be able to contemplate at his leisure, to carry with him like talismans against the misery that lay in wait for him at Lawley Hall, which sprung upon him every morning and evening when he was turned away from his father’s bedchamber.
He had had to contend with banishment for long enough, he told himself. Why should he banish himself from the presence of the very thing that brought him joy?
* * *
The room fell silent as soon as he entered. It was not the usual hush that he had come to expect when he attended an assembly in his home village — the reverent silence of a crowd who knew that a member of the aristocracy had come among them. Rather, it was an overtly hostile silence, the silence of a group that had sensed the presence of an outcast.
For what felt like an eternity, Adam stood in the middle of the room. Though he felt the burn of the scrutiny of dozens of eyes, he stood up straight and ensured that none of his discomfort was showing in his face. Instead, he gave a cordial bow to the Master of Ceremonies, who returned the gesture.
The room fell back into its chatter. It seemed that nothing would distract the people of the village from matters of society, entertainment, and courtship. At least, not for very long.
He cast around the room anxiously. At first, he feared that he had risked this humiliation for nothing, that Miss Miller would not be in attendance, after all.
But then… there she was.
If he had been asked to describe her gown or the arrangement of her hair, he would not have been able to do so, save to say that her entire appearance was such that all her beautiful features were displayed to their best advantage.
Her hair was arranged about her face and adorned with a few sprigs of white flowers, and something about the effect made her eyes seem to sparkle all the more. Although he did not dare to look at her for more than a few seconds, there was a brief moment of eye contact, and Adam was reminded all at once of a line from Shakespeare:
O! She doth teach the torches to burn bright.
He had thought, that morning in the grove, that Miss Miller was at her most charming in the bright light of the early morning, but now he was forced to revise his opinion. She seemed to sparkle under the chandelier, though her dress was amongst the plainest and most simple of anyone’s at the ball.
It took all that he could to stop himself from striding straight to her side and asking that she reserve every dance for him, for he could scarcely bear the idea that she would stand up with anyone else.
But he had the sense to refrain from doing so. He knew that if he were to behave so, then within the hour there would be a rumor about some attachment between himself and Miss Miller, and he had no wish to subject the young lady to a share in his disgrace by associating himself with her.
Perhaps I should not have come at all, he thought, rebuking himself. Perhaps all I have done is thrown myself in the way of a temptation that I may prove unable to resist.
But he did his best to steel himself. After all, why should he stay away? He was innocent of all the charges leveled at h
im, and keeping away from society now that he had returned to Lawley Hall, would only be taken as further proof of his guilt. Better to come out now and face their stares and demonstrate that he had nothing to be ashamed of.
It seemed the room was evenly divided between those who had missed his company and were pleased to see him back in the village, and those who thought him a terrible criminal and lacked only the audacity to snub him properly.
He was vague about his activities abroad and did not give anyone the satisfaction of providing any details that he knew would later be used as fodder for gossip.
And so he managed to spend the first ten minutes or so greeting those at the assembly with whom he had some acquaintance. He danced with an old family friend, a Miss Young, and managed to irritate her greatly by glancing over her shoulder the whole time to see if Miss Miller was likewise engaged.
“It is good to see you back, Adam,” she said with exasperated fondness, “but I do wish that you would discard your pretense, and get to whatever it is that you really wish to do.”
He took her at her word, bowed, and excused himself.
Miss Miller was standing with a young woman whom Adam vaguely recognized. If she had noticed his presence, then she was not showing it.
The warmth of the room and the vigor of the dancing had brought a charming flush to her cheeks, and for a moment, Adam simply stood back and admired the effect. He could not help but compare her to every other young lady in the room and found her so obviously superior that he was amazed she was not being surrounded by every other young man.
How could his feelings for her have developed so quickly, he wondered? But the fact of the matter was they had, like a horse running away, and now he could only do his best to try to catch up with them.
He was surprised by how nervous he felt when he approached her. It felt strange to greet Miss Miller with a bow. It would have been more natural to approach her the way he had in the grove, with a passing comment that would have suggested an intimacy that lay beyond the rigid boundaries of formal convention.
“Forgive me,” he said. “I am not sure whether I should consider us formally introduced since we are old acquaintances.”
“An acquaintance, once made, never dies,” Miss Miller replied, turning away from her friend to meet his eyes. It was the same playful look that she had cast over her shoulder at him in their last meeting in the grove, and Adam felt quite overcome by it. He smiled — a smile that signified far more than any of the polite nods and bows that were being exchanged all around them.
“Indeed,” he said. “To be sure, an acquaintance can only grow richer with the benefits of time and good conversation.”
Miss Miller did not seem to think this observation required a response but merely nodded in such a way that Adam knew she understood his meaning correctly.
She introduced him to her somewhat familiar friend, and he bowed too, but the truth was that he did not even remember the name that Miss Miller said. He could scarcely hear it over the blood that was thumping in his ears when he looked at Miss Miller, and when he opened his mouth to speak, he felt almost constricted, such was the force of the physical feeling in his chest.
“Might I have your hand for the next dance?” he asked.
Chapter 13
It had occurred to Charity that Mr. Harding might be present at the dance. Of course, it had.
But the idea had only taken the form of a daydream, a what-if that, in Charity’s mind, was tinged with the soft light of unreality.
She supposed that it was just what young ladies did when they met young men — amused themselves with thoughts of what could be, crafted elaborate and imaginary encounters, exaggerated the attractions of the young gentleman in question in their own minds.
It was remarkable, therefore, that now, standing in the candlelight, Mr. Harding was even more handsome than he had been in her imaginings.
She had kept telling herself that she must have been distorting her memory.
No man was as handsome as Mr. Harding appeared in her mind. His white teeth could not possibly flash so brilliantly when he smiled, that his brown eyes could not truly have held the warmth and complexity of polished oak, that his broad shoulders could not truly stand in such a graceful line several inches above everyone else in the company.
And yet, there he was.
Perhaps Esther said something, but she knew not. Nor did she notice the intrigued glance of Esther’s older married sister, who was acting as their chaperone for the occasion.
How could she notice anything apart from the warmth of Mr. Harding’s hand, which she could feel even through the thin barrier of her silk glove with the way that he held her hand in his with a firm yet gentle grip?
As he led her to the space where the dancers were lining up, she could hear a murmur ripple through the assembled crowd. And why should it not be so? Here was the son of a Duke — a disgraced son, but son nonetheless — dancing with the daughter of a clergyman.
“We seem to have made quite a spectacle,” Mr. Harding said, leaning close to Charity to speak softly so that his breath disturbed the little curls that framed her face.
Usually, that sort of attention would have made Charity’s cheeks burn with embarrassment, but tonight she scarcely noticed the stares. She felt as though she were floating, and there was nothing in all the world but herself, Mr. Harding, and the strains of music that were filtering through the haze in her mind.
She did not consciously notice what melody was being played, but fortunately, her feet seemed to play their part unbidden.
“It is peculiar to see you like this,” Mr. Harding remarked when the music brought them close together enough to speak. He spoke to her familiarly, as if he were sharing the thoughts that he had been waiting to convey to her since they had last spoken as though they were in the habit of revealing their ruminations to each other.
“Like what?” she replied. It was not that she did not share his feeling that this meeting was strange, but she wanted to know his reasons for thinking it so, rather than merely assuming that he shared hers.
It would have been so easy to suppose that he felt the same as she did. It would have been so easy to become carried away.
“Like this,” Mr. Harding said again, gesturing with one hand to the other dancers, the standing candelabra, the pretty young ladies and watchful mammas, the red-cheeked men who had partaken in one too many glasses of port. “Out in society, where we are being watched.”
“I believe it is you that is being watched,” Charity replied, “I believe that my own part in the play is merely incidental.”
“I would not be so sure,” Mr. Harding replied, smiling. “I would wager that by the end of the evening there will be all manner of speculation about Miss Miller and what it all might mean.”
“I scarcely think so,” Charity replied. “I am sure that there could be no other interpretation of our dancing together than that your impeccable manners compelled you to dance with the poor, plain vicar’s daughter.”
She had not meant to be so self-deprecating in her speech, but the mingled impression of the light, the music, and Mr. Harding’s smile caused her to be less cautious in her speech than usual.
“Poor and plain?” Mr. Harding did not leap to exaggerated professions of outrage, as might have been customary for a gallant young man.
Instead, he smiled gently, leaning closer so that his breath brushed at her ear. “You cannot believe that, Miss Miller, I am sure. When I entered the room and saw you, I knew that I would be obliged to ask you to dance immediately, or I should be edged out by all the other young men in the room.”
Charity could feel a blush creeping to her cheeks, and was grateful for a brief interlude in which the dance drew Mr. Harding away from her so that she did not have to think of some gracious and socially acceptable response.
However, what he said was far more sincere, and caught her more greatly off guard than any compliment she had received before. She became
acutely aware of the sensation of her hand in his.
“You are truly radiant tonight, Miss Miller. I have given a great many compliments in my life, and until now, I thought I meant them. But never in my life have I felt so moved by a lady’s beauty nor so compelled to tell her how I feel.”
At this pronouncement, Charity actually missed several steps of the dance, but she was able to recover and keep her composure, which she was able to maintain so long as she did not look directly into Mr. Harding’s eyes.
Charity Falls for the Rejected Duke: A Historical Regency Romance Novel Page 7
