The Secret Mistress

by Mary Balogh

  “Don’t bother,” he said. “I am not thirsty.”

  He was actually, but not for tea.

  “It is no bother,” she assured him.

  “Well?” His grandmother raised her lorgnette, but not all the way to her eye. She very rarely looked through it, having been blessed with exceptionally good eyesight for an elderly lady. “Was it a marriage proposal you were making, Edward? What did she say?”

  “It was,” he said. “And the answer was no. And so that is that for the time being.”

  “Lady Angeline Dudley?” his mother said, both looking and sounding shocked. “You offered her marriage, Edward, and she said no?”

  “Oh, but, Edward,” Lorraine said as she pulled on the bell rope, “from the way she was looking at you last evening, I thought she was quite taken with you.”

  “I am convinced of it,” Juliana said. “And Christopher agreed with me.”

  “Apparently she was not,” he said, clasping his hands behind his back and forcing a smile.

  “The girl is playing hard to get,” his grandmother said, pointing the lorgnette in the direction of his heart. “She cannot do better than you and she knows it and fully intends to have you, Edward, mark my words. She wants to be wooed. Girls do, you know, especially the most marriageable ones. They do not want to feel that they are nothing but commodities, and who can blame them? Every girl wants to be wooed. I did, and I was. Oh, your grandfather was a one, my boy. I could tell you tales to make your hair stand on end.”

  “Edward,” Juliana asked after a short pause while the fresh tray of tea was carried in, “did you tell her you loved her?”

  Dash it all, no, he had not. He supposed he ought to have. It was clearly what she had wanted to hear. She had asked him if he loved her, in fact, and even then he had missed his cue. He had attempted honesty instead.

  “What does that mean?” he asked, taking a seat since obviously he was about to be plied with tea whether he wanted it or not. “I fully intend to cherish any lady I marry, to cultivate a friendship with her, to grow fond of her, to protect and defend her, to give her my time and attention whenever I am able, to remain faithful to the vows I make to her. Is that not what love is?”

  “Oh, Edward,” his mother said, “you will make the best of husbands.”

  “But every lady likes to be told that she is loved when a man asks her to marry him,” Lorraine said as she handed him a cup of hot tea. “She needs to be made to feel that she is special, that she is the one. The only one.”

  Did Maurice make you feel that way?

  But fortunately he stopped himself just in time from asking the question aloud. He was in no doubt that Maurice did. He would have. That was the kind of person he had been. He had certainly known what women wanted and expected. Perhaps there was something in the old adage, though, that actions spoke louder than words.

  Except that words seemed to be important to a woman being proposed to.

  “We are expected to mouth a great many platitudes and hypocrisies and out-and-out lies,” he grumbled. “It is how society seems to function. Sometimes, I believe, people ought to be told the truth, especially about the important things in life. Why should I pretend to feel this romantic thing called love when I do not? Is it kind to the lady concerned to pretend?”

  She had been about to say yes, he thought. Her eyes had been shining, her lips had been parted, she had leaned slightly toward him as he kneeled on one knee before her—feeling like a prize idiot. She had looked as she had looked last evening just before he kissed her and just after, when she had told him it was the loveliest evening of her life.

  Good Lord, she had behaved as if she was in love with him. How could anyone love him? In the romantic sense, that was. He could almost hear Maurice snickering with incredulity.

  She could not possibly entertain romantic feelings for him. It must be just that she was eager to marry someone eligible. And as she herself had pointed out, he was one of the most eligible bachelors in town this year. And because she had fixed her choice on him, she had to convince herself that she also loved him. It seemed so typical of women. They thought with their emotions, or their imagined emotions. If she had agreed to marry him, she would have discovered soon enough that she was marrying nothing but a dull and very ordinary man.

  “Why do you have to pretend, Edward?” his mother asked in response to what he had just said. “I am not sure I have ever known a more loving man. You have a way of always putting the needs of others before your own. You are allowed to reach for some happiness of your own too, you know. You are allowed to love in a way that will engage all your emotions. Your whole being, in fact. You do not owe us all so much that there is nothing left for yourself.”

  He looked at her, his cup suspended halfway to his mouth. He had never heard her talk this way before. And her voice was shaking. I am not sure I have ever known a more loving man. Yet she had adored his father, who had treated her with careless affection. And she had adored Maurice.

  You are allowed to reach for some happiness of your own too …

  He was happy. Well, he would be once he was back at Wimsbury Abbey for the summer. And once this business of choosing a wife and setting up his nursery was over with and he could settle into the life of a married man and father.

  He would be happy if that wife was Eunice.

  Perhaps now was the time to mention her. The time to make a stand, to reach for his own happiness.

  But just three days ago, she had refused him—quite firmly and irrevocably. She had told him not to ask her again.

  Two proposals and two refusals in three days. He had told an untruth to Lady Angeline. His proposal to her had not been his first, just the first formal one.

  He was not a virgin. He had had a few women, though he had never kept a mistress. He had enjoyed all of them. He found sex exhilarating and satisfying—and necessary, though he had not had a woman since Maurice’s death.

  He had never wanted any of them as he had wanted Lady Angeline Dudley last night. Why had he wanted her? Pure lust did not explain it entirely. He had met many beautiful women in his time. He had met some of them this year. A few of them were exquisitely lovely. He could look at them with great appreciation, but he did not feel any overpowering urge to bed any of them.

  Only Lady Angeline Dudley.

  Whom he did not even like.

  Though that was not strictly true. He liked her humor. He liked the way she did not laugh at others but only at herself. He liked her bright sparkle, her unabashed enjoyment of life. And he did suspect that there was more to her than met the eye. A few times he had had a fleeting glimpse at a certain insecurity in her. It puzzled him. Why should she of all people feel vulnerable? She was beautiful, and she surely had everything any young lady could want as she made her debut in society. She had already had a few marriage proposals if Tresham was to be believed. And why would he lie?

  He had never wanted to bed Eunice. He had wanted to marry her—at some future date. He still did. She would suit him perfectly, and the urge was strong at this very moment to rush back out of the house and over to Lady Sanford’s to beg her—on his knees in earnest this time—to put him out of his misery and betroth herself to him.

  Which was not very flattering to her, was it?

  He could not really imagine being in bed with Eunice. It was somehow an embarrassing thought.

  Whereas with Lady Angeline Dudley …

  She had said no. They had both said no. There was no more to be said.

  “I am happy, Mama,” he said with a little laugh that sounded false even to his own ears. “We will not make a tragedy out of this. If I remember correctly, you had other names on your list than just Lady Angeline Dudley’s. And I am not entirely helpless on my own account. I am quite capable of looking about me for my own bride. Lady Hicks’s ball is this evening, is it not?”

  The very last thing he felt like doing this evening was attending a ball and actually dancing. But duty was alread
y reasserting itself, and there was no point in curling up under his bedcovers, his eyes tightly closed, willing the world to go away, as he might have done when he was five years old.

  “It is indeed,” his mother said with a sigh. “Oh, Edward, I so want you to be happy.”

  He set down his cup, which was still almost full, he noticed, and got to his feet.

  “Grandmama,” he said, “are you ready to go home? I’ll have the carriage brought around and take you there if you wish. You too, Juliana.”

  “That would be good of you, Edward,” his grandmother said. “Your grandpapa is supposed to come this way from his club to take us home, but he is probably deep in conversation setting the world to rights and forgetting all about clocks and the passing of time and Juliana and me sitting here listening for carriage wheels.”

  Edward strode from the room, glad of something to do.

  Lady Angeline, will you do me the great honor of marrying me?

  Good Lord, talk about platitudes! And on one knee, no less. He winced. He had been a walking—or kneeling—cliché.

  Lord Heyward, is this because you kissed me last night?

  I compromised you. I have come to make amends.

  Deuce take it, had he really said that? Could he not have denied it, told her that last night’s kiss was only the thing that had convinced him he did not want to wait any longer before asking her to marry him? Surely a little lie could be excused in such circumstances. She had needed reassuring, for God’s sake.

  You do not love me?

  And the question had been whispered and phrased in the negative. Dash it, but there had been definite vulnerability there. He really ought to have lied. After all, he had fully intended to treat her for the rest of her life as though he loved her. Indeed, he would have loved her, in his own way. How could he not love his own wife, after all?

  Instead he had spoken the most heartlessly asinine words that had ever passed his lips. He had spoken the strict truth and made it sound as dry as dust. Drier.

  I am fond of you, and I do not doubt affection will deepen between us as time goes on. And then, far too inadequate, and far, far too late—I hope I did not give the impression I have come here today only because I kissed you last evening.

  He had gone to offer her marriage because he had compromised her—even if no one knew it except the two of them—and he had ended up insulting her quite horribly. Perhaps even hurting her.

  He was a horrible man. His mother must be quite wrong about him.

  Had he hurt her?

  Could he possibly make amends?

  But no, he could not. She had said no, and he must respect her decision.

  Except that …

  Oh, good Lord, she had looked hurt.

  Despite all the prattling on she had done about getting experience at kissing, with the implication that kissing him had meant nothing else but that to her—well, despite it all he had the strong suspicion that he had hurt her.

  She prattled to cover her insecurities.

  Now there was a disturbing revelation, if it was true.

  Lady Angeline Dudley prattled all the time.

  Dash it all.

  He strode off to order his carriage brought around only to come face-to-face with his grandfather in the hall.

  “Ah, my boy,” he said, clapping Edward on the shoulder with one large hand, “you are still here, then. I feared you might be taking your grandmother home by now, and I would never have heard the end of it. Women, my boy. There is no living with them, and no living without them.”

  He winked and smiled broadly as though he had said something of unique originality.

  ANGELINE WAS HAVING a frantically good time at the Hicks ball. She had never been so merry before in her life.

  She linked arms with Martha and Maria before the dancing started. She had to be in the middle, of course, because she was so much taller than either of them, as well as being darker and built really on a larger scale altogether. The two of them must look like dainty ribbons dancing about a maypole, in fact. They promenaded about the perimeter of the ballroom, the three of them, chatting and laughing—even out-and-out giggling once or twice.

  She danced three sets in a row and smiled dazzlingly and chattered incessantly to her partners, even when the figures of the dance took them so far apart they would have needed ear trumpets to hear every word. She smiled at all the other dancers in passing, ladies and gentlemen alike—except that she conveniently failed to notice the Earl of Heyward when he lumbered past ten feet away from her with his partner and so did not smile at him. It was the same moment anyway as that in which she almost tripped over her own slipper, though she recovered well enough that no one noticed except Ferdinand, who grinned at her.

  She chattered between sets to all who wandered her way. A flattering number of those who came were gentlemen, some to ask for dances, some just to be amiable. There were a few notorious fortune hunters among them, according to Cousin Rosalie. But poor men must marry rich wives. It was only good sense. Angeline did not hold their poverty against them. She smiled as brightly upon them as she did upon all the rest.

  Ferdinand wandered over to her when there was a lull in the crowd gathered about her and congratulated her upon rejecting yet another suitor for her hand.

  “For they have all been nonsensical so far, Angie,” he said. “But none more so than Heyward. I suppose the best that can be said of him, poor man, is that he is worthy. He is undoubtedly that. But the fellow cannot dance.”

  “Tresh calls him a dry old stick,” she said, smiling until she felt her lips might crack.

  He gave a short bark of laughter.

  “It is a good one,” he said. “I must remember it.”

  She fanned her tightly smiling lips and turned to greet her next partner.

  It was only as she was dancing with him that Angeline realized that Miss Goddard was at the ball. She was tucked into a shady, crowded corner of the ballroom with a group of older ladies, wearing the same blue gown she had worn at Angeline’s own ball. Oh, goodness, she must not have danced at all or Angeline would have seen her sooner. Was one of those ladies her chaperon? Why had she not made some effort to find partners for Miss Goddard?

  Angeline had been looking out for her since that day in the library but had not seen her anywhere.

  Her partner—goodness, she could not even remember his name, which was shockingly careless of her and not at all fair to him—returned her to Cousin Rosalie’s side when the set was at an end. Angeline spoke quickly before another crowd could gather.

  “I am going to speak with Miss Goddard for a moment,” she said to Rosalie. “She is sitting over there.”

  “Miss who?” Rosalie asked, but Angeline was already on her way.

  She fanned her face and smiled brightly as she approached, and Miss Goddard, seeing her coming, smiled back.

  “Lady Angeline,” she said in her quiet, serious voice. “How do you do?”

  “I have borrowed Mr. Milton’s Paradise Lost from the library,” Angeline said. “I have read six of the books and have started the seventh. I am loving it. I cannot wait to find out what happens.”

  “Oh.” Miss Goddard looked a little taken aback. “Well done. I read it when I was a girl. I have always meant to read Paradise Regained but have not yet brought myself around to it.”

  “The Earl of Heyward called at Dudley House this afternoon,” Angeline said. “He offered me marriage, but I said no.”

  There was a short silence, during which Miss Goddard stared at her without expression.

  “I am surprised,” she said. “And sorry. Surprised and sorry that you said no, that is.”

  “He does not love me,” Angeline said. “I asked and he said no. Well, he did not say an out-and-out no. That would have been ungentlemanly, and Lord Heyward is always a gentleman. He talked about fondness and affection and other things that all meant the same thing. But he could not say he loved me.”

  “No,” Miss Go
ddard said quietly, “he would not. He ought to have lied because he would have been devoted to you for the rest of his life, you know. He could not possibly not be. It is not in his nature. But he finds it difficult, if not impossible, to lie, even if only for the sake of diplomacy.”

  “He once said that my riding hat was the most atrocious thing he had ever seen in his life,” Angeline said.

  Miss Goddard was startled into laughter.

  “No!” she said. “Edward said that?”

  “But he smiled as he said it,” Angeline said, “and I laughed too. He has a lovely smile.”

  “Yes.” Miss Goddard looked arrested. “Pardon me, how very rude I am being. Lady Angeline, may I present my aunt, Lady Sanford? Lady Angeline Dudley, Aunt Charlotte.”

  Angeline sat on an empty chair facing the ladies, her back to the dance floor, and chatted for a while. She looked around again only when Miss Goddard fixed her eyes upon something or someone beyond and above Angeline’s shoulder and opened her fan, though she held it in her lap.

  Lord Windrow was approaching, all lazy smiles and mocking charm.

  Angeline jumped to her feet and smiled brightly again. She fluttered her fan before her face. He was just what she needed this evening—or whom she needed, perhaps. He must have just arrived, which would be typical of him. Certainly she had not seen him before this moment, and she surely would have done if he had arrived earlier.

  He feigned a look of surprise.

  “Ah, fair one,” he said, bowing elegantly. “And the delectable Miss Goddard, whose stimulating conversation I have sought but not found, alas, since a certain memorable evening that is regrettably long in the past.”

  Angeline set her closed fan on his sleeve. The next dance was to be a waltz, was it not? And it was the supper dance. This was perfect. And she actually liked Lord Windrow, she realized, in much the way she liked her own brothers. He was a rake and a rogue, but at least he was an interesting one. An amusing one. And she was not in any danger whatsoever of being taken in by his charm. She would be able to relax and enjoy herself thoroughly with him. No matter that he had made some very improper advances to her at that inn and never apologized adequately for them. What gentleman would not have tried to take advantage of her under similar circumstances?