The Secret Mistress

by Mary Balogh

  “And what was the prize to be if you raced me to the top?” he asked her.

  She turned to smile at him.

  “You did not accept the wager,” she said, “just as I did not when you said the view would be even more magnificent from up here. I daresay we can see for miles in every direction. Oh, this was worth every moment of the climb, was it not?”

  The tower was properly battlemented, of course, though there was some crumbling to one side at the front. It had been constructed that way, for this was a folly and was therefore supposed to look like a ruin, like something that had been here for a thousand years. Angeline rested her hands on the higher projections of the battlements and raised her face to the sky.

  “It’s a little gusty up here,” Lord Heyward said, raising a hand to hold on to his hat. “You had better—”

  The attempted warning came too late. Even as Angeline lifted both hands to grasp the ribbons of her bonnet and tie them securely beneath her chin again, they whipped free, and her bonnet lifted from her head and sailed off into the sky and down over the slope in the direction of the lake below. All that saved it from a watery grave was the presence of a tree at the foot of the hill that was taller than its fellows. The ribbons caught and tangled in its upper branches and the hat lodged there to end up looking like a particularly exotic bloom.

  “Ohhh!” One of Angeline’s hands slapped against her mouth while the other reached out foolishly into empty space and Lord Heyward’s hand clamped about her upper arm like a vise to prevent her from following the path her bonnet had taken.

  They watched it all the way down without saying a word. And then Angeline burst into uncontrollable laughter and, after a moment, Lord Heyward joined her, bellowing with mirth at something that really was not funny at all.

  “My poor hat,” she wailed between spasms.

  Another healthy gust of wind tugged at her hairpins and won the battle with one of them. She turned and slid down the wall until she was sitting against its shelter, her knees drawn up before her. And Lord Heyward slid down beside her, his legs stretched out, and removed his hat.

  They were still laughing.

  “Did you s-s-see it?” she asked when she could catch her breath. “I thought it might fly all the way to America.”

  “I thought it might cause heart seizures among all the birds inside the park,” he said. “It looked like a demented parrot. It still does.”

  Which was a horrible insult to her bonnet.

  Angeline laughed again. So did he.

  “Oh, look at me,” she said as she grasped one fallen lock of hair and attempted to twist it up into the rest of her coiffure, which was probably hopelessly flattened anyway. “Just look at me.”

  He turned his head and did so, and somehow their laughter faded. And they were sitting almost shoulder to shoulder, their faces turned toward each other.

  Angeline bit her lip.

  That was Lord Heyward with whom she had been laughing so merrily?

  “You look windblown and wind-flushed and very wholesome,” he said.

  “I shall have to think about that,” she said, “to understand whether I have been insulted or not.”

  “Not,” he said softly.

  There were beads of perspiration clinging to his brow where his hat had been.

  “You are kind,” she said. “But goodness, I am not much to look at to begin with.”

  The lock of hair, pushed firmly and quite securely beneath another, promptly fell down over her ear again as soon as she let go of it.

  “Why do you say that?” he asked.

  “Well,” she said, looking down at her lap, “just consider my mother.”

  “I knew her,” he said. “Not personally, but I saw her more than once. She was extremely beautiful. You look nothing like her.”

  “You noticed?” She laughed softly.

  “Do you wish you did?” he asked.

  It was funny. She had never really asked herself that question before. She had lamented the fact that she was not as beautiful as her mother had been, but—did she really wish she looked like her? It would change everything, would it not?

  “When I first saw you,” he said, “when you turned from the window at the Rose and Crown, I thought you were the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. I thought so again when I saw you at Dudley House.”

  She laughed.

  “I am so tall,” she said. “A beanpole.”

  “Perhaps you were at the age of thirteen or so,” he said, “but certainly not now.”

  “And I am so dark.”

  “Vividly dark,” he said.

  “I cannot even arch my eyebrows properly,” she said.

  “What?” He looked baffled.

  “When I try it,” she said, “I look like a startled hare.”

  “Show me,” he said.

  And she turned her face obediently toward his again and showed him.

  His eyes filled with laughter once more.

  “By Jove,” he said, “you are quite right. A startled hare. Who was the first to warn you about it?”

  “My mother,” she said.

  The laughter faded.

  “She was disappointed in me,” she said. “She loved Ferdie. She took him to London with her a number of times, but never me. I daresay she hoped my looks would improve before she had to show me to anyone beyond the neighborhood of Acton. And she had lovers, you know. Of course you know. Everyone knew. But it is quite unexceptionable for a married lady, is it not, once she has presented her husband with an heir and a spare, and a daughter in her case. And why should she not take lovers when Papa had mistresses and even kept one in a cottage on the corner of the estate, saying she was an indigent relative. But she was not. I always knew she was not even before I knew what a mistress was. She never looked poor, and she never came to the house for a meal, which she would have done at least once in a while if she had been a poor relative, would she not? And of course Tresham has mistresses, even married ones. He has fought two duels I have heard of and perhaps more that I have not. I daresay Ferdie has mistresses too, even though he is only twenty-one. I have sworn and sworn that I will not marry a rake, even if it means marrying a dull man instead. Better to be dull than to be so unhappy that one is forced to take lovers. She was unhappy, you know, my mother. If she had lived, perhaps she would have thought me improved, and she could have brought me out and helped me find a husband, and we could have become friends and she would have been happy and proud.”

  She grasped her knees and turned her face from his and shut her eyes tightly.

  “I am babbling,” she said.

  Oh, where had all that come from? How absolutely mortifying.

  “And then Tresham left home abruptly when he was sixteen and never came back,” she added for good measure, “and Ferdinand went off to school and sometimes did not even come home during the holidays but went to stay with school friends instead, and Papa died a year after Tresham left, and Mama stayed most of the time in London after that, even more than before, it seemed, and all I had left was my governesses. They did not like me, and I do not blame them. I made myself unlikable.”

  There. Oh, there. She wished she really had cast herself over the battlements in pursuit of her hat. She brought her forehead down to rest on her knees, and felt after a few moments his hand come to rest against the exposed back of her neck—and then stroke lightly back and forth.

  “You were a totally innocent bystander in your family dramas, you know,” he said. “Whatever made your parents’ marriage an unhappy one had nothing whatsoever to do with you. They had their lives to live and they lived them as they saw fit. Whatever drove your elder brother away so suddenly and kept him away had nothing to do with you—or you would have known it. And your younger brother was a boy learning to spread his wings. He sought out friends of his own, no doubt heedless of the fact that his sister was lonely for his company. As for your governesses, women like them have a hard lot in life. They are often imp
overished gentlewomen unable for whatever reason to marry and so have homes and families of their own. They often take out their unhappiness upon their pupils, especially if those pupils are rebelling against life for some reason or other. You are not unlovable.”

  His hand on the back of her neck was hypnotic. She felt so embarrassed and so close to tears. And if she was so lovable, why did he not love her?

  “If your mother had lived,” he said, “perhaps you would have come to discover that she did not have to grow to love your adult self. Perhaps she always loved you. I never really doubted that I was loved, but I always felt I had to earn love, that I had to work extra hard for it because my brother was so much more easily loved than I was. He was always a charming rogue. Everyone adored him despite all his faults—sometimes even because of them, it seemed. And he was selfish. He did not really care when he hurt people’s feelings, or even if he did care, gratifying his own desires was more important. It always seemed unfair to me that I tried so hard and yet was loved less. I discovered two things after he died.”

  “What?” she asked into her knees.

  “One was that I was loved,” he said. “More than I had known, I mean. I never had been loved less, in fact, only differently. And I learned that I tried to do what was right by my family and friends and even strangers because I wanted to, that I tried not to hurt other people because I did not want to hurt them. I was as selfish in my own way as Maurice was in his, for even if I had had the choice I would not have lived his life.”

  Angeline swallowed.

  “I tried to talk him out of that curricle race,” he said. “I reminded him that there was Lorraine to consider. And at the time Susan was ill. She had a fever. Lorraine was beside herself with worry. She needed Maurice to be there with her. He called me a pompous ass. And then I said something that will forever haunt me.”

  Angeline lifted her head and looked at him. He was staring off across the top of the tower with unseeing eyes. His hand fell away from her neck.

  “I told him to go ahead,” Lord Heyward said. “I told him to break his neck if he wished. I told him I had everything to gain if he died, that I would be Heyward in his stead.”

  She set a hand on his thigh and patted it.

  “And what you said was provoked,” she said. “It had nothing whatsoever to do with the accident. Did you want him to die?”

  “No,” he said.

  “Did you love him?” she asked.

  “I did,” he said. “He was my brother.”

  “Did you want to be Earl of Heyward?” she asked.

  He closed his eyes and pressed his head back against the wall.

  “I did,” he said. “I always felt I could do a better job of it than he did. I wanted the title and position for myself. Until I had them—and did not have him. And now I have to watch his wife marry someone else. I am going to have to watch another man bring up my brother’s child. And I have to know that for Lorraine it is a happily-ever-after. I have to be happy for her because I am fond of her and know her life with Maurice was hell. But he was my brother.”

  She gripped his thigh and said nothing. What was there to say? Except that no one is without pain, that pain is part of the human condition. And there was nothing terribly original in that thought, was there?

  “As Tresham and Ferdinand are my brothers,” she said. “Perhaps they will never marry. Perhaps—But I will always love them, no matter what.”

  He opened his eyes and turned his head toward her.

  “It was your brother with whom mine was racing that day, you know,” he said.

  “Tresham?” She frowned, and her stomach churned.

  “I have always blamed him,” he said. “I even did it to his face at Maurice’s funeral. I suppose when sudden tragedies occur, we always feel the need to nominate some living scapegoat. But in reality Tresham was no more to blame for what happened than I was. For even if he was the one who suggested the race—and it was just as likely to have been Maurice—my brother did not have to accept. And even if Tresham overtook him just before that bend, he did not force Maurice to take the risk of pursuing him around it at suicidal speed. And Tresham did apparently turn back as soon as he saw the hay cart and realized the danger. He did try to avert the collision. He must have done, else he would not have seen it happen—he would have been another mile farther along the road. And he did see it. I have been unfair to your brother, Lady Angeline.”

  “As you have been unfair to yourself,” she said. Oh, it could just as easily have been Tresham who had died in that race. How would she have borne it? Would she have blamed Maurice, Earl of Heyward? She probably would have.

  “Yes.” He sighed. “Love hurts. And how is that for a cliché?”

  She sighed. They were growing maudlin.

  “I suppose my bonnet is lost for all time,” she said. “I liked it particularly well when I bought it last week. The blue and yellow reminded me of a summer sky, and the pink—well, I always have loved pink.”

  “Last week,” he said. “It is number fifteen, then?”

  “Seventeen, actually,” she said. “And today was the first time I had worn it. Well, perhaps the birds will enjoy it until it fades and rots into shreds.”

  “Let’s go and have a look,” he said, getting to his feet and reaching down a hand to help her to hers.

  They made their way carefully down the ladder and out of the tower back to the path. They stepped off it a little farther along and looked downward. The slope, covered with long grass that rippled when the wind gusted, was long and far steeper than the one they had climbed. Her bonnet was an impossible distance away, though impossible had never figured large in the Dudley vocabulary.

  “I can get down there if I go carefully,” he said.

  “Carefully?” She laughed. “One does not go down a hill like that carefully, Lord Heyward.”

  And she grasped his hand in hers and started downward with him—with long strides and at a dead run. She whooped and screeched as they went and felt a few more hairpins part company with her hair. And then they were both laughing again and hurtling along as fast as their feet would carry them—and ultimately, alas, faster even than that. Angeline lost her footing first and then he came tumbling down too and they rolled together until the level ground with its longer grass close to the lake brought them to a halt. By some miracle they had missed colliding with any trees.

  They lay still for a few moments, laughing and half winded, side by side, hand in hand. And then he raised himself up on one elbow and gazed down at her, their laughter suddenly gone, their eyes locking.

  Her arms came up about his neck at the same moment as his pushed beneath her, and they were kissing in the long grass as though their lives depended upon melding together with no space between them or in them or through them. As though they could somehow become one person, one whole, and never ever be lonely or loveless or unhappy again.

  When he lifted his head and gazed down at her, into her eyes and into her very soul, Angeline gazed back, and knew only that she had been right. Oh, she had been right to fall in love with him on sight, to continue to love him, to want more than anything else in life to spend the rest of it loving him. And she had known—oh, she had known that he was not a dry old stick at all but capable of extraordinary passion. She had known that he was capable of loving her with that forever-after sort of love that sometimes seems not to exist outside the pages of a novel from the Minerva Press but actually, on rare occasions, does.

  Oh, she had been right. She had known.

  She loved him and he loved her and all was right with the world.

  His eyes were bluer than the sky.

  And then, in a flash, she remembered something else and could not believe she had forgotten. She had resolved to be noble and self-sacrificing. For Miss Goddard loved him too, and in his heart of hearts he loved her. They were suited to each other. They belonged with each other. And not only had Angeline pledged herself to bringing them together, b
ut she had also told Miss Goddard about her plan and enlisted her collaboration.

  Oh, what had she done?

  When Lord Heyward opened his mouth to speak, Angeline placed one finger over his lips and then removed it again hastily.

  “And this time,” she said, smiling brightly at him, “you do not owe me a proposal of marriage. You do not. I would only refuse again.”

  He searched her eyes with his own and then moved without another word to sit beside her. He was silent for a while. So was she. She doubted she had ever felt more wretched in her life. For not only was her heart broken, but—worse—she had betrayed a friend.

  She was going to have to redouble her efforts.

  Lord Heyward was looking up into the tree in which her bonnet was stuck. It was an awfully tall tree, and the bonnet was awfully high up it.

  “It can stay there,” she said. “I have sixteen others, not counting all the old ones.”

  “Plus all the ones that will take your fancy before you leave London for the summer,” he said. “But that is a particularly, ah, fancy one.”

  He got to his feet, and almost before Angeline could sit up he was climbing the tree with dogged determination. It seemed to her that there were simply not enough foot- and handholds, but up he went anyway. Her heart was in her mouth long before he was high enough to unhook her bonnet from the branch with which it had become entangled and toss it down to her. Which was strange really because her heart also seemed to be crushed beneath the soles of her shoes. How could it be in both places at once?

  And her stomach was churning with terror.

  “Oh, do be careful,” she called to him as he made his way down again. And she spread her arms, her bonnet clutched in one hand, as if she could catch him and keep him from harm if he fell.

  He did not fall. Within minutes he was on the ground beside her again, watching while she tied the ribbons of the bonnet beneath her chin and tucked up all the untidy locks of her hair beneath it.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “I am sorry,” he said simultaneously.