The Secret Mistress

by Mary Balogh

  It was surely the most moving marriage proposal and acceptance ever made. He smiled at the water.

  He turned his head and she turned hers and their mouths met. Just like that. Their bodies did not turn. They did not wrap their arms about each other. There was no burning passion.

  Only …

  Well, only that thing beyond words.

  Peace.

  Rightness.

  Love.

  It was no use. There really were no words. And it absolutely did not matter. There did not need to be words.

  He spoke some anyway.

  “I love you,” he said.

  She smiled softly in the light of the moon.

  “I know,” she said.

  Which was by far the most eloquent speech he had ever heard from her lips.

  Chapter 23

  ANGELINE HAD CHOSEN pale yellow muslin for her wedding dress. Her initial choice had been a bright sunshine yellow, like her favorite old day dress, but she had ended up taking the advice of Cousin Rosalie and Miss Goddard, who had both accompanied her to the modiste’s and were in agreement with each other.

  “The dress is to be worn on your wedding day,” Miss Goddard had explained. “And on your wedding day all the focus of attention must be upon you, not upon your clothes. And really, you know, Lady Angeline, you are worth focusing upon.”

  “And you will be especially radiant on your wedding day,” Cousin Rosalie agreed. “A bright dress will be quite unnecessary.”

  Miss Goddard had been at the modiste’s on her own account as well as to advise her friend, and she had chosen pale blue and a simple design. She was to marry Lord Windrow in Cambridge two weeks after Angeline’s own wedding. Cousin Leonard and the Countess of Heyward, now Lady Fenner, had married at his country estate two weeks ago. There was a flurry of weddings now at the end of the Season, as there always was, and there were more to come. Martha’s betrothal to Mr. Griddles had just been announced, and Maria was in imminent expectation of a declaration from Mr. Stebbins.

  Angeline had resisted the urge to complete her wedding outfit with a flamboyant bonnet, though it had been a very strong urge. A wedding was a festive occasion, after all, and a festive bonnet ought to be … well, festive. However, all on her own, without even consulting the opinions of her cousin and her friend, she had decided upon a small-brimmed straw bonnet with a high crown, and had had it trimmed with white lace and white and yellow daisies and white ribbons. She had bought white gloves and white slippers.

  And looking at herself now in the pier glass in her dressing room, she had to admit that she looked almost pretty. Except that the paleness of the garments accentuated the darkness of her hair and eyes and her dark-hued complexion. And there was nothing delicate about her features. But there was nothing she could do about any of that.

  She wondered fleetingly what her mother would have thought about her today. Would she have thought the clothes tasteful? Would she have thought her daughter pretty? Would she have been happy?

  “Mama.”

  Angeline formed the name with her lips but did not speak aloud. She supposed there would always be a sort of wistful sadness in her whenever she remembered her mother and the fact that she had never measured up to her mother’s expectations. But she would use the memories in a positive way. When she had daughters, she would adore them from the moment of their birth, and she would shower them with love and approval no matter what they were like. They might be timid or bold, pretty or plain, it would not matter. They would be her daughters. And her sons would be her sons. Oh, she hoped there would be a dozen of each and that they would start coming soon. Well, perhaps not a dozen of each or even a dozen all told, but many of them anyway. She wanted to be surrounded by children. She wanted Edward and her to be surrounded by children.

  “Oh, my lady.” Betty was sniveling. “You do look lovely.”

  Angeline spun around and hugged her impulsively, turning Betty’s snivels to shrieks lest she crease Lady Angeline’s dress or drip on it. But before any such disaster could occur, the maid had to turn to open the door of the dressing room, upon which someone had knocked.

  “Well, Angeline,” Tresham said, standing in the doorway and looking her over unhurriedly from top to toe, “you look unexpectedly … glorious.”

  “Unexpectedly?” She raised her eyebrows.

  And glorious? Tresham had said she looked glorious?

  “I half thought of donning an eyeshade before knocking on your door,” he said. “I expected … something different.”

  “Tell me again,” she said.

  He raised his own eyebrows.

  “How I look,” she explained.

  “Glorious?” he said.

  She blinked several times in quick succession. She would feel remarkably silly if she wept merely because her brother had paid her a compliment.

  He stepped into the room and with one glance dismissed Betty.

  “Angeline,” he said, “you know that I believe you could do considerably better for yourself. Leaving a man standing at the altar, especially of St. George’s with half the ton in attendance, would cause a scandal of astronomical proportions. But we are Dudleys. We could live it down. If you feel now that you made too hasty a choice, then tell me and I will extricate you before it is too late.”

  She gazed at him, at the brother she so adored. He just did not understand at all, did he? Of course, she had never told him, and she would not tell him even now. Some things—even I love him—were just too private. And how could she say I love him because he is so different from you? That was only a very small part of the truth, anyway. It might have been the starting point of her feelings for Edward, but it was not anything close to the ending point.

  But Tresham was prepared to let her embroil him in scandal. And it would be a dreadful thing indeed even for the Duke of Tresham to live down.

  Tears welled in her eyes after all and threatened to spill over onto her cheeks.

  Tresham loved her.

  “Devil take it,” he said curtly. “I’ll send directly to the church. I’ll go there myself, in fact. Have Betty pack your things. I’ll take you back to Acton this afternoon.”

  He had misunderstood her tears.

  “Tresh,” she said, “I am marrying Heyward because I want to, because I expect to be happy with him.”

  And it struck her suddenly that she had never called her elder brother by his given name—Jocelyn. He had been Everleigh—the Earl of Everleigh—until their father died when he was seventeen, and since then he had been Tresham. She wondered if he minded, if perhaps he too had felt some lack in his family life. But it was too late to call him Jocelyn now. To her he would always be Tresham.

  He was looking at her very steadily with his almost black eyes.

  “And I suppose,” he said softly, “that is all that really matters when all is said and done.”

  He offered his arm and she took it.

  She would not return to this room or to the bedchamber beyond it. Tonight she would sleep, appropriately enough, at the Rose and Crown Inn this side of Reading. Within the next few days she would be at Wimsbury Abbey in Shropshire. She would be the Countess of Heyward, a married lady, Edward’s wife.

  Her heart and stomach performed a vigorous pas de deux inside her. She did not look back.

  THEIR NIGHT TOGETHER at the Peacock Inn had not had consequences. Angeline had been able to assure Edward of that a month ago, and he was enormously relieved, for a hasty marriage by special license instead of by banns, and an eight-month child following after it, would tell their own story, and he would rather not have that story told even though he had never regretted that night. It had been something free and passion-filled and wonderful—and very private. Very secret.

  He smiled at the memory of her eager, happy face poised above his as she had described herself as his secret mistress and sworn that she would use his name only in private. He had been Heyward to her ever since, for their betrothal had been conducted
with strict propriety and they had hardly been alone in the six weeks since he had proposed to her and been accepted.

  Tonight they would be alone together.

  It seemed fitting that it would be at the Rose and Crown Inn. He had suggested it to her, and she had laughed and said that yes, it would be perfect. She had added that she would not even for a moment step alone into the taproom. He had replied, in all seriousness, that she had better not. And then they had looked into each other’s eyes and laughed.

  Edward was aware of the church filling up behind him. No one was so ill-bred as to talk aloud, but there were murmurings and rustlings and whisperings. Beside him, George Headley, his best man, cleared his throat and attempted to loosen his cravat. Headley was more nervous than he was. He had been dreaming for a week, apparently, that he would drop the ring when the time came to produce it and would be forced to make an idiot of himself chasing it as it rolled endlessly from pew to pew.

  Edward was not nervous. He was excited. He was doing his duty, he was pleasing his family, and he was pleasing himself all at once. He was a happy man.

  Provided, that was, Angeline did not have a change of heart at the last possible moment. He would not put it past Tresham to try to talk her out of this marriage, of which he obviously disapproved. He did not like Edward, which was perhaps fair enough, as Edward was not particularly fond of him either, or of Lord Ferdinand Dudley, who had seemed to enjoy the Season in a particularly carefree and often reckless manner. But they would all be civil to one another, Edward thought—if Angeline did indeed marry him, that was.

  He did not have a pocket watch and would not have drawn it out, he supposed, even if he had. But it seemed to him that she was late.

  And he felt nervous after all. What if she did not come? How long would the congregation sit here before becoming restless and beginning to slip away? How long would he sit here before slinking away?

  And then there was a heightened rustling at the back of the church and the clergyman appeared in front of him and the murmurings among the congregation swelled slightly and the pipe organ drowned them all out with an anthem.

  She had come.

  His bride had arrived, and he was about to be married.

  Edward stood and half turned to watch her approach along the nave on Tresham’s arm.

  She looked like a ray of spring sunshine dropping its delicate touch onto the end of summer. The veil of her bonnet was in a cloud about her face, he could see as she came closer. But beneath it she was all vivid, radiant beauty and warm smiles directed at him. He clasped his hands behind him and gazed back.

  Angeline.

  The most beautiful woman he had ever set eyes upon. Not that he was biased.

  And then she was at his side and the clergyman was speaking and Tresham was giving her hand into Edward’s.

  “Dearly beloved,” the clergyman said in that voice only clergymen possessed to fill a large, echoing building without shouting.

  The large building was unimportant. So was the congregation, even though it included all the people in the world most dear to him and to her. Angeline was here, her hand in his, and they were speaking to each other the words that would bind them in law for the rest of their lives, the words that would bind their hearts for a lifetime and an eternity.

  It felt strange and strangely freeing to have discovered that after all he was a romantic. Half the people here would be deeply shocked if they knew that he actually loved the woman who was becoming his wife, and that she loved him. Such an extravagance of sensibility would seem almost vulgar to many people. And it amused him that Angeline had suggested they guard the secret of their deep love for each other while presenting the front of a conventional marriage to the world.

  And then she was his wife. The clergyman had just said so.

  She turned her head to smile at him, her lips parted in wonder, her eyes bright with unshed tears. He gazed back.

  His secret mistress.

  He almost laughed aloud with sheer joy at the remembered words. But that could wait for tonight when the door of their room at the Rose and Crown was firmly closed behind them.

  There was the rest of a church service to be lived through first, and a grand wedding breakfast at Dudley House.

  This was their wedding day.

  She was his wife.

  Epilogue

  Seven Years Later

  THE SNOWDROPS HAD been blooming for a couple of weeks or longer. The crocuses were starting to bloom. Even the daffodils were pushing through the soil ready to bud before February turned to March.

  It was not a springlike day today, however. In fact, Edward thought as he stood at the French windows in the drawing room at Wimsbury Abbey, it was downright wintry. The sky was slate gray, wind was whipping through the bare branches of the trees, bearing a few sad remnants of last year’s leaves before it, and a light sleet was trying to fall. It was a cold, cheerless day.

  He hoped it was not an omen.

  A blaze crackled in the fireplace behind him. His mother sat close to it, alternately holding her hands out to the heat and drawing her shawl more warmly about her shoulders. Edward was not feeling the cold—or the heat for that matter.

  He was restless and worried and, yes, frightened. He even caught himself at one irrational moment believing that he must surely be suffering more than Angeline was. She at least was doing something. She was laboring hard. He had nothing to do. Absolutely nothing but fret. And feel helpless. And guilty at having been the cause of her pain. And aggrieved that Alma was allowed in their bedchamber, and the physician and the nurse they had hired and even Betty—his mother too, when she chose to go up there, as she did every hour or so. Half the world was allowed into his bedchamber, but not he. Not the mere husband and lord of the manor. He was not allowed in there. He was not even allowed to pace outside the door. Angeline could feel him there when he did, if you please, and his distress distressed her.

  A man could surely be forgiven if he became peevish at such moments in his life. Except that they were considerably longer than just moments. Angeline had woken him at one o’clock this morning with the news that she was experiencing pains that were so peculiar and so regular that she really believed they must be labor pains. He had shot straight up in the air in his panic and come down on his feet beside the bed—or so it had seemed—and he had not been allowed near that bed since.

  It was now half past four in the afternoon.

  “I have poured you a cup of tea, Edward,” his mother said. “Do come and drink it while it is hot. And Cook has made some of her buttered scones. I have put two on a plate for you. Do eat them. You had very little breakfast and no luncheon.”

  How could one eat when one’s wife was laboring abovestairs and had been for hours and hours? And when had the tea tray arrived? He had not heard it.

  “Is this normal, Mama?” He turned to face the room though he did not move closer to his tea. “This length of time?”

  So many women died in childbed.

  “There is no normal when it comes to a confinement, Edward,” she said with a sigh. “When Lorraine had Simon two months ago, she delivered after no longer than four hours. Yet Susan took three times as long to arrive, I remember, and Martin even longer than that. I was not with her when Henrietta was born three years ago.”

  They all continued to treat Lorraine, Lady Fenner, as though she were a member of their family. She had no family of her own apart from a reclusive father. Of course, Susan, now age ten, really was one of their own.

  But three times as long. Twelve hours. Angeline had been in labor for sixteen—and that was only since she had told him about it.

  “Perhaps I should go up there,” he said.

  He had gone up a couple of times despite the prohibition, though not inside the bedchamber, of course. The last time was an hour and a half ago. He had listened through two bouts of heavy moaning and had then fled.

  “What useless creatures we husbands are,” he complaine
d.

  His mother smiled and got to her feet to come to him. She set her arms about him and hugged him close.

  “You have waited so long for a child, you and Angeline,” she said. “Wait an hour or two longer. She is strong, and she has been so very excited about this confinement, Edward. She has been happy enough since your marriage, of course. She has always been cheerful and always smiling and always full of energy. But there has been a core of sadness that I have sensed more and more over the years. She has longed for a child.”

  “I know.” He hugged her back. “She has always said—we both have—that having each other is enough. And for me it has been. I do not care the snap of two fingers about the succession—pardon me, Mama. But I do care about Angeline. I do not know how I would live without her.”

  Yet he had shared that core of sadness—if sadness was the right word. He had never wanted them to be a childless couple.

  “It is to be hoped,” his mother said, “that you will not have to live without her, or at least not for a long, long time. Come and drink your tea and then I will pour you another while you eat your scones.”

  But before they could move toward the fire and the tea tray, the door opened and Alma hurried inside, looking flushed and slightly untidy and very happy.

  “Edward,” she said, “you have a daughter. A plump and tiny little thing considering how large Angeline was, but with an excellent set of lungs. She is protesting her entry into this world with what appears to be typical Dudley bad temper—and those were Angeline’s words, I hasten to add. Many congratulations, Brother. You may come up in ten minutes’ time. By then we will have her cleaned and wrapped and ready to set in your arms.”

  And she was gone, closing the door behind her.

  Angeline’s words. She was still alive then. She had made a safe delivery and survived it.

  And he had a daughter.

  He set the fingers of one hand to his lips. But it was no good. The tears were coming from his eyes, not his mouth.