by Mary Balogh
She had made no move to take off her bonnet. Jocelyn regarded it with distaste. “Lady Sara Illingsworth is now at Lady Webb’s,” he said. “I would be obliged if you would call upon her there, Angeline. The Lord knows why, but you are the only respectable Dudley—probably because a dry stick like Heyward married you and keeps you on some sort of rein, though heaven knows it is not a tight one.”
She laughed merrily. “Heyward a dry stick?” she said. “Yes, he is, is he not? In public, at least.”
Jocelyn’s expression became more pained as her blush clashed horribly with the pink plumes of her bonnet.
“I shall certainly call at Lady Webb’s,” she said. “Heyward will escort me there this afternoon. I cannot resist having one more look at her, Tresham. Is she likely to be wielding an ax? How enormously exciting that would be. Heyward would be forced to risk his life in defending me.”
“She hit Jardine over the head with a book,” he said dryly, “when he was, ah, disrespectful. That is all, Angeline. The gentleman is alive and well, and it turns out that the stolen property was not stolen at all. A very dull story, in fact. But Lady Sara is not to be allowed to hover on the brink of society. She will need respectable people of good ton to draw her in.”
“All of which Lady Webb will arrange for her,” she said. “Why should you be interested, Tresham?” But she stopped after an uncharacteristically brief monologue, stared at him for a moment, her cup halfway to her mouth, set it down in its saucer again, and resumed her hilarity. “Oh, Tresham, you are interested! How absolutely famous! Oh, I cannot wait to tell Heyward. But he has gone to the House, provoking man, and I daresay he will not return until it is time to take me visiting. Tresham, you are smitten.”
Jocelyn used his quizzing glass despite the fact that it enlarged the garish bonnet. “I am delighted to have caused you such amusement,” he said, “but smitten and the Tresham name are mutually exclusive terms, as you ought to be aware. I will, however, be marrying Lady Sara. You will be pleased to learn that you are the first to know, Angeline, apart from the lady herself, of course. She has said no, by the way.”
She stared at him, and for one fascinated moment he thought she had been robbed of speech.
“Lady Sara has said no.” She had found her voice. “To you? To the Duke of Tresham? How absolutely splendid of her. I confess I scarcely noticed her when she was your nurse. She looked so very drab in gray. Whoever would wear gray when there are so many other colors to choose among? I was quite struck with her when she sang at your soiree. And she knew how to waltz. That should have been a clue, but I confess I did not pick up on it. But now she has refused you. I am going to like her. She must be a woman of spirit. Just what you need. Oh, I am going to love her as a sister.”
“She has said no, Angeline,” he said dryly.
She looked at him in incomprehension. “You are a Dudley, Tresham,” she said. “Dudleys do not take no for an answer. I did not. Heyward was quite averse to marrying me for all of one month after I was first presented to him, I do assure you. He thought me empty-headed and frivolous and too talkative. The fact that I had you and Ferdie for brothers did not endear me to him either. But he did marry me. Indeed, he was horridly dejected the first time he asked and I said no. I feared he would go home and shoot himself. How could he not have fallen for my charms when I was determined that he should?”
“How indeed?” he agreed.
He was subjected to almost half an hour more of her incessant chatter before she took her leave. But he felt that the morning had been well spent. Jane’s respectability was assured. And by dropping a word in a fertile ear, he had lined up on his side powerful forces with which to storm the citadel of her mulish determination not to have him.
He did wonder briefly why he would want to storm her defenses. He could not admit, after all, to any personal need of her. It was just her very stubbornness, of course. Jane Ingleby had always had the last word with him.
Well, Lady Sara Illingsworth would not. It was as simple as that.
He found himself wondering what he would wear when he paid her an afternoon call. Just as if he were some moonstruck schoolboy.
23
OU ARE LOOKING PEAKED, SARA,” LADY WEBB said. “It is quite to be expected, of course, after all you have gone through. We will soon put the roses back in your cheeks. I just wish we could go outside this afternoon for a walk or a drive. The weather is so lovely. However, this is one of the afternoons on which it is known that I am at home to visitors. Vexing as it may be, my dear, we must be ready to receive them.”
Jane was wearing a fashionable, high-waisted dress of sprigged muslin. It had been in the trunk of her belongings that had been delivered during the morning by Phillip and the Duke of Tresham’s coachman. Her hair had been dressed by the maid who had been assigned to her care. But ready as she appeared to be to face an afternoon of socializing, she broached the subject that was troubling her.
“Perhaps it would be best,” she said, “if I remained out of sight of your guests, Aunt Harriet.”
Lady Webb, who had been looking out through the window, came to sit down on a chair opposite Jane’s. “That is precisely what you must not do,” she said. “Although neither of us has put it into words, Sara, I am fully aware of how you have been living for the last little while. Appalling as it is that you felt driven to such a life, it is over. No one need know. You can be very sure that Tresham will silence anyone of his acquaintance who suspects the truth. And of course he means to marry you. He is a gentleman and knows he has compromised you. He is not only prepared to do the honorable thing but will doubtless try to insist upon it.”
“He is very good at that,” Jane said bitterly. “But he knows better than to believe it will work with me.”
“The Duke of Tresham has possibly the most unsavory reputation of any gentleman in town,” Lady Webb said with a sigh. “Though perhaps I exaggerate. He is not known for any particular vice but only for wildness and the tendency to be at the center of every brawl. He is exactly like his father before him and his grandfather before that.”
“No!” Jane said more hotly than she had intended. “He is not.”
Lady Webb raised her eyebrows. But before she could say anything more, there was a tap on the drawing room door and the butler opened it and announced the first visitors—Sir Conan Brougham with Lady Brougham, his mother, and Miss Chloe Brougham, his sister. They were followed not many minutes after by Lord and Lady Heyward, the latter of whom made it very clear that she had come for the specific purpose of talking with Jane and scolding her for hiding her true identity while she was at Dudley House.
“I was never more surprised in my life as when Tresham told me about it,” she said. “And never more gratified than to know he had discovered you and brought you here, Lady Sara. The very idea that you were an ax murderer! I go off into peals of laughter whenever I think about it, as Heyward will testify. I daresay Mr. Jardine was unpardonably rude to you. I met him once and received the distinct impression that he was a slimy villain. It was most forbearing of you to slap him merely with a book, and very poor spirited of him to make a fuss about it and run sniveling to his papa. In your place I would have reached for an ax.”
“Lady Webb has been offering you this chair for the last two minutes, my love,” Lord Heyward said, leading his wife away.
A large number of guests arrived after that. A few were Lady Webb’s friends. Many were people Jane had met at Dudley House on various occasions—Viscount Kimble, Lord Ferdinand Dudley, and Baron Pottier among them. It did not take Jane long to understand who had sent them all or why they had come. The campaign was on to make her respectable again. Far from gratifying her, the knowledge infuriated her. Did he really believe that she could not manage her own life without his helping hand? She only wished he would come in person so that she could give him a piece of her mind.
And then he did.
He arrived alone, looking immaculate in a blue coat and biscu
it-colored pantaloons so well fitting that he must surely have been poured into them and Hessian boots that one might have used as twin mirrors. And he was looking insufferably handsome, of course, although when she had started to think of him as handsome Jane did not know. And suffocatingly male. And armed with all his detestable ducal hauteur.
She hated him with a powerful hatred, but of course good manners prevented her from either glaring at him or demanding that he leave. This was not her drawing room, after all. She was as much a guest here as he.
He bowed to Lady Webb and exchanged civilities with her. He bowed distantly to Jane—just as if she were a speck of dust that had floated into his line of vision, she thought indignantly. He acknowledged with the lift of an eyebrow those of his relatives and friends who were clustered about her—Lady Heyward, Lord Ferdinand, Viscount Kimble among others. And then he proceeded to converse with Mrs. Minter and Mr. Brock-ledean for all of fifteen minutes.
She was determined not to speak to him, Jane had thought as soon as he was announced. How dare he give her no opportunity to ignore him? Of course, she also wanted a chance to tell him that he need not have bothered to send people here to visit her or to try to restore respectability to her life. How dare he not approach her to be upbraided and told to mind his own business?
“It is really a very splendid new curricle, Ferdie,” Lady Heyward was saying. “It is far more dashing than the last one. But you are bound to accept a wager from someone to prove its superiority to any other. You must absolutely not accept. Only consider my nerves if there were another race like the last. Though I never tire of hearing about that final bend in the road, around which you accelerated despite all Tresham’s and Heyward’s warnings that you must drive with caution. I do wish I had been there to witness it. Is it not tiresome sometimes, Lady Sara, to be a woman?”
He had got up from his place, Jane saw with her peripheral vision. The Duke of Tresham, that was. He was about to take his leave. He had turned toward her group. He was going to approach and speak to her. She turned her head and smiled dazzlingly at his brother.
“I understand you are a famous whip, Lord Ferdinand,” she said.
An eager, good-natured young man, whom she liked extremely well, he rose immediately to the bait.
“I say,” he said, “would you care to drive in the park with me tomorrow afternoon, Lady Sara?”
“I would love to, thank you,” she replied warmly, looking up into the dark eyes of the Duke of Tresham, who had stopped at the outer perimeter of her group.
But if she had expected to see annoyance in his face, she was to be disappointed. He had the gall to look faintly amused.
“I came to take my leave of you, ma’am,” he told her, slightly inclining his head.
“Oh,” she said, still smiling, “is it you, your grace? I had quite forgotten you were here.” It was about the most ill-mannered thing she had said in public in her whole life. She was enormously pleased with herself.
“Ah,” he said, holding her gaze and speaking only loudly enough to be heard by her and her group. “Not surprising, I suppose, when I am renowned for avoiding the tedium of paying afternoon calls. But for you I made an exception as I so rarely have the opportunity to take tea with a former employee.”
He turned and strolled away, having enjoyed the satisfaction of having the last word, Jane had no doubt. She glared hotly at his receding back, good manners forgotten, while the members of her group either stared at one another in astonishment or pretended to a sudden deafness and a need to clear their throats. Lady Heyward tapped Jane’s arm.
“Well done,” she said. “That was a magnificent setdown and took Tresham so much by surprise that he descended to sheer spite. Oh, how well I like you.”
The conversation resumed until a short time later the guests began to take their leave.
“Never has one of my at-home afternoons been such a success,” Lady Webb said with a laugh when everyone had left. “For which I believe we have the Duke of Tresham to thank, Sara.”
“Well,” Jane said more tartly than she had intended, “I am grateful to him, I am sure. If he should ever come back and ask specifically for me, Aunt Harriet, I am not at home.”
Lady Webb sat down and regarded her houseguest closely. “Did he treat you so badly, then, Sara?” she asked.
“No,” Jane said firmly. “I was forced into nothing, Aunt Harriet. He offered and I accepted. I insisted upon a written contract, and he kept its terms. He did not treat me badly.”
Except that he made me love him. And worse, he made me like him. And then he discovered the truth and turned as cold as ice and would not trust me even enough to believe that I would have made myself as vulnerable to him as he had made himself to me. Except that he stood all my emotions on their heads and left me empty and bewildered and as wretchedly unhappy as it is possible to be.
She did not speak her thoughts aloud, but she did not need to.
“Except to make you fall in love with him,” Lady Webb said quietly.
Jane looked sharply at her, but she could not stop the despicable tears from springing to her eyes. “I hate him,” she said with conviction.
“I can see that,” Lady Webb agreed with a faint smile. “Why? Can you tell me?”
“He is an unfeeling, arrogant monster,” Jane replied.
Lady Webb sighed. “Oh, dear,” she said, “you really are in love with him. I do not know whether to be glad or sorry. But enough of that. All day I have been considering what is to be done to help you put the past quite behind you. I will present you at the next Queen’s Drawing Room, Sara, and the following day I will give you a come-out ball here. I am as excited as a girl. It will almost certainly be the grandest squeeze of the Season. You are understandably famous, my dear. Let us start making plans.”
It would be the come-out Jane had dreamed of just a few years ago. But all she could think of now was that Jocelyn had come this afternoon, looking cold and haughty, and that he had almost entirely ignored her until he had a chance to insult her. How many afternoons ago was it since he had finished her portrait and then poured out his heart to her and wept while holding her on his lap?
It felt like a lifetime ago.
It felt as if it must have happened to two other people.
She hated him.
She believed the heavy ache in her heart would never go away.
And then she felt sudden panic. Her portrait. Her precious painting. She had left home without it!
Home?
Home?
ALL THE FASHIONABLE WORLD rode or drove or promenaded in Hyde Park late in the afternoon during the spring Season. Everyone came to see and be seen, to gossip and be gossiped about, to display and observe all the latest fashions, to flirt and be flirted with.
Jane was wearing a blue dress and pelisse and a plain straw bonnet tied beneath her chin with a wide blue ribbon. She carried a straw-colored parasol, which Lady Webb had lent her. She was perched on the high seat of Lord Ferdinand Dudley’s new curricle while he wielded the ribbons, conversed amiably with her, and introduced her to a number of people who approached for the specific purpose of meeting the notorious Lady Sara Illingsworth, whose story had drawing rooms and club lounges abuzz again.
She smiled and chattered. The sun was shining, after all, and she was in the company of a handsome young gentleman who was going out of his way to be charming to her. He bore a remarkable resemblance to his brother, which fact she would not hold against him.
It was the thought of his brother that kept her from truly enjoying herself. Despite all that had happened during the past forty-eight hours—the release from fear, the return to being herself, living in her own world—she almost wished she could will herself back one week. This time last week they had been together, he painting, she working at her embroidery. Growing comfortable together. Becoming friends. Falling in love.
All illusion.
This was reality.
And reality came riding up to
Lord Ferdinand’s curricle in company with Viscount Kimble. The Duke of Tresham, that was—it was even difficult now to think of him as Jocelyn—looking dark and morose and unapproachable, quite his usual self, in fact. He touched his whip to the brim of his hat, inclined his head to her, and bade her a good afternoon, while the viscount smiled and reached for her hand to carry to his lips and proceeded to make conversation for a few minutes. The duke’s black, expressionless eyes rested on her the whole time.
Jane smiled and talked and twirled her parasol and agreed to come driving in the park again the very next day with Lord Kimble. Then they were gone and Jane, smiling gaily, fought the lump that had formed in her throat and the ache it sent up behind her nostrils and down into her bosom.
But there was no time to brood. There was Lord Ferdinand to listen to and other people with whom to converse. Only minutes after Jocelyn rode away, Lady Heyward drove up in an open barouche, introduced Jane to the Dowager Lady Heyward, and proceeded to talk.
“I am looking forward excessively to your come-out ball at Lady Webb’s,” she said. “Our invitation was delivered late this morning. I daresay Heyward will escort me, which is rare enough for him as he finds balls tedious. Can you imagine being bored by dancing, Lady Sara? And you may not roll your eyes in that odious way, Ferdie. I was not speaking to you. Besides, everyone knows that you prefer fighting to dancing. You will never know what palpitations I suffered on hearing that you and Tresham had fought three of the Forbes brothers the other day. Though as I told Tresham, the victory would have been sweeter had you fought all five. I do not know why the other two stood by to watch their brothers being slaughtered.”
“Angie,” Lord Ferdinand advised, “take a damper.”
But Jane had turned sharply to look at him. “You and his grace fought a few days ago?” she asked. “With pistols? And you killed three opponents?”
