“I must say…” she said, knowing it was impolite to ask but she had to know nonetheless. “I find it slightly curious that you have invited Lady Hester Montgomery. Are you well acquainted with her?”
William turned his brilliant grin to her. “You seem to me a loyal friend, Lady Templeton, and therefore I am assuming that you feel the same disregard toward her as Olivia?”
“I do,” Rosalind agreed with a nod. “Perhaps even more so.”
He chuckled at that. “Yes, Olivia has told me in great detail how she feels about the woman on more than one occasion. Our mothers are friends, you see. In fact, most of the people present are here due to their connection with my mother, with a few exceptions.”
“Where do you put them all?” she asked in a bit of amazement. This was a spacious house, to be sure, but she didn’t know there were so many bedrooms.
“Lord and Lady Harrington live not far down the road, so they will be staying in their own home, attending some of the festivities of their choosing. Otherwise, we have ample accommodations.”
She nodded, and was about to ask further questions of the activities to come the following days — she liked to be prepared — but as she opened her mouth, William’s attention was commanded by Lord Huntington, and she found herself dismissed with a quick, “excuse me.”
No matter, she thought, and went off to find Lady Anne.
14
“And then she what? By God, you don’t say!” Alfred chortled at a story being told by Abbottsford as he lit a cheroot. The ladies had retired to the drawing room, and William sat back in his chair, taking a sip of his port and listening to the conversation around him. Abbottsford was well experienced in the events of Tattersall’s, and was regaling them all with tales of his prized horse’s latest feats.
It had been a lively dinner, and William felt like himself again, settled amongst his peers and friends of his mother. It had been some time since they had hosted a house party, but when another London season had passed without him securing a bride, his mother had told him in no uncertain terms that she was hosting a house party and would be inviting the perfect woman for him. If he did not further the acquaintance with at least a proposal of courtship, she told him, he was a fool.
He could see why his mother had thought Lady Diana Watson, daughter of Lord Huntington, was a woman he would be interested in. She was, if he were being honest, rather like Olivia, although slightly more polished. She laughed heartily, yet appropriately, and she had quick wit and wasn’t afraid to say what was on her mind. She was everything he had ever thought he had wanted in a woman — until recently.
Throughout the dinner, he had continued to find his eyes straying to Rosalind. She had been quiet, subdued, unlike the woman he had come to know over the past few days. Oh, she made polite conversation with her table companions. She had spoken at length with the Duke and Duchess of Barre, seemingly getting on quite well with the pair of them, who wore the love and affection they had for one another much more openly than was fashionable. He knew his mother disapproved, but William was pleased to see that it was possible to have such continued emotion for one another.
Rosalind spent the rest of her time speaking with Lady Anne, a woman with whom she had become acquainted through Olivia. He wished she would do her best to meet others. He hosted enough parties that he was hoping to find a woman who could move as easily amongst his peers as did he.
His attention returned to the men around the table when he heard his name.
“Southam, tell me, is this little gathering not a farce to find a wife for yourself?” asked Merryweather, and most of the eyes turned toward him. “Are there any women to your liking so far?”
“Why, Merryweather, are you looking to find one for yourself?” William answered with a laugh, deflecting the question. “My mother has organized this party, gentlemen, although I am pleased that you were all able to attend,” he said, aware that two of the men round the table were the fathers of said women in attendance. “I am appreciative of the many admirable qualities of all of the young ladies amongst us, and should any of them be interested in a mere viscount, I would be ever so flattered.”
“I have heard it said that Lady Templeton has been in residence for a time,” said Lord Huntington, startling William. Could no one keep their mouths shut? Although, judging from Alfred’s knowing look toward Richard Abbottsford, he realized that the culprit was likely none other than his own brother, the man who had brought the woman here against her will. Except, it was not as though William was going to tell the men that particular story, now was he?
“Lady Templeton was passing through when her travel plans were suddenly interrupted,” he said. “Therefore, I invited her to stay for the house party. As you may be aware, I have known her since I was a child through her friendship with the Duchess of Breckenridge.”
He saw relief in the eyes of Lord Huntington. Clearly the desire for a match between William and his daughter was not only formed in the eyes of William’s mother, but in the young lady’s parents as well.
What was he to do now?
If she had to hear one more piece of the latest contrived, untrue gossip of the ton, Rosalind thought she might walk over and hit the smug smile off of Hester’s face. And yet Hester maintained the rapt audience of many of the ladies around the drawing room, so apparently she knew what she was doing.
Rosalind tried not to listen, and instead waited for the chime of the clock to determine how much longer it would be until she could escape to her own rooms. She was, however, beginning to realize that one of the positive aspects of being a widow was to no longer require the constant presence of a nagging mother or chaperone who told her when and with whom she should be speaking and that no, she could not retire early, nor leave a party to withdraw into other quarters.
She felt sorry for the young women who still required such direction, although she had to say that the mother of Lady Anne was delightful, unlike Rosalind’s own mother who had constantly harped on her for one reason or another. Even in this moment, Rosalind could practically hear her mother’s voice in her ear, telling her to sit up straighter, to converse politely with the other ladies present, and to remove the perpetual frown off of her face.
It was not Rosalind’s fault, however, that her face looked like that, she had told her mother on more than one occasion. It was simply the way her face was.
“Then, for God’s sake, smile, Rosalind!” her mother would say, to which Rosalind would simply roll her eyes. It wasn’t quite as easy as her mother made it out to be.
Hester launched into another tale, and Rosalind sighed as she looked around the room, pretty with it’s blue-striped wallpaper, the color of a robin’s egg. As lovely as her surroundings, however, she couldn’t take much more of this. And then, she realized, as she thought of her mother, that she didn’t have to take any more of it. No one was forcing her to be here. She was a widow now. A destitute one, true, but she had broken free of her mother’s will. There was no need to continue here when that was the very last thing she wanted to be doing. Rosalind began rising from the low, curved-back chair with brass inlays, but then the door opened and the gentlemen returned. Her eyes found William and she promptly sat back down. It would seem at the moment that her body was more in tune with her heart than her mind.
“William!” His mother rose and greeted him with a kiss on the cheek, as if she had not seen him in days instead of just over an hour. “Darling, shall we not have some music and perhaps a bit of dancing? Do you not think that would be simply lovely?”
Rosalind didn’t think so. She was a horrific dancer, and avoided it at all costs. She had learned the steps to the most popular dances tolerably enough from the multitude of dance tutors in her youth, but any man who partnered her soon became aware of her lack of skill.
“Oh, how lovely!” said the Duchess of Barre from beside her. “I love a good dance, do you not, Lady Templeton?”
Rosalind made a bit of a strangled sound
, one that neither agreed or disagreed with the woman, and took a large, unladylike gulp of her wine. Anne, an accomplished piano player, was happy to begin the evening with music, and Rosalind tried to slink back in her chair to blend in with her surroundings.
She had never been a true wallflower, despite her very best efforts. Between her mother’s pushing, her dowry, and her friendship with Olivia, she had always been asked to dance, though she knew it was never for her own company or conversation.
Rather, she was always just, well, there. She knew she was a pleasant enough woman, one who was agreeable to spend time with while a gentleman waited to dance once more with whichever woman had captured his attention.
Rosalind looked up, her eyes latching onto William as he walked toward her. He looked striking this evening. Of course, he always did. The attention of most of the women in the room was trained on him, and yet he was making his way over to her. Rosalind’s heart began beating quite quickly, and she couldn’t make up her mind as to whether or not she wanted him to ask her to dance. She did not particularly want to perform in front of these people, and yet she wasn’t sure she could watch him dance with anyone else, and she so longed to be in his arms.
The decision was taken away from her, however, when his mother stepped into his path. “William,” she said, her voice trilling through the air. “Lady Huntington tells me that her daughter simply loves this song. Perhaps you would accompany Lady Diana in this set?”
The young blonde woman rolled her eyes at her mother, but smiled prettily for William who, of course, had no choice but to lead her into the middle of the room and begin the set.
A few other couples joined in, and it seemed as if the evening’s festivities were well underway. Rosalind tried to focus her attention elsewhere, but her gaze kept drifting back to William and Diana. He was laughing at something she said, his head dipping toward her as he looked down at her while she animatedly chattered away to him.
“They look well together, do they not?” Rosalind turned to find Alfred leaning over her chair, his voice low in her ear.
“They do,” she said with a shrug, feigning nonchalance.
“Come, come, Lady Templeton, if nothing else you can be honest with me after all we’ve been through together, can you not?” he said, his voice low in her ear. His breath rankled her, but Rosalind was determined not to let him see that his words were having any effect on her. “I do hope you weren’t getting your hopes up that dear old William actually saw anything in you. You know as well as I do that he’s spent his life hopelessly in love with Olivia. Now that she’s married, well, he’ll find one just like her. I think Lady Diana will do — at least, Mother thinks so.”
Rosalind simply nodded and smiled, as her mother had taught her to do in any situation in which she did not have an answer. And to this, she truly did not. For the worst part about what Alfred said was that it was true. She knew as well as any what William’s feelings had always been for Olivia, and Diana was rather like her. In fact, Rosalind could not fault Diana at all. She seemed a truly lovely girl, and would make a fine wife for William.
She allowed nearly the rest of the set to complete before she rose, and did what she had been longing to do all night — she left.
15
“I thought I’d find you in here.”
William had been disappointed, but not entirely surprised, when he had seen Rosalind rise and leave the room before his dance with Lady Diana had come to an end. She had been so stealthy, he didn’t think anyone else had noticed — except perhaps Alfred, who looked after her with a grin on his face that worried William.
It hadn’t been difficult to ascertain where she had gone. In the few short days since her arrival, she had noted a particular fondness for the conservatory — nearly as much as the library. The room adjoined the drawing room, but it was at the other end of it, within the plants, where he found her curled up in a window seat with her forehead on the glass of the window, her breath leaving a fog upon it.
She didn’t turn to look at him, but leaned back slightly from the window, her face now a reflection on the panes in the dark of the night.
“You needn’t have come after me,” she said. “You have your guests to see to.”
“And you, Rosalind, are one of those guests,” he said, coming to stand behind her. “The one whose feelings I care most about.”
She dipped her head then, still not turning around.
“I am simply not one for parties, I’m afraid,” she said. “But that does not mean that you shouldn’t enjoy yourself.”
“I am finding it difficult to be happy, knowing you are not similarly so,” he said. “What ails you? My dance with Lady Diana? I would have preferred dancing with you.”
As he sat beside her, he caught the slight flush on her cheeks from the side. He leaned back slightly so that the profile of her face was in his view.
“You do not have to say such things to me,” she said, long eyelashes hiding her eyes from him. “Lady Diana is lovely and a very fine dancer.”
“So are you,” he said, to which she gave a rueful chuckle.
“Clearly you do not recall ever dancing with me,” she said lowly.
“No,” he said. “Though I wish my memory was better, for I should like to know what it is like. Come,” he said, standing and holding out a hand.
“I’d prefer not,” she said, shaking her head. “We likely should not return together and begin a dance.”
“No,” he said, a slow smile breaking out over his face as he looked down at her. “I was not suggesting we return. Give me your hand — trust me.”
She looked up at him then, and without hesitation, put her hand in his. He led her around the bench and into the middle of the room. Strains of Anne’s melody on the pianoforte reached them, and he drew Rosalind into his arms.
“May I have this dance?” he asked, and he saw her lips part in surprise.
“Someone may see us.”
“We shall remain hidden from view. Now, Rosalind, I will ask you again — will you dance with me?”
“I will.”
He gathered her close in his arms — much closer than would ever be proper in any English ballroom — and began to move back and forth with her. It was not a dance that required steps or etiquette, but a simple sway back and forth. William saw Rosalind close her eyes as she relaxed in his arms.
He lowered his lips to her ear. “Do not run,” he said. “When you feel alone, or not at ease, tell me? Wait for me, and I will be there with you.”
“Oh, William,” she said with a bit of a tremor in her voice. “You are so kind to me but I — I feel as though I am not the woman for you. You enjoy social events such as these, balls and house parties and the like, and I would prefer to be alone with a book or a close friend or two. Do you not think that perhaps, before we find ourselves traveled so far down a road that we can no longer find our way back, we should go our separate ways?”
William stepped back from her. At first he was angry at her refusal of his affections, but then he took in the sorrow of her eyes and realized how much it pained her to say what she had.
“Do not be ridiculous,” he said, although he inwardly had to acknowledge the truth to her words. A life with him was one which required social niceties, whether it be with others of the ton or his own people on his estate.
She opened her mouth to say more, but he no longer wanted to hear any more reasons as to why they should keep their distance. Before she could utter a word, he took her lips with his, halting whatever she was going to say with a searing kiss. His lips and his tongue explored hers, finding the velvet corners of her mouth as they locked in a firm embrace, his arms coming even more tightly around her and pulling her in close.
For a woman who said she preferred the quiet of solitude and claimed to be rather subdued, she certainly had a fiery passion to her. William groaned as he longed to take things further, to walk her over to the window seat and truly show her the depths of his fe
elings, but realizing where they were and who was in the house, he gently eased back from her, finishing the kiss with a soft peck on her lips followed by one on her forehead.
He held her close for a moment, continuing their rocking motion, before he leaned down and looked her in the eyes, his gaze holding hers.
“I must return,” he said. “I would like you to do the same. Come back, will you?”
She said nothing, but he gave her one last soft kiss before striding out of the room and through the doors leading back to the drawing room. He hoped she would overcome whatever it was holding her back, he thought. Come with me, Rosalind.
Rosalind pressed a hand to her lips as she could still feel William lingering there. She could scarcely believe he had come after her. Men never came after her. Never. Not like in the stories she wrote, in which the men arrived at simply the perfect time to make amends or to come to the rescue of their heroine. Why was William so different?
And what was it that had caused William to suddenly notice her, after all this time? She had known him for years. Not well, to be sure, but well enough that were he to have any sort of interest in her, she should have certainly caught his attention prior to now. She frowned. She was being too hard on him, she thought. She should be grateful for all he had done for her.
It did, however, bother her, the way people could so easily change. Harold certainly had. When she had met him, he had been a nice enough man who she had thought would make a fine husband, though she had realized early on he would never be a man who would entirely capture her heart. But then, once they had married, he had become someone she didn’t even recognize — a monster, to be honest. She had been so thankful when he had turned from their bed back to his brothels.
She was no longer sure of her own judge of character. Could she trust William?
Loved by the Viscount Page 10
