by Mary Balogh
“But you must never offer to take her walking or shopping, Sophie,” Eden said in the bored voice he used whenever he wished to ruffle someone’s feathers. “Or she will accuse you of treating her like a charity case and look at you with such marked disdain that you would feel your shirt points withering, if you ever wore them.”
Eden, Nathaniel thought, had been offended this afternoon. And who could blame him? Lavinia had been unpardonably rude.
Lavinia gave Eden the look he had just described and then smiled at Sophie with contrasting charm. “I would love to go walking or shopping with you, Sophie,” she said. “Preferably walking so that we may talk uninterrupted. Shopping can be such a bore. I shall have Nat escort me to your house one day, if I may—does he know where you live?—and we can proceed together from there. May I?”
“Of course,” Sophie said. But she darted a glance at him, Nathaniel saw. It would never occur to Lavinia to wait for an invitation, to wonder if her desire for friendship was reciprocated. But then Lavinia did not have many female friends. She thought most women silly.
The orchestra was tuning up again.
“Miss Gascoigne.” Young Viscount Perry, Catherine’s brother, was bowing to Georgina. “May I take you for some lemonade? This is a waltz and you may not dance it yet, I suppose.”
Perry, Nathaniel could not help thinking, was heir to the Earl of Paxton. He was also a wealthy and personable young man and doubtless attractive to the ladies. Georgie was blushing and setting her hand on his arm. Fortunately she always looked her prettiest when blushing. Nathaniel caught Catherine’s eye. She raised one eyebrow and half smiled at him.
“Is there really truth in that ridiculous story?” Lavinia asked of no one in particular. “One may not waltz until some old dragons say that one may?”
“It is a good thing none of the dragons are within ear-shot,” Eden said, “or you might be waltzing for the first time on your eightieth birthday. Nat wants to waltz with Sophie. You had better come with me to the refreshment table, Miss Bergland, or you are going to look suspiciously like a wallflower.”
Nathaniel raised his eyebrows. Ede really must have been offended. It was unlike him to speak to any lady without his customary charm. Indeed, he had been downright rude. However, Lavinia took his offered arm without bristling noticeably.
Nathaniel turned to Sophie. Eden had read his wishes correctly. And it was to be a waltz. He could not have planned it better.
“It would be a shame, Sophie,” he said, “if you could not dance the fourth set with the fourth Horseman and so complete the quartet. Will you dance it with me, my dear?”
“That would be very pleasant.” She set her hand on his arm.
The music was already beginning. And which Sophie was he seeing now? he asked himself as he set one hand at the back of her waist—why had he never noticed in the past how alluringly slender it was?—and took her hand with his other. He could smell her perfume—no, her soap.
She smiled up at him as she set her free hand on his shoulder. Sophie Armitage’s cheerful, comfortable smile. And the small, supple body of last night’s lover.
EIGHT
THE SURGE OF PHYSICAL awareness that assailed Sophia as soon as she touched him, as soon as he touched her, took her completely by surprise. She had been consumed by embarrassment—would not all their mutual friends and acquaintances suspect? And by the awkwardness of finding herself being presented to his relatives. And by her dismay at Lavinia’s eagerness to strike up a friendship.
And by annoyance that she was somehow seeing herself as a ... what? A mistress? A fallen woman? How foolish! How very middle class, Walter would have said. But then she was middle class.
But now she felt only awareness—and the sudden memory that just last night, not even twenty-four hours ago, they had been naked and intimate together. She raised her eyes to his. He was looking steadily at her from those heavy-lidded eyes of his that always made him look enticingly sleepy.
“Was it proper?” she asked him.
“Is that what troubled you?” he asked her in return. “Do you feel like a kept woman, then, Sophie?”
“No, of course not.” And it was the truth, she told herself firmly. She did not.
“Then why is it improper,” he asked, “for you to meet my sister and my cousin? For me to meet your niece? What we do in privacy together and by mutual consent concerns no one but us, Sophie.”
She wondered—had wondered all day—if that was really true. Even though she believed it.
He moved her into the dance then and for a while she forgot all else but the glorious exhilaration of dancing with him, of waltzing with him. There had never been any waltzes at the regimental balls—it had been too new, too controversial a dance. She felt his body heat though their bodies did not touch, smelled his cologne, shared his rhythm—and felt her cheeks grow hot at the memory of another shared rhythm.
She was mad, she thought. Insane. How would she survive the inevitable end of the coming months? But how, after last night, could she survive without them?
He was still looking at her when she glanced up again. He was half smiling too. “You were born to dance, Sophie,” he said.
Strange words. She did not ask him what he meant. But suddenly she felt wonderfully feminine. She so rarely felt this way. She thought back to her youth and Walter’s brief courtship—she had been only eighteen. He had never been a particularly handsome or charming man, but she had liked his bluff good humor. At that time she had still thought herself passably pretty and attractive. When she had accepted him and married him, she had anticipated great happiness. She had had confidence in herself as a woman. She had looked forward eagerly to being a wife, a mother. It was all she had ever wanted of life.
It had not taken long—not long at all—to lose all confidence in her beauty and charms. She had quickly learned to be content with being Walter’s “old girl” or “old sport” and with being “good old Sophie” to the Four Horsemen and others—though now she came to think of the matter, she did not believe that Nathaniel had ever used that particular phrase.
She did not know whether it was good for her to hear that she had been born to dance. But she smiled back at Nathaniel before lowering her eyes so that she could concentrate on sheer sensation again. She had waltzed before, but it had never been like this—like dancing in a dream or on a rainbow or on clouds or among the stars or any of those other clichés, all of which seemed suddenly quite fresh and altogether appropriate.
She realized finally that the waltz must be coming to an end. She looked about her, trying to hold the memory, wishing again that it were possible to freeze a moment in time. She looked beyond Nathaniel’s shoulder—and froze indeed. She completely lost her step with the result that her slipper ended up beneath Nathaniel’s shoe. She winced and he hauled her right against him for one moment.
“Sophie, my dear,” he said, stopping dancing and looking down at her in dismay. “I am so sorry. How dreadfully clumsy of me. Did I hurt you?”
“No,” she said, flustered, her mind flying off in all directions. “No, it was my fault. I am quite all right.”
“You are not,” he said. “Come. Let us move over here and stand by the windows. Are you hiding crushed toes inside that slipper?”
“No.” She shook her head and bit her lip—she felt as if she had five crushed toes—and darted a glance to the doorway. He was not there. Had he come farther inside? Had he gone away again? Had she imagined that he had been there at all? She knew she had not imagined it. Their eyes had met.
“Let me find you an empty chair,” Nathaniel suggested.
“No.” She grabbed his arm. “No, let us finish the waltz.”
He dipped his head and looked more closely into her face. “What is it?” he asked her. “You stopped dancing, did you not? Not that it was not still my fault. It is a capital offense, I do believe, to tread upon one’s partner’s toes. What is it, Sophie?”
There it was again,
that illusion of safety that was not safety at all. She imagined telling him and seeing his look of concern turn to one of disgust. She would not be able to bear it.
“Nothing,” she said, smiling. “Just screaming pain. You must weigh a ton, Nathaniel. Perhaps two. But the pain has gone now. Let us dance.”
“May I come to you tomorrow night?” he asked her, his head still dipped toward hers.
Her stomach lurched with unmistakable desire. “About midnight?” she said. “I will watch for you. My servants will be in bed.”
“Would you prefer that it be somewhere else?” he asked her. “I could rent a house.”
“No,” she said quickly. “That would be intolerable.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “It would. But I would not wish to cause problems with your servants.”
“They need not know,” she said. “And even if they do, I am my own mistress, Nathaniel.”
“Yes,” he said. “I think you always were, Sophie.”
Strange words again. Comforting words. And true to a large degree. She had always—almost always—controlled her own life. She would continue to do so even though there were several things to fear over the coming months. Financial ruin or exposure. Losing Nathaniel when the Season was over. Finding life too frighteningly empty.
“Let us dance,” he said, taking her hand in his.
Nathaniel returned Sophie to her own group. He should have gone earlier, he knew, to pay his respects to her niece, since he had been presented to the girl in the park. Doing so, of course, would mean having to be presented to her parents too. But then Houghton was Walter Armitage’s brother. It was only right that he make the man’s acquaintance. There was no reason to keep his distance because he was bedding Sophie—the idea still seemed dizzyingly strange. There was nothing immoral in what they were doing—he had convinced himself of that during the course of the day. And there was nothing distasteful about it, provided they were discreet and kept the affair strictly private.
And so he went with Sophie, bowed to and smiled at Miss Sarah Armitage and complimented her on her appearance, and secured an introduction to her parents and her brother. Houghton, he discovered, had none of Walter’s ruggedness of build or floridity of complexion. He looked far more refined. They all talked about Walter for a few minutes and then, because Miss Armitage had stood close to him and gazed at him the whole while with the result that any prospective partners must have assumed she already had one, he felt obliged to invite her to dance the set with him.
That seemed somehow improper, especially as the girl had that way of looking at him, he remembered from the year after Waterloo, when he and his three friends had quickly come to realize that they were being seen as very eligible young men. He had forgotten. Because he had come to town with the express purpose of shepherding Georgina and Lavinia about and finding husbands for them, it had not struck him that perhaps women—both mothers and daughters—would be looking at him as a prospective husband.
Miss Sarah Armitage was looking at him that way. So had her mother before he led the girl out. And of course Miss Armitage looked quite exquisitely lovely. He set himself to talking as little as possible—the intricate patterns of the dance discouraged conversation—and to confining his few remarks to dull, safe topics. But fate had conspired against him. It was the supper dance, and so he was obliged to offer the girl his arm when it was over and to lead her into the supper room and secure her a place beside him. He was obliged to talk with her, to smile at her, to give her the courtesy of his undivided attention.
He must be so terribly brave, she told him. He simply must tell her all about his courageous deeds in battle. She could not believe that her uncle Walter had been the only brave officer. He told her a few of the more amusing incidents he could remember, like the time when Major Hanley, an avid sportsman, had taken out his dogs and his cronies and had had such success at the hunt that they had come riding back to camp whooping and shouting and doing nothing to quell the exuberant barking of the dogs. Their colonel, who had been sleeping off the effects of a hearty dinner washed down by large quantities of liquor, had woken up startled and befuddled, had assumed a surprise French attack was about to descend upon his head, and had bellowed out commands that had thrown the whole camp into panic and confusion.
“But there was no French attack?” Miss Armitage asked after a short pause, her eyes wide with alarm.
He smiled gently at her. “There was no French attack,” he said. “Only Major Hanley and his friends and his dogs.”
“Oh,” she said. “He ought not to have been making so much noise, ought he? I daresay he might have alerted a French force had one been near. And then you and Uncle Walter and—everyone would have been in grave danger.”
“You are quite right,” he said, deciding that he must turn the conversation to bonnets or some such topic with which she would feel more at home. “I do believe Major Hanley was severely reprimanded and was contrite and never did it again.” He was about to add that the colonel had sworn off drink from that moment on, but he did not want her to believe she was being made fun of.
“And Aunt Sophie would have been in grave danger,” she added as an afterthought.
“Your uncle was there to keep her safe,” he said. “And all of us who did not have wives looked out for the ladies too, you know, as gentlemen must always do. Sophie was a particular favorite with my friends and me. We always kept an eye out for her whenever your uncle was on duty.”
“I am sure,” she said, gazing at him with what appeared to be real worship in her eyes, “she must have felt perfectly safe if you were close by, Sir Nathaniel.”
He smiled at her and looked about the room to find Sophie. She was sitting some distance away with her sister-in-law. But a gentleman came up behind her even as Nathaniel watched, and touched her on the shoulder. She turned her head, her customary smile on her lips, and—and something happened. She did not stop smiling. She proceeded to speak to the man and to listen to him and then turned to her sister-in-law, apparently to present the gentleman to her.
But there was something wrong. Nathaniel was reminded of the way she had suddenly stopped dancing an hour ago and caused him to step heavily on her foot. It had been something very fleeting, and something she had denied afterward. But something had definitely happened. She had seen someone unexpectedly, perhaps.
He could not see the man’s face to identify him until he turned to make his bow to Viscountess Houghton and appeared in profile. He looked familiar, though Nathaniel could not immediately put a name to the face. And then he did remember—how could he have forgotten? The man was no longer in regimentals, of course, and therefore he did look quite different. Pinter. Lieutenant Boris Pinter. Always a weasel, ingratiating himself with superiors even at the expense of his fellow officers, dealing with subordinates with unutterable cruelty in the name of discipline, Pinter had been liked by no one and hated by many. He had been the only officer of Nathaniel’s acquaintance who had actually enjoyed watching a formal whipping and had hated to see any other man promoted.
Walter Armitage had once opposed Pinter’s promotion on grounds that had never been made public—and had won his point. Pinter never had made the rank of captain. Apparently he had not had the funds with which to buy the promotion although his father was an earl.
And Pinter was now talking with and smiling at Sophie—and being presented to Walter’s sister-in-law. Nathaniel frowned. And he could see now what was wrong with Sophie—the outer evidence of what was wrong anyway. Her smiling face was quite without color. He half rose from his chair.
But his view of Sophie was suddenly cut off by the appearance of young Lewis Armitage, who had come to take the empty chair opposite his sister.
“Oh, Lewis,” Miss Armitage said, “Sir Nathaniel is telling me such stories about French attacks and hunting dogs and sleeping colonels.”
Young Armitage grinned at Nathaniel. “I trust, sir,” he said, “that you have included no gory deta
ils to give Sarah nightmares for the next six months.”
“Indeed, I would never forgive myself if I had,” Nathaniel said.
“Oh silly, Lewis,” Miss Armitage scolded. “Sir Nathaniel has been just entertaining me. But seriously, I would just die if I had to follow the drum like Aunt Sophie did.”
Ken and Eden had gone to the rescue, Nathaniel saw after shifting his position so that he could see across the room again. They were standing on either side of Pinter, smiling, perfectly at their ease, talking with him, talking with her. He might have trusted them to notice too that she was in distress. He relaxed a little.
“Actually, sir,” young Armitage was saying, a flush of color in his cheeks, “I was wondering if you might do me the honor after supper of presenting me to the young lady in white whom you are escorting—your sister, I believe? With your permission, I would like to lead her into a set.”
He must be one or two and twenty, Nathaniel thought. He was blond and slender, very like his sister. He seemed to have a deal more sense than she—though she was not without a certain sweetness, he must confess. Armitage was heir to a viscount’s title and property. Probably not a wealthy one, but certainly respectable. He was not asking to marry Georgie, of course, merely to dance with her. But even so, the responsibility of bringing a sister out was a serious one. One would not wish her to make ineligible connections.
“I shall return Miss Armitage to your mother’s side when supper is over,” Nathaniel replied. “I would be happy then to take you to meet my sisters.”
“Thank you, sir,” the young man said.
Moira had crossed the room to Ken and the two of them were leading Sophie out, one on each side of her, each with one of her arms drawn through theirs. They were laughing and talking. Eden had taken the empty seat beside Viscountess Houghton and was engaging her in conversation. Pinter was looking around him, a half smile on his lips. For one moment before Lewis Armitage moved and cut off the view again, his eyes met Nathaniel’s.
