by Mary Balogh
He was jolted back to reality and to a realization of his ill-mannered silence by the sight of Miss Borden fumbling in a pocket and bringing out a small lace-edged handkerchief. She sniffed. Good Lord, she was crying!
“What is it?” he asked gently, taking the handkerchief from her hand and wiping away her tears. The others, he noticed with a quick glance, were out of sight. Where was Allie when he most needed her?
“It is nothing,” she said, her voice vibrating on a sob. “It is nothing at all.”
Had he drawn her into his arms or had she come there? But there she was, sobbing on his chest. He held her close, patting his hand soothingly against her back.
“Oh, forgive me,” she said eventually. “Pray forgive me.”
“But what is it?’’ he asked, lowering his head to hers. “Is it something I have said or done?”
“N-no,” she said. “Oh, nothing, sir. It is just the rhododendrons.”
“The rhododendrons?” he said.
“They remind me so of home,” she said. “Of the country. And I fear I will never be back in the country again. Mama and Uncle want to find me a husband, and I fear he will be a man who will live always in London. And I do not think I could bear it. Though I cannot disappoint Mama and Uncle.”
Oh, Lord. Mr. Westhaven looked hopefully down the path again, willing Alice to appear. This needed a woman’s touch. The path was empty.
“But you will have choices,” he said. “You are a very pretty young lady, and you must have noticed the interest various gentlemen have shown in you already. I am sure your mother will not try to force you to marry one particular gentleman. She will want your happiness.”
“But Uncle wishes to choose my husband,” she said. “And he has lived all his life in town. Oh, what am I to do?”
“Dry your eyes and blow your nose for a start,” he said. “ I shall take you back to the carriages then, shall I? You will have time to compose yourself before the others return. And why do you not tell your mama just what you have told me? Surely she will understand.”
“Yes,” she said. “I am so sorry, sir. I am so very sorry. I feel quite humiliated to have shown my feelings thus. I wish we had not come this way.”
“So do I,” he said, “if it distresses you so. Come now, smile at me. All will turn out well for you, you will see. Are you to be at the Hendon ball tomorrow evening? You must reserve the opening set for me, if you will. And I shall organize the night at Vauxhall that I promised. You cannot fail to enjoy yourself there and forget all your woes.”
She did peep up at him very briefly with a look of melting gratitude. But he had never seen her smile, he realized with sudden interest.
“You are very kind,” she said. “So very kind, sir. I am so glad I was with you. I am sure no one else would understand. They would have been impatient with me. But you are from the country. You understand how I feel.”
“Yes, certainly I do,” he said, taking her hand within his arm again and patting it. He turned back toward the carriages and walked as fast as he felt he decently could. They had been alone quite long enough.
Chapter 7
PHOEBE, having withdrawn from the social scene with the greatest reluctance, now showed an equal unwillingness to return to it. She complained of continued symptoms of her illness and insisted on lying in bed all day in a darkened room. Although Alice sat with her for a half hour the morning after the picnic, trying to take her sister-in-law’s mind off herself by describing in detail Amanda’s successes of the previous few days, clearly it was an impossible task.
Mary and Richard were up and about, though Mary was still peevish and clearly irritated that her mother had taken some attention away from her. Amanda was very weary and quite content to spend the day at home, with the exception of a quick trip to Bond Street with Henrietta Marks and her mama late in the morning. She declared her intention of resting all afternoon so that she might be able to enjoy the Hendon ball in the evening.
“Do you like Mr. King?” she asked Alice, frowning in thought.
“He is a very amiable young man,” Alice said.
“You do not think his hair just a little too red?” the girl asked.
Alice was left to conclude that poor Mr. King, who had been enormously fascinating as long as he might not have been interested in Amanda, was seen to have shortcomings now that he had demonstrated that he was.
“But he does have a lovely smile,” Amanda added.
Alice looked forward to the afternoon’s outing despite herself. It would be lovely, she thought, to be responsible for no one but herself for a few hours. And Piers was always good company. Since it appeared that circumstances were forcing her into his company for a few days, she might as well enjoy it. It was foolish to tell herself that his presence in her life made her restless. It also exhilarated her. She might as well enjoy the exhilaration while she was able.
The summer and winter in Bath would doubtless be long and dull enough. She was ready to leave before Piers arrived, and dressed in a new dark green dress and matching pelisse. It was a chilly day and raining outside.
The thing was, she thought as she paced the downstairs salon, unable to sit down and relax, she must treat the relationship as a pleasant friendship, as she had trained herself to do through many years. She must know clearly in her mind that this enforced closeness would continue for only a few more days, and then normal life would resume.
There was nothing so terrible in the thought. It had always been so. She had always looked forward to his coming home, but she had never minded dreadfully his leaving again, because her everyday life had been very pleasant. And it still was, even though a great emptiness had been left where Web had been. She had her home in Bath and her friends. She was looking forward in particular to seeing Andrea Potter again.
Yes, she decided, hearing a carriage draw up outside the house, it was entirely possible to take a sensible approach to life. She had grown expert at it through the years.
And then Piers was there at the door of the salon, disdaining the assistance of the servants as he always did, grinning at her, raindrops spotting the shoulders of his coat. Alice smiled.
“Hello, Allie,” he said. “I am glad to see you are ready to go. I half expected that you would be huddled close to a fire, afraid of being drowned if you ventured outside. I might have known you were made of sterner stuff.”
“I have already been to Portman Square this morning,” she said.
“Of course,” he said. “Doubtless you would be expelled from the family if you failed to show up there daily. You do look fine, Allie. Are you spending all of Web’s fortune on Bond Street modistes?”
“That is not at all a proper question,” she said. “But yes, I have been doing some shopping. I am in London so rarely.”
“I thought we might go to the Egyptian Hall on Piccadilly,” he said, “and then to Somerset House to see the paintings. Will that suit you?”
“It sounds wonderful to me,” she said, passing through the doorway ahead of him as he held the door open for her. “Is the Egyptian Hall where Napoleon Bonaparte’s carriage is on display?”
He opened an umbrella at the front door and held it over her head as they hurried to his waiting carriage. “That is my sole reason for taking you there,” he said. “You cannot say you have lived a full life until you have seen old Bony’s carriage, now can you, Allie?”
“My feelings exactly,” she said, settling herself on the seat and shaking the raindrops from her skirt. “I shall be the envy of all my acquaintances in Bath.”
They drove in companionable silence for a few minutes. And then he turned to her impulsively.
“I did a rather foolish thing again yesterday,” he said.
“Again?” she said, smiling. She did not know if he realized that he had reached across the space between them and taken her hand in his. She guessed not. But she would not draw his attention to the fact by trying to remove it.
“I reserved the fir
st set at tonight’s ball with Miss Borden,” he said. “Foolish in the extreme, was it not? I danced the opening set with her at the last ball.”
“Doubtless Mr. Bosley will have the marriage contract ready for your signature the very next time you call on him,” she said.
He grimaced. “You don’t have to make a joke of it, you know, Allie,” he said. “You are permitted to be sympathetic. The whole of the ton will be consulting their Morning Posts, looking for the announcement.”
“You do not want to marry her?” she asked.
He sat back in the comer of the carriage and drew her hand onto his lap. “I feel a decided urge to loosen my cravat,” he said, “and to run a cool finger along beneath it. I feel a strange compulsion to don my most comfortable footgear and start running in the direction of Wales or Scotland. I feel the noble instinct to become an ambassador to the court of the sultan of Arabia. Have I answered your question?”
She was laughing. “And is it just Miss Borden who inspires these feelings in you?” she asked.
He stared at her without answering for a few moments. “Oh, Lord, no,” he said. “It’s the whole infantry regiment, Allie. The whole of the female species. I am terrified. Do you think my mother will disown me as a son if I fail to make a grandmama of her within the next five years or so?”
“I really have no idea, “ she said. “But why did you ask Miss Borden for the opening set if you feel as you do?”
“Oh, Lord, I don’t know,” he said, smoothing the forefinger of his free hand absently along her fingers. “She is so very sweet and helpless, Allie. I had the poor chit sobbing in my arms while the rest of you were sedately admiring the rhododendrons. It was as much as I could do to stop myself from kissing her. That would not have been at all the thing with such a very young lady, now, would it?”
“Not with your fear of marriage,” she said. “But what happened?”
“She was crying over the flowers,” he said. “They reminded her of the country, where she fears she will never live again. It seems that Bosley has some town dandies in mind for her. Poor little girl. She has the tenderest heart, Allie.”
“Does she?” she said. “I suppose she knows you have property in the country?”
“Oh, yes,” he said. “Anyway, I advised her to talk to her mama. The woman seems sensible enough. Not a dragon, anyway. And I asked her to reserve the opening set for me tonight.”
Alice opened her mouth to speak, but closed it again. It really was not her business to voice suspicions which might well be unfounded.
“Well,” he said, “perhaps I will survive the ordeal unscathed after all. And if I don’t, then perhaps it will be as well to be forced into something I really ought to do.”
“Marry?” she said. “I cannot see that marriage should ever be entered into as a duty, Piers. It is such a very personal commitment.”
“Ah,” he said, raising her hand to his lips and smiling at her before releasing it, “but you were very fortunate, Allie. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that Web was very fortunate.”
“Yes, that is true,” she said. “We both were. But it was a marriage of two human beings anyway, Piers. We had to work at making it a success every day of our lives. It was no easy matter even though we entered into it from personal inclination. I shudder at the thought of a marriage of convenience.”
“And yet you are such a very sensible person,” he said.
“But it does not make good sense to marry someone just because one feels one ought,” she said, “or because one feels that one should produce heirs. The whole of one’s life is affected when one marries. One spends one’s days with one’s spouse, not with one’s children. Oh, Piers, you must know the truth of what I say. You were married yourself for more than a year.”
“Yes, so I was,” he said. “And so I might still be if things had turned out differently. And I might be papa to a brood, too. I wonder if I would be happier or less happy than I am now. It is impossible to say, is it not? Can you imagine me the father of a brood, Allie?” He grinned at her.
“Yes, I can,” she said. “You would be a good father.” She turned to look out the window onto the rain-soaked street.
“And you should have been a mother,” he said. “I remember how you glowed with Nicky and were quite unwilling to leave him to a nurse’s care. But I should not speak as if it were a present impossibility. Are you going to marry again, Allie? You should, you know, provided it is not to the oily baronet, that is. I am sorry I lost sight of you yesterday afternoon, by the way. He did not molest you, did he?”
“No,” she said, laughing. “We were well chaperoned, remember.”
“Ah, yes,” he said. “I was just afraid that amid those heady blooms he would have waxed romantic and tried to kiss you. He didn’t, did he?”
“No, not again,” she said.
“Again?” He frowned at her. “You mean he has before?”
“The night he proposed to me,” she said, laughing. “I managed to fight him off.”
“The devil!” he said. “I ought to slap a glove in his face. And I would, too, Allie, if half the world would not hear of it and soon know the cause. I shall certainly advise him that he would be safer away from London, if you wish.”
She continued to laugh. “He fancies himself in love,” she said, “and has made me an honorable offer of marriage. That is hardly the occasion for a death threat, Piers.”
“Certainly it is when the lady is you,” he said. “The very thought of anyone’s mauling you around as if you were a milkmaid!”
“Is this the Egyptian Hall?” she asked, looking out through the window again.
“The very place,” he said. “Bullock’s Museum. Let us go and see what is to be seen.”
Alice enjoyed the next couple of hours more than anything else since her arrival in London, first there and then at the Royal Academy in Somerset House. Apart from a few jokes about Emperor Napoleon’s carriage, Piers was serious and quiet. He did not seem to feel the necessity to comment and exclaim upon everything they saw. And so she was able to become absorbed in the beauty of the paintings.
They stood for a whole hour in Somerset House, gazing at walls covered with canvases. And until she thought about it, it did not seem at all unnatural when a party of schoolboys invaded the room to have Piers encircle her waist with one arm and draw her protectively against his side. He appeared to do so quite unconsciously and continued to gaze upward.
She relaxed against him and did not try to pull away even after she had realized that it was not quite proper to stand thus even if he had been her husband. But there was a sweet, seductive feeling of comfort and closeness, with no unease at all. She found that she could even turn her attention back to the paintings and continue to enjoy them.
He smiled down at her after a while, his arm still about her. “Are you still there?” he asked. “I must be an insufferably dull companion, Allie. I don’t think I have uttered a word in the past half hour, have I?”
“But then, neither have I,” she said. “Talking seems superfluous when there is so much to see, does it not?”
“Ah, Allie,” he said, “you are so peaceful to be with. How do you do it? With everyone else I feel the constant necessity to make noise, however meaningless.”
“Perhaps because I am a friend,” she said, smiling up at him. Finally she was uncomfortably aware of his nearness, of his arm about her waist, his shoulder brushing her cheek.
“I wish you did not live in Bath,” he said. “I wish you were still at Chandlos or at least in the village. How dare you move away without my permission, Allie,” He was laughing at her.
The party of schoolboys had moved on long ago. There was only a pair of ladies at the other side of the room, examining a painting at very close range.
“I know,” he said. “Your memories were too painful for you to stay there. That was the real reason, was it not? I’m sorry, Allie. I wish more than anything in the world that I could brin
g him back for you.”
She watched in shock as his head moved the small distance that separated them and he kissed her warmly and lightly on the lips.
“Time to obey that royal summons,” he said, releasing her and offering his arm. “I shall be in Mama’s black book for the next decade if I am five minutes late producing you for tea.”
“That would never do,” she said, taking his arm and smiling at him.
***
Lady Neyland, formerly Mrs. Westhaven, had moved away from Westhaven Park as soon as her son reached his majority, and had remarried very soon after. She and Sir Barry had lived in London or Paris ever since.
However, Alice could remember her from her childhood and knew her from occasional visits into the country since. And she had spent some evenings in company with both her and her husband in Bath the previous year. She liked Piers’ mother.
“Piers,” Lady Neyland said when they were shown into her drawing room, offering her cheek for his kiss, “you are five minutes late. I said four o’clock. Mrs. Penhallow, my dear, do come and sit down. Is the weather not dreadful?”
But Alice found her hand in the large, hearty clasp of Sir Barry before she was able to take her seat. Piers was explaining to his mother that traffic had been slow and heavy on the streets because of the rain.
“Of course,” Lady Neyland said, “and you should have made allowances for that, Piers. You are no green boy. I hope you have an umbrella for Mrs. Penhallow.”
“Yes, indeed, Mama,” he said. “And chased behind her with it from carriage to house so that not a single drop of moisture was allowed to water her bonnet. You see, I am not such a careless creature as you think.”
“It is a great wonder you remembered it,” she said. “Your valet must have reminded you. Is it still Vaughan? An excellent man, Vaughan. Doubtless he has prevented you a dozen times from leaving your rooms without your head fixed firmly on your shoulders. Do sit down, Piers. One gets a crick in one’s neck from looking up at you.”
