by Wilma Counts
“Of course,” Lady Cowper agreed. “We delight in welcoming gentlemen such as yourself.”
As he and Retta moved on, Jake waited until they were out of earshot and asked, “How did I do?”
She tapped his arm with her fan. “You know very well that you did splendidly, you arrogant man!”
He chuckled as the orchestra was emitting the first notes of a waltz. “You did promise me the first waltz, did you not?”
For several minutes, he just marveled at having her in his arms again. “I have missed you so much,” he said softly, drinking in that beguiling flowery-woody scent of her hair. “When this night is over, there is much that I must tell you.”
“All those secrets you have withheld from me?” she teased.
“Well, yes, that too.” He splayed his hand on her back and pulled her closer. They simply reveled in the swirls of the dance, and he knew from a small sigh that she regretted the end of it as much as he did.
* * * *
Retta was feeling exuberant as they left the dance floor. So far, the evening was perfect. Jake had clearly charmed the patronesses of Almack’s—those most particular arbiters of London society. And he had said he loved her. True, he had made that statement in a rather off-hand way, but he had said it. She could not wait to tell him—and show him—just how much she returned that sentiment!
Suddenly a tall man standing on the edge of the dance floor, beside a pretty woman in a fashionable gown of sunny yellow, said in a loud, surprised voice, “Jake?” He grabbed Jake’s other elbow and jerked him around so hard that Retta lost her very light grip on his arm. “Jake! Just what the h— What are you doing here? In London? At this ball? We thought—we were sure you were still in France! Why, we had a letter just last week—and here—here—”
“Oh, God,” Jake said in a stricken tone. “Not here, Burwell.”
Retta, concerned at what she perceived as pain in Jake’s voice, quickly took charge. “The library is just down the hall from the ballroom entrance,” she said, glad that she had allowed Rebecca to show the place off to her on a call one afternoon.
Burwell’s outburst had attracted a good deal of attention, and the crowd parted as they made their way across the ballroom. Retta was aware that they had picked up an entourage as they went: the woman in a sunny yellow ball gown clung to the man’s arm and Uncle Alfred fell into step beside Retta, who led the way to the library. It was well lit, intended, she supposed, as a place for guests to seek a temporary respite. She could hear the buzzing behind her. Burwell. Burwell. I know I know that name. Ah! I have it! The Marquis of Burwell. Heir to the Duke of Holbrook. But why—? How does Jake—?
Her thoughts were abruptly interrupted as the five of them went through the library door. She was vaguely aware of others crowding in behind them.
Burwell stopped abruptly in the middle of the room and whirled around to face Jake. He was obviously angry. “Well? I do hope you have a credible explanation for this. Or maybe you just forgot you had a family?”
“No, I did not forget. I—I was not free before.” Jake sounded somewhat uncertain of himself—a condition that Retta thought she had never seen in him before. He put an arm around her waist and drew her close. She felt his arm trembling. “Lady Henrietta Parker, may I present to you Herald, the Marquis of Burwell and Deirdre, Marchioness of Burwell? My brother and his lovely wife.”
“B-Burwell?” she stuttered. “Your b-brother?” She quickly recovered herself, incongruously thinking, Miss Pringle trained her girls well. She curtsied to the Marquis and his wife who acknowledged her politely; then she waited as impatiently as she supposed they did for Jake’s explanation. She felt Uncle Alfred at her other side and then Aunt Georgiana pushed through the gathering crowd at the door to stand with Uncle Alfred.
There was a long, heavy silence.
“Well?” the marquis demanded, then his voice broke and he opened his arms. “For God’s sake, Jake, we’ve not seen you in more than ten years!” He enfolded Jake in his arms and said against his brother’s neck, “Years!” He stepped away enough to allow his wife to hug Jake as well.
“We truly have missed, you know,” she said.
“Now, just what is going on here, Jake?” The marquis was back to sounding demanding, but both his and his wife’s eyes showed glittery moisture. “Surely you cannot think you would be unwelcome in your own family? Not even you could hold a grudge that long and all your letters—”
“No. No, it was nothing like that at all.” Jake’s voice sounded a little “watery” too.
Retta saw him look about the room, his gaze resting on Lord Peter Fenton who had pushed into the room. Then he glanced at her uncle and both men nodded to him.
“Let us all sit down,” Jake said, drawing Retta onto a couch with him as Burwell and his wife took the matching one opposite them. Retta saw that Lord Fenton was trying to close the library door against gawking onlookers.
“You will not deny me entrance to a room in my own house,” Rebecca said in a shrill voice. Fenton stepped aside and Rebecca was followed by her husband, and Melinda, and then Richard and Gerald and several others, including Lady Sefton, before Fenton succeeded in closing the door. Retta closed her eyes for a moment. My whole family. My whole family is to witness . . . but she could not complete that thought because she did not know what was going on. But Jake still had an arm about her shoulders, so maybe it was not so very bad.
* * * *
Jake bent his head close to Retta’s and whispered, “Trust me, my darling. This changes nothing between you and me. Nothing.”
Then he sat up straighter and faced his brother. “I could not contact you, B’well,” he said using the name the siblings had called the heir in the nursery rooms, “because I was—until yesterday—working on an assigned mission.”
“What ‘mission’ kept you from your own family?”
Sensing some apprehension in Retta, Jake sighed. “It’s a long, long story, my brother.”
“I cannot wait to hear it,” Burwell said.
“Nor can I,” Retta muttered, moving away slightly.
Jake looked at Retta, but she refused to meet his gaze. He drew a deep breath and started reciting, just as though he were giving a military report—which, to some extent, he supposed he was. “I have not been an ordinary soldier since my first year in India.”
Burwell interrupted. “But you were—you are in the army, are you not? Father did buy you a commission. All those letters—the latest ones from ‘Major’ Bodwyn, sent from France.”
“That is true. But in India and then in the Peninsula I served with the Duke of Wellington—he was not a duke then, of course. I was a ‘corresponding officer’—a spy if you will.”
“We like to call it intelligence work,” Fenton put in.
Burwell turned to this voice. “Fenton? You knew he was in England and did not tell me when I saw you at White’s just a few nights ago?”
“Couldn’t. Just hear him out.”
“After Napoleon abdicated, the duke—Wellington, that is—asked me to help uncover spies that we knew to be passing to the new French government a remarkable amount of very accurate information—impeding negotiations in Paris and then at the Congress in Vienna.”
“Why you? Why all this secrecy from your own family?”
Jake could tell that his brother was really trying to understand. “You know that languages and dialects have always come easily to me.”
“I know you used to get all the best parts in the plays we did as youngsters.”
“Yes. Well. The duke wanted someone to slip into England to work on the docks, for we thought the conduit must be with ships sailing regularly to and from France. We were right, up to a point.”
“Oh, good Lord! Have I interfered in an official action of the government? Are you even now— If only you had contacted me . . .” his b
rother’s voice trailed off as he looked from Jake to Fenton and back.
Fenton stepped in from where he had been standing since most of the chairs in the room were occupied. “The mission is over. With Lord Alfred Parker’s invaluable aid, we dealt with it just last night. Major Lord Jacob Bodwyn is now free to be himself again.”
“Whoever that might be,” Retta muttered.
Jake felt his heart sinking as she seemed to be putting emotional distance between them.
Rebecca stood up and virtually screeched at Retta. “A lord? He is the son of a duke?” She emitted a harsh, mirthless laugh. “I cannot believe it. And you were teaching him how to become a gentleman? Oh, this is rich! Preposterous! Well, I won’t have it! No wonder he fooled Lady Sefton and Lady Cowper!” She pointed a finger at Retta. “This means I won the bet after all—you did not train a common dockworker to become a gentleman. He was a gentleman all along! So I won. I will come by tomorrow to collect my new mare.”
“No,” Retta protested with what might have been a sob. “This cannot be happening.”
There was a general buzz of conversation now. Gerald stepped forward from where he had been standing with Fenton and some others and said firmly, “Sit down, Rebecca, and watch your tongue. You are creating a scene for which you may be sorry later.”
“You cannot talk to me like that in my own home. Lenninger,” she wailed, but she did sit down.
Her husband patted her shoulder. “It’s all right, my love, we will get this sorted out.”
“But I won.”
“No, Rebecca, you did not.” Gerald’s tone was calm and authoritative. “Think. You chose that particular man on the docks. The mistake was yours. The bet is simply nullified.”
“He’s right, Rebecca,” Richard said from the back.
“Oh. Oh. Oh,” she wailed. “You two always did take her side! And now you are doing it again! And now you have ruined my ball. I hate you. I hate all of you.”
She started to run from the room, but Gerald grabbed her arm and pulled her away from the door.
“Oh, no you don’t,” he said. “You are not running away from this. It is as much your fault as anyone’s. And you cannot run through that ballroom crying your eyes out and making the situation worse, bringing scandal on all of us.”
Her husband came to put an arm around her and murmur soothing words to calm her. She allowed herself to be pampered into some semblance of control, but refused eye contact with either Gerald or Retta.
“She did not mean to say that,” Lord Lenninger said to the room at large. “It is her condition you know. Come, now Rebecca. We must return to the ball—we must carry on. Melinda will help us. The three of us, along with Mama, will see that our guests are properly cared for. I’ll ask the musicians to give us another waltz.”
He and Rebecca, with Melinda right behind them, left the room and while those remaining in the room were still staring at each other silently, they heard the first strains of a waltz starting.
Finally, Retta stood up. “I have had enough of this ball. The rest of you may stay and put as good a face on it as you can manage. I am leaving.”
“I shall come with you,” Jake said.
“No. I never want to see you again.”
“Oh, Retta,” Lady Georgiana said, rushing to her side as Retta moved purposely toward the door.
“Rest assured, my lady, you absolutely will see me again,” Jake called after her, his jaw clenched.
Chapter 21
Retta stood in silent fury and humiliation as she waited for the servant to find their cloaks for her and her aunt and uncle, neither of whom was willing to let her return home alone. Even when she at last entered the carriage and scooted to the far side of the seat she shared with Aunt Georgiana, she said nothing. She just wanted to hide. She wished the coachman had not bothered to light the lantern inside the vehicle. As the carriage rolled away from Lenninger House, Aunt Georgiana heaved a sigh and patted Retta’s knee.
“Retta, my dear, I know you are feeling let down—”
“Let down? Let down, you say? What an understatement! I have never been so embarrassed in my entire life!” She stifled an angry sob. “I thought he cared for me and all the while—all these weeks and months—he—he must have been laughing at me. Laughing! And now Rebecca will spread it all about and the whole world will be laughing at me!”
“But, my dear,” her aunt pursued gently, “you have never been one to care overmuch what others thought of you. You have always gone your own way and let the devil take the hindmost.”
Barely able to keep from breaking into great shaking sobs, Retta said, “I do not ever remember anyone setting out so deliberately to humiliate me before. And that is exactly what Jake-whatever-his-name-is did!”
Uncle Alfred cleared his throat. “I think you are being a might harsh on the lad.”
“Harsh? Uncle Alfred, have you any idea how really hard I worked at making those inane lessons worthwhile—and it was all for nothing. Nothing. And you! Just how long have you known about him? How long did you let me go on making an utter fool of myself?”
“Well, let me see . . . I think I have known who he was for about a month. But Retta, you must try to see reason. Jacob Bodwyn had a job to do, and, I must tell you, he did it at no small sacrifice to himself. At first he may well have seen the irony of a duke’s son being taught how to be a gentleman, but at the time, that was merely a means to an end for him—the end, of course, being to stop those spies who would bring harm to England.”
“What spies? Who were they?” Retta asked, her interest finally focusing on something other than her sense of hurt and loss.
“Yes, I have wondered the same thing,” her aunt said.
Now it was Uncle Alfred’s turn to heave a sigh. “You won’t want to hear this, Georgiana,” he began. He then filled them in on the entire story. Both women sat silent until he had finished.
Aunt Georgiana was the first to speak and there were shocked tears in her voice. “You are right, Alfred. That was not something I wanted to hear at all. Celeste? How she must have resented us all these years.”
He wiped a hand over his face. “I find it difficult to understand either her role in the whole mess or Lindstrom’s. I never would have dreamed he would betray his own country for a paltry piece of property in the Loire valley.”
“Well, it was not merely property, was it?” Retta asked, feeling sorry for both her aunt and uncle. “It appears there was some prestige to go along with that. And Madame Laurent—she must have been sincere in wishing a better life for her son.”
“I am certain she was,” her aunt replied, and gave her brother a sad look as she added, “but they both betrayed long-standing friendships. That is hard to forgive.”
Retta was spared having to reply to that, for the carriage had arrived at Blakemoor House and they all went immediately to their rooms. Retta supposed that her aunt and uncle would sleep as little that night as she would.
The next morning, she gave Jeffries strict orders that should Lord Jacob Bodwyn call, she was not at home. The following morning, she issued the same order and felt some bit of satisfaction when Jeffries reported both days that he had called. However, she was not best pleased in learning that her uncle, and then her aunt, too, had received him. And, truth to tell, that satisfaction was tempered by regret, but she could hardly back down, could she? When he failed to call on the third day and the day following, she began to feel panicky at the thought of never seeing him again.
She was angry and hurt that she had been played for a fool all these weeks and months, but when she let her guard down on her resentment, memories intruded and overwhelmed her: memories of sharing small jokes, the feel of his arms around her, the tenderness of his lovemaking. She avoided both the music room and the morning room, for they reminded her of him too much. She ignored her uncle’s advice when he
said at breakfast the second morning after the ball, “I think you should talk to him, Retta. Work this out.” Her one consolation was that there was no danger of her losing Moonstar now. She cried into the soft warmth of the mare’s neck. She cried far too often as some small thing ignited a memory. Her future looked bleak, but she could not bring herself to deal with it just yet.
* * * *
For Jake, the days following the Lenninger ball were some of the busiest, most emotional days of his life. He had gone home to Holbrook House that night with his brother and they had spent hours after Deirdre had retired just catching up with each other. He learned that his father and the other two brothers, as well as his sister Elizabeth and their families, would be arriving within the week for the season. Jake looked forward with eager anticipation to seeing all of them again.
The thing that would make that reunion complete would be if he could introduce his new wife to the lot of them. But that looked unlikely so long as Retta persisted in avoiding him. Deirdre had informed him that apparently Lady Henrietta was not only not receiving many visitors, but that she was not making any calls herself. He found that bit of news depressing; it hurt him to think that she was experiencing such anguish, but so long as she refused to see him, he could see no way of making amends.
The second time he called at Blakemoor House, he asked to see Lady Georgiana. She did not seem surprised at his request.
“I must admit, my lady, that I am embarrassed to be talking with you about Retta and me,” he began. She had received him in the drawing room and invited him to join her for tea. She merely raised an eyebrow, and he felt like a bumbling schoolboy, but he plunged on. “I mean, I know you know about us—really know, that is—and the thing of it is that she simply must agree to marry me. I mean—”
“I know what you mean, dear boy,” she said, letting him off the hook. “And I quite agree. My niece is impetuous and stubborn, as you must surely know by now, but rarely have I seen her be unfair. I know she cares for you, so I guess my best advice is to just give her time.”
