White Lace and Promises

by Natasha Blackthorne

  Oh bother. I do care.

  The old woman never changed. Her gently faded beauty, her petite, birdlike build and white hair without a trace of yellow, peeking from beneath a bouffant, stiff-starched, white-lace-trimmed cap. A serene half smile curling her lips. All these things were engraved on Beth’s heart as a vision of home—the only home she’d known as a child.

  A lump formed in her throat—a lump made of pure gratitude and something she didn’t have a right to. She didn’t even want to give it a name. If she’d ever had the right to these feelings, she’d long since proven herself unworthy. Mrs Hazelwood had raised her with better morals than to bed men without the benefit of marriage.

  Well, at least she could stand up straight and be a lady for a few moments. For her benefactress’ sake.

  “My darling girl,” Mrs Hazelwood said in her slightly gravelled tones. The familiar scent of lavender and ginger tea wafted over Beth as the woman came closer and took her hands. “How good it is to see you again. You’ve been hiding from me.”

  “I have been so busy… The shop and the children…” Beth’s voice trailed off. Anything she ever said seemed so inadequate. She didn’t know why she avoided the kindly lady who had saved her from the foundling house. She just did.

  The snapping, ice-blue eyes darted to Grey, where he had been drawn away into conversation with two older gentlemen. “I suspect you have allowed Mr Sexton to monopolise your time.”

  The faint chiding tones pricked Beth’s ears. Mrs Hazelwood had privately made plain that she disapproved of Beth’s engagement. If there was one thing Mrs Hazelwood had endeavoured to imprint upon her youthful mind, it had been an admonition that she should never use her unusual beauty to try to aspire beyond the station of her birth. Wealthy gentlemen could only bring a girl of her origins disgrace and disappointment.

  At the tender age of eighteen, Beth had disregarded this well-meaning advice and reaped unbearable heartache. Would Mrs Hazelwood be proved correct this time as well?

  Mrs Hazelwood sighed, bringing Beth back into the moment. “Joshua says he cannot come tonight. Says the quinsy that is going around is keeping him too busy. I told him a good nephew would find the time.”

  Relief washed over Beth. Thank God. He wouldn’t be here.

  “You’ve gone a little pale, dear,” Mrs Hazelwood said, concerned.

  Beth placed her hand at her throat and laughed weakly. “Oh, I just hate to think about catching a quinsy.”

  It was a perfectly plausible explanation. She’d always had a tendency to tonsillitis.

  Mrs Hazelwood’s thin, white brows drew together. “You haven’t been exhausting yourself, have you? You must preserve your health for your wedding day. I shall have Joshua come and have a look at you.”

  Her heart began beating like a trapped bird. “Oh, that’s not necessary.”

  “Nonsense, we can’t be too careful with the wedding so close now. He can bring you some of those preventative elixirs he prepares. They kept me in fine form all last winter.”

  “Everything looks so lovely,” Beth said, to change the subject.

  Mrs Hazelwood beamed with pleasure. “Do you think so? I always work extra hard on my June ball—it’s a special occasion.” Sadness flickered in her eyes. “Today would have been my Peter’s fiftieth birthday.”

  Peter had been Mrs Hazelwood’s brother, younger by twenty years. He had died when Beth was six, and he was no more than a shadow of a memory—a kind gentleman who had always had sweets for her. He must have been a saint, for he’d been canonised in the memory of Mrs Hazelwood in the way that only a childless woman could dote on a much younger sibling. The venerable old woman had lost her only daughter to the yellow fever years before.

  Beth’s eyes burnt—she couldn’t help it. She’d always been envious of Mrs Hazelwood’s regard for her family, her deep love for both Peter and Joshua. At the age of twenty, the full shock of how little she fitted into this world had hit home in the most painful way possible. It had sent her running to her half-brother’s house. But she didn’t fit in any better there than she had here.

  Perhaps, once she was wed to Grey, with her own home and children, she’d feel less envious of others.

  * * * *

  Just beyond the dividing wall, where the double folding doors had been pulled back to make the two parlours into one large ballroom, Grey stood talking with a Mr Phillips, a local wine merchant.

  But the gentleman’s words fell on his ears unheard as Grey watched Beth.

  She stood next to Mrs Hazelwood, in front of the open doors to the garden. The night breezes were gently ruffling the silver-gilt ringlets trailing down from the knot of hair pinned atop her head. A diadem of laurel leaves and pale pink roses adorned the crown. They gave her an innocent air. He adored her hair. She kept it longer than fashion dictated and, when undone, those silken tresses fell over his naked body like a shimmering veil of moonlight.

  He wasn’t the only one admiring her beauty.

  Though the ladies spared her no more than the barest polite attention, she drew glances from gentlemen of varying ages and marital status. Watching their eyes trail over her feminine curves, watching them fall prey to the same beguilement he had the first time he’d set eyes on her, he clenched his teeth. He wanted to go straight over and pull her away and out of the sight of the greedy vultures. Claim her for his eyes only.

  He took a deep breath and forced the urge down. The last thing he needed was to start acting like a possessive jackass every time another man turned an appreciative gaze upon her. Good God, he’d be in a state of outrage all the time. Unless he hid her away somewhere…

  The idea was tempting, damned tempting. But unfortunately it didn’t seem feasible. His mistress he might keep squirrelled away, but never his wife. He tightened his fists. He’d kill any man stupid enough to try to trifle with her.

  The vehemence of his thoughts startled him. Such a charged reaction was the very thing he hated about this whole business of being besotted.

  Yet he couldn’t fault her behaviour. She balanced the right amount of charm and feminine modesty. A perfect lady. Still, he’d begun to understand the idea behind Eastern harem walls.

  Get control over yourself.

  He forced his attention back to Mr Phillips but couldn’t help taking glances at Beth out of the corner of his eye. Country dancing tunes echoed, deafening and discordant, in the stifling ballroom and settled on Grey’s nerves with all the stridence of a cat in season on a hot summer’s night. An hour crawled by. One by one, Beth’s admirers drifted away, either to join the dancing or to wander away to the card room. Mrs Hazelwood soon joined a clutch of turbanned tabbies but Beth remained staring out of the garden doors.

  He crossed the distance between them, nodding and smiling a greeting as he passed several wallflowers sitting in the chairs along the walls. Then his gaze focused on the line of Beth’s back and moved down to her ass. Her softly rounded, gorgeous ass.

  She turned. Her eyes, large and blue as the sky, were full of wistfulness. Melancholy. Any time they came to this house, she looked the same. A lump lodged in his throat. He wanted to eradicate that sadness. He wanted to give her everything her heart desired. He took the last two steps towards her and stopped.

  “Are we still speaking to each other, Beth?”

  “We must be; you are talking to me now.” Her chilly tone matched the lingering hurt in her eyes. She smoothed the deep blue satin sash tied beneath her breasts, a fidgeting move that bespoke her ill ease with the fancy gown. The gesture drew his attention to her lithesome curves. Her flat stomach fascinated him—he adored touching it, kissing it, pressing his cock against it and letting his seed jet all over it. And he ached to take her into his arms, but here, he couldn’t. He couldn’t even dance with her, for she had never been taught to dance.

  He forced himself to focus on her face, his eyes falling softly over her angelic features. “We shall have to engage a dance master for you, once we are in New Y
ork.”

  Her eyes turned glassy as she put a hand to her lips and nodded slowly. Her shoulders slumped a little. Well, damn. Was the prospect of learning to dance that daunting? What had happened to his fire-spitting little vixen? She was so unlike herself right now. Subdued, timid. She seemed almost a stranger.

  His guts tightened. He knew better than this—they were too different and he was thirteen years older and far too set in his ways. He’d never had a relationship with a woman her age. Not even when he was her age.

  He hated being hard on her, forcing her to attend society functions when he knew she’d rather not. But no matter how young or untried, she was going to have to meet the challenge. Once she was his wife, her behaviour would reflect directly upon him. It would affect his business relationships.

  A girl her age deserved more coddling during this transition. Yet he had to focus on his business and he wouldn’t be able to give a wife the attention she craved. He hadn’t been able to give it at nineteen, so what made him think he would do any better at thirty-six? But he couldn’t help himself—he wanted her for his own.

  Suddenly, he desperately needed a drink. A strong one.

  “Come, let us get you some punch,” he said, taking her hand.

  Chapter Two

  As the cool champagne punch drenched her parched throat, Beth closed her eyes, drinking deeper. God, maybe—just maybe—she’d survive this evening without making some hideous faux pas. After all, the night was half over and she’d kept herself in check so far. She lowered the drained cup.

  Two men approached. One was tall and thin with a beak-like nose, the other short and rotund with a too-ripe red mouth and dark eyes. Her heart jumped into her throat.

  Oh, hell’s bells. Why did it have to be these two?

  Once, when she’d gone to a tryst with Grey at City Tavern, disguised in a widow’s veil, she’d seen them sitting with Grey in the dining hall. Their cold eyes had scanned her person with greedy lust, as if she were subhuman, there for the taking, like a harem girl on the block. She shivered at the memory and the gulped punch settled uneasily. She resisted placing a hand over her belly as the two men stared back at her with curiosity and a degree of warm but respectful masculine appreciation. How perversely amusing. They hadn’t connected her petite, slender form with the veiled woman of the same dimensions who had visited Grey. Of course not. They would never dream he would actually wed a woman he’d met under those circumstances. They thought the woman at City Tavern had been a bought and paid for whore.

  They exchanged greetings with Grey.

  Grey turned to her. “Elizabeth.”

  She startled. To hear her proper name on his lips always surprised her, as though he was speaking of someone he shouldn’t know—couldn’t possibly know. Only as Beth had she mingled with gentlemen like him, and never in a proper way. Elizabeth was the dutiful sister who worked long hours sewing shoes and wiping snotty noses and grimy hands. Elizabeth wore shabby clothes and had no prospects. Elizabeth was real and Beth was a fiction—a make-believe seductress, forbidden to see the light of day.

  Who was she, truly? Dutiful and devoted Elizabeth, or seductive and secretive Beth? Who should she pretend to be now? Was she always pretending?

  “Elizabeth?” The sharpness under Grey’s polite tone made her snap to attention

  “I want you to meet the Honourable Senator Theophilus Dorr.”

  Theophilus Dorr, a venerable hero of the revolution and now a state senator for Philadelphia. She swallowed. Hard.

  “Senator Dorr, this is Miss Elizabeth McConnell.”

  The short, dark little man nodded and smiled. “My pleasure, Miss McConnell.”

  Words deserted her. She offered him a dazzling smile. If there was one thing Beth knew how to do, it was smile at and dazzle men. These were the same men she’d be expected to play hostess to in New York. During their courtship, Grey had explained a little of what would be expected of his wife. Night after night of dinner parties, many of them all-male business gatherings where, as the sole female present, she would be expected to smile and sweeten the conversation. It had sounded so easy when he had spoken of it.

  But now, faced with the very gentlemen she’d have to entertain, her legs went weak and began to quake. She was just a lowborn bastard child, all dressed up in a grown woman’s clothes. How could she possibly make conversation with such a worldly man?

  Dorr’s lips were moving. She couldn’t hear his words over the beat of her heart. God, he was asking her something. They were all staring at her, their faces seemed closer, larger than their bodies. It was so hot in the ballroom now. Sweat soaked her shift under her fine, expensive ball gown. She replied with some inanity. A coil of fear twined through her belly. Had she provided the correct, polite answer? Or had she shamed herself and Grey?

  Dorr smiled, broadly. Relief made her weak. She must have done the right thing.

  She remained the centre of attention. Several other older gentlemen drifted over to join them. Their names became a mixed-up jumble in her mind while she stood smiling and speaking, this time without Mrs Hazelwood to ease the way.

  Oh, Lord. It was one thing to relate to a gentleman in a seductive way. In his carriage, in his bedchamber. There, she possessed a certain power that levelled the game. But, here, having to stand and be a faux lady strained her nerves to the breaking point.

  She squinted against the candles’ bright glare as the air grew hot and so thick with the smell of jasmine that it suffocated her. What good was this farce? These gentlemen would see right through her—right down to the harlot’s heart that beat so rapidly against her ribcage. Her nausea increased—the punch really was not sitting well.

  She clamped a hand to her forehead and turned to Grey. “I don’t feel very well. The air is very tight in here tonight.”

  His expression turned to polite concern. “Of course, my darling.” He took her arm, then nodded at the other gentlemen. “Pardon us.”

  * * * *

  “I spent every day for six years in this chamber.” Beth’s voice echoed in the little upstairs schoolroom that smelt of dust and mouldering paper.

  In the dim light from the window, Grey watched her walk past the semicircle of small desks, then past the larger desk to the hearth. She seemed recovered, but one could never tell with her—like a cat, she hid her weaknesses.

  “Mrs Hazelwood employed a governess, just for me. A frightful old harridan. My palms stayed constantly sore. And, after she left, Mrs Hazelwood sent me to a young ladies’ academy in Baltimore. To teach me to be a lady.” Her delicate shoulders rolled up and then down. “You see how well it took. The other girls knew my situation. They hated me. I wouldn’t tolerate their insults and I was expelled within six months.”

  Never before would she open up about her childhood. Grey had been holding his breath, afraid if he made a sound she’d stop speaking. But now that she’d fallen silent, he had to know. “Did you ever ask her who your father was?”

  “I asked once when I was eight.” Her tone was light. Too light. “Mrs Hazelwood said nothing and refused to speak to or look at me for three whole days afterwards. I couldn’t bear it. I never asked again.”

  He winced. He knew the old biddy could be insensitive but still… “Damn, Beth.”

  “Oh, Grey, please, you must understand how shaming it was for her that her servant—a woman under her care and responsibility—got herself into such a position.”

  How coolly and rationally Beth said that. Grey took a deep breath, trying to ease the ache he felt for her. “Did it never strike you as odd she would go to so much trouble over a servant’s child?”

  “Mrs Hazelwood lost her daughter years and years ago, to the yellow fever. It’s been said that, as a child, I favoured Mary Hazelwood. Blonde hair and blue eyes. It must have softened her towards me. But then, Mrs Hazelwood is very open-hearted—gives to the almshouse and all.”

  “That’s not the same as privately championing a child and raising said ch
ild in her own home.”

  “Well, it is how it was,” she replied in snappish, defensive tones. “You must admit, for such a high stickler, it was an amazing move.” He forced his own tone to be gentle.

  Her expression closed and she shrugged again. “My mother died in her care. I suppose that made the difference. She had such high hopes I would marry a clergyman, be a credit to her. Live up to her expectations of a child of her house. It’d break her heart to know of my harlotry.”

  The ugliness of that last word wiped all rationality from his brain. Anger pounded through his blood and his jaw began to ache. “Beth, stop it.”

  She glanced over her shoulder and arched one pale blonde brow. “Grey, we both know there’s only one reason why you want to marry me and it isn’t for my hostess abilities.”

  “Damn it, Beth. Don’t do this.”

  She rolled one shoulder up to her ear, then turned to the mantel. She struck a flint and lit three candles.

  “Beth, it’s not true and you know it. I have made a place for you in my life—as my wife. Believe me, it’s not something I did lightly.”

  “Ha! Now you regret it.”

  He took a deep breath. “No, I don’t.”

  Damn it. They had spent the whole of their courtship without this topic coming between them. She’d been warm, giving and wholly natural with him. Now she was defensive and defiant. Testing him.

  “You’re going to have a position of respect in my life and you shall have anything you want. You shall have your charity school.”

  Her dream of running a charity school to teach piano to unfortunate but talented girls had given him his first inkling that she was more than a gorgeous piece of petticoat to warm his bed.

  “Won’t everyone simply adore that notion—a charity school for the charity girl?”

  “Beth, it will be something of your own. Something you alone will control. A very different experience for you. It will ease the memory of these years you were powerless.”