by Carola Dunn
Lady Wintringham never made a threat she did not have the means to carry out. Recognizing defeat, Edmund bowed and stalked from the drawing-room. He returned to the library to pace the floor.
He loathed balls and routs and breakfasts, where the frivolous gathered to chatter inanities and the spiteful to exchange scandal. Worse was the prospect of not merely attending such assemblies but having to do the pretty to coy misses, vain beauties, and haughty heiresses. Worst of all was the thought of being tied for life to some ghastly chit like Lavinia Chatterton or some cold, proud female like his cousins.
The only person he could imagine happily spending the rest of his life with was Miss Jane Brooke. Yet it was unthinkable for the Earl of Wintringham to wed a bastard—especially as he’d never be sure that she had not married him for his wealth and rank.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“So what’s that urgent you had to call me out to the pastry-cook’s in the rain, Alfie?”
“Her ladyship’s come to Town—Lady Wintringham, that is. You want a cup of chocolate, love?”
“That’d be nice. It’s turned right chilly all of a sudden. Lady Wintringham’s here? Oh lor, she’ll be going to parties and she’ll see my lady!”
“Not likely. She’s not staying long and she don’t go to nobby parties.”
“Whyever not?”
“It don’t suit her conseekence to rub shoulders with them as has more conseekence nor she does, and there’s too many as remembers her pa was just a baronet. Likes to be a big fish in a small pond, she does. Leastways, that’s what Miss Neville used to tell our housekeeper at the Abbey. Thick as thieves, they was.”
“Aye, I mind Miss Neville. The little plump body, weren’t she? But if her ladyship’s not like to meet my Lady Jane, why’d you have to bring me out in the rain?”
“If I was to say it was just to see you, Ellie, would you be cross?”
“You’re a cheeky one, and no mistake!”
“Well, it ain’t just that, though I did want to see you, o’course. No, the trouble is, she’s making my lord go to them parties.”
“Get on! He’s a grown man, she can’t make him do owt he don’t want to.”
“The ol’ witch has her ways. A right Tartar she is when she’s crossed.”
“You mean he’ll be going to balls and that?”
“This very evening, he’s off to the Daventrys’ ball, and her with him.”
“So’s my lady! Oh, Alfie, what’ll we do?”
* * * *
“Shopping is such a bore,” said Jane as the carriage splashed through a puddle and turned into St. James’s Place. “We have been at it all afternoon and I have nothing to show for it but a shawl.”
Gracie raised her eyebrows. “I seem to remember that not two months since you considered the London shops one of the wonders of the world.”
“Compared to Lancaster, they are! I enjoy having pretty, fashionable clothes, but I wish one was not obliged always to be dressed in something new and modish. Though I have two or three serviceable shawls, it will not do if Alicia Daventry recognizes one I have worn a half dozen times before.”
“Miss Daventry is an agreeable girl.”
“Yes, and she regards me as her bosom-friend, which is why we are invited to dinner before the ball. Yet she will not hesitate to mention to all the rest of her bosom-friends—quite in confidence!—that Lady Jane carried that old shawl again. So out we go on a wet afternoon to scurry about seeking a new one.”
The carriage drew to a halt and Thomas escorted them to the door under a huge umbrella. As they went upstairs, Gracie said, smiling, “It is not only Miss Daventry’s friendship to which we owe the dinner invitation, is it?”
Jane laughed. “Her brother has conceived a tendre for me, or for my fortune, but as he is the consummate Town Beau, the marchioness would never give her permission even if I cared for him, which I do not.”
At the top of the stairs, Gracie turned towards her chamber. Jane was approaching her sitting-room when the door opened and Ella stuck her head out.
“Oh, my lady, such shocking news!”
“What is it? What has happened?” Jane asked in alarm.
Miss Gracechurch heard the exchange and joined them as Ella tugged her mistress into the room and closed the door firmly behind them.
“It’s Lord Wintringham, my lady.”
“Oh, what, pray tell me at once! Is he ill?”
“No, my lady, he’s in the pink o’ health, not but what it might be better if he weren’t. This very night he’s going to the Daventrys’ ball.”
Jane sank onto the nearest chair.
“How do you know, Ella?” asked Miss Gracechurch sharply.
The maid’s rosy cheeks grew pinker and she hung her head. “You see, madam, p’raps I didn’t ought, but the fact is I been walking out wi’ Alfred, that’s his lordship’s vally de chamber. And...and I told him ’bout Lady Jane being Lord Hornby’s daughter.”
“Ella, how could you?” Jane cried in reproach.
“He won’t never tell, my lady, honest. He’s a good fella and he took his oath. And if you ask me,” she continued with some spirit, “it’s a good job I did let on or he wouldn’t’ve told me about the ball.”
“Gracie, we shall have to send our excuses.”
“It is much too late, my dear. We ought to be dressing now. If it were only the ball...but we cannot upset Lady Daventry’s numbers at table by crying off at the last minute.”
“My Lord Winter’s dining at home,” Ella said.
“Then we shall go to dinner and make our excuses afterwards, before the dancing begins,” Jane proposed.
“Unthinkable. To claim illness immediately after a meal is to cast disgraceful aspersions upon one’s hostess’s kitchens. I wish you will make up your mind to ending this hoax.”
“I cannot, not now!” She shuddered, imagining the bitter contempt in Edmund’s eyes when he found out. “I shall just have to avoid him all evening. At least Lady Daventry will not try to introduce him to me since she has hopes for her son. And thank heaven Lavinia and the Fitzgeralds will be there to warn me of his movements. But Gracie, if he sees you it will be almost as bad!”
“I shall seclude myself in a corner behind a potted palm with Mrs. Peabody.”
“The old lady who has taken such a fancy to you? Yes, that will do, I daresay.”
“’Tis all well and good, my lady, but that’s not the end of it. His lordship’s going to be at lots of parties from now on.”
“How can he do this to me!” Jane moaned, hiding her face in her hands. “We must go back to Hornby.”
“’Tis not so bad as it looks, my lady.” Ella patted her shoulder. “Me and Alfred, we thought as how if he tells me which invites my lord accepts, soon as ever he decides, you can turn those uns down.”
“An excellent notion,” approved Miss Gracechurch. “I am going to change my dress now. Pray do likewise, Jane, or we shall be late.”
Ella had set out a pretty ball gown of blue crape over white sarcenet, and a wreath of blue silk cornflowers and white daisies.
“Not that one,” said Jane.
“‘Tis the one you asked for, my lady.”
“But I always wear blue when I am with him. He will recognize me at a glance. I know, the rose pink with the matching toque.”
“But you didn’t like the toque. You bought them roses for your head instead, ’member?”
“Yes, but it will hide my hair.”
“And make you look a good ten years older, my lady,” Ella objected.
“So much the better. The earl will not know me unless we come face to face. I wish I dared borrow the marchioness’s rubies. Their magnificence would blind him, since he is used to seeing me shabby.”
“Rubies! That you won’t, or I’ll be turned off wi’out a character. Her ladyship said as pearls is the only proper jewels for a young lady, and pearls is what you’ll wear.”
Trepidation destroyed Jane’s usually
healthy appetite and she did not enjoy her dinner. She was seated beside the Honourable Stephen Daventry, a fair, foppish gentleman in his middle twenties, who was not best pleased when she responded at random to all the latest on-dits. Nonetheless, he asked her to stand up with him for the first dance. She could think of no excuse to refuse.
The Fitzgeralds and Chattertons had not been invited to dine, but to Jane’s relief they arrived early for the ball. As they left the receiving line, Lady Chatterton stopped to speak to another matron with a daughter in tow. Jane seized her chance and hurried her friends off to one of the small antechambers set aside for guests seeking privacy. Closing the door, she set her back against it to discourage unwanted company.
“Lord Wintringham is coming here tonight!”
“Ned? He can’t be, Lady Jane. He’s never been to a ball as long as I’ve known him and he didn’t mentioned it when I saw him a couple of days past.”
“The countess insists that he escort her. I had it from my maid who had it from his valet.”
“Lady Wintringham?” groaned Lavinia. “Surely she has abandoned hope that he will offer for me! Mama has, thank heaven.’’
“What will you do, Jane?” asked Daphne anxiously. “Are you going to let him discover who you really are?”
“Not if I can help it. Please, will you all help me?”
“Of course,” Fitz assured her. “Just tell us what you want us to do.”
“Mostly to keep me informed of his whereabouts. Lavinia, pray stay by me whenever you can, since he avoids you, and Fitz, keep away for he is certain to wish to talk to you. Daphne, if you can bear to absent yourself from the festivities after so long a deprivation, perhaps you could claim to be tired and I shall accompany you to the ladies’ withdrawing room. The less time I spend in the ballroom, the better.”
“He will not recognize you from a distance in that quiz of a headdress,” Lavinia told her candidly.
“That is why I put it on. It is amazingly horrid, is it not? Oh dear, I hear the music starting. Mr. Daventry will be looking for me.”
“I’ll go and see if the coast is clear,” Fitz offered. He opened the door a few inches, sneaked round it and down the short passage, and peered round a pillar. From the rear, he looked every inch a conspirator.
After scanning the ballroom from his vantage point for a few moments, he beckoned and they joined him. “He’s not here yet, unless he made straight for the card room, but he ain’t no gamester. Being tall, he’ll be easy to spot. There’s young Daventry, Lady Jane, with a face like the end of a wet week.”
“Can you see my partner, Fitz?” Lavinia asked as Jane slipped away through the crowd to find Mr. Daventry.
He was easily persuaded that she preferred to be in a set close to the musicians, at the far end of the room from the entrance. Edmund would not see her when he came in. The obvious corollary to this advantage was that she would not see him. Already the flower-bedecked ballroom with its glittering chandeliers was filled with glittering matrons, gentlemen in blue or black coats, and silk-flower bedecked damsels. The Daventrys’ ball looked set to win the accolade of being described as a shocking squeeze.
Jane missed several steps in the more complex figures of the cotillion, in her effort to keep a watch on the entrance over the heads of several hundred guests. By the end of the dance, her fastidious partner appeared to be weighing in his mind the balance between her fortune and her clumsiness.
Fitz appeared at her side and murmured, “He’s not here yet,” so with tolerable composure she took to the floor again for a country dance with Lord Charles.
His lordship applied to the Dashing White Sergeant all the vigour of a country sportsman. Jane was hot and thirsty by the end. The silk toque had miraculously stayed in place but it made her head even hotter.
“Lemonade!” she panted, fanning herself.
“We’ll never find a footman in this crush. Let’s sneak into the supper-room.”
She agreed; Edmund was unlikely to make for the supper-room as soon as he arrived.
Several other people had made their way to the supply of lemonade, champagne, and punch. Jane and Lord Charles stayed there, chatting to friends, until Lord Ryburgh sought her out for the next dance. Her hand on his arm, they returned to the ballroom.
As she stepped through the double doorway, in the centre of one long side of the room, Fitz once more materialized at her elbow.
“Ned’s here! “he hissed.
She did not need the warning. Her gaze had automatically turned towards the entrance, visible now since sets were just beginning to form as the musicians tuned up. Edmund stood there with Lady Wintringham, Lady Daventry, and Alicia Daventry.
Jane thought him by far the handsomest man in the room, though his face was aloof, forbidding. Half of her wanted desperately to speed to his side and bring a warm smile to his grey eyes. Her faint-hearted half imagined his aloofness turning to ice instead, when he realized that she had deceived him.
She spared a moment of pity for Alicia as she turned to Lord Ryburgh and said urgently, “I am still horridly hot. Shall we go out onto the terrace?” Gripping his arm, she tugged him towards the orchestra’s end of the room.
“Is there a terrace?” he enquired.
“Of course, all proper ballrooms have terraces. Those tall windows on the other side open on to it, but we shall disturb people if we cross directly.”
Though he followed her lead, he objected, “I expect it’s raining.”
“Surely a farmer is not afraid of a spot of rain!”
“No, but it would be unconscionable in me to expose you to a wetting. Lady Jane.”
“Let us at least see if it has stopped.” She pulled aside a heavy blue velvet curtain. “Here are the French doors.”
Lord Ryburgh opened one and stepped out. “It is still raining.”
Following him, she held out one hand palm up. “No more than the merest mizzle, and I believe that is stopping. I begin to think you do not want to be out here with me.”
“My dear Lady Jane...” He hesitated as two couples came after them, the girls giggling.
She was afraid he was going to insist on returning to the ballroom. Turning up her face to the sky, she said firmly, “It is quite dry now, and the air is delightfully balmy. I do believe the moon is coming out. Let us stroll in the garden.” She grasped his sleeve and pulled him down the steps to the flagstone path.
The damp, gusty air, scented with some flower she could not identify, was indeed balmy but not precisely warm on her bare shoulders. The moon emerged helpfully between high, racing clouds, to reveal a pretty little summer-house, glassed on three sides, that Alicia had once shown Jane. Thither Jane led her suitor. She was far too fearful of meeting Edmund to consider what Lord Ryburgh’s emotions must be, until, seating herself on a well-cushioned bench, she found him on his knees before her. He clasped her hand.
“My dear Lady Jane, I had not hoped for such a sign of partiality, such encouragement I dare call it! I am all too aware that, though I feel myself in the prime of life, to you I must appear stricken in years.”
“Oh no, my lord, pray do not...”
He took her agitated attempt to forestall a proposal as a polite denial of his venerable age. “Yes, yes, I am a good deal older than you, my dear Jane. You are too sensible not to be aware that I am therefore settled in life, not subject to the whims and crotchets of younger men. Certainly my sincere devotion to you is no whim. I believe we can deal comfortably together despite...”
“I beg you, sir, say no more.” She pulled her hand from his, near to tears. “I am very sorry if I have misled you, but my feelings are not such as you would wish in a wife.”
Agile despite his years, which after all probably numbered no more than forty, he rose to his feet and sat down beside her. “My dear child,” he said with a sort of rueful sympathy, “there is no call for tears. If I have been misled it was by your mama’s hints and my own wishes. Can you give me no hope that y
our sentiments may change?”
“I f-fear not, sir,” she stammered past the lump in her throat.
“Then I trust we can remain friends.”
His unexpected kindness was too much for her precarious composure. The tears escaped and, turning her face to his shoulder, she wept. His arm about her in a comforting embrace, he thrust a handkerchief into her hand.
“I w-wish you were my father,” she muttered into the handkerchief, surprising him into a wry laugh.
“Perhaps it’s a daughter I want more than a wife. Unfortunately it’s a bit difficult to come by the one without the other.”
That drew a watery giggle from her, followed by a shiver as a chilly gust of wind swirled through the summer house.
“Time to go in,” said Lord Ryburgh firmly.
“I must wash my face. There is a side door we can use.”
“Excellent. I must straighten my cravat.”
She tucked her hand confidingly into the crook of his arm and they stepped out into the garden. Another gust whipped her skirts, and then, without further warning, a drenching squall enveloped them. Jane’s thin silk was sodden within seconds.
Hand in hand they ran up the barely visible path, round the base of the terrace, and in through the side door. Her gown clung to her, her toque had collapsed in ruins about her ears, and icy streams trickled down her back, but Jane’s only thought was that she had the perfect excuse to go home.
Lord Ryburgh promised to send a message to Miss Gracechurch, and Jane, her teeth chattering, hurried to the ladies’ withdrawing room. There, happily for her reputation, she found three more young ladies who had been caught by the squall on the terrace.
Not that she cared a farthing for her reputation at that moment. Lord Ryburgh’s proposal had made her quite sure that the only person she wanted to marry was Edmund Neville, Earl of Wintringham—but when he discovered her secret, her beloved Edmund would turn back into “My Lord Winter.”
