by Jane Lark
When he led her into dine she spoke of her other dancing partners, all excitement, but he sensed that her jubilant descriptions were designed to spur his jealousy and probably a hastier proposal. She need not waste her breath, he’d not bend on his desire to wait a year.
Susan had danced with Harry again, so they came to join Henry and Alethea, and therefore so did Fred, Greg and William.
They made up a jolly, flirtatious table. Alethea glowed in the company of so many young gentlemen all vying for attention. Susan however became more silent, and spoke mostly to Harry who sat beside her.
Henry had a feeling that if she had a choice she would have taken the opportunity to hide.
“How is your flower painting progressing, Susan?” Henry asked from across the table. “Did you master that book?”
She looked across at him and blushed. She was not easy in company still, no matter that she enjoyed dancing. “My skill has improved. I am much better than I was. But I have not copied them all yet.”
“What flowers? What book?” Fred asked leaning more towards her.
Susan began an explanation of her desire to be able to paint images with more detail. Now she had a subject she was comfortable with she conversed more easily, but Alethea then seemed out of sorts.
Henry looked at her and began a private conversation about things they might do together while she was in town. She had always loved to be the centre of attention; perhaps that was why Susan had grown up the shier of the two.
After they had eaten, when the dancing began, Henry stood to the side and watched the girls. They danced four dances without sitting down, he left his friends and walked about the edge of the ballroom, to reach Uncle Casper. Aunt Julie and his parents, who had spent most of the night together. He could not dance with Alethea again, but he could dance with Susan once more.
“Hello, Son, how is your night progressing?” His father gripped his shoulder.
“Good,” Henry answered looking across the room as Susan skipped down the centre of a set with a partner he did not know.
“I saw you taking supper with Alethea…”
“Yes.”
“She seems very happy…”
“Yes.”
“She looks very pleased that you encouraged her to come for the season…”
“Yes.”
The dance came to its end.
“Excuse me, Papa.” He left his father and crossed the room to meet Susan, before another man might ask her.
“May I have your hand as a partner for the next?” he said when she looked towards him. She stood about three feet away. The notes of a waltz began.
“Yes,” she answered, before looking at another gentleman and smiling an apology, as though she had expected him to ask for her hand. The man walked away as Henry stepped forward.
Henry held out his hand. She accepted it, and he lifted it into position, preparing to dance as her other hand rested on his shoulder. His hand settled at her back, his thumb running along the upper curve of her spine, and he looked into those silver eyes. He’d always felt some level of attraction for Alethea… but for Susan… there was a sudden desperate hunger.
Because he had never looked at her properly until this spring. The excuse swept through him. But he ought not to feel anything like that for his future sister-in-law, he ought to feel what he had always felt—nothing.
He turned Susan into a spin, without saying a word, and yet he would swear there were words in her eyes, and probably words in his. They were not the words of an artist’s description. He’d never speak them.
Neither of them spoke through the entire dance, yet her gaze held his, looking into his eyes as though she sought an answer, while he stared at her with a sense of awe.
When the dance came to an end he breathed in and stepped out of a dream, breaking whatever spell had surrounded them.
“Will you take me back to my father, I think I will sit out the next, I am exhausted, and I would like a glass of something.” Her hands slipped from his shoulder and his hold as she stepped back, away from him.
He moved beside her, his hand lifting to hover behind her back when they began walking. “What would you prefer, lemonade or punch? I will fetch you a glass.”
“I’d rather lemonade, but Alethea would welcome punch, I’m sure.”
“Yes.” He brought his arm forward, offering her his forearm as they walked from the floor. She gripped it gently. Her touch did things to his innards that it really ought not do.
He bowed to her slightly before he left her with their parents, then turned away and breathed deeply, trying to draw some sense into his head.
When he returned, Alethea was with her parents too, and so he and Alethea sat out the next dance together, talking.
He had invited Alethea to town to court her, not to develop an attraction for her sister. This emotion was the height of recklessness. When he was trying so hard to be responsible.
~
Alethea set her candle down beside Susan’s bed and slipped between the sheets, lying down beside Susan and she rested her head on Susan’s pillow, so they lay facing one another. “Who was the best dance partner that you had?”
Susan took a breath, Henry, she could think of nothing but his eyes as they’d looked into hers while they’d waltzed. “Harry,” she answered as Alethea turned to blow out the candle.
The scent of the burnt wick carried on the air when the room dropped into darkness.
“Mine was Henry, which is good I suppose…” Alethea said as the mattress moved when she lay back down.
“He is a good dancer,” Susan confirmed.
“I saw he waltzed with you too.”
“Yes.” Susan was glad of the darkness.
“He is being more thoughtful. He is being generous.”
“Yes.”
“And kind to you…” The words were whispered into the dark.
“Yes.”
“I like him more than ever and I believe he is really trying, but I will not let him think he has won me. I wish him to be on his guard and trying hard to win me. He owes me that.”
“Yes.”
“We are well suited. We laugh all the time. Yet I enjoyed the company of every man I danced with tonight, and it only proved to me how many men there are to be met in London, and I might laugh with any number of them.”
“Yes…”
Chapter Eleven
Susan’s hands trembled a little when she tied the ribbons of her bonnet, in her room, as she prepared to go down to the hall to meet Henry and Harry for their excursion to the Victoria and Albert Museum. She had thought of nothing else but Henry in the hours since their last waltz. Her mind was full of him, and it was more than appreciation. She was not a fool.
She ought not to be thinking of him at all. He was Alethea’s beau.
Yet she had become fixated upon the memory of that waltz, upon the detail she had seen in his eyes as they’d stared at one another; upon the sensation of his thumb caressing her back as his hand had braced her, and his hand gently but securely holding hers.
She had no idea how to greet him today. Her tongue might not form a single word. She had become a flustered fool.
She sighed out her breath. The only thing to do was walk downstairs and behave as though nothing had changed.
But everything had changed.
She’d been entirely charmed by Henry, and I cannot be, he’s Alethea’s.
She stared at herself in the mirror. “Stop thinking of him!” But he would not be ordered from her mind.
A gentle tap struck the door of her bedchamber. “Miss!”
“Yes!” Susan called.
The door handle turned and the door opened. ”Lord Henry and Captain Marlow are downstairs, miss.” Yes, she knew. She had heard Henry’s curricle draw up, and Alethea call down the stairs.
“Thank you. Let them know I will be down directly.”
The maid left and Susan looked at herself in the mirror once more. However she
was to face Henry, the time had come.
She picked up her cloak and slipped it over her arm to carry it down as she left the room. When she reached the stairs she could hear Alethea below, speaking with Henry and Harry.
Susan’s heartbeat raced as she walked down the stairs to the reception hall. Alethea stood facing Harry.
Henry looked up as Susan walked down from the last landing, and his gaze struck hers. It was as though he’d slapped her it struck her so firmly. She had not imagined the look in his eyes while they had danced, he was not merely looking at her, his gaze said something else. But it was not the glitter that she had always seen in his eyes when he looked at Alethea.
He smiled. She smiled, and then he looked away, at Alethea.
Did he know how she felt? She hoped he did not.
“You have taken your time,” Alethea accused.
“Sorry I was absorbed in my book. I had forgotten the hour.” Liar. She had been counting down the minutes since Henry had said goodnight to them after the ball.
When she stepped from the bottom stair, Harry came forward. “Good day, Susan, I hope you are looking forward to our outing as much as I?”
“Very much.” She smiled, only looking at him, and trying to think only of him. But she had not felt the same emotions she had for Henry when she’d danced with Harry, or anyone else.
“Let me take your cloak.” He took it from her arm, her fingers trembled when she pushed her spectacles farther up her nose, before turning so Harry might set her cloak on her shoulders. Then she turned to let Harry tie the cords for her. Her gaze caught Henry watching, as his arm lifted out towards Alethea.
Today would be torture.
“Susan.” Henry bowed his head slightly.
“Henry.” She bowed her head too.
That minimal level of communication between her and Henry became the theme of the day. She shared only odd words with him, with a stilted politeness, while about those words Henry chatted amiably with Alethea, and Susan with Harry, and Harry with them all.
If Harry or Alethea noticed Henry’s and Susan’s awkwardness, they said nothing, but it was the way Henry and Susan had spoken to each other throughout their childhood, so perhaps it did not seem strange.
Harry was excellent company, though, and a handsome companion, and he laughed liberally and smiled constantly, jesting about and exclaiming over the displays. He made Susan laugh frequently as she tried her hardest not to look at Henry, even though she sensed him looking at her often.
“Look at this,” Harry pointed at a sculpted stone frieze in the exhibition hall they were exploring. She turned to look but as she did her gaze struck Henry’s. The deep brown quality of his eyes shot a bullet through her heart. He looked away as she turned to face Harry again.
Harry’s eyes were a pale blue, like Aunt Ellen’s, but the colour of his brown hair and his looks were Uncle Edward’s. All of the Marlows were handsome to the point there was an edge that struck a person. If you walked past any of them in the street you would look back to make sure you had not imagined them.
He smiled at her, “You have very pretty eyes, Susan. I will admit. I do not remember noticing before. Have you been hiding your beauty from us all and blossoming in secret, tucked away in your Yorkshire retreat?”
A blush warmed her skin. She had no idea what to say. She had never thought herself pretty but now Henry and Harry had told her that she was.
When they returned to the house, Susan’s mother offered Henry and Harry tea but they declined.
Relief gripped at Susan when they said their goodbyes, and then she retired to her room, desperate to pull herself together and stop herself from thinking of Henry.
~
Damn. Damn!
Emotion swayed through Henry. It was not just attraction, nor affection, it was something more intense.
Susan had glanced at him numerous times, then looked away, and yet in those moments it was clear to him that whatever he felt—she felt it too.
It was absurd. Ridiculous. He had known her for years. He’d spent all his life carelessly disregarding her. Yet now… Now he’d discovered he cared for something. He cared about her.
He flicked the reins of his horses. Harry sat beside him, speaking of the evening he had planned and the things he wished to do before he returned to his regiment. Henry could not focus on a word.
Susan. Why Susan?
They had never even been particularly friendly until this year. Why Susan?
He had spent the afternoon with Alethea, the woman he was supposed to be courting, looking at her sister, only hoping that at any moment Susan might look at him—and when she did…
Damn. He’d wanted to kiss Susan even as Alethea’s fingers had lain on his arm.
He had always known that he had a reckless nature, a wicked streak. He had never foreseen such folly as this, though.
For the next week, when he called upon Alethea, to fulfil the promise he’d made to her, it was with a darker intent. He longed to see Susan, to spend time alone with her and explore what the hell it was that had possessed him. Yet clearly she had no desire to know. She had taken to rebellion and run. Hiding from whatever it was—and him…
Even when he brought others with him, in the hope of flushing her out of her hiding places, his plan did not work. Yet maybe that was for the best, and this would pass.
Chapter Twelve
When the day of Sarah’s debut ball arrived, Susan let the maid dress her slowly, without urgency. Every moment she could delay, she wished to delay. She had spent all day considering feigning a headache, but Alethea knew her too well she would have known it was feigned.
Susan breathed deeply as the maid dressed her hair. In her head she heard Henry telling her how pretty her hair had looked at the last ball.
She had not seen him for a week. He had called here daily, to visit Alethea, but on every occasion Susan had found a reason to escape the drawing room before he entered, even though he’d frequently arrived with William or another of Harry’s cousins. She’d presumed Henry had brought the others to entertain her, but she did not need Henry interfering with her life.
Yet if he and Alethea married, when her father passed away, Henry might order her life as he wished. That thought had become unbearable.
She could not live with them. Not now. Not when she had feelings for Henry that she should not have.
When she faced herself in the mirror, she faced a woman she did not know.
She’d known for years that her future would be spinsterhood—a life dependent on her father and then Henry. Nausea spun through her stomach. Her future had to change.
She had to consider marriage. She had to find a husband. She could not live with Henry and Alethea.
The door was knocked, and then opened. Alethea swept in, looking beautiful as she always did. She had chosen to wear a pale almost luminous grey. It made her eyes shimmer and the colour a dozen times more striking.
Susan was wearing a lime green. It was a very unusual colour for her, and yet her mother had persuaded her to take it. But it would make her stand out in the ballroom and she did not wish to draw people’s attention. She should not have let her mother persuade her to buy it.
“Oh.” Alethea stopped and stared at her, “my goodness. You look… wonderful. I have never seen you look so well. Who would have thought that such a vibrant colour would suit you, but with your brown hair and pale eyes… You look magnificent.”
“Thank you.” Although she was not sure she wished to look magnificent. She would rather be obscure. Yet, if she must find herself a husband…
“But take your spectacles off. You cannot wear them with your hair dressed, they make the whole thing look silly.”
Alethea reached out and took Susan’s spectacles off, as the maid stepped back and bobbed a curtsy. Alethea handed Susan’s spectacles to the maid, then gripped Susan’s hand and pulled her into motion.
They walked downstairs together.
Two foo
tmen stood in the hall, awaiting them with their shawls. Susan turned as the man draped hers across her shoulders. She shivered, but not because she was cold. The evening was quite warm.
When they sat in the carriage, travelling the short distance to Uncle Robert’s town house, she shut her eyes, as if by doing so she could hide from all that might come.
How would she choose a husband? How might she find someone who would like the things that she liked? Someone whom she might talk to. Someone who would make her feel comfortable.
The thought of marriage terrified her more than seeing Henry. Her heartbeat quickened the closer she came to his home. Rain joined in the rhythm of her heart, hammering upon the roof of the carriage.
They stopped at the end of a queue of carriages when they neared the house, and then the carriage crept along, as those before theirs deposited guests at the door.
The rain continued its drum beat on the carriage roof.
Nausea turned Susan’s stomach over. She pulled her shawl a little tighter about her, then her fingers played with its fringe while they awaited their turn.
When the carriage pulled up outside the house in Bloomsbury Square, her heartbeat leapt into a rhythm of panic. She could not do this, she wished to turn about and run—to scream at the horses and tell them to take her away.
Once her mother and Alethea had alighted, she took her father’s hand. Her mother and Alethea ran up the steps and into the house under the cover of an umbrella as Susan stepped down on to the pavement. A footman came forward to offer the protection of an umbrella. The rain pattered on that as her father took it from the footman’s hand, still holding Susan’s hand too. He walked with her, leading her up the steps to the front door which was swiftly opened to let them in out of the rain.
Her heart beat so hard she could hear the rhythm in her ears.
When she walked into the hall she was greeted with the sight of Henry holding Alethea’s hand and pressing it against his lips.
Susan longed to turn away, but Sarah had already caught her eye, so she could not. “Susan!” she called across the hall.
