The Last Waltz

by Mary Balogh

  And he spent a good deal of time with his steward, sometimes in the study, more often out of doors about the estate. He inspected all his farms, which were not very active now that it was winter. But the relative idleness of the farmers gave him the opportunity to talk with his tenants and his laborers and listen to their comments and complaints. Most of the latter concerned repairs that were too slow in getting done.

  It was in the nature of workers and tenants, Charles Monck explained when questioned afterward, to believe that they had only to ask for something to have it granted. They invariably assumed that their employers were made of money.

  He had a point, the earl agreed. He had been a businessman, an employer, long enough to know that a large number of workers were only too ready to take as much as they could while giving, as little as possible in return. But he knew too that there was an at least equally large number who gave an honest day’s work in expectation of an honest day’s wage—but who were sometimes not accorded quite that wage.

  He would need more time to assess the situation at Thornwood, he thought, to feel quite satisfied that everything was running as he would wish if he had the direct oversight of its operation. Ideally, he would need to observe the working of his farms over spring and summer and harvest. Since that would be impossible, he must do the best he could in the short time available to him.

  He tried to resist the impulse to become too involved in Thornwood affairs.

  In his spare time—or so he sometimes described it to himself with wry humor—he gave dancing lessons. He taught the quadrille, the cotillion, the waltz, though sometimes the lack of other couples to make up a set made matters tricky. After that first day, when he had been thoroughly convinced that Margaret must have been born tone deaf and with two left feet, he found that she improved steadily. His cousin might never be a naturally graceful dancer, but she would be proficient enough to acquit herself adequately in the ballroom. She was learning to relax. More important, she was learning to enjoy herself. She sparkled as she danced. She had stopped giggling.

  The countess did not attend any more dancing lessons. When he commented on her absence at the dining table one day, she told him that her mornings were necessarily filled with preparations for the house party and that she needed to spend her afternoons with her daughters.

  “Bring them to the ballroom with you,” he suggested.

  Her lips compressed in that way she had of looking severe and disapproving and older than her years. “Is that a command, my lord?” she asked him.

  She could be intensely irritating. He hated those words of apparently docile submissiveness, which were always accompanied by her look of ice. For one moment he was tempted to tell her that yes, by God, it was a command and that she had better obey it if she knew what was good for her. But he would not give her the satisfaction of being able to look upon herself as a martyr.

  “It is a request, my lady,” he replied with excessive politeness.

  She had not come—and he was glad of it. He wanted no repetition of that one afternoon. Somehow he must avoid waltzing with her at the Christmas ball. It should be easy enough. She was quite determined not to dance at all. And there would be plenty of other ladies only too eager to dance.

  One day he was so busy that he missed luncheon—and he had breakfasted early. The dancing lesson was to be at four o’clock, as usual. But there was some time left before then that he would steal for himself, his lordship decided, though there were doubtless a thousand and one things he should be doing if he gave thought to the matter. He would not waste part of this stolen time eating. He was not particularly hungry anyway.

  He strolled along the wooded bank of the river, which flowed to the east of the house and wound its way behind the hill to the north. He found the gamekeeper’s hut in which he had spent so many hours during his youth. It was unlocked. It was clean and tidy inside and kept in readiness for an inhabitant, with logs piled neatly in the corner by the fireplace, though he had discovered a few days earlier that Pinky no longer lived there all the time—he had taken a small cottage in the village. But the hut, empty though it was, brought back memories—happy memories. The earl sat by the window, looking out at trees and the river for all of half an hour.

  Not that he had spent the whole time reliving happy memories, he thought ruefully at last. Or not happy memories from his boyhood, anyway. He had been thinking of her— of the lovely, eager girl she had been; of the strange something that had happened to her bright, dark eyes when he had first been presented to her, and the corresponding lurching about his own heart; of the way she had always watched eagerly for him at every ball and party after that—she had been too innocent to disguise the fact; of dancing with her until the world receded from around them and there were only the two of them left; of driving her in Hyde Park in a borrowed curricle one afternoon and finding a secluded pathway and kissing her for the first time. She had kissed him back, eagerly, inexpertly—though he had not known the difference at the time—and had rashly gazed into his eyes afterward and told him with passionate conviction that she loved him, that she would always, always love him.

  He got up to leave the hut. But he stared for a few more minutes sightlessly through the window to the river below. It had not taken her long to lose her innocence. She had met Gilbert—he had introduced them—discovered that he was the Earl of Wanstead, was very wealthy, and was in search of a wife. And if Gerard had ever wondered whether she had bitterly regretted her mercenary decision, he had only to look at her now. She had acquiesced in the type of life Gilbert had decreed for them. She still tried to live it. Except when she had waltzed ...

  Her spine, usually so stiff, had arched gracefully beneath his hand, her feet had seemed scarcely to touch the floor, she had appeared to take the music inside herself. Her eyes had softened, grown dreamy. Her lips had smiled. No—-her whole face had smiled.

  And the world had receded.

  He had wondered immediately afterward if she had done it deliberately as punishment for his insisting that she waltz with him. He thought now that it was more likely he had imagined much of it. She had always been a good dancer. It was to be expected that she would waltz well. He had been dazzled by the simple fact of her nearness and the subtle smell of lavender that had always clung about her.

  He left the hut and decided to return to the house a different way. He would take the shortcut through the trees and about the base of the hill. The route would bring him within a relatively short distance of the back of the house. But he could hear voices soon after he had left the trees behind— two of them, one shrieking and one laughing. He soon realized where the sounds were coming from.

  The hill was wooded, though a scenic walk had been constructed over it, the path lined with flowering trees and shrubs, with seats and follies at appropriate intervals along it and the occasional carefully revealed vista over the surrounding countryside. One part of the slope had been cleared entirely of trees so that the beholder could look down from the path above over the gardens at the back of the house, over the house itself, and along the cultivated parkland in front of it. It was a breathtaking view. The slope itself was thick and beautiful with wildflowers during the summer. But both summer and winter it had always been out of bounds to walkers. Taking a shortcut either up or down the slope had been strictly forbidden. Its wild beauty was to be preserved at all costs.

  But down the whole length of that slope, as the Earl of Wanstead watched from the shelter of the trees a short distance away, sailed seven-year-old Rachel, her legs pumping fast, but almost not fast enough for her body, her arms stretched to the sides. She ran in silence and then turned to begin the laborious climb to the top again. And down the lower half of the slope rolled Tess, over and over, shrieking with mingled fright and glee, until she reached the safe haven of her mother’s waiting arms at the bottom. It was the countess who was laughing.

  “Caught you!” she said, picking her daughter up and twirling her about, still lau
ghing.

  “Again!” The child was all flailing arms and legs. She scrambled upward on all fours as soon as her mother had set her down again.

  Ah, his lordship thought, setting one shoulder against a tree trunk, that brought back memories. He had been a sailing ship, a bird, an avenging angel down that slope—until Gilbert had seen him at it one day and had gone off with gleeful haste to report the transgression to his father. One of Uncle’s wild rages had followed. The cane had been brought out.

  It was a happy family group that he watched now. He had wondered. He had seen them together only one other time, in the nursery, when the children had been quietly at work under their mother’s serious supervision. He had wondered if those children were to be pitied. But there could be no mistaking the happiness of the scene before his eyes. She gave her attention to both children. She laughed with them both even though the elder played a seemingly solitary game.

  Oh, no, he thought with a curious pang about the heart, he had not imagined it. Somewhere behind the dark, cold, puritanical facade of the Countess of Wanstead lurked the exuberant beauty of that girl he had loved—and then hated. She had appeared briefly in the ballroom while she waltzed with him. She was fully present now with her children.

  It was a pang of envy, perhaps. They were family. He was the outsider. Always the outsider.

  It was Rachel who spotted him. She had just made her third silent, graceful, solemn descent down the hill and had paused to gaze about her. Her eyes alit on him, and she turned to say something to her mother, who had just caught the younger child again.

  He strolled toward them and watched them all change. The intruder was coming into the family group, and the family was closing protectively on itself. He did not even attempt to smile.

  The countess had put her children behind her and stood before them as if to protect them from harm. She stood straight and dark and—and what? He sensed some strong emotion. He was given the fleeting impression that it was fear. More likely, he thought cynically, it was annoyance that he had come along to spoil the idyll. He should have walked home the more direct way. He should not have come at all—out on this little afternoon escape, to Thornwood in the first place. He had known that memories would be stirred if he saw her again. He had known, surely, that somehow he would be hurt by them.

  “It was my fault,” she said quickly and almost defiantly before he could say anything himself. “I did not see any harm in it. Blame me.”

  Good Lord! She was afraid—for her children. Because they had been breaking what must still be a strict rule. Was she afraid he was about to lay about him with a heavy hand? He clasped his hands tightly at his back.

  “It is still forbidden?” he asked. “Racing down that hill merited a caning in my day—bent over the desk in the earl’s study. One hoped to avoid having to sit down for an hour or so afterward.” He leaned a little closer to her when she did not crack even the semblance of a smile or show any other sign of relaxing. “But I have just remembered that I am the one who now makes the rules at Thornwood. Let me exercise my authority, then. This particular rule is rescinded— completely, for all time. The hill is no longer out of bounds to runners or rollers.”

  But if he had expected a smile this time, a look of relief, a thank-you, he was doomed to disappointment. “It was made,” she said, “to protect the wildflowers.”

  For the space of an hour or two in the library that first morning, when they had planned the house party, there had been some semblance of amiability between them. But there had been none since—he would not count their waltz in that category. She would not allow any pleasantness.

  The younger child was clinging to her mother’s cloak and then reaching up both arms. The countess bent to pick her up. The other child stood where she was, not moving, not smiling. She was a thin, plain, solemn little girl. He looked at her, tipping his head slightly to one side so that he could see her around her mother.

  “What were you?” he asked her. “A sailing ship?”

  “A swan, sir,” she said.

  Ah. Imagining herself graceful and beautiful? Strangely, she had looked both though she was not a pretty child. But she would perhaps grow up to resemble her mother.

  “With this cloak,” he told her, “I believe I would make a magnificent crow.” He spread his arms, grasping the edges of his cloak with his hands.

  There was a little wobble of a smile at the edges of her mouth.

  “Shall we see whether the swan or the crow flies the faster—and the more gracefully?” he suggested.

  “Yes, sir,” she said and turned to climb the slope silently beside him. The countess stood below, holding Tess.

  The crow flew faster though far less gracefully. And it did not reach the bottom—at least, not propelled by its billowing black wings. It tripped over its top boots halfway down and rolled clumsily the rest of the way, roaring with alarm. Rachel was smiling, he could see as he got to his feet and brushed himself off. The younger child was giggling helplessly in her mother’s arms.

  “I believe,” he said, “the swan won on all counts.”

  “You did it on purpose, sir,” Rachel accused, but her eyes were bright with merriment.

  “I?” He raised his eyebrows. “I have murdered my boots, for which my valet will scold me roundly. Would I do such a thing deliberately?”

  But he had interfered in the family outing for long enough. “I have to return to the house for a dancing lesson,” he said. “Do continue playing.” He made them all a bow.

  But Rachel took a step toward him. “Dancing?” she said, and he could see suddenly from her luminous eyes that she would indeed inherit her mother’s beauty. “Oh, sir, may I come and watch?”

  “Rachel!” the countess said sharply even as his eyes flew to her face. She closed her eyes briefly and set Tess down on the ground. “His lordship is busy.”

  “But not too busy to allow of an audience,” he said. “If you will permit it, my lady.”

  She bit her lip.

  “If you will permit it,” he said again quietly. “Not otherwise.”

  “Please, Mama!”

  “I believe,” he said, “it is the minuet that is on the agenda this afternoon—not the waltz.”

  “I will bring both children to watch, then,” she said. “I shall keep them out of your way, my lord. Rachel has a passionate interest in dancing, though she has been told repeatedly that it is—” She bit her lip again and did not complete the sentence.

  Frivolous? Evil? Ungodly? Who had first told her that? Gilbert? Christina? Both?

  “Allow me to escort you back to the house, then,” he said, offering her his arm.

  She looked at it, and he thought for a few moments that she would refuse to take it. But she did so and began to walk with him. Rachel walked silently at his other side. The younger child skipped along ahead of them, humming to herself.

  A family group, he thought. Or what would look like a family group to a stranger. He and Christina—Gilbert’s widow. And Gilbert’s children. They had nothing to say to each other, he discovered, he and the Countess of Wanstead, though it took them all of ten silent minutes to reach the house.

  He was an outsider.

  And had no wish to be an insider, surely.

  Chapter 6

  ALL had been made ready for the arrival of the house guests four days before Christmas.

  A number of extra servants had been hired. Every room in the house had been swept and dusted and polished until it sparkled. Every bedchamber had been prepared and assigned. All the extra leaves had been added to the dining room table so that it extended to its fullest possible length. Great quantities of food and other supplies had been ordered and what had already arrived had been stored away—or already cooked. Crates of wine and other liquors had been hauled into the cellar. One sitting room, which had almost never been used for the past ten years, had been restored to its original function when a crew of hefty servants carried down the old billiard table fr
om the attic and set it up for two maids to clean. The attic had also been denuded of boxes of toys that had been deemed unsuitable for girls and had therefore never been brought down for Rachel and Tess. The nursery had been filled with these new treasures and the adjoining rooms set up as children’s bedchambers. Even the wintry park had been raked clear of leaves and other signs of neglect.

  There was really nothing left to do except await the arrivals, Christina thought finally as she wandered from day room to day room after luncheon. And change her clothes, of course. Indeed, Aunt Hannah and Margaret and even the earl had already gone to their rooms in order to get ready.

  She recognized a reluctance in herself. A reluctance, perhaps, to begin what she had worked hard for during the past week. Life had changed so much already. It would surely change even more drastically in the coming days. There was a certain attraction in the thought, she was forced to admit. She had loved her come-out Season and yet that had been years ago. She had been only a girl. Life had been so very quiet since. And so very dull, a deep inner voice added.

  But her chief reluctance, she knew, had nothing to do with the imminent arrival of the guests, who would change Thornwood and the daily life there beyond recognition. Her real reason for delaying going to her room was that she knew what her maid would have laid out for her there. A new afternoon dress of bright royal blue. It was so beautiful that she could scarcely bear to look at it. The thought of actually wearing it was almost painful.

  She would be different, she thought. The unrelieved black she had worn for the last year and a half was not so very different from the drab, serviceable colors she had worn for years before that. They had come to feel like safe colors, something behind which she had been able to hide. Though she had never thought of them that way until her new clothes had started to arrive and she had tried them on and imagined herself wearing them in public.

  For him to see.

  How foolish she was being, she thought, setting out resolutely for the staircase and her rooms. If she did not hurry she would be late. He had asked her to be his hostess. She must be ready to meet the first arrivals, then.