Almost Heaven

by Judith McNaught

  Elizabeth watched him make a herculean effort not to further terrify her and to agree with what she asked. “Fine,” he bit out. “I’ll be only a moment behind you,” he promised. “Now go on to my carriage before that crowd out there who’s been watching this whole scene decides to come in here where they can hear as well as see.”

  Elizabeth felt physically ill when she stepped out of the greenhouse and saw many of the people from the ballroom gathered outdoors. Penelope was there, and Georgina and the others, and the expressions on their faces ranged from amusement among the older people to icy condemnation among the younger.

  A short while later her brother strode to the chaise and climbed inside. His manner was more rigidly controlled than it had been. “The matter is settled,” be said, but regardless of how much she pleaded, he would not say more.

  In helpless misery Elizabeth leaned back against the squabs, listening to Berta, who was sniffling in anticipation of the blame she felt she would ultimately receive from Lucinda Throckmorton-Jones. “My note couldn’t have reached you more than two hours ago,” Elizabeth whispered after a few minutes. “How could you have gotten here so quickly?”

  “I never got your note,” be replied stiffly. “This afternoon Lucinda felt well enough to come downstairs for a bit. When I told her where you’d gone this weekend, she gave me some startling news about the sorts of goings-on your friend Charise permits at her country parties. I left three hours ago to fetch you and Berta home early. Unfortunately, I was too late.”

  “It’s not as bad as you think,” Elizabeth lied lamely.

  “We’ll discuss it tomorrow!” he snapped, and she slumped with relief, thinking be meant to do nothing, at least until then. “Elizabeth, how could you be such a fool? Even you should have realized the man’s a complete scoundrel! He’s not fit to . . .” He broke off and drew a long breath, striving to get control of his temper. When he spoke again he seemed more composed. “The damage, whatever it may be, has already been done. I’m to blame for this— you’re too young and inexperienced to go anywhere without Lucinda to keep you out of harm’s way. I can only pray that your affianced husband will take an equally understanding view of the matter.”

  It dawned on Elizabeth that this was the second time tonight that Robert had openly spoken of her engagement as if it was finalized. “Since it hasn’t been settled or made public, I can’t see why my actions should reflect on Viscount Mondevale,” she said with more hope than conviction. “If there is a little scandal, he may want to delay announcing it for a while, Robert, but I can’t think he’ll be so very embarrassed.”

  “We signed the contracts today,” Robert gritted. “Mondevale and I had no difficulty agreeing on your settlement—he was extremely generous, by the way. The proud bridegroom was eager to send an announcement to the papers, and I saw no reason why he should not. It will be in the Gazette tomorrow.”

  That piece of alarming news made Berta let out a muted sob before she lapsed again to sniffling and blowing her nose. Elizabeth squeezed her eyes closed and held back her own tears while her mind tormented her with more pressing problems than her handsome young fiancé.

  In bed Elizabeth lay awake for hours, tortured with memories of the weekend and with terror that she might not be able to dissuade Robert from dueling with Ian Thornton, which she was almost certain he still meant to do. Staring up at the ceiling, she feared alternately for Robert and then for Ian. Lord Howard had made it sound as if Ian was a deadly duelist, yet Ian had refused to defend his honor when Lord Everly called him a cheat—an act many might view as cowardice. Perhaps gossip about Ian’s skill was totally wrong. Robert was a fair shot, and Elizabeth’s body grew clammy thinking of Ian, proud and alone, being felled by a ball from Robert’s pistol. No. She told herself she was thinking hysterically. The possibility of either of them actually shooting the other was outlandish.

  Dueling was illegal, and in this instance the code of honor would dictate that Ian appear—which he’d already agreed to do in the greenhouse—and that Robert would delope— fire in the air. In so doing, Ian would be tentatively admitting his guilt by putting his life in Robert’s hands, which would give Robert the satisfaction a duel provided without the bloodshed, and Robert could then delope. That was the way gentlemen usually dealt with such matters these days.

  Usually, Elizabeth’s terrified mind reminded her, but Robert’s temper was explosive, and he was so infuriated tonight that instead of raging he’d been coldly, murderously silent—and that alarmed Elizabeth more than his outburst would have done.

  Shortly before dawn she fell into an uneasy slumber, only to wake what seemed like minutes later to the sound of someone moving down the hall. A servant, she thought, glancing at the window where pale rays of gray were tinting the inky night sky. She was about to drift off to sleep again when she heard the front door downstairs open and then close.

  Dawn—duels. Robert had promised to talk to her today before doing anything, she thought hysterically, and for once Elizabeth had no trouble waking up. Fear sent her bolting from beneath the covers. Still pulling on a dressing robe, she ran flying down the stairs and jerked open the front door in time to see Robert’s carriage rounding the corner.

  “Oh my God!” she said to the empty hall, and because she was too overwrought to wait and wonder alone, she went upstairs to awaken the one person whose good judgment could be depended upon no matter how chaotic the world became. Lucinda had been waiting up for them last night, and she knew most of what had happened this weekend, with the exception, of course, of the interlude in the gamekeeper’s cottage.

  “Lucinda,” she whispered, and the gray-haired woman’s eyes opened, their pale hazel orbs alert and unclouded. “Robert has just left the house. I’m certain he means to dud with Mr. Thornton.”

  Miss Lucinda Throckmorton-Jones, whose career as a duenna had heretofore included the unblemished chaperonage of the daughters of three dukes, eleven earls, and six viscounts, pushed herself upright against the pillows and gazed narrowly at the young lady who had just spoiled her brilliant record. “Inasmuch as Robert is not an early riser,” she said, “that would seem to be an obvious conclusion.”

  “Whatever shall I do?”

  “For a start, I suggest you cease wringing your hands in that unbecoming fashion and then go to the kitchen and make some tea.”

  “I don’t want any tea.”

  “I shall require some tea if we are to wait downstairs for your brother’s return, which I foresee is what you wish to do.”

  “Oh, Lucy,” Elizabeth said, looking at the gruff spinster with love and gratitude, “whatever would I do without you?”

  “You would get yourself into a deal of trouble, which you have already done.” Seeing the torment in Elizabeth’s face, she relented slightly as she climbed out of bed. “Custom dictates that Thornton present himself and that your brother have the satisfaction of seeing him do so, and then Robert must delope. There’s nothing else that can happen.”

  It was the first time in Elizabeth’s acquaintance with Lucinda that the stalwart duenna was wrong.

  The clock was just chiming the hour of eight A.M. when Robert returned with Lord Howard. He stalked past the drawing room, saw Elizabeth huddled on the sofa across from Lucinda, who was doing needlework, paused, and stepped back. “What are you doing up so early?” he asked her tersely.

  “Waiting for you,” Elizabeth told him, hurtling out of her chair. Lord Howard’s presence confused her for a moment, and then it hit her—Robert would have needed a second to attend the duel. “You dueled with him, didn’t you, Robert?”

  “Yes!”

  Elizabeth’s voice was a strangled whisper. “Is he hurt?”

  Robert stalked over to the side table and poured whiskey in a glass.

  “Robert,” she cried, grabbing him by the arms. “What happened?”

  “I shot him in the arm,” Robert snapped savagely. “I was aiming for his black heart, and I missed! That’s what
happened.” Shaking off Elizabeth’s hands, he downed the contents of his glass, then turned to refill it.

  Sensing that there was more, Elizabeth searched his face. “Is that all?”

  “No, that’s not all!” Robert exploded. “After I wounded him, that bastard lifted his pistol and stood there, making me sweat. Then he blew the tassel off the top of my goddamned boot!”

  “He—he what?” Elizabeth said, recognizing Robert’s roiling fury and unable to understand it. “Surely you aren’t angry because he missed!”

  “Damn it, don’t you understand anything? He didn’t miss! It was an insult. He stood there with blood pouring down his arm, his pistol aimed at my heart, then he changed his aim at the last possible second and shot the tassel off my boot instead. He meant to show me he could have killed me if he’d chosen, and everyone who was there saw it! It was the final insult, damn his rotten soul!”

  “You not only refused to delope,” Lord Howard bit out, sounding as angry as Robert, “you fired before the call was given. You disgraced yourself and me. Moreover, if word of this duel becomes public, you’ll have the lot of us arrested for participating. Thornton gave you satisfaction by appearing this morning and refusing to raise his pistol. He admitted guilt. What more did you expect?” As if unable to bear the sight of Robert any longer, Lord Howard turned on his heel. Elizabeth followed him helplessly into the hall, desperately trying to think of something eloquent to say in Robert’s defense. “You must be cold and weary,” she began, stalling for time. “Won’t you at least stay for some tea?”

  Lord Howard shook his head and kept walking. “I only returned to get my carriage.”

  “Then I’ll see you out,” Elizabeth persisted. She walked him to the door, and for a moment she thought he actually meant to leave without even saying good day. Standing in the open doorway, he hesitated and then turned back to her. “Good-bye, Lady Elizabeth,” he said in an odd, regretful voice, and then he left.

  Elizabeth scarcely noticed his tone or even his departure. She realized for the first time that this morning—perhaps at this very minute—a surgeon somewhere was digging a ball out of Ian’s arm. Sagging against the door, she swallowed convulsively, fighting the urge to vomit at the thought of the pain she’d caused him. Last night she’d been too terrified by the prospect of a duel to consider how Ian must have felt when Robert told him she was engaged. Now it was finally beginning to hit her, and her stomach clenched. Ian had spoken of marrying her, had kissed and held her with tender, possessive passion and told her he was falling in love with her. In return for that, Robert had barged in on him and contemptuously told him she was beyond his touch socially and already engaged besides. And this morning he had shot him for daring to reach too high.

  Leaning her head back against the door, Elizabeth stifled a moan of contrition. Ian might not have a title nor any claim to being a gentleman in the ton’s interpretation of the term, but Elizabeth sensed instinctively that he was a proud man. That pride had been stamped on his bronzed features, in the way he carried himself, in his every movement—and she and Robert had trampled it to pieces. They had made a fool of him in the greenhouse last night and forced him into a duel today.

  At that moment, if Elizabeth had known where to find him, she really thought she would have braved his anger and gone to him to explain about Havenhurst and all her responsibilities, to try to make him understand that it was those things, not any lack in him, that had made it impossible for her to consider marrying him.

  Shoving herself away from the door, Elizabeth walked slowly down the hall and into the drawing room where Robert was sitting with his head in his hands. “This isn’t finished,” Robert gritted, lifting his head to look at her. “I’ll kill him one day for this!”

  “No you will not!” Elizabeth said, her words shaking with alarm. “Bobby, listen to me—you don’t understand about Ian Thornton. He didn’t do anything wrong, not really. You see,” she said in a suffocated voice, “he thought he was— well, falling in love with me. He wanted to marry me—”

  Robert’s sharp bark of derisive laughter rang through the room. “Is that what he told you?” he sneered, his face purpling with fury at her lack of familial loyalty. “Well, then let me set you straight, you little idiot! To put it bluntly and in his own words, all he wanted from you was a tumble between the sheets!”

  Elizabeth felt the blood drain from her face, then she slowly shook her head in denial. “No, you’re wrong. When you first found us he said his intentions were honorable, remember?”

  “He changed his mind damned quick when I told him you are penniless,” Robert flung back, looking at her with a mixture of pity and scorn.

  Too weak to continue standing, Elizabeth sank down on the sofa beside her brother, crushed by the full weight of responsibility for her stupidity, her gullibility, and all that those two traits had brought down on them. “I’m sorry,” she whispered helplessly. “I’m so sorry. You risked your life for me this morning, and I haven’t even thanked you for caring enough to do that.” Because she couldn’t think of anything else to say or do, she put her arm around his slumped shoulders. “Things will work out for us—they always have,” she promised unconvincingly.

  “Not this time,” he said, his eyes harsh with despair. “I think we’re ruined, Elizabeth.”

  “I can’t believe it’s as bad as that. There’s a chance none of this will come out,” she continued, not believing her own words. “And Lord Mondevale cares for me, I think. Surely he’ll listen to reason.”

  “In the meantime,” Lucinda said at last, with typical cool practicality, “Elizabeth must go out as usual—as if nothing untoward has happened. If she hides in the house, gossip will feed on itself. You, sir, will have to escort her.”

  “It won’t matter, I tell you!” Robert said. “We’re ruined.”

  He was right. That night, while Elizabeth bravely attended a ball with her fiancé, who seemed to be blessedly unaware of her weekend debacle, lurid versions of her activities were already spreading like wildfire throughout the ton. The story of the episode in the greenhouse was circulated, along with the added slander that she had purportedly sent him a note inviting him to join her there. More damning by far was the titillating gossip that she’d spent an afternoon with Ian Thornton alone in a secluded cottage.

  “That bastard is the one who’s spreading those stories,” Robert had raged the next day when the tales reached his ears. “He’s trying to whiten his own hands by saying you sent him a note inviting him to the greenhouse, and that you were pursuing him. You’re not the first female to lose your head over him, you know. You’re just the youngest and the most naive. This year alone there’ve been Charise Dumont and several others whose names have been linked with his. None of them, however, was unsophisticated enough to behave with such wanton indiscretion.”

  Elizabeth was too humiliated to argue or protest. Now that she was no longer under the influence of Ian Thornton’s sensual magnetism she realized that his actions were, in retrospect, exactly what one would expect of an unscrupulous rake who was bent on seduction. After only a few hours’ acquaintance he’d claimed to be half in love with her and to want to marry her—just the sort of impossible lie a libertine would tell to his victim. She’d read enough novels to know that fortune hunters and dissolute libertines intent on seduction often claimed to be in love with their victims when all they wanted was another conquest. Like an utter fool, Elizabeth had thought of him as a victim of unfair social prejudice.

  Now she realized too late that the social prejudices that would have excluded him from respectable ton activities had existed to protect her from men like him.

  Elizabeth didn’t have a great deal of time to devote to her private misery, however. Friends of Viscount Mondevale, upon learning of his betrothal in the papers, finally felt it incumbent upon them to disclose to the happy bridegroom the gossip about the female to whom he’d offered his hand.

  The next morning he called at t
he town house on Ripple Street and withdrew his offer. Since Robert had not been at home, Elizabeth had met with him in the drawing room. One look at his rigid stance and unsmiling mouth and Elizabeth had felt as if the floor was falling away from beneath her.

  “I trust there won’t need to be an unpleasant scene over this,” he’d said stiffly, without preamble.

  Unable to speak past the tears of shame and sorrow choking her, Elizabeth had shaken her head. He turned and started for the door, but as he strode past her he swung around and grasped her by the shoulders. “Why, Elizabeth?” he demanded, his handsome face twisted with angry regret. “Tell me why. At least give me that.”

  “Why?” she repeated, stupidly longing to throw herself into his arms and beg his forgiveness.

  “I can understand that you might have accidentally encountered him at some cottage in the woods in the rain, which is what my cousin, Lord Howard, tells me he believes happened. But why would you have sent him a note to meet you alone in the greenhouse?”

  “I didn’t!” she cried, and only her stubborn pride kept her from collapsing in a sobbing heap at his feet.

  “You’re lying,” he said flatly, his hands falling away. “Valerie saw the note after he tossed it away and went looking for you.”

  “She’s mistaken!” Elizabeth choked, but he was already walking out of the room.

  Elizabeth had thought she could not feel more humiliated than she did at that moment, but she soon discovered she was mistaken. Viscount Mondevale’s desertion was taken as proof that she was guilty, and from that day onward no more invitations or callers arrived at the town house on Ripple Street. At Lucinda’s insistence Elizabeth finally got up the courage to attend the one function she’d been invited to before the scandal became public—a ball at Lord and Lady Hinton’s home. She stayed for fifteen minutes, and then she left—because no one except the host and hostess, who had no choice, would speak to her or acknowledge her in any way.