She stopped. Was she saying he was wrong? That he ought to be less concerned about duty and good sense and … and plain decency? Surely not. Not Eunice!

“Perhaps?” he prompted.

“Oh, never mind,” she said. “But I do think you should seriously consider marrying her, Edward.”

He drew a deep breath and released it slowly.

“I still want to marry you,” he said. And suddenly he really did, very much indeed. Without further delay. By special license. Then he would be comfortable and safe.

She sighed.

“It did seem a good idea at the time,” she said softly, “and it still would be … comforting to lean upon it. One feels a little bereft to be entirely free. But I do believe, Edward, that everything happens for a reason. The fact that you are now the Earl of Heyward makes a great deal of difference to both of us. It has shaken us out of our complacency. But perhaps it was meant to.”

“You think,” he said stiffly, “that I consider myself too important now to marry you?”

“I think no such thing,” she said, smiling into the darkness of the garden. “Oh, Edward, I know you are not so fickle. But perhaps I think you too important for me. Though important is probably not quite the right word.”

“I have not changed,” he protested.

“Yes, you have,” she said sadly. “Not in yourself, maybe, but in … in who you are. You are the Earl of Heyward, Edward, and the title has forced you to change. As it ought. You have never shirked duty.”

He turned and looked with unseeing eyes through an open French window into the ballroom, where the final dance of their set was in progress. He was feeling remarkably unhappy. How was he to persuade her that she was the only one he had ever considered marrying, that she was the only one he could contemplate marrying with any confidence of finding peace and companionship and comfort?

Peace and companionship and comfort?

From a marriage?

Was there nothing else to be hoped for, then?

And safety. That word too had leapt to mind just a few minutes ago.

Safety?

Yes, a marriage ought to be safe, ought it not?

His train of thought was suddenly broken as his unseeing eyes focused. Sharply.

“Oh, I say,” he said.

“What?” Eunice turned too to look into the ballroom.

“Of all the gall,” he said. “Windrow is dancing with her.”

“Windrow?” she said. “Dancing with—?”

And he told her the whole story of the episode on the road to London, with the exception of a few unnecessary details. In this version, for example, Lady Angeline Dudley had merely been standing at the window of the taproom.

“How typical of you,” Eunice said when he had finished, “to have risked your own safety in order to defend a lady who was behaving so badly from a gentleman who was behaving worse. Especially when you did not even know her. But he did apologize. I daresay there was some decency left in him, then, though that does not entirely excuse him from behavior that was not becoming in a gentleman.”

“And now he is dancing with her,” he said. “And ogling her. And no one but me knows how outrageous it all is. She does not look happy.”

Or perhaps he was imagining that. She was smiling.

“Which is very much to her credit,” Eunice agreed. “Lady Palmer is her chaperon. She is a very proper lady. However, without the pertinent information, she would not have known to refuse him the nod of approval when he came to solicit Lady Angeline’s hand for the set.”

“And Tresham,” he said through his teeth, “is his friend. He has a whole army of such ramshackle friends.”

“But to be fair, Edward,” she said, “he would doubtless not feel very friendly at all to Lord Windrow if he knew the man had accosted and insulted his sister at an inn.”

Edward’s nostrils flared. But he could not, of course, stride into the ballroom to demand that Windrow step away from Lady Angeline Dudley and quit Dudley House without further ado. Or ride in there on a white steed, brandishing a flashing blade in one hand while with the other he scooped the lady up to the saddle before him and bore her off to safety. This was none of his business. And she was doubtless safe from harm tonight, though heaven knew what Windrow was saying to her. He was saying something.

“The set is almost at an end,” he said, “but it is the supper dance. He will be leading her in to supper, Eunice.”

“It is altogether possible,” she said, “that he has apologized abjectly again tonight, now that he knows who she is, and that she has forgiven him, though I certainly would not have done so in her place. Not easily, anyway. He certainly ought to have been made to grovel. Perhaps she is enjoying both the dance and the prospect of sitting beside him at supper.”

It was indeed possible, Edward conceded. She was no delicate flower, after all. Quite the opposite. She was really quite as ramshackle as her brothers, though perhaps that was a little uncharitable. Perhaps she was delighted to see Windrow again. Though she had been outraged when she first set eyes upon him at the ballroom doors, he remembered.

“And perhaps not,” Eunice said as the music came to an end and the sound of voices from within the ballroom rose and the guests turned almost as one in the direction of the doors and the supper room beyond. “And she ought not to be compelled to go undefended just because she is too polite to make a fuss. Come along, Edward. We will follow them out and secure a place at their table if we are able. He will not dare be impertinent in your hearing. Indeed, I expect he will be quite ashamed of himself.”

Windrow would doubtless shake in his dancing shoes as soon as his eyes alit upon the sniveling coward from the Rose and Crown, Edward thought ruefully. And this really was not his business. Or Eunice’s. He did not want her within fifty feet of Windrow.

But she had taken his arm and was drawing him purposefully along with her in the direction of the supper room.


AFTER THE FIRST set Angeline danced with two young gentlemen and one older one—a marquess, no less—before it came time for the supper dance. She had enjoyed every moment, even the labored and florid compliments the marquess had seemed to feel obliged to press upon her while his breath came in increasingly audible gasps and his corsets creaked. She had enjoyed too the brief intervals between sets when she had been able to speak with other guests. She had spent a few animated minutes with Lady Martha Hamelin and Maria Smith-Benn, the outcome of which was that they were to visit Hookham’s Library together the next day.

She had two new friends.

She hoped—oh, how she hoped—that the Earl of Heyward would ask her for the supper dance. She knew it was unexceptionable for a gentleman to dance with a lady twice in one evening—Cousin Rosalie had told her so. It must be rare, though, at a girl’s come-out ball, when everyone wished to dance with her, especially if she was rich and well connected. And she knew that Lord Heyward did not approve of her. Good heavens, could she blame him? She had called him stuffy, albeit in an affectionate way. He may not have detected the affection, however, which was perhaps just as well. And he knew that her accident had been deliberate. He believed she had done it because she was embarrassed to be seen dancing with him.

Anyway, she hoped. It would be the loveliest ending to the loveliest day of her life if she could dance—no, stroll on the terrace with him and then sit with him at supper. Perhaps she would have a chance to redeem herself somewhat in his eyes. She must think in advance of some sensible subject upon which she could converse with him. Had she read any good books lately? At all? She could tell him that she was going to take out a subscription at the library tomorrow because she was feeling starved of good reading material and could he recommend anything that she might not already have read?

And then a double disappointment set in, though actually one of them was more in the way of being an outrage than a disappointment. First she watched Lord Heyward return his last partner to her mama’s side and then begin his journey about the perimeter of the ballroom in her direction. He stopped along the way, though, to talk to a group of ladies, and when he moved away from them a minute or so later, he had one of them—the youngest—on his arm and proceeded to lead her out onto the terrace.

Angeline did not know the lady, though she did remember greeting her in the receiving line. It was impossible to remember every name that had been announced, or even most. Or even some, for that matter. She had remembered Maria Smith-Benn’s name and Lady Martha Hamelin’s because she had met and liked both at the palace earlier. And she had remembered the names of the Earl of Heyward, of course, and the Countess of Heyward and the dowager. And Cousin Leonard, Lord Fenner, because he was Rosalie’s brother and Angeline must have met him at Rosalie’s wedding all those years ago. And there were a couple of Ferdinand’s friends who had been riding with him this morning and whose names she had recalled this evening without prompting. And that was about it. She must make more of an effort in the coming days. She must try to memorize one name each day. No, better make that ten names.

Was it possible?

And then came the other great disappointment hot on the heels of the first—or, rather, the outrage. It came sauntering along in company with Tresham and stopped before her, and there was Lord Windrow, smiling warmly as if he had never in his life set eyes upon her until this evening and had never suggested that she sit on his lap and share a meat pasty and a glass of ale with him.

He had the impressive physique she remembered and the dark red hair, which now gleamed like copper in the candlelight, and the handsome face and, yes, the green eyes that were slightly hooded beneath lazy eyelids. Someone had once mentioned in Angeline’s hearing the evocative term bedroom eyes. This is what that person, whoever it was, must have meant.

Lord Windrow had bedroom eyes. Doubtless he thought of them as lady-killer eyes. Men could be very silly.

“Rosalie, Angeline,” Tresham said, “may I present Lord Windrow, who has asked for the introduction? My cousin, Lady Palmer, Windrow, and my sister, Lady Angeline Dudley.”

Angeline would have burst with indignation if she could while he fawned over Rosalie and kissed her hand. And then he turned to Angeline and bowed very correctly and smiled again with just the right amount of deference a man ought to show to the young sister of his friend. He made no attempt to kiss her hand.

“With your permission, ma’am, and if I am not already too late,” he said, addressing Rosalie oh so correctly, “I shall lead Lady Angeline Dudley into the next set. I will consider it a great honor. Tresham is a particular friend of mine.”

Which was hardly surprising, Angeline thought nastily. It did not take a great stretch of the imagination to picture her brother offering to take a lady onto his lap to share refreshments if he were ever to encounter one standing alone in an inn taproom. She contemplated an outright refusal to Lord Windrow. Except that he had not addressed the offer to her. He had talked of her as though she did not exist in her own right.

Rosalie had been growing increasingly agitated. The dancing was about to resume, and Angeline had been steadfastly refusing all evening to reserve the supper dance for anyone who had asked for it. By this time, Rosalie had just been saying, most gentlemen would assume that she already had a prospective partner, and she was in grave danger of being a wallflower at her own come-out ball. At the supper dance, no less. There could, apparently, be no worse social disaster for any young lady. Angeline, of course, had been hoping desperately that the Earl of Heyward would come along to request the set.

“I am certain Lady Angeline will be delighted,” Rosalie said with a nod of approval and no doubt a huge inward sigh of relief.

Tresham wandered off to seek his own partner. He had danced every set so far, a strict attention to duty that must be simply killing him while at the same time sending his chosen partners and their mamas into transports of joy.