Mary Balogh - The Secret Mistress

Angeline was not delighted at all. But what was she to do short of making a scene? She had already done that once this evening when she had turned her ankle. She would be the talk of London drawing rooms for the next decade instead of just the next week if she snubbed Lord Windrow in front of all her brother’s gathered guests.

She set her hand on his sleeve and contented herself for the moment with assuming a cold, haughty demeanor, similar to the one she had turned on him at that inn.

“Ah, fair one,” he murmured to her as he led her onto the floor, and he had the effrontery to move his head a little closer to hers. “I said it would be a pleasure to renew my acquaintance with you, but I had no idea just how great a pleasure it would be. Tresham’s sister.”

“He would flatten your nose and knock all your teeth down your throat and blacken both your eyes if he knew what you said to me at that inn,” she said.

“Oh, goodness me, yes,” he agreed. “And shatter every rib in my body. If he succeeded in hobbling both my legs and securing both my hands behind my back and tethering me to a post before he commenced, that is. And if he blindfolded me.”

Men and their silly boasts!

“I did not know,” he said abjectly. “I mistook you for a lesser mortal.”

She looked at him with cold hauteur, and he chuckled.

“I must,” he said, “have been blind in both eyes. Which perhaps makes it just as well that that sniveling coward was there to apprise me of my error.”

“Lord Heyward is not a coward,” she said. “Nothing compelled him to confront you or to defend me. He did not know my identity any more than you did. And when you would have left, nothing compelled him to block your way and insist that you apologize.”

He grinned at her.

“Perhaps he is an idiot,” he said, “as well as a sniveling coward.”

She pursed her lips as though she had just swallowed a particularly sour grape. She was not going to engage in any argument with him. She had said her piece.

“You were sitting with him when I entered the ballroom, regrettably late,” he said. “I was told that you sprained your ankle partway into the opening set and were forced to sit out the rest of it. I am delighted that you have recovered so soon and so completely. Or was the injury, ah, convenient? I have noticed that the fellow dances rather as though he has two wooden legs.”

“I was sitting with Lord Heyward because I wished to do so,” she told him.

The music rescued her from even more severe annoyance, and they moved off into the set. Fortunately, the figures of the dance kept them apart for much of the time and there was little chance of conversation. When he was able to talk to her without being overheard, he larded her with extravagant compliments, though they were far more deliberately amusing than the Marquess of Exwich’s had been earlier.

He was trying to make her laugh. He could not try to make her smile because she was already doing it by the time the dance began. It would not do for the spectators to notice that there was something wrong. The rumor mill would jump at the opportunity to concoct some suitably ghastly story to explain her sudden moroseness.

The Earl of Heyward was still out on the terrace, she noticed with an inward sigh. He was still with the lady in blue. The two of them were standing against the stone balustrade, talking earnestly, as though they had known each other all their lives.

Angeline felt a wave of envy.

If only …

And then she remembered again that this was the supper dance and that she would be expected to sit with Lord Windrow and be polite to him. And smile at him.

Life could be very trying at times.

She could positively weep.

Except that this was still the most exciting day of her life. And actually, if she ignored her indignation, she would have to admit that her partner was quite amusing in an entirely silly sort of way. And he was a graceful dancer.

He was very like Tresham, of course. And Ferdinand. And most of Ferdinand’s friends who had been riding with him this morning. There was a whole breed of such men—careless, shallow, amusing. And really quite, quite unthreatening.

She was not at all afraid of Lord Windrow. Indeed, she never had been. She just had no interest in his flatteries and was still indignant that he had had the effrontery to solicit a dance with her—in the hearing of both Cousin Rosalie and Tresham. That was low. Very low.

Who was that lady in blue?

THIS WAS NOT a good idea, Edward thought. It was absolutely none of his business whom Lady Angeline Dudley danced with—in the presence of both her guardian and her chaperon. And no possible harm could come to her. The setting could scarcely be more public, and she was still very much the focus of everyone’s attention.

He did not want to be seen anywhere near her again this evening. He did not want anyone to get the wrong idea. And it would be wrong. His mother and the committee of female relatives were going to have to shift their attention to the alternate list. Better yet, they were going to have to stand back and let him choose for himself.

Eunice had just admitted that she felt a little bereft at the fact that they had released each other from that informal agreement they had made four years ago. She had been acting nobly when she released him, then, doing what she felt she ought to do. She thought he should marry someone closer to him in rank, and she thought that someone should be Lady Angeline Dudley. But even Eunice, with all her intelligent good sense, could be wrongheaded at times. She was suited to his rank. She was a lady by birth and upbringing. More important, she was suited to him. They were very similar in many ways.

The more he thought about it, the more determined he was that it was Eunice he would marry after all. He would bring her around to his way of thinking. His family might be a little disappointed, but they would not make any great fuss. They loved him. They wanted his happiness.

Inside the supper room Windrow was seating Lady Angeline at a small table. It was not well done of him. The ball was in her honor, and she surely ought to be seated at the long table. On the other hand, of course, the whole purpose of her come-out was that she find a suitably eligible husband, and everyone knew that Windrow was of an ancient, respected family and as rich as Croesus to boot.

Perhaps her relatives were all holding their collective breath and hoping no one else would join the two of them at their table.

Eunice drew him inexorably onward. They wove their way past tables beginning to fill up with chattering guests.

“Oh, here, Edward,” she said at last. “There are two empty places at this table. May we join you?”

The last words were addressed to Windrow and Lady Angeline.

It seemed to Edward that Windrow was not at all pleased—until his eyes moved past Eunice and alit upon Edward himself, that was. Then he looked deeply amused. He jumped to his feet to draw back a chair for Eunice.

“Heyward,” he said, “present me to this lovely lady, if you would be so good.”

“This is Lord Windrow, Eunice,” Edward said as she seated herself. “Miss Goddard, Windrow, Lady Sanford’s niece.”

“And now,” Lady Angeline said, smiling brightly, “I will not suffer the embarrassment of having to cover the fact that I do not remember your name, Miss Goddard. I was introduced to dozens of people this evening, almost all of them strangers, and their names went in one ear and out the other, I am afraid. Not that I am deliberately careless of other people’s identities. Miss Pratt, the last of my governesses—I had six in all—taught me that one of the essential attributes of a true lady is that she never forget a face or the name that goes with it. Even the faces and names of servants. She stressed that last point, perhaps because she was in the nature of being a servant herself and knew how often people looked at her without really seeing her at all. Her words were very wise, I am sure. But I am equally certain she never attended a ball of this size and found herself expected to remember everyone and greet them all by name the next time she saw them. So do forgive me for not remembering your name at first. I will know it now for all time.”

The woman could certainly talk, Edward thought as he seated himself. Her silence at the Rose and Crown Inn obviously had not been typical of her at all.

“Your governess’s advice was sound, Lady Angeline,” Eunice said. “But of course it is impossible to know everyone in the ton after a single brief introduction, and no one would realistically expect it of you. The important thing is always to do one’s best. It is all that is required of one in this life.”

Windrow had glanced from Eunice’s face to Edward’s and back again while she spoke. The gleam of amusement in his eyes had deepened if that were possible.

“But not in the next, Miss Goddard?” he asked.

“I beg your pardon?” She looked at him with raised eyebrows.

“In the next life,” he said, “we may relax and do somewhat less than our best?”

“In the next life, Lord Windrow,” she said, “if there is a next life, which I seriously doubt, we are presumably rewarded for having done our best here.”

“Or not,” he said. “For not having done it.”

“I beg your pardon?” she said again.

“Or we are not rewarded,” he said, “because we have not done our best. We are sent to the other place.”

“Hell?” she said. “I have very serious doubts about its existence.”

“Nevertheless,” he said, “doubts are not certainties, are they? I believe, Lady Angeline, you must continue earnestly memorizing names during the coming days so that you may avoid the risk of ending up in hell when you die.”

Lady Angeline laughed.

“How utterly absurd,” she said. “But I thank you, Miss Goddard, and I shall remember your wise words—the important thing is always to do one’s best. My best was never good enough for Miss Pratt—or any of my other governesses—with the result that I often quite deliberately did considerably less than my best. I suppose I was not an ideal pupil.”

“And they were not ideal governesses,” Eunice said. “The primary goal of any governess ought to be to encourage and inspire her pupil, not to discourage and dishearten her. Expecting and even demanding perfection is quite dangerously wrong. None of us is capable of perfection.”

“Hence the need for heaven,” Windrow said. “To reward those who at least do their best.”

“Exactly,” Eunice said, looking steadily into his mocking eyes with their drooped eyelids and refusing to be cowed by them. “Though it is all perhaps wishful thinking on our part.”

“If you could but prove that to me, Miss Goddard,” he said, “I should never again feel the need to try my best.”

Plates laden with appetizing foods of all descriptions, some savory, some sweet, were brought to the table at that point. And another servant came to pour their tea.

Edward looked around quickly and met his sister Alma’s eyes. She nodded approvingly at him.

Then he looked at Lady Angeline. She was gazing back at him, her eyes bright with laughter.

“And what about you, Lord Heyward?” she asked as she took a lobster patty from the plate he offered. “Is it important to you always to do your best?”

She had called him stuffy. Did she want further evidence that she was correct?

“It would depend,” he said, “upon what I was doing. If it were something I knew I ought to do, then of course I would do it to the best of my ability. If it were not, then even my best might not be good enough. If, for example, someone at a social gathering asked me to sing, I might agree and try my very best. But I would succeed only in murdering the ears of a roomful of unsuspecting guests. It would be far better in that case, then, not to try my best. Not to try at all, in fact.”

“Oh, dear,” she said. “Are you that bad?”

“Utterly tone-deaf,” he said.

She laughed.

“But Lord Heyward was devoted to his studies at Cambridge, where my father is a don,” Eunice said. “And he has been devoted to his position as Earl of Heyward during the past year. Duty always comes first with him. He will never fritter away his time and resources in rakish pursuits, which many gentlemen in his position deem almost obligatory, I believe.”