Mary Balogh - The Secret Mistress

No Lady before her name?

She swallowed and gazed into his very blue eyes. She had no choice, really. There was nowhere else to look unless she stepped back, and there was no way of doing that without tripping over her chair.

“Do I?” she said.

“It is not Eunice I love,” he said.

“Oh?”

She dared not hope. Oh, she dared not. Perhaps he only meant that he did not love anyone. Not in that way, anyway. Perhaps he had not changed. Perhaps he never would.

She sank her teeth into her lower lip.

“It is you I love,” he said.

Oh.

Ohhh!

It was precisely at that moment that they both heard the unmistakable clopping of horses’ hooves, and the rumbling of carriage wheels over the cobbles of the inn yard and out onto the street and along it until the sounds gradually faded into the distance.

I AM NOT at all sure,” Eunice said from within Lord Windrow’s carriage, “that we are doing the right thing. Indeed, I am rather sure we are doing the wrong thing. For I did not notice another carriage, did you? Edward must have ridden here, a complication I did not foresee.”

Lord Windrow, seated across one corner of the carriage, his foot braced on the seat opposite, his arms crossed over his chest, regarded her with amused eyes from beneath drooped eyelids.

“My dear Miss Goddard,” he said, “would a man about to race in pursuit of his lady love, whom he feared was being abducted by a black-hearted villain, stop to call out his carriage?”

“You knew, then,” she said, “even when we devised this scheme? But what are they to do now?”

“Ride together on the same horse,” he said. “A means of locomotion that is vastly romantic in theory, deucedly uncomfortable in practice. Hire a carriage. I daresay the Peacock has some rickety old thing that would serve the purpose. It would, however, and beyond all doubt, be deucedly uncomfortable in both theory and practice. Stay where they are until we return for them. That option has the potential for all sorts of comfort. They have at least three clear choices, then, as you can see.”

“We will return for them?” she said. “Soon?”

“Tomorrow morning,” he said, “after we have breakfasted at Norton and taken leave of my mother.”

“But what if there is no carriage for hire?” she asked, frowning.

“Then their choices will be reduced to two,” he said. “There will be less cause for dithering.”

She turned her head to gaze at him.

“You do not really believe they will remain at the Peacock, do you?” she asked. “Edward would be the perfect gentleman, of course, and I daresay there are enough rooms for the two of them. It did not look a crowded place, did it? But even so, Lady Angeline would be ruined. We did not even leave her my maid.”

He smiled lazily.

“I have distinct hopes for Heyward,” he said. “That punch he threw—in front of ladies—hurt like Hades. I can still feel it. I do believe he may not act the gentleman at all tonight. I would not wager upon it, however. He has never been known to set a foot wrong in all of human history to date, and now he has already done it once today. He will either decide that that is quite enough adventure for the next millennium or two, or he will discover in himself a taste for anarchy. One can only hope. As my favorite groom in all the world liked to remark with great wisdom and no originality whatsoever when I was a child, one may lead a horse to water, but one cannot make him drink. And as for your maid, you have need of her yourself. My mother would have a fit of the vapors if you were to arrive unchaperoned, and she would scold me for a month after regaining consciousness. Besides, it may not have escaped your attention that your maid is quite happy to ride up on the box with my coachman and that he is quite happy to have her there. It would have been cruel to them both to have left her behind at the Peacock.”

Eunice sighed.

“I never ought to have agreed to this perfectly mad scheme,” she said. “For Lady Angeline will be ruined whether she comes to Norton unchaperoned later today or returns to Hallings unchaperoned tonight or—heaven forbid—remains at the Peacock until our return tomorrow morning. And I will blame myself for the rest of my life. Whatever was I thinking?”

Lord Windrow reached out and took her hand in his.

“You were thinking of bringing your two friends together in a match made in heaven,” he said, “since they did not seem to possess the good sense to do it for themselves. I was thinking of a way to get you to myself again for a while.”

She looked down at their hands for a moment before curling her fingers about his and sighing again.

“I ought not to encourage you,” she said. “You are a rake.”

“Ah,” he said, “but even Lady Angeline Dudley admits that rakes may sometimes be reformed. It is certainly within the bounds of possibility that I may be one of their number. Not probability, perhaps—she did speak of it rather as if it resembled a Forlorn Hope, did she not? But definitely a possibility.”

“I am the daughter of a Cambridge don,” Eunice said apropos of nothing.

“I daresay,” he said, “he is fiendishly intelligent and bookish.”

“He is,” she agreed.

“Both of which traits he has passed on to you,” he said.

“Yes,” she agreed. “Though perhaps not the fiendishly part.”

He lifted her hand and set the back of it briefly against his lips.

“May intelligent, bookish ladies sometimes be reformed?” he asked her.

She thought about it.

“I suppose it may be within the bounds of possibility,” she said, “even if not of probability.”

“Under what circumstances might it?” he asked.

“I have discovered within myself in the last while,” she said, “a desire to …”

“Yes?” he prompted her when she fell silent.

“To enjoy life,” she said.

“And you cannot enjoy being intelligent and bookish?” he asked.

“I can appreciate both,” she said. “I always have and always will. I certainly have no wish to renounce either. I just want to … to have some fun.”

“Ah.” He returned their hands to the seat between them. “I like the sound of this.”

“Edward and I thought we would suit admirably when we made that agreement four years ago,” she said. “We were and are alike in many ways. But when I saw him again earlier this spring in London after not seeing him for well over a year, I knew immediately that it was impossible, and not only because by then he was the Earl of Heyward and more was expected of him than to marry someone like me. I also knew that he needed someone to brighten his life, to lift the load of duty and responsibility that he shouldered without complaint after his brother died. I could not do that. I cannot be … merry unless someone draws merriment out of me. I have no experience of my own. And then, at the Tresham ball, when you danced with Lady Angeline and Edward and I came to sit at your table during supper, I could see immediately that she admired him and that he was unaccountably concerned about her safety even while he was irritated by her. And I knew that she was just the wife he needed. As I got to know her better, I could see too that he was just the husband for her. She needs steadiness and he needs … joy. And I knew too that I felt a little depressed at the loss of what for four years I had thought I wanted. But I did not want that dream back, or Edward, dearly as I love him. For I realized that I would like some joy too. Or at least a little fun.”

“Have you had fun with me, Eunice?” he asked softly.

She looked sharply at him but let his use of her given name go.

“I have,” she said. “You are fun—intelligent and sharp-minded and witty and irreverent.”

“I sound like a dreadfully dull dog,” he said.

“Oh,” she said, “and you are handsome and … attractive and you kiss well. Not that I have anything with which to compare that kiss, but I would be very surprised if even the most experienced of courtesans would not agree with me. There! Is your vanity satisfied?”

He grinned slowly at her.

“We are here,” he said. “Come and meet my mother. We will warn her, by the way, that she may expect two more guests, though they have been unfortunately delayed at the Peacock by carriage troubles and may well decide to return to Hallings once the carriage is roadworthy again.”

“Oh,” Eunice said with a sigh. “I have told more lies in the last few days than I have in my whole life before. After today there will be no more.”

And then he escorted her into the grand house of Norton Park and up the winding staircase to the drawing room, where Lady Windrow was waiting to greet them, a warm smile on her fragile face.

“Charles,” she said as he enclosed her in his arms and kissed her cheek and wished her a happy birthday. “I told you when you went to Hallings that you must not dream of coming all the way back here just for my birthday. Ten miles is a long way.”

“How could I not come for such an occasion, Mama?” he said. “Have I ever missed being with you on your birthday?”

He turned, one arm about her waist, and her eyes rested upon Eunice, who curtsied.

“Besides,” he said, “I had another reason for coming, one that will delight you, I believe, as you have been pestering me for years. I wanted you to meet Miss Goddard, the lady I plan one day soon, when the setting and the atmosphere are quite perfect, to ask to marry me. It is time, you see, to do that most dreaded of all things to men, though suddenly it does not seem so dreadful after all. Indeed, it seems infinitely desirable. It is time to settle down.”

He smiled sleepily at Eunice, who gazed briefly and reproachfully back at him, her eyebrows raised, her cheeks pink, before wishing his mother a happy birthday.

“WHAT WAS THAT?” Angeline asked after they had listened for a few moments.

Edward assumed the question was rhetorical since it would have been obvious even to an imbecile what they had just heard, but she was waiting for his answer, all wide-eyed and pale-faced.

“It was a carriage leaving the inn,” he said. “Windrow’s, no doubt. He is taking Eunice and probably her maid to Norton Park to dine with Lady Windrow.”

“Without waiting for us?” Her dark eyes grew larger, if that were possible.

“I daresay,” he said, “they hope to dine before midnight and fear that that hope may be dashed if they wait. I daresay they think you and I have a few things to work out between us. And no doubt Windrow does not particularly relish the thought of sharing carriage space with me so soon after I hit him. The fact that he did not hit back or accept my invitation to step outside indicated, of course, that he was a party to Eunice’s scheme—even perhaps the instigator. And Eunice will have seen the success of her plan, even though she was alarmed at the flaring of violence, and will have considered it fitting—or perhaps she has been persuaded to consider it fitting—to leave us alone to settle what is between us.”

“Miss Goddard’s scheme,” she said, “was that I leave that letter for you, so that you would come hurrying after us to rescue her from Lord Windrow’s clutches. Yet you have just allowed him to drive off with her.”

“I would like to read that letter sometime,” he said. “I suppose it is a marvel of Gothic literature. But before I came to rescue you, it was a letter from Eunice that I read. It was restrained in tone but really rather clever and quite effective. As you see, here I am.”

And he was beginning to feel just a little angry, in a different way than he had been feeling until a few minutes ago. He was everyone’s puppet, it seemed, and he had been dancing to everyone’s tune. Well, to Eunice’s, anyway, and that infernal Windrow’s. Lady Angeline’s was less effective.

“What did you say?” She frowned suddenly.

“When?”

“Just before the carriage left,” she said.

“It is you I love,” he repeated, gazing steadily into her eyes.

And it is you I could shake until your teeth rattle. But he did not say those words aloud. Actually it was all part of the same feeling. She fascinated him and annoyed him. She exhilarated him and infuriated him. He adored her and could cheerfully throttle her, even if only very figuratively speaking. Theirs would not be a match made in heaven. There would be nothing placidly comfortable about their lifelong relationship. But one thing was certain. He knew he was alive when he was with her, whatever the devil that meant.