Mary Balogh - The Secret Mistress

It was a relief to Edward to discover during a chance meeting on Oxford Street that Lady Sanford and Eunice were also to attend the ball, even though Eunice despised the frivolities of most social entertainments and was going only because she did not want to disappoint her aunt. Perhaps she would dance a set with him, Edward thought, even though he hated to dance. Even though he could not dance, in fact. His right leg and foot might look like a right leg and foot, but in reality they were a left leg and foot in disguise. Or so it always seemed when he attempted to perform the intricate steps of any dance yet invented.

Perhaps Eunice would sit out a set with him, then, or stroll in the garden outside with him if it was a pleasant evening. She would not mind having to forgo the pleasure of tripping the light fantastic for half an hour.

Meanwhile he hired a secretary to help him with all the work of being an earl in London with an estate in Shropshire still to run in absentia. And he applied all his energies to composing a maiden speech that would render all the other peers of the realm speechless with admiration when it was delivered in the House of Lords.

He started to suffer from insomnia and sudden cold sweats and clammy palms.

WHEN THINKING AHEAD to her removal to London, Angeline had somehow imagined that she would make her curtsy to the queen the moment she arrived in town—well, perhaps not the very moment, but certainly within a day or two—and that she would then sweep off into all the dizzying round of entertainments with which the ton filled its days and nights during the Season.

She was quite wrong, of course. For one thing, she had come to town rather early in the year, when there was a mere trickle of entertainments and half the ton were still in the country packing their trunks and bandboxes in preparation for the move to their town houses.

For another thing, a young lady needed time—and lots of it—to make endless preparations for her presentation and all the balls and parties and concerts and whatnot that would follow it.

Tresham had explained it to her in the carriage on the way to London, sounding rather bored, as if it were just too, too tedious to have a sister to bring out. And he had been sprawled across a corner of the carriage seat, one booted foot propped against the seat opposite, for all the world as though looking alert and elegant for a sister were too great a bore to be contemplated. Of course, he had looked gorgeous anyway with all his tall, dark, harsh beauty, and Angeline had gazed back at him with fond exasperation.

Brothers had positively no idea how to treat a sister.

“Cousin Rosalie will bring you up to snuff,” he had said. “She will tell you what to wear, what to do, where to go, whose acquaintance to cultivate, how deeply you must curtsy to the queen.” He had paused to yawn. “While I have to exert myself to host a come-out ball at Dudley House, which is something I have never done before and never expect to do again, and so I hope you are properly grateful. And then I must interview all your suitors, who are bound to be queued up outside my door as soon as they know you are on the market for a husband.”

He had glanced at her then, a hint of lazy affection in his eyes. But really, if one was not watching closely, one could easily miss such moments.

Cousin Rosalie was Lady Palmer, actually their second cousin on their father’s side. She had kindly agreed to sponsor Angeline’s come-out and chaperon her throughout the Season. She would be glad to do so, she had assured Tresham, since Palmer was on a lengthy diplomatic mission in Vienna and was making rumblings about her joining him there. She had no patience with either Vienna or any other foreign city and would be glad of the excuse to put him off.

Rosalie called promptly at Dudley House the morning after Angeline’s arrival there.

“Goodness, you have grown tall” was her first observation.

“Yes,” Angeline agreed meekly, waiting for a listing of all her other shortcomings.

But Rosalie only nodded briskly.

“Your modiste is going to thoroughly enjoy dressing you,” she said. “I suppose you have nothing, Angeline? You have spent all your life in the country, have you not? Your mother never brought you to town. Having nothing is fine. It is better than having stacks of garments of inferior workmanship and unfashionable design. Tresham has given us carte blanche on the amount we may spend on you, which is no less than I would expect of him.”

“I wish to choose my own designs and fabrics,” Angeline said.

“But of course,” Rosalie agreed.

“I like bright colors,” Angeline warned her.

“I can see that.” Rosalie looked at her sunshine yellow dress with the blue and green stripes about the hem. There was perhaps a suggestion of pain in her expression. “The design and even the color of your court gown will of course be dictated largely by what the queen demands of young ladies being presented to her. It will be archaic and very uncomfortable, but we will have little say in the matter. It would not do to offend Her Majesty. Your ball gowns—all of them—will have to be white, I am afraid. It is de rigueur for unmarried young ladies.”

“White?” Angeline cried in dismay. White was her least favorite color—or lack of color—especially when it was upon her person.

Rosalie held up one hand.

“All your other dresses and accessories may be as brightly colored as you wish,” she said. “You may dress in all the colors of the rainbow at once if you choose. I may advise against it, and I shall certainly express my opinion, but if you are a true Dudley, as I daresay you are, then you will pay no heed anyway.”

“I always listen to advice,” Angeline said, brightening. She was going to like her cousin, she believed. She had not set eyes upon her since she attended Rosalie’s wedding at the age of eight or thereabouts.

“This is going to be a great delight to me, Angeline,” Rosalie said. “I was ecstatic when I gave birth to Vincent. I was pleased when I had Emmett—it is always a relief to have a spare as well as an heir, and I knew Palmer had hoped for a second boy. I was somewhat disappointed when I had Colin and really rather depressed when I had Geoffrey. They are all perfect loves, of course, my boys, but I would have so liked to have a girl. But now I am to bring you out. I was really very gratified when Tresham asked me if I would.”

“I hope,” Angeline said, “I will not be a disappointment to you, Cousin Rosalie.”

“You will not,” her cousin said decisively. “And I am so glad you are not a small, soft, lisping, blond, blue-eyed creature like your m—”

She was assailed by a sudden fit of coughing.

Like your mother? Was that what she had been about to say? Surely not. Mama had not lisped. And she had been beauty itself. Perfection itself. Everything that Angeline was not, in fact.

“Oh, dear,” Rosalie said, patting her chest to stop the coughing. “It is time we had some rain. The air is dry. What was I saying? Ah, yes, that we will go out shopping tomorrow bright and early. And the day after. And the day after that. We are going to have a wonderful time, Angeline.”

And surprisingly they did. Angeline had never been shopping. She soon discovered that it was the most blissful activity in the world. At least, it was for the time being until there were even more exciting things to occupy her time.

The day for her presentation to the queen was set. And her come-out ball was to be the same evening at Dudley House. Tresham had made all the arrangements, and Ferdinand—who had been waiting at the house the day she arrived and had swept her off her feet and swung her about in two complete circles on the pavement outside the front door while she shrieked her protest and delight—had promised to see to it that she did not lack for partners all evening.

“Not that you will even without my vigilance, Angie,” he had said. “In fact, I daresay prospective partners will be queued up beyond the ballroom doors and all the way down the stairs and out the door. Tresh will have to extend the duration of the ball for three whole days to accommodate them all and you will have blisters on all ten toes and on both heels and be unable to dance again all Season. Tell me about your journey. Tedious, was it?”

The days rushed by, and Angeline acquired so many new clothes and shoes and slippers and fans and reticules and a hundred and one other items that she wondered where Betty found room to put them all.

And finally, almost before Angeline was ready for it, the great day dawned. The day of The Curtsy—she thought of it in capital letters—and the come-out ball. Ferdinand might yet prove right, or wrong, about the number of prospective partners she would have, but she was to have at least one. The widowed Countess of Heyward had spoken to Rosalie, and Rosalie had spoken to Tresham, and the Earl of Heyward, the countess’s brother-in-law, had spoken to Tresham, and it was all settled—the earl was to lead Angeline into the first set.

The very first set of her very first ton ball.

She hoped the earl was tall, dark, and handsome, or at least some acceptable mixture of the three. Tresham, annoying man, had only said when she asked that Heyward was a dry old stick, but Rosalie had said nonsense, the earl was a young man, though she did not believe she had ever actually seen him. Which meant, of course, that he might still be a dry stick, whatever that was.

Anyway, it was just a dance, albeit the most important, most anticipated one of her life.

She was up ridiculously early in the morning. At just after seven o’clock she was at the open window of her bedchamber, barefoot and still in her nightgown, her forearms resting along the sill, her bosom propped on her forearms, her back arched inward. She gazed out upon gray early morning drizzle, but rather than allow the inclement weather to dampen her spirits, she sighed with contentment.

Today—within the next few hours—her real life would begin.

She was to be presented to the queen. There was a little flutter of excitement, perhaps even of nervousness, deep in her stomach at the prospect. And then she would be free. Free to enjoy all the myriad activities of the Season while searching for the man of her dreams.

Angeline sighed again, more wistfully this time.

She had already found him once, of course. Except that she had not set eyes upon him since that day at the Rose and Crown Inn and would probably never do so again. It would be very romantic to pine for him for the rest of her life but not at all practical. She would grow old and be a spinster and an unpaid nanny to all the children Tresham would produce once he had finished sowing his wild oats and taken a wife. And eventually she would shrivel up like a dried prune and be nothing but a burden to all her nephews and nieces and great-nephews and great-nieces and on down the generations while she relived the ever-dimming memory of the one meeting she had had with the love of her life when she was nineteen.

It all sounded ridiculously pathetic. And ridiculously … well, ridiculous.

She was going to put him right out of her mind from this moment on. There, it was already done. Tonight she would meet other gentlemen—hordes of them, if Ferdinand was to be believed. Tonight she would begin to fall in love again.

But her thoughts were distracted at that moment by the sounds of a small commotion in Grosvenor Square below her window. She leaned forward on her forearms and peered downward.

Marsh, Tresham’s head groom, was standing down there holding onto the bridle of a horse that was literally champing at the bit in its eagerness to be off on its morning gallop. And Tresham, all black and long-legged in form-fitting riding clothes, was hurrying down the steps, pulling on his riding gloves as he went. He swung himself up into the saddle, and even as Angeline watched, he assumed instant command of his restless mount and rode off without further ado.

Angeline was assailed by a wave of envy bordering on jealousy.

He must be going for an early morning ride in Hyde Park. She would give anything in the world to be going with him. It was chilly and windy and ever so slightly drizzly, all weather conditions that would make almost any delicately nurtured female shudder with distaste and cling tenaciously to the indoors until the sun deigned to make an appearance.