The Secret Mistress

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.”

Oh, Lord, Edward thought, she was trying to court Lady Angeline for him and scold Windrow all at the same time. He picked up the plate of cakes and handed it around.

“Rakish pursuits?” Windrow said with a shudder. “Are there such gentlemen? Point out one to me, Miss Goddard, and I shall challenge him to pistols at dawn.”

“Rakish pursuits,” she said, looking steadily at him, “and the frivolous pursuit of violence. When duty and courtesy and kindness could be embraced instead.”

“Miss Goddard,” Lady Angeline said, “you and I think very much alike. Men can be so silly, can they not? Perhaps they impress each other when their first reaction to anything even remotely suggestive of an insult is to issue a challenge. But they do not impress us.”

Edward met Windrow’s eyes across the table, and the man lofted one eyebrow.

Edward was feeling like a very dull dog indeed, since he obviously did not fit into the category of those who indulged in rakish pursuits—or of those who pursued frivolous violence as an answer to insult.

Eunice and Lady Angeline Dudley, he thought, were as different from each other as day and night. Lady Angeline was gorgeously dressed and coiffed, her face vividly alive with smiles and sparkling dark eyes. She was a chatterbox. She was bold and indiscreet. She often dressed in garish colors. She was frivolous. Eunice was neatly dressed and coiffed, her manner restrained and refined, her conversation intelligent. She was serious-minded. Yet strangely the two had found common ground upon which to converse.

“Miss Goddard,” Windrow was saying, “I am crushed by your disapproval of my offer to rid your world of at least one rakish gentleman. And stunned by your superior insight into the essential difference between the sexes. You simply must grant me an opportunity to redeem myself in your eyes. You must dance the next set with me.”

Eunice looked coolly at him.

“Must I, my lord?” she asked.

He sighed, one hand over his heart.

“Ah, Heyward,” he said, “we have much to learn of the fair sex. Miss Goddard, would you do me the great honor of allowing me to lead you into the next set? Or ought I to apply to Lady Sanford?”

“I am of age, my lord,” she said. “And thank you. That would be pleasant. Edward, would you please pass the plate of savories? The shrimp tarts are quite delicious.”

Well, Edward thought. Poor Eunice. She had come here in order to rescue Lady Angeline from the clutches of a rake only to find herself caught up in those clutches instead. But she might have said no. And she was perfectly capable of looking after herself.

“I saw that you were out on the terrace during the last set, Lord Heyward,” Lady Angeline said. “I was quite envious. The ballroom is really quite stuffy, is it not? So is the dining room. It is because there are so many people here, I suppose. Was it pleasant outdoors?”

He could not quite understand this lady, Edward thought. She had made it perfectly clear earlier that she disapproved of him, that she found him stuffy, and she had gone to great lengths not to have to dance with him, yet at the end of the set she had told him that she would not enjoy any other set even half as much as she had enjoyed theirs. And now she was blatantly hinting …

“Very,” he said. “Would you care to stroll there before your next partner comes to claim you?”

“There is no next partner,” she said. “Not yet, anyway, though I suppose there will be if I am still free when the dancing resumes.”

“Then perhaps,” he said, “you would care to grant the set to me and stroll with me for a full half hour.”

“That sounds like heaven,” she said. “You are kind. I must first go and tell Cousin Rosalie, though. Not that she will mind. Indeed, she will be delighted. You see? She is sitting with Lady Heyward, your sister-in-law, and Lord Fenner, Cousin Leonard, Rosalie’s brother. And they are all nodding in this direction as if they are feeling very satisfied indeed with life.”

“Allow me to go instead,” he said, getting to his feet and directing an apologetic glance in Eunice’s direction.

Lady Palmer did indeed express her delight at his offer to escort Lady Angeline out onto the terrace, and Lorraine beamed her approval.

This was not good, Edward thought a couple of minutes later as he led Lady Angeline out of the supper room. He had danced the opening set of her come-out ball with her. He had sat with her at a small table for supper. Now he was leading her out before many people had even returned to the ballroom and it would soon become obvious to anyone who was interested—almost everyone, in other words—that he had taken her outside and was keeping her there through the upcoming set.

And both his sister-in-law and her chaperon looked thoroughly delighted, as though everything was proceeding according to some preordained plan.

It all seemed very much like the beginning of a courtship, he thought uneasily. And how easy it would be to get caught in a trap and find himself unable to extricate himself.

THE LADY IN blue was Miss Goddard. The Earl of Heyward called her