The Secret Mistress

raised it to his mouth.

It was a dashed good thing she was an innocent, albeit a flirtatious one. She could not otherwise have failed to notice …

Fortunately—very fortunately—his mind had got a grip on his body soon enough for him to be struck by the oddity of her flirting with him. He was not the sort of man with whom women flirted. Not women like Lady Angeline Dudley, anyway. Actually, not any kind of woman. Even Eunice had never flirted with him. And he had realized that Lady Angeline could have only one possible motive for flirting.

He still believed it to have been her motive, even though she had denied it quite vehemently, and it made no real sense anyway. But for very pride’s sake she had been forced to deny it.

Every time Lady Angeline Dudley popped into his head—and it was far too often —he firmly quelled the thought. It was too deuced uncomfortable, and she was too deuced … Well, if he tried to think of a type of lady he most definitely did not want to marry, she would be at the very top of the list. Head and shoulders above every other type.

He would meet someone else even if Eunice would not have him. There were already a few distinct possibilities, in fact—Miss Smith-Benn, Lady Fiona Robson, Miss Marvell, for example.

He enjoyed his day of freedom as far as he was able, then—his partial day, that was.

He arrived home late in the afternoon and was informed by his butler that his grandmother was taking tea in the drawing room. Edward went up there to see her. She was with his mother and Lorraine. Susan was sitting on her lap. The child wriggled down, though, when the door opened and came flying across the room, arms spread wide, face alight with welcome.

“Uncle Edward!” she cried in her very precise three-year-old voice.

Edward scooped her up, and she cupped his cheeks with her hands, puckered her lips, and kissed him on the mouth.

“You said you would take me for an ice the first nice day,” she said.

Ah. Cupboard love.

“And so I did.” He grinned at her.

“It is a nice day,” she said. “Your whiskers are rough.”

“So what should I do?” he asked her. “Take you for an ice or ring for my valet to come and shave me?”

“Ice,” she said.

“Five minutes, then,” he told her. “Give me a moment to greet your mama and your grandmama and great-grandmama.”

He set her on the floor and bent to kiss his grandmother’s cheek.

“You grow more handsome every day, Edward,” she said. “Your grandfather and I would have attended the Tresham ball last evening, but doubtless we would both have fallen asleep within the first hour. I am delighted to hear that you danced both the opening and the after-supper sets with Lady Angeline Dudley, though apparently you did not dance either one. That is all to the good as you had more opportunity to engage her in conversation and get to know her. Adelaide tells me she is a handsome girl, and Lorraine tells me you think her the most beautiful creature you have ever seen.”

Edward winced. An exact quote, if he was not mistaken.

“I enjoyed the evening, Grandmama,” he said. “I did have other partners too, though.”

She waved a dismissive hand.

“I have already invited Lady Palmer to take tea with your grandpapa and me tomorrow afternoon,” she said, “and Lord Fenner, her brother, at Lorraine’s suggestion. I used to know their grandmother on their mother’s side, you know, though she was older than I. Lady Palmer is to bring Lady Angeline Dudley.”

Edward knew what was coming with a dull certainty.

“Your mother and Lorraine will be there,” his grandmother said. “And you must come too, Edward. You will wish to take Lady Angeline for a drive in the park afterward if the weather is fine, as I daresay it will be. A courtship must be pursued vigorously, especially when the lady is so very eligible.”

Edward opened his mouth to explain that there was no courtship and closed it again. His mother was smiling. So was Lorraine. And Susan was tugging at one tail of his coat.

“Come on, Uncle Edward,” she said.

“Susan,” Lorraine said reproachfully, but he held up a staying hand.

“It seems that immediate action is what most ladies expect and demand,” he said. “We will go, Susan. Immediately, or as soon as you are fit for the outdoors.”

Lorraine got to her feet to fetch outdoor clothes for her daughter, who was now clinging to Edward’s hand and bouncing up and down in her eagerness.

And it struck Edward unexpectedly and for the first time ever that it might be great fun to have children of his own.

But his sense of freedom had fled all too quickly and too soon. He had not put his grandmother right on her misconception when he had had the opportunity, and somehow it seemed that it was already too late to do so.

Well, a tea, followed by a brief drive in the park, was not exactly a declaration of an intent to marry the girl, was it?

But it felt as if the noose was tightening.

THE DAY FOLLOWING Angeline’s come-out ball was really rather an exciting one even if it was somewhat anticlimactic. But, as Cousin Rosalie had explained when she left the ball at some ridiculously late hour—or early, depending upon which end one looked at it from—Angeline would need a quiet day in which to recover from all the excitement and exertion, and so would she.

Enough bouquets arrived to fill the ballroom over again if she had felt inclined, Angeline thought. But, disappointingly, there were no flowers from Lord Heyward. And no visit from him either, though she did have one from the Marquess of Exwich, who came in the afternoon to offer her marriage.

It was excruciatingly embarrassing to be forced to go down to the library, as Tresham insisted she do after he had been closeted with the marquess for all of half an hour while Angeline sat upstairs, all unsuspecting, reading one of her new library books. She had to listen to the proposal in person and refuse it in person. Tresham had flatly refused to do it for her.

She had better get used to it, he told her afterward, having the nerve to sound bored. It was likely to become a frequent occurrence until she put a stop to it by accepting one of her suitors. And he would be damned before he would gain a reputation as a tyrant by refusing the serious offers of perfectly eligible gentlemen on behalf of his sister.

She would put a stop to it when the right man came along, she told him. But she did not tell him that she already knew who the right man was. He would merely fix her with one of his looks and pass a remark of the dry old stick variety. When Cousin Rosalie had commented at the end of last evening upon the gratifying fact that only the Earl of Heyward had requested and been granted two sets with her charge, Tresham had fixed her with his stare and then spoken his mind.

“Devil take it, Rosalie,” he had said. “I hope a sister of mine can do considerably better than Heyward. Is she to yawn her way through the rest of her life? Lockjaw might set in after the first fortnight or so.”

Which he really had no right to say. Did he even know the Earl of Heyward? Besides, it was her life, was it not? No one was asking him to marry Lord Heyward.

The morning was exciting even apart from all the bouquets from last evening’s