The Secret Mistress

steady character. He was not just another Maurice.

Duty called, then. Oh, and affection too. Duty did not preclude love. Indeed, it could hardly exist without love to impel it onward.

So he would go. To Vauxhall of all the undesirable places. With the near certainty that Lady Angeline Dudley would be a fellow guest. If Fenner was inviting all of Lorraine’s family, it stood to reason that he would invite all of his too. And devil take it, that included the Duke of Tresham as well as his sister.

“Send an acceptance of this one,” he told his secretary, waving the invitation in one hand before setting it down on the desk.

She would love Vauxhall. She would bubble over with exuberance. He could picture it already in his mind. Lady Angeline Dudley, that was, not Lorraine. Lorraine’s enjoyment would be altogether quieter, more dignified, more decorous.

Chapter 10

ANGELINE WAS SITTING very upright in a small boat on the River Thames, wishing that somehow she could open up her senses even wider than they already were and will them to take in every sensation of sight, sound, smell, and touch and commit them to memory for all time.

Not that she would have trouble remembering anyway.

It was evening and darkness had fallen. But the world— her world—had not been deprived of light. Rather, the darkness enhanced the glory of dozens of colored lanterns at Vauxhall on the opposite bank and their long reflections shivering across the water. The water lapped the sides of the boat in time with the boatmen’s oars. There were the sounds of water and distant voices. She was on her way to Vauxhall—at last. The hours of the day had seemed to drag by. The air was cool on her arms. It was a little shivery cool actually, but it was more shivers of excitement she felt than of cold. She held her shawl about her shoulders with both hands.

Tresham had insisted upon the boat, though there was a bridge close by that would have taken the carriage across in perfect comfort. Angeline was very glad he had insisted. And she was still surprised he had accepted his invitation from Cousin Leonard. She knew he had been about to refuse it, but then he had heard that Belinda, Lady Eagan, Leonard and Rosalie’s cousin on their mother’s side, having arrived unexpectedly in town just last week, was also to be of the party. Lady Eagan’s husband had run off to America with her maid a year or so ago, and Angeline could hardly wait to meet her. She hoped she was not gaunt and abjectly grieving, however. That would be distressing.

Tresham was reclining indolently beside Angeline, one long-fingered hand trailing in the water alongside the boat. He was looking at her rather than at the lights.

“You do not have a fashionable air, Angeline,” he said. “You are fairly bursting with enthusiasm. Have you not heard of ennui? Fashionable ennui? Of looking bored and jaded as though you were a hundred years old and had already seen and experienced all there is to be seen and experienced?”

Of course she had heard of it—and seen it in action. Many people, both men and women, seemed to believe that behaving with languid world-weariness lent them an air of maturity and sophistication, whereas in reality it merely made them look silly. Tresham did it to a certain extent, but he was saved from silliness by the air of dark danger that always seemed to lurk about him.

“I have no interest in following fashion,” she said. “I would prefer to set it.”

“Even if no one follows your lead?” he asked her.

“Even then,” she said.

“Good girl,” he said, a rare note of approval in his voice. “Dudleys never follow the crowd, Angeline. They let the crowd follow them if it chooses. Or not, as the case may be.”

Remarkable, she thought. Absolutely remarkable. Tresham and the Earl of Heyward agreed upon something. Tresham would expire of horror if she told him.

“You know why you have been invited this evening, I suppose,” he said.

“Because Leonard is our cousin?” she asked, keeping her eyes on the lights, which were becoming more dazzling and more magical by the minute. They looked even more glorious if she squinted her eyes.

“Because Lady Heyward and her family have singled you out as the most eligible bride for Heyward,” he said. “And for some reason that eludes my understanding, Rosalie seems just as eager to promote the match. I was always under the impression that she was a sensible woman, but matchmaking does have a tendency to distort female judgment quite atrociously. You had better watch your step, Angeline, or it will be the earl himself who will be turning up at Dudley House next to petition for your hand. And you know how much you love having to confront and reject unwanted suitors.”

There had been two more since the Marquess of Exwich. And the embarrassing thing with the second of the two had been that when Tresham had come to the drawing room to inform her that Sir Dunstan Lang was waiting in the library to propose marriage to her, she had been unable even to put a face to the name. And when she had gone down and had a faint memory of dancing the evening before with the young gentleman standing there looking as though his neckcloth had been tied by a ruthlessly sadistic valet, she had no longer been able to recall his name.

Embarrassed was not a strong enough word for how she had felt.

“I will be careful,” she promised.

“It would be an almighty yawn to have the man as a brother-in-law,” he said. “I can only imagine what it would be like to have him for a husband. No, actually, I cannot imagine it and have no intention of trying.”

“Why do you dislike him so much?” she asked.

“Dislike?” he said. “There is nothing either to like or to dislike in the man. He is just a giant bore. You ought to have known his brother, Angeline. Now, there was a man worth knowing. Though I daresay I would not have wanted you to know him—not before his marriage anyway. He might have been the devil of a fine fellow, but he was not the sort to whom one would want to expose one’s sister.”

It was odd, Angeline thought, that he did not want her to marry anyone like himself, and yet at the same time he did not want her to marry someone altogether more worthy, like Lord Heyward. She wondered if she would feel similarly when it came time for him to choose a bride. Would no lady be good enough for him in her eyes?

Or would she be warning every lady in sight away from him?

Would he ever be in love? She doubted it. But the thought saddened her, and the very last thing she wanted to feel tonight was sadness. Besides, the boat was drawing into the bank, and Tresham was vaulting out even before it was quite there and offering her his hand, and excitement bubbled up in her again until she thought she might well be sick.

Then they were inside the gardens and completely wrapped about in magic. They walked along a wide avenue already half crowded with revelers, all of them in high spirits—there was no ennui here. There was conversation and laughter, and there were trees on either side, their branches laden with more of the colored lamps. And though the breeze was a little cool, Angeline was thankful for it, for it set the lamps to swaying slightly, and the colored arc of their lights moved with them and danced among the branches and across the path. And far above, if one tipped back one’s head, there was the blackness of the sky dotted with stars. She could smell the trees—and food. An orchestra was playing somewhere ahead.

And then they came to the pavilion with its tiers of open boxes and its