The Secret Mistress

the ices on the way home.”

They had all laughed, and Angeline had stored in her heart the image of Lord Heyward as a doting uncle.

But the very best part could be postponed no longer. Her memory was fairly bursting with it. She wiggled her toes against the mattress and closed her eyes.

He had kissed her.

She had kissed him.

Her very first kiss.

He had taken her off the main avenue, where everyone else was walking, and had found a quiet, enchanted little clearing into which moonlight poured—so much more romantic after all than the lamps—and he had kissed her once, then drawn her right into his arms and kissed her again.

Oh, it had been nothing like anything she had ever expected a kiss to be. She had always wondered what her lips would feel like when being kissed and what the man’s would feel like. She had wondered how she would breathe. She could not remember breathing at all, but she supposed she must have done so or she would be dead.

She could not even remember clearly what her lips had felt like, or his. For a kiss had proved to be far more than just a touching of lips. Their whole bodies had been involved, their whole beings. Oh, goodness, as soon as his lips had touched hers for the second time, his mouth had opened and so had hers—and he had pressed his tongue into her mouth. It sounded shocking if it was put into words. But she was thinking more in remembered sensations than in words.

Her insides had turned to a sort of aching jelly. Her legs had felt weak. She had been throbbing in a place to which she could not put a name. And their bodies had been pressed together. He had been all hard-muscled, solid, unfamiliar masculinity and familiar cologne, and she had clasped him to her with arms that strained to draw him even closer. But how much closer could he have got short of removing a few layers of clothes? The very thought of that reminded Angeline of how hot that clearing had seemed for the few minutes of their embrace. As though someone had lit a fire and piled on a forest of kindling and a ton of coal.

His one hand had been spread—oh, dear—over her bottom. The other had come beneath one of her breasts and closed about it.

It was surely the most startlingly glorious first kiss anyone had ever experienced. Not that she was interested in anyone else for the moment.

It had been the very best experience of her life. She could not imagine that anything in her life could exceed it. Ever. Except that she had wanted it to go on and on forever, and of course it had not.

And the dear man had apologized afterward.

As if he had somehow taken advantage of her. As if he had somehow compromised her. He had even said so. A lady’s honor could not be compromised if there was no one there to see, could it?

Indeed it could, said Miss Pratt’s voice in her head, at its most severe. A lady must always be a perfect lady, even in the privacy of her own boudoir.

Which was about the most stupid of many stupid pronouncements Miss Pratt had made.

She had told him it was her first kiss. She had told him it was wonderful. Perhaps she ought not to have said either thing. She must have sounded very naive. But why not? Why pretend to be worldly-wise and jaded when one was not? She had begged him to tell her he was not really sorry, and he had admitted it was a lovely evening.

Lovely was an understatement. For she had made perhaps the most wonderful discovery of all last night. Lord Heyward was a very proper, serious-minded gentleman to whom courtesy and reason and good sense were more important than posturing and violence. But it could always be said that such men were dull. Tresham called him a dry old stick.

But it was not so.

She now knew from personal experience that such a man could also be passionate in his private dealings with the woman he loved. Very passionate indeed.

With the woman he loved.

Angeline’s eyes were still closed. She wiggled her toes and opened her eyes at last. Was that who she was? The woman he loved? She must be. He could not possibly have kissed her like that if she was not. Could he?

She would see him again this evening. At least, she hoped she would. There was Lady Hicks’s ball to attend, and apparently it was always one of the great squeezes of the Season.

Oh, surely he would be there too.

She threw back the bedcovers and swung her legs over the side of the bed to the floor. She had planned to walk in the park this morning with Martha and Maria—she had so much to tell them. It was still raining, of course, so that idea must be abandoned. But there were always shops just waiting to be shopped at, and there were tearooms where one might sit and talk with friends. She had far too much energy to remain at home merely waiting for this evening to come.

WHEN EDWARD ARRIVED at Dudley House later the same afternoon, he was shown into the library on the main floor while the butler went off to see if the Duke of Tresham was at home. Edward could not even allow himself the luxury of hoping he was not. Besides, he was almost sure Tresham would be here. He had been at the House earlier, as had Edward himself. He would certainly have returned home before going out for the evening.

Edward looked around at the shelves of books that lined the walls and wondered if Tresham ever as much as opened the cover of any of them. The large oak desk was clear apart from an inkpot and some quill pens on a blotter. Comfortable-looking leather winged chairs flanked the fireplace. A chaise longue was set at the other side of the room. One could not imagine Tresham spending much of his time in a library of all places.

He walked closer to the fireplace for the simple reason that he did not want to be found hovering just inside the door, looking as uncomfortable as he felt. But a man stood in front of his own hearth, not someone else’s. He changed direction and crossed to the window instead. He stood looking out.

He did not believe he had ever felt more depressed in his life. Or more purely embarrassed. He wished he were anywhere else on earth but where he actually was. On the opposite side of Grosvenor Square he could see a maid cleaning off the boot scraper outside one door and found himself envying her her quiet, uncomplicated existence. Which was nonsense, of course. No one’s life was all quietness or lack of complications. It just seemed sometimes that someone else’s life—everyone else’s in this case—was preferable to one’s own.

As luck would have it, his mother and Lorraine had just been returning from a visit as he was leaving the house, bringing with them both his grandmother and Juliana, and they had all, of course, wanted to know where he was going all spruced up and freshly shaven.

“Oh, out,” he had said vaguely, kissing his mother and grandmother on the cheek.

“Take my word for it, Adelaide,” his grandmother had said, “there is a lady involved. Lady Angeline Dudley, I trust.”

“She was at Vauxhall with us last evening,” Juliana had said, smiling. Just as if his mother and grandmother had not already known that.