The Secret Mistress

need a husband, and you are the most eligible of prospective grooms. It does rather sound like a match made in heaven, does it not?”

He was frowning.

“It is not quite like that,” he said. “I-I want to marry you. Dash it all, Lady Angeline, this is the first marriage proposal I have ever made. I hope it will be the last. I have made a mess of it, have I not? Do forgive me. What can I say to put it right?”

But there was nothing. She had asked him right out if he loved her, and he had answered—I am fond of you, and I do not doubt affection will deepen between us as time goes on.

She would have been far more cheered if he had said a definite no, he did not love her at all, in fact he hated her.

There was passion in hatred.

There was none whatsoever in I am fond of you, and … affection will deepen between us.

Angeline slid her hand out from between his and looked down at it, forlorn and cold and on its own again.

“I do thank you for your flattering offer, Lord Heyward,” she said, “and for your concern to make all right after last evening. But there was no need to be concerned, you see. No one knew and no one will ever know. Not unless you tell. I let you kiss me, and I kissed you back because I wanted to, because I had never been kissed before and I am nineteen years old and it is a little ridiculous and pathetic never to have been kissed. Now I have been, and I thank you for the experience. It was really very pleasant, and next time I will know far better what to expect and how to behave. And I will not expect everyone whom I will allow to kiss me to rush here the next day to offer me the respectability of marriage. Not that I will allow everyone, or even many men, to kiss me. I’ll probably allow very few, in fact. Of course, you are a gentleman, which not many men are despite what their birth and upbringing may lead them to call themselves. I am sure you do not make a habit of slinking off into the bushes with every girl who has never been kissed just so that you can show them how it is done. That would not be at all honorable, and you are always unfailingly honorable. Besides, you would be forever dashing off to propose marriage the day after, and one of them might say yes and you would be miserable forever after. Unless you loved that particular one, of course, except that—”

I am babbling.

She stopped doing it and turned her hand over so that she could examine her palm with as much attention as she had been giving the back of her hand.

There was a short silence.

“I am sorry,” he said then.

His voice was quiet, flat.

And that was all. There was another silence, a rather lengthy one this time, and then she was aware of him bowing rather abruptly to her. He left without another word. She heard the door open quietly and then close just as quietly. There was no passion even in his exit.

The long line that curved around her palm from just below her forefinger and disappeared into the folds of her wrist was her lifeline, was it not? It looked as if she was going to live at least a hundred years. That meant she still had eighty-one left.

Eighty-one years of heartbreak. Would it fade by about the seventieth of those years? The seventy-fifth?

The door opened again, much more forcefully.

“Well?” Tresham asked.

“Oh.” She looked up. “I said no and sent him on his way.”

“Good girl,” he said briskly. “Am I supposed to escort you to the Hicks ball tonight, or is Rosalie coming by here?”

You, she was going to say. But she was not sure she could get even the one more word past her lips without its wobbling all out of control and making her feel like a prize idiot.

She yanked the door open and fled out into the hall and up the stairs, leaving someone else to close the door behind her.

The Duke of Tresham stared after her, his brows almost meeting above his nose.

“What the devil?” he asked of the empty room. “All I asked was whether I am to escort her to this infernal ball tonight.”

And then he scratched his chin and looked thoughtful.

Chapter 12

EDWARD CONSIDERED PASSING the drawing room doors and going straight up to his room. It would have been easy to do—the doors were closed. But he knew they were in there, all of them. He had asked the butler. His grandmother was late going home today—of all days. Juliana too.

He stopped outside the room, sighed, and went in. There was no real point in postponing the inevitable, was there?

“Edward.” His mother smiled at him.

“I’ll pour you a cup of tea,” his sister-in-law said. “Though it may be only lukewarm by now. I shall ring for another pot.”

“Don’t bother,” he said. “I am not thirsty.”

He was actually, but not for tea.

“It is no bother,” she assured him.

“Well?” His grandmother raised her lorgnette, but not all the way to her eye. She very rarely looked through it, having been blessed with exceptionally good eyesight for an elderly lady. “Was it a marriage proposal you were making, Edward? What did she say?”

“It was,” he said. “And the answer was no. And so that is that for the time being.”

“Lady Angeline Dudley?” his mother said, both looking and sounding shocked. “You offered her marriage, Edward, and she said no?”

“Oh, but, Edward,” Lorraine said as she pulled on the bell rope, “from the way she was looking at you last evening, I thought she was quite taken with you.”

“I am convinced of it,” Juliana said. “And Christopher agreed with me.”

“Apparently she was not,” he said, clasping his hands behind his back and forcing a smile.

“The girl is playing hard to get,” his grandmother said, pointing the lorgnette in the direction of his heart. “She cannot do better than you and she knows it and fully intends to have you, Edward, mark my words. She wants to be wooed. Girls do, you know, especially the most marriageable ones. They do not want to feel that they are nothing but commodities, and who can blame them? Every girl wants to be wooed. I did, and I was. Oh, your grandfather was a one, my boy. I could tell you tales to make your hair stand on end.”

“Edward,” Juliana asked after a short pause while the fresh tray of tea was carried in, “did you tell her you loved her?”

Dash it all, no, he had not. He supposed he ought to have. It was clearly what she had wanted to hear. She had asked him if he loved her, in fact, and even then he had missed his cue. He had