The Secret Mistress

supposed to come this way from his club to take us home, but he is probably deep in conversation setting the world to rights and forgetting all about clocks and the passing of time and Juliana and me sitting here listening for carriage wheels.”

Edward strode from the room, glad of something to do.

Lady Angeline, will you do me the great honor of marrying me?

Good Lord, talk about platitudes! And on one knee, no less. He winced. He had been a walking—or kneeling—clichй.

Lord Heyward, is this because you kissed me last night?

I compromised you. I have come to make amends.

Deuce take it, had he really said that? Could he not have denied it, told her that last night’s kiss was only the thing that had convinced him he did not want to wait any longer before asking her to marry him? Surely a little lie could be excused in such circumstances. She had needed reassuring, for God’s sake.

You do not love me?

And the question had been whispered and phrased in the negative. Dash it, but there had been definite vulnerability there. He really ought to have lied. After all, he had fully intended to treat her for the rest of her life as though he loved her. Indeed, he would have loved her, in his own way. How could he not love his own wife, after all?

Instead he had spoken the most heartlessly asinine words that had ever passed his lips. He had spoken the strict truth and made it sound as dry as dust. Drier.

I am fond of you, and I do not doubt affection will deepen between us as time goes on. And then, far too inadequate, and far, far too late—I hope I did not give the impression I have come here today only because I kissed you last evening.

He had gone to offer her marriage because he had compromised her—even if no one knew it except the two of them—and he had ended up insulting her quite horribly. Perhaps even hurting her.

He was a horrible man. His mother must be quite wrong about him.

Had he hurt her?

Could he possibly make amends?

But no, he could not. She had said no, and he must respect her decision.

Except that …

Oh, good Lord, she had looked hurt.

Despite all the prattling on she had done about getting experience at kissing, with the implication that kissing him had meant nothing else but that to her—well, despite it all he had the strong suspicion that he had hurt her.

She prattled to cover her insecurities.

Now there was a disturbing revelation, if it was true.

Lady Angeline Dudley prattled all the time.

Dash it all.

He strode off to order his carriage brought around only to come face-to-face with his grandfather in the hall.

“Ah, my boy,” he said, clapping Edward on the shoulder with one large hand, “you are still here, then. I feared you might be taking your grandmother home by now, and I would never have heard the end of it. Women, my boy. There is no living with them, and no living without them.”

He winked and smiled broadly as though he had said something of unique originality.

ANGELINE WAS HAVING a frantically good time at the Hicks ball. She had never been so merry before in her life.

She linked arms with Martha and Maria before the dancing started. She had to be in the middle, of course, because she was so much taller than either of them, as well as being darker and built really on a larger scale altogether. The two of them must look like dainty ribbons dancing about a maypole, in fact. They promenaded about the perimeter of the ballroom, the three of them, chatting and laughing—even out-and-out giggling once or twice.

She danced three sets in a row and smiled dazzlingly and chattered incessantly to her partners, even when the figures of the dance took them so far apart they would have needed ear trumpets to hear every word. She smiled at all the other dancers in passing, ladies and gentlemen alike—except that she conveniently failed to notice the Earl of Heyward when he lumbered past ten feet away from her with his partner and so did not smile at him. It was the same moment anyway as that in which she almost tripped over her own slipper, though she recovered well enough that no one noticed except Ferdinand, who grinned at her.

She chattered between sets to all who wandered her way. A flattering number of those who came were gentlemen, some to ask for dances, some just to be amiable. There were a few notorious fortune hunters among them, according to Cousin Rosalie. But poor men must marry rich wives. It was only good sense. Angeline did not hold their poverty against them. She smiled as brightly upon them as she did upon all the rest.

Ferdinand wandered over to her when there was a lull in the crowd gathered about her and congratulated her upon rejecting yet another suitor for her hand.

“For they have all been nonsensical so far, Angie,” he said. “But none more so than Heyward. I suppose the best that can be said of him, poor man, is that he is worthy. He is undoubtedly that. But the fellow cannot dance.”

“Tresh calls him a dry old stick,” she said, smiling until she felt her lips might crack.

He gave a short bark of laughter.

“It is a good one,” he said. “I must remember it.”

She fanned her tightly smiling lips and turned to greet her next partner.

It was only as she was dancing with him that Angeline realized that Miss Goddard was at the ball. She was tucked into a shady, crowded corner of the ballroom with a group of older ladies, wearing the same blue gown she had worn at Angeline’s own ball. Oh, goodness, she must not have danced at all or Angeline would have seen her sooner. Was one of those ladies her chaperon? Why had she not made some effort to find partners for Miss Goddard?

Angeline had been looking out for her since that day in the library but had not seen her anywhere.

Her partner—goodness, she could not even remember his name, which was shockingly careless of her and not at all fair to him—returned her to Cousin Rosalie’s side when the set was at an end. Angeline spoke quickly before another crowd could gather.