The Secret Mistress

She laughed.

“I do tend to exaggerate,” she admitted.

“I do not,” he assured her, giving her the full benefit of his bedroom eyes. Well, perhaps not the full effect. They were still filled with amusement.

She laughed again.

He waltzed divinely. And that was no exaggeration at all.

She could not have been happier.

Chapter 13

BETTY ARRIVED IN Angeline’s dressing room the following morning with watery eyes, a reddened nose, and a voice that a baritone might have envied if only there had been some volume to it. And she admitted when asked—it was self-evident really—that her head was pounding and she felt wretched.

Angeline promptly sent her back to bed with the command that she stay there all day and not even dream of getting up even tomorrow unless she was feeling well again. And then she sent a direction to the kitchen that her maid be dosed and coddled with anything and everything the cook could devise that might soothe a head cold and all its attendant ills.

Then she was left with a bit of a problem, for Rosalie was not coming until the afternoon, yet Angeline wanted to go out this morning. She could have taken one of the other maids, of course, but the housekeeper would look at her with long-suffering reproach if she suggested it. And she was certainly not going to ask Tresham himself to escort her, even supposing he was still at home. It would take too long to send for Ferdinand, even supposing he was home.

She would go out alone, then. She was not going far. No harm would come to her, and it was unlikely anyone she knew would see her and report the indiscretion to her brother.

She walked alone to Lady Sanford’s, then, and found to her great delight that that lady was from home but Miss Goddard was able to receive her. It was Miss Goddard she had come to see. She had conceived an idea during a night of restless, fitful sleep, and it had restored her spirits considerably.

“This is an unexpected pleasure,” Miss Goddard said, getting to her feet as Angeline was shown into a small parlor.

“I hope it is a pleasure and not an imposition,” Angeline said, taking the seat Miss Goddard indicated and removing her gloves. “It is just that I realized last evening when I saw you hidden in the shadows of the ballroom that I had been hoping ever since first meeting you that we could be friends. Which is absurd, I know, when you are an intelligent, well-educated, well-read lady while I—”

She stopped abruptly.

“While you—?” Miss Goddard raised her eyebrows.

“I chatter,” Angeline said. “Constantly. About nothing at all. I cannot seem to help it. My governesses—all of them—told me I had nothing but fluff in my head and that it revealed itself whenever I opened my mouth. And I never made any particular effort to learn from them. I would sometimes try, but my mind would wander after a few moments. I hated poetry and drama in particular. Miss Pratt used to read a poem or a play out loud, giving very deliberate emphasis to every word, and she would stop after every few lines in order to point out all the literary and intellectual merits contained in them. By the time she got to the end of a poem or speech, I had no idea how it had started and was almost screaming with boredom.”

“So would I have been,” Miss Goddard surprised her by saying. “What a perfectly dreadful way to teach. I really do not believe I would have liked your Miss Pratt. I suppose she was a very worthy lady.”

There was a twinkle in her eye.

“Oh, very,” Angeline said. “There was not a fault to be found in her. Which made my behavior toward her that much more reprehensible. I played the most awful tricks on her. I put a huge daddy longlegs of a spider between her sheets one evening, and her screams when she went to bed must have woken everyone in the village a mile away. I felt ashamed of that one afterward, though, for I knew she had an unnatural fear of spiders.”

“It was probably not your finest moment,” Miss Goddard said. “But it does sound as if you were severely provoked. Learning ought to be exciting. Reading ought to be. How can one possibly enjoy it, though, when one is forced to stop every few lines to listen to someone else’s interpretation of what has been written? Especially the interpretation of someone worthy.”

Angeline laughed, and so did Miss Goddard. But she had expressed very similar ideas about learning to those Lord Heyward had expressed at Vauxhall. Could learning ever be exciting?

“Did you want to discuss Paradise Lost?” Miss Goddard asked. “It is some time since I read it, but it left a lasting impression upon me and I would be happy to share my thoughts with you.”

She would like it of all things, Angeline thought. She would really love to have a friend with whom she could talk about sensible, intelligent things. But it was not why she had made a point of coming here today. Today she had something else to say—something noble. Today she would do something for someone else, she would be unselfish, and then she would feel better. She needed to feel better. She had spent so many wakeful hours last night telling herself that she had enjoyed herself at the Hicks ball more than she had enjoyed herself on any other occasion in her life that her head had ached with all the happiness, and so had her heart. After this visit she could feel truly happy.

“I really came to talk about the Earl of Heyward,” she said, leaning slightly forward in her chair.

“Oh.” Miss Goddard sat slightly back in hers. “Are you regretting that you refused him?”

“No, not at all,” Angeline said, her heart plummeting nevertheless to take up residence in the soles of her shoes. “I want to ask you a question. You must not feel obliged to answer, for of course it is impertinent of me and absolutely none of my concern. But all this business of ton alliances and marriages is horridly complicated, you know. Everyone wants to marry well, which means choosing and setting one’s cap at the most eligible … other. I will not say man, because it works both ways, though that did not really occur to me until after I had come to town and made my come-out. I had always thought that it was only we ladies who would be hoping to find the perfect husband, but of course that was shortsighted of me because men have to marry too, for a variety of reasons, and they also want to marry the very best candidate. And the very best, for both men and women, is not necessarily the person they like best. It is often whom their family likes best, or who society suggests is best, or who has the most illustrious title and lineage or the most money, provided it has not been acquired in business or commerce, of course, for then it is tainted by vulgarity, just as if money were not simply money. No one even thinks about love or the fact that the two people have to live together after they marry and make the best of what often turns out to be not a very great bargain at all even if it pleases all the rest of the world. People can be terribly foolish, can they not?”

“Far too frequently,” Miss Goddard agreed. “What is your question, Lady Angeline?”

“Well, it is very impertinent,” Angeline said. “But I shall ask it anyway since it is what I came here to do. Do you love Lord Heyward, Miss Goddard? I mean, do you love him in a way that makes you ache here when you think that perhaps you will never have him?” She tapped a closed fist over her heart.