The Secret Mistress

her from following the path her bonnet had taken.

They watched it all the way down without saying a word. And then Angeline burst into uncontrollable laughter and, after a moment, Lord Heyward joined her, bellowing with mirth at something that really was not funny at all.

“My poor hat,” she wailed between spasms.

Another healthy gust of wind tugged at her hairpins and won the battle with one of them. She turned and slid down the wall until she was sitting against its shelter, her knees drawn up before her. And Lord Heyward slid down beside her, his legs stretched out, and removed his hat.

They were still laughing.

“Did you s-s-see it?” she asked when she could catch her breath. “I thought it might fly all the way to America.”

“I thought it might cause heart seizures among all the birds inside the park,” he said. “It looked like a demented parrot. It still does.”

Which was a horrible insult to her bonnet.

Angeline laughed again. So did he.

“Oh, look at me,” she said as she grasped one fallen lock of hair and attempted to twist it up into the rest of her coiffure, which was probably hopelessly flattened anyway. “Just look at me.”

He turned his head and did so, and somehow their laughter faded. And they were sitting almost shoulder to shoulder, their faces turned toward each other.

Angeline bit her lip.

That was Lord Heyward with whom she had been laughing so merrily?

“You look windblown and wind-flushed and very wholesome,” he said.

“I shall have to think about that,” she said, “to understand whether I have been insulted or not.”

“Not,” he said softly.

There were beads of perspiration clinging to his brow where his hat had been.

“You are kind,” she said. “But goodness, I am not much to look at to begin with.”

The lock of hair, pushed firmly and quite securely beneath another, promptly fell down over her ear again as soon as she let go of it.

“Why do you say that?” he asked.

“Well,” she said, looking down at her lap, “just consider my mother.”

“I knew her,” he said. “Not personally, but I saw her more than once. She was extremely beautiful. You look nothing like her.”

“You noticed?” She laughed softly.

“Do you wish you did?” he asked.

It was funny. She had never really asked herself that question before. She had lamented the fact that she was not as beautiful as her mother had been, but—did she really wish she looked like her? It would change everything, would it not?

“When I first saw you,” he said, “when you turned from the window at the Rose and Crown, I thought you were the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. I thought so again when I saw you at Dudley House.”

She laughed.

“I am so tall,” she said. “A beanpole.”

“Perhaps you were at the age of thirteen or so,” he said, “but certainly not now.”

“And I am so dark.”

“Vividly dark,” he said.

“I cannot even arch my eyebrows properly,” she said.

“What?” He looked baffled.

“When I try it,” she said, “I look like a startled hare.”

“Show me,” he said.

And she turned her face obediently toward his again and showed him.

His eyes filled with laughter once more.

“By Jove,” he said, “you are quite right. A startled hare. Who was the first to warn you about it?”

“My mother,” she said.

The laughter faded.

“She was disappointed in me,” she said. “She loved Ferdie. She took him to London with her a number of times, but never me. I daresay she hoped my looks would improve before she had to show me to anyone beyond the neighborhood of Acton. And she had lovers, you know. Of course you know. Everyone knew. But it is quite unexceptionable for a married lady, is it not, once she has presented her husband with an heir and a spare, and a daughter in her case. And why should she not take lovers when Papa had mistresses and even kept one in a cottage on the corner of the estate, saying she was an indigent relative. But she was not. I always knew she was not even before I knew what a mistress was. She never looked poor, and she never came to the house for a meal, which she would have done at least once in a while if she had been a poor relative, would she not? And of course Tresham has mistresses, even married ones. He has fought two duels I have heard of and perhaps more that I have not. I daresay Ferdie has mistresses too, even though he is only twenty-one. I have sworn and sworn that I will not marry a rake, even if it means marrying a dull man instead. Better to be dull than to be so unhappy that one is forced to take lovers. She was unhappy, you know, my mother. If she had lived, perhaps she would have thought me improved, and she could have brought me out and helped me find a husband, and we could have become friends and she would have been happy and proud.”

She grasped her knees and turned her face from his and shut her eyes tightly.

“I am babbling,” she said.

Oh, where had all that come from? How absolutely mortifying.

“And then Tresham left home abruptly when he was sixteen and never came back,” she added for good measure, “and Ferdinand went off to school and sometimes did not even come home during the holidays but went to stay with school friends instead, and Papa died a year after Tresham left, and Mama stayed most of the time in London after that, even more than before, it seemed, and all I had left was my governesses. They did not like me, and I do not blame them. I made myself unlikable.”

There. Oh, there. She wished she really had cast herself over the battlements in pursuit of her hat. She brought her forehead down to rest on her knees, and felt after a few moments his hand come to rest against the exposed back of her neck—and then stroke lightly back and forth.

“You were a totally innocent bystander in your family dramas, you know,” he said. “Whatever made your parents’ marriage an unhappy one had nothing whatsoever to do with you. They had their lives to live and they lived them as they saw fit. Whatever drove your elder brother away so suddenly and kept him away had nothing to do with you—or you would have known it. And your younger brother was a boy learning to spread his wings. He sought out friends of his own, no doubt heedless of the fact that his sister was lonely for his company. As for your governesses, women like them have a hard lot in life. They are often impoverished gentlewomen unable for whatever reason to marry and so have homes and families of their own. They often take out their unhappiness upon their pupils, especially if those pupils are rebelling against life for some reason or other. You are not unlovable.”