The Secret Mistress

Present tense?

He was such a novice at all this. And part of him was still wary. How could he be in love? And how the devil could he be in love with Lady Angeline Dudley? He deliberately brought to mind his first two encounters with her—at the Rose and Crown and on Rotten Row—and looked along the dining table to where she was seated between Sir Webster Jordan and Christopher. She was talking with great animation to the former, and he was smiling back at her.

She was a young, warmhearted, exuberant girl, full of dreams and hopes and charm and quite, quite unconscious of her own vivid beauty. Her mother would still have disapproved of her, he thought. The competition would have been too stiff.

She lifted her eyes and caught him looking at her. And for a moment—it was so brief that he might have imagined it—she gazed wistfully back. Then she smiled more brightly and lowered her eyes while she listened to what Jordan was saying.

He was not going to take her at her word. He was not going to forget about marrying her. If there was one thing he had learned about women, limited as his experience was, it was that they did not always say what they meant or mean what they said. Dealing with women was not an easy thing. But like all skills worth acquiring, it needed to be worked upon.

It was to be an evening of dancing. It was not the best situation in which to begin some determined wooing, but perhaps not the worst either. This was no London squeeze after all, and the musicians were no professionals. He danced an energetic hop with Miss Marianne Briden and a slightly more stately one with Alma. They all watched as Lorraine and Fenner waltzed together.

And then Lady Palmer asked the musicians to play a whole set of waltzes and there was a buzz of approval from the guests.

Edward drew a deep breath, but he dared not hesitate.

“Lady Angeline.” He stepped up to where she was standing, talking with Eunice and the Reverend Martin. “Would you care to waltz?”

Her lips formed a soundless O, and she glanced at Eunice and even made a small gesture toward her with one hand. But then she smiled.

“Thank you, Lord Heyward,” she said and set her hand on his sleeve as he led her farther onto the floor of the drawing room, from which the Persian carpet had been rolled back earlier in the evening.

His grandmother was beaming at him, Edward could see. Alma, who was with her, was smiling and nodding in his direction. His mother was looking hopefully at him. So, actually, was Lady Palmer. And for the first time he could feel encouraged rather than trapped by their obvious approval of this match. If only it were not a waltz! Or any dance at all for that matter.

“Perhaps,” Lady Angeline said, “you would prefer to sit and talk, Lord Heyward. Or perhaps you would like to stroll outside.”

The French windows were open though there was no one outside.

“Shall we compromise,” he suggested, “and dance outside?”

Perhaps his legs would feel more like legs—one left and one right—if he waltzed in the darkness without any critical eyes upon him.

“Oh,” she said. “Very well. But I am surprised you did not ask Miss Goddard. She is your friend, and I am sure you would not wish to see her be a wallflower. Your mother and sisters would understand if you danced with her.”

“A wallflower?” he said as he led her through the doors and out onto the cool terrace, which was illuminated only by the candles within the drawing room. “Eunice has had a partner for every dance so far. She is going to dance this one with Windrow.”

“I do not like that,” she said. “And you ought not. He is not a man to be trusted.”

“Not even in a drawing room full of fellow guests at a house party?” he asked her.

“But if they should venture beyond the sight of everyone else,” she said, “I do believe you ought to be concerned.”

He had been given the strange impression both yesterday and today that Windrow was actually interested in Eunice—perhaps because she was no easy victim to his charms. Nothing would come of it, of course. Eunice was far too sensible to encourage him, even if she appeared to be enjoying his company right now. She was laughing at something he had said. Eunice should laugh more often. She looked younger and lovelier than he remembered her looking at any time since he had known her.

And then the music began and he forgot about Eunice and Windrow and everyone else in the drawing room. He set a hand behind Lady Angeline’s slender waist and took her right hand in his left. He felt her other hand come to rest on his shoulder. Her eyes were large in the darkness. They were looking directly into his.

He even forgot that he could not dance, or, rather, that he did so with extreme awkwardness. And that the musicians were not particularly skilled.

He had been wrong about the candlelight. The sky was clear overhead. The moon was waxing toward the full. A million stars twinkled with varying degrees of brightness. The air was cool but not cold. They moved into the steps of the waltz.

It was the only time ever he had enjoyed dancing. Perhaps because he did not even realize that was what he was doing. They moved as one, in and out of the beams of light cast by the drawing room candles, and they twirled beneath the stars until it seemed that it was they that were whirling in bands of light while the two people beneath them stood still.

Her body was warm and supple, her hand clasped in his. She wore a perfume—or perhaps it was soap—so faint that it seemed more the fragrance of her. It wrapped about him like a soft shawl, warming him against the cool of the evening.

They did not speak. It did not occur to him that they might. It did not even occur to him that they were not conversing. The silence was eloquent enough with its background of music and voices and laughter.

And when it was over, they stood a foot apart—less—and gazed at each other.

“Lady Angeline—” he said softly.

“Thank you,” she said brightly as he began to speak. She smiled dazzlingly. “That was very pleasant, Lord Heyward. It is chilly out here, is it not? I shall be glad to get back inside.”

And the spell was broken.

Was it possible that it had been one-sided, that only he had felt it? Had she been feeling chilly all the time they danced and anxious for the music to end so that she could go back indoors?

He did not believe so.

But she was edgy. She did not trust him, perhaps, to be more than the dull, plodding suitor who had acted out all the platitudes and clichйs of a marriage proposal a month ago and had admitted, when pressed, that he was proposing only because he had kissed and compromised her the night before.

What an insufferable ass he had been—as well as an utter simpleton.

It was no wonder she did not trust him now.

The only question was, was it too late to redeem himself? Had his cold manner then killed all her love for him? If she had loved him, that was. But she had loved him this afternoon. He had no experience by which to judge such things, but one did not need experience. He had felt her kiss and her arms about him. He had gazed into her eyes.

“Yes,” he said now and offered her his arm.

Five minutes later she was dancing with Windrow and sparkling and laughing up at him, and Edward felt that he could cheerfully kill the man. But he was dancing with Eunice, and he determinedly