The Secret Mistress

uncomfortable void where she had been. If not Eunice, then whom? Was he going to have to meet and woo a stranger and marry her and get her with child? It was a rhetorical question, of course. That was exactly what he must do. It was one of his two reasons for leaving behind the peace and safety of Wimsbury Abbey for London. London in the spring was the great marriage mart, and he had come to shop.

Unless Eunice could be persuaded to change her mind. She had avoided his question about her personal feelings on being set free of their agreement. Perhaps she was secretly hoping that he would refuse to be set free.

It did not take long for the family committee to compile an alarmingly long list of marital possibilities for him, though it took even less time for them to whittle it down to a few probabilities and then to one overwhelming and unanimous favorite.

Lady Angeline Dudley.

Everything about her made her supremely eligible.

She was about to make her come-out. Her come-out ball was to be held less than one week hence, in fact—on the evening of the very day appointed for Edward’s maiden speech in the Upper House. She was the daughter and sister of a duke, and her fortune was said to be astronomical. She had lived a sheltered life in the country under the tutelage of an assortment of the finest governesses money could buy. She was at the very top of everyone’s list of eligible hopefuls this Season and would be snapped up within weeks or even days of her first appearance on the marriage mart.

For Edward there was only one impediment—and it was a huge one. Lady Angeline Dudley just happened to be the sister of the Duke of Tresham.

Of course, he admitted to himself, she could hardly be blamed for the wildness and dissipations of her brother. Or for those of her late father. Or for the scandalous reputation her mother had enjoyed before her untimely death a couple of years or so ago.

Indeed, it might be altogether kinder to pity the girl.

Either way, he soon found himself committed to firing at least the opening volley in what his family hoped would be a rapid and successful courtship campaign. Lorraine took it upon herself to speak to Lady Palmer, with whom she had an acquaintance. Lady Palmer was Lady Angeline Dudley’s cousin and her sponsor for the all-important come-out Season. The outcome of the meeting was that Edward was engaged to lead Lady Angeline Dudley into the first set of dances at her come-out ball—arguably the most important set of dances in her life.

Lorraine’s initiative was accorded the heartfelt approval of the rest of the committee. Indeed, Edward even heard—and carefully ignored—mention being made of St. George’s, Hanover Square, as the only truly proper setting for a marriage of such social magnitude. The comment came in the voice of his maternal grandmother.

Being accepted to dance that opening set with Lady Angeline Dudley was a huge honor for Edward. It was no less an honor for her, of course. He was one of the most eligible bachelors on the market this year—and he did not doubt that the whole of the beau monde was fully aware that he was actively in search of a bride.

It was all deucedly unnerving.

Just a year or so ago he might have attended any and every ton ball without anyone’s remembering afterward if he had even been there. Being a second son made one blessedly invisible.

He wondered what Lady Angeline Dudley looked like. And what she was like as a person. But it seemed he was destined to find out soon enough. He was forced to go through the excruciatingly embarrassing formality of applying to Tresham himself for that all-important set with his sister—Tresham was back in town, alas. And of course permission was granted, even though he had been forced to endure a long, inscrutable stare from Tresham’s black eyes before being informed that if Lady Palmer deemed Heyward an unexceptionable partner for Lady Angeline, then who was he to argue?

Lord! What would it be like, Edward could not help wondering, if he ever had to apply to the duke for permission to marry the sister? It did not bear thinking of, though he believed he had acquitted himself well enough on this occasion by staring back at Tresham with equal steadiness of eye.

All of Edward’s female relatives were fairly twittering with delight when the matter became official. And it was not just the ladies. Augustine Lynd began cracking jokes about leg shackles and braying loudly over his own wit. And Overmyer began hoping that his gout—which was in his head more than it was in his legs, in Edward’s inexpert and unkind medical opinion—would allow him to attend the ball at Dudley House so that he could witness the first fateful meeting between his brother-in-law and his future countess.

It was a relief to Edward to discover during a chance meeting on Oxford Street that Lady Sanford and Eunice were also to attend the ball, even though Eunice despised the frivolities of most social entertainments and was going only because she did not want to disappoint her aunt. Perhaps she would dance a set with him, Edward thought, even though he hated to dance. Even though he could not dance, in fact. His right leg and foot might look like a right leg and foot, but in reality they were a left leg and foot in disguise. Or so it always seemed when he attempted to perform the intricate steps of any dance yet invented.

Perhaps Eunice would sit out a set with him, then, or stroll in the garden outside with him if it was a pleasant evening. She would not mind having to forgo the pleasure of tripping the light fantastic for half an hour.

Meanwhile he hired a secretary to help him with all the work of being an earl in London with an estate in Shropshire still to run in absentia. And he applied all his energies to composing a maiden speech that would render all the other peers of the realm speechless with admiration when it was delivered in the House of Lords.

He started to suffer from insomnia and sudden cold sweats and clammy palms.

Chapter 3

WHEN THINKING AHEAD to her removal to London, Angeline had somehow imagined that she would make her curtsy to the queen the moment she arrived in town—well, perhaps not the very moment, but certainly within a day or two—and that she would then sweep off into all the dizzying round of entertainments with which the ton filled its days and nights during the Season.

She was quite wrong, of course. For one thing, she had come to town rather early in the year, when there was a mere trickle of entertainments and half the ton were still in the country packing their trunks and bandboxes in preparation for the move to their town houses.

For another thing, a young lady needed time—and lots of it—to make endless preparations for her presentation and all the balls and parties and concerts and whatnot that would follow it.

Tresham had explained it to her in the carriage on the way to London, sounding rather bored, as if it were just too, too tedious to have a sister to bring out. And he had been sprawled across a corner of the carriage seat, one booted foot propped against the seat opposite, for all the world as though looking alert and elegant for a sister were too great a bore to be contemplated. Of course, he had looked gorgeous anyway with all his tall, dark, harsh beauty, and Angeline had gazed back at him with fond exasperation.

Brothers had positively no idea how to treat a sister.

“Cousin Rosalie will bring you up to snuff,” he had said. “She will tell you what to wear, what to do, where to go, whose acquaintance to cultivate, how deeply you must curtsy to the queen.” He had