by Mary Balogh
“I see that you are offended,” Lord Uxbury said. “Yet in my place, Netherby, you cannot deny that you would have done exactly the same thing. No one wishes to find himself married to a bas— Ah, pardon me, there is a lady present. Lady Anastasia, will you bow to a ducal whim at your own come-out ball without protest, or will you rather honor me by partnering me in the coming set?”
The duke was no longer ignoring her. Nor did he continue to press his inexplicable quarrel upon the viscount. Instead, he dropped his quizzing glass on its ribbon and turned sleepy eyes upon her, awaiting her answer.
Other eyes were turned upon them too in some curiosity, and guests who had been returning to the ballroom paused before doing so.
“I would ask, Your Grace,” she said, keeping her voice low, “what your quarrel is with Viscount Uxbury. Except that, whatever it is, it does not concern me, and I must beg leave to inform you that I resent being caught in the middle of it and somehow being made a party to your bad manners—again.”
His eyes gleamed for a moment with what looked like appreciation. “Perhaps Lord Uxbury did not introduce himself fully, Anna,” he said softly. “Perhaps he did not mention that he was recently betrothed to Lady Camille Westcott until he made the shocking discovery that she is merely Miss Westcott, illegitimate daughter of the late Earl of Riverdale.”
Her eyes widened and she stared at him a moment before turning toward the viscount.
“You are the man who jilted my sister?” she said.
“You have been misinformed,” he said stiffly. “It was Miss Westcott who ended our engagement with a public notice to the morning papers. And her relationship to you is surely not something of which you can be proud, Lady Anastasia. The less said about her and her unfortunate sister, the better, I am sure you will agree.”
“Lord Uxbury.” Unconsciously she spoke with her teacher voice, the one she used when her class was particularly inattentive. “I informed you a few minutes ago that it was a pleasure to make your acquaintance. It is no longer a pleasure. I have no wish to be acquainted with you now or at any time in the future. I have no wish to speak with you again. I hope never to see you again. You are a man I despise, and I am only glad my sister was fortunate enough to avoid a marriage that would surely have brought her nothing but misery even if the truth of her birth had never been discovered. Archer House is not my home, but this ball is in my honor. I would ask you to leave.”
Too late she heard the silence around them. And a glance about the hallway confirmed her fear that no one had moved off into the ballroom since she last looked. Indeed, more people seemed to have spilled out, including Alexander, who stood a few feet away, his hands clasped at his back.
And then a group of five young ladies, in a huddle together outside the ladies’ withdrawing room, clapped their hands. They did not make a great deal of noise, since every one of them wore gloves, but a couple of gentlemen joined them before a murmur of conversation rose again and everyone turned away as though nothing unusual had happened.
“Quite so,” the duke said agreeably. He raised his eyebrows in the direction of Alexander. “I shall see you safely on your way, Uxbury. One would not wish you to have another of your seizures on the stairs, would one?”
“Anastasia,” Alexander said, “allow me to escort you inside. There is already a crowd gathered about your aunt, hoping to solicit your hand for the next set.”
Anna set a hand on his sleeve and allowed him to lead her into the ballroom.
“How much of that did you hear?” she asked him.
“Netherby’s explanation of who Uxbury is,” he said, “and the whole of your magnificent setdown.”
“Was I speaking very loudly?” she asked.
“Not at all loudly,” he said, “but quite distinctly.”
“Oh dear.” She grimaced. “I have been a colossal failure at my very first ton appearance.”
“But are you sorry,” he asked her, “for having given Uxbury such a public scolding?”
She thought about it for a moment, biting her lower lip. Then she smiled at him. “No,” she said.
“I believe, Anastasia,” he said, and he surprised her by grinning at her, “my cousins—your grandmother and aunts—are going to have to learn to present you as an original rather than as a perfect and perfectly docile lady.”
“I am an imperfect lady?” She grimaced.
“I do believe you are,” he said. “And I like you.”
They had come up to Aunt Louise, who was indeed in the midst of a group of gentlemen, mostly young, who turned as a body to smile at her and welcome her into their midst and vie with one another over who would lead her into the next set. Word of what had just happened had not reached any of them yet.
But really, Anna thought, opening her fan for the first time and waving it before her face, how dared he. How dared he!
And her relationship to you is surely not something of which you can be proud, Lady Anastasia. The less said about her and her unfortunate sister, the better, I am sure you would agree.
Had he really expected that she would welcome his acquaintance? That she would be pleased to dance with him? She hoped Avery really had felled him that one night with three fingertips, though she was still not sure she believed him. She wished he would do it again on the stairs, preferably close to the top. And she was not at all ashamed at the viciousness of the thought. If Camille’s heart had been broken, it would be little comfort to her to know that she had had a narrow escape from a bounder.
The next set, the first after supper, was a waltz, and she danced it with the portly Sir Darnell Washburn, who wheezed his way through the first few minutes and made no conversation because it was clear he was counting steps in his head—his lips were moving slightly. His lips stopped and so did their waltz, however, when a ringed, well-manicured, lace-trimmed hand closed upon his shoulder.
“The footman standing in the doorway to the refreshment room has a cool glass of ale just for you, Washburn,” the Duke of Netherby said. “Go and drink it before it grows too warm. I shall waltz with Lady Anastasia in your place.”
“Oh, I say.” Sir Darnell’s initial look of annoyance turned to something else when he saw who had interrupted him and was attempting to take his partner away. “Decent of you, Netherby. Dancing is warm work. If you will excuse me, Lady Anastasia?”
“I will, sir,” she said, but she looked very pointedly at the duke as he drew her into his arms. “That was rude.”
“To perspire all over you and count steps instead of murmuring flatteries into your ear?” he said. “Forgive him, Anna. He can resist most temptations, but not a glass of ale.”
He moved her flawlessly into the waltz, twirling her about the perimeter of the dance floor with the other dancers.
“By tomorrow,” she said, “I shall be notorious.”
“Ah, Anna,” he said, “do the ton some justice. You are already notorious, and your aunts are just beginning to realize it.”
“If you had not been so secretive,” she said, “and had explained at the theater who he is, then tonight’s very public scene might have been avoided.”
“Remind me,” he said, “never to be secretive with you again. And remind me never to offend you. One shudders at the prospect of being at the receiving end of your displeasure, especially in a public place.”
“Have I ruined the ball?” she asked. Have I ruined my life? she wondered silently.
“That,” he said, “will depend upon whom you speak with in the coming days.”
“I am speaking with you now,” she said.
“And so you are.” He swept her around one corner of the room, twirling her twice about as he did so. “I am not bored, Anna. And I am invariably bored at grand ton affairs, especially balls.”
And he did again what he had done only once before, though she was as little prepared for
it now as she had been then. He smiled fully at her and twirled her again. And she smiled back, as caught up in the magic of the waltz as she had been during that first lesson in the music room at Westcott House.
She had probably disgraced herself beyond redemption. But she would think of that later.
She would think of it tomorrow.
Fifteen
Nothing had been planned for the day following the ball. It would be a quiet time for rest and reflection, the aunts had decided, before they all gathered again to assess Anna’s debut and plan the rest of her Season.
The day following the ball did not turn out to be a quiet one.
It started with exactly thirty bouquets being delivered to Westcott House before noon.
“I am almost tempted just to leave the front door open so that the knocker does not end up making a hole in it, Miss Snow,” John Davies said from behind a particularly extravagant bouquet of two dozen red roses as he brought it into the drawing room. “But Mr. Lifford says it would not be the thing. This one must have cost a fortune.”
Three of the bouquets were for Elizabeth, twenty-seven for Anna. Two, one for each of them, were from Alexander.
“Oh dear,” Anna said, surveying the veritable garden surrounding them, though a number of the bouquets had been borne off by housemaids, to be displayed elsewhere about the house. “I do not even remember half these gentlemen, Lizzie. More than half. I surely did not even dance with half of them. How very kind they are.”
“Indeed,” Elizabeth said, fingering the petals of a cheerful daisy in one of her bouquets. “Sir Geoffrey Codaire proposed marriage to me once. It was the day after I had accepted Desmond’s offer. The notice had not yet appeared in the papers. He professed himself to be heartbroken, though I daresay he was not. And I was so in love with Desmond, I must confess I did not spare him another thought.”
“Is he the gentleman who danced the first waltz with you?” Anna asked, remembering Elizabeth’s partner for that dance as a tall, solid, sandy-haired gentleman who had had eyes for no one but his partner.
“And the waltz after supper,” Elizabeth said. “The one you started to dance with Sir Darnell Washburn and finished dancing with Avery. Sir Geoffrey lost his wife a year ago and has only recently left off his mourning. How tragic it was for him. She was trampled by a runaway horse and cart outside Hyde Park. She left him with three young children.”
“Oh,” Anna said.
But Elizabeth shook her head and smiled. “Was it not a lovely, lovely ball, Anna? Goodness, I missed dancing only one set—at my age.”
“You looked lovely, Lizzie,” Anna told her. “Yellow suits you. It makes you look like a ray of sunshine.”
Her friend laughed. “It was kind of Mr. Johns to send me flowers too,” she said. “He used to stay with us sometimes as a boy when his father hunted with Papa. I used to think him a horrid know-it-all, but he has mellowed. Or perhaps I have. But, Anna, all these admirers of yours—twenty-what? I have lost count.”
“Twenty-seven,” Anna said. “It is the first time in my life anyone has given me flowers, and now twenty-seven people have all at once. It is a little overwhelming. It is a good thing there is nothing planned for the rest of the day and no one is coming here. I am already exhausted—or still exhausted.”
She was wrong about the rest of the day, however. They had luncheon and went to their rooms to change into frocks more suitable for afternoon wear even though they were going nowhere. But scarcely had they settled in Anna’s sitting room, Elizabeth with her embroidery, Anna at the small escritoire to write letters, than John Davies came to announce that there were visitors downstairs, and he had shown them into the drawing room since there were two of them and they had not come together, and Mr. Lifford had given it as his opinion that judging by the number of flowers that had come this morning, there were likely to be more visitors and they might become crowded in the visitors’ salon especially since four of the bouquets were in there taking up most of the table space.
“Though they do look lovely,” he added, “and they smell a treat. But then, so do all the ones in the drawing room and these ones in here.”
“Thank you, John,” Anna said as she cleaned her pen and set it down and Elizabeth folded her embroidery and put it away. “Whoever can they be, Lizzie?”
By the time they arrived in the drawing room, three more gentlemen had arrived, one of them with his mother, another with his sister. And that was just the beginning. They kept coming for all of two hours, the fashionable visiting hours, Elizabeth explained later, and stayed for half an hour apiece. Elizabeth poured the tea when the tray was brought in and Anna concentrated upon conversing with their guests. It was surprisingly easy, since everyone seemed to be in a hearty good mood and talked easily with one another. There was a great deal of laughter. She did not count the total number of visitors, but there were surely more than twenty in all, only four of whom were ladies.
Anna received five invitations to drive in the park later in the afternoon and accepted the one that came from Mr. Fleming, since he asked first and his invitation included his brother—who had not accompanied him here—and Elizabeth. She also had three invitations to dance the opening set at Lady Hanna’s ball four days hence, which they all assumed she would attend. She had one invitation to join a theater party the following week and another to join a party at Vauxhall, also next week. She deflected all five of those invitations by declaring with a laugh that she had not yet had a chance to look through all her invitations and decide which she would accept and which dates were still open to her. Mrs. Gray’s lessons, though lighthearted and laughter filled, had been invaluable.
Written invitations really had been arriving all day, and the butler brought them into the drawing room on a silver salver after the last of the guests had left.
“Oh goodness, Lizzie,” Anna said as they sorted through them, “how very kind everyone is. I really thought that after last night I might have put myself beyond the pale.”
Elizabeth was shaking her head at her. “You really do not understand, Anna, do you?” she said. “I will not say you are the wealthiest lady in England, but I am quite sure you are among the five or so wealthiest. And you are young and newly arrived upon the social stage. And . . . you are single.”
“But just a short while ago,” Anna said, “I was an orphan and a teacher at an orphan school.”
Her answer struck them both as funny and they went off into whoops of laughter. Though Anna was not quite sure she was amused.
“We had better get ready to drive out with Mr. Fleming and his brother,” Elizabeth said. “Just do not expect it to be a quiet drive, Anna.”
* * *
Avery called at the Earl of Riverdale’s rented house in the middle of the afternoon and found that he had just returned home from escorting his mother to the library. He raised his eyebrows when Avery was admitted to the sitting room where the two of them had just settled for refreshments. He might well be surprised, Avery thought, for the two men, while not enemies, had never been friends either.
“Avery,” Mrs. Westcott said, smiling warmly as she got to her feet. “How delightful. Do come and sit down. I am just about to enjoy a cup of tea, but I expect you will have something stronger with Alex. You must have been very pleased with the ball last evening. It went very well, and Anastasia acquitted herself with admirable poise. As for what happened with Viscount Uxbury after supper, well, for my part I can only applaud her having spoken up in defense of poor Camille. I just wish I had heard her.”
“We can only hope, Mama,” the earl said, crossing to the sideboard, “that the rest of the ton agrees with you. What will you have, Netherby?”
Avery sat and conversed for a while until Mrs. Westcott had finished her tea. She got to her feet then and gathered up the three books piled beside her.
“I can see how it is,” she said, her e
yes twinkling. “You came for a specific purpose, did you not, Avery? You came to speak privately with Alex and are wondering how you can hint me away. And I have been wondering how I can get away without appearing ill-mannered. I have three new library books and cannot wait to dive into them. No, no need to get up. You neither, Alex. I can hold three books in one hand and open the door with the other.”
Her son got to his feet nevertheless to open the door. He closed it quietly behind her and turned to look at Avery.
“To what do I owe this honor?” he asked.
“I need a second,” Avery said with a sigh, “and thought it might be better to keep it in the family, so to speak.”
There was a beat of silence.
“A second,” Riverdale said, moving to the fireplace and leaning one elbow upon the mantel. “As in a fight? A duel?”
“It is tiresome in the extreme,” Avery said, “but I have been called out by Uxbury for causing him public humiliation and anguish—I believe that latter was the word Jasper Walling used this morning when he presented himself at Archer House on behalf of Uxbury to invite me to name my seconds. I believe he meant a singular second even though he used the plural.”
“The devil!” Riverdale said. “Why Cousin Louise decided that it would be bad manners not to invite the man to the ball escapes my understanding. He was fortunate that either you or I did not throw him down the stairs and chuck him out the doors.”
“Quite so,” Avery agreed. “But I need a second. Will you oblige?”
Riverdale frowned at him. “What weapons will you choose?” he asked. “The choice will be yours since you are the challenged rather than the challenger. I can remember that you were tolerably handy with a fencing foil in your senior year at school. I have heard it said that Uxbury is a crack shot with a pistol. How good are you?”
“Tolerable,” Avery said, withdrawing his snuffbox from a pocket and taking a pinch while Riverdale waited impatiently for him to continue. “I would hate to put a bullet between his eyes, however, and cause a fuss. I would hate even more to shoot into the air and then have to stare down the barrel of his pistol. Swords draw blood, and blood is notoriously difficult to wash out of shirts, or so my valet informs me. Swords also make holes in shirts. No, no, my weapon of choice must be the body, unencumbered by any additional weapon that may cause holes or an excess of blood. Though nosebleeds can be messy, of course.”