by Mary Balogh
“Georgie!” she said to her sister, reproach in her voice.
“Did I say something wrong?” the countess asked. “But there is only Lady Severn to hear, Vera—or did you imagine that I had not told Ralph yet? And I am sure Lady Severn will not have a fit of the vapors to know that you are increasing and that I am wondering if you will be dancing the more strenuous sets.”
Lord Beauchamp was grinning, and had set one arm loosely about his wife’s waist. “I warned you not to tell Georgie until the evidence was staring her in the face, Vera,” he said. “Though why you should be embarrassed, I have no idea, unless you are afraid that people will be imagining the process by which you have come by this state.”
“Roger!” his wife said while he laughed down at her. “I am so sorry, Lady Severn. If my sister and my husband do not drive me to an early grave, perhaps I will live to a ripe old age.”
“I envy you,” Abigail said, smiling reassuringly at the baroness. “I hope to be in the same state myself before many months are past.”
Her husband’s hand was at her waist, she felt as she was speaking.
Lord Beauchamp chuckled. “Now, there is a challenge for you to take up, Severn,” he said. “Ah, the dancing is about to begin at last. Vera, my love?”
“Abby?” The earl was smiling at her. “It is a quadrille, not a waltz, so you can put away that look of blank terror for a while.”
Abigail laughed. It felt very splendid, she thought, to be led into the opening set by the gentleman who was not only her husband but also without a doubt the most gorgeously handsome man in the room. Her own claim to great splendor had already been relinquished to fifty other women, but she would continue to bask in the glory of being Miles’s wife.
After a few minutes of dancing, she was caught again by that feeling of familiarity about someone across the ballroom. She turned her head sharply and looked again.
It was a woman—a woman with black hair and a daringly low-cut red gown that clung to her generous curves just as if it had been dampened. And undoubtedly it had been—Abigail had heard that several bold ladies did that.
Her hair had been a light brown when Abigail had known her, and her figure had not appeared quite so generous. But her identity was unmistakable. She was laughing up at a dark-haired, heavyset gentleman, her dancing partner, apparently enjoying herself greatly. She had not often looked happy when Abigail had known her. Not toward the end, anyway.
Their eyes suddenly caught and held across the room, and her stepmother raised her eyebrows and smiled at her.
Abigail jerked her head back to stare at the intricate folds of her husband’s neckcloth.
“I am sorry,” she said as she trod on his foot.
“No harm done,” he said, “I managed not to scream out loud and you are not so very heavy anyway. You are not really nervous, are you, Abby? You look as white as a ghost.”
“I have only three spaces on my dancing card,” she said. “Everyone has been most obliging.”
“Have you reserved a waltz for me after supper?” he asked.
“Two spaces,” she said. “Are you permitted three dances with me, Miles? I thought two was the limit.”
“Since you are my bride of two days,” he said, “I think I will be forgiven.”
Abigail glanced again at the woman in red. But there was no mistake. She was Rachel, all right.
THE EARL OF SEVERN was feeling well pleased with his first appearance in public with his wife. She was taking well.
His mother and Connie, he was relieved to find, had treated her civilly after their late arrival, his mother actually seeking them out after the opening quadrille was finished and offering her cheek for Abigail’s kiss and his own.
A large number of people had come to be presented to her and had remained to be charmed and amused by her conversation. The two empty unreserved spaces on her dancing card were quickly filled.
Lord and Lady Galloway had been courteous in the receiving line, and Frances gracious. He had reserved a set with her sometime before supper.
His wife was dancing the same set with the young Earl of Chartleigh, he saw. At least she would be able to talk uninterrupted with that very quiet gentleman. He smiled and wondered not for the first time how Abigail had succeeded in appearing so quiet on that first morning and during their shopping trip the next day.
“I am to be presented next week,” Frances was saying. “Of course, Mama did wonder if it was quite proper for me to make my come-out tonight before my appearance at court, but Aunt Irene assured us that it would be quite unexceptionable to do so. I do believe that sets during a ball should be shorter, do you not agree, my lord? Then one would be able to dance with more gentlemen and there would be fewer disappointed at finding that one’s card is full already.”
“You are a great success, then, Frances, as I knew you would be,” he said.
“Mama says we will have vouchers for Almack’s by next week,” she said. “It is a great bore there, so I have heard, but of course it is the thing to do to appear there. Doubtless within the next week or two I will be permitted to waltz too. It is very provoking to be prohibited from performing the dance until one has had the approval of one of the old ladies from Almack’s.”
“I am quite sure you will not have long to wait, Frances,” he said.
And he suddenly realized why he had always found Frances’s prattling tedious while he was amused by Abigail’s. Frances was incurably conceited. Abby was not. When she had admired her appearance earlier that evening, she had done so with a merry laugh and the acknowledgment that she would be outshone as soon as she was in other female company.
And yet she was not outshone, he thought, glancing at her once more.
“It was very kind of you to marry Lady Severn,” Frances said, and his eyes focused on his partner again.
“Kind?” he said.
“And greatly condescending,” she said, “to marry a poor relative to save her from destitution.”
“There is a very distant connection of blood between Abby and me,” he said. “And I married her because I wished to do so, Frances.”
She smiled kindly at him. “She was in service?” she said. “With a cit? And was dismissed for excessive familiarity with her employer’s son, though I am quite sure the charge was unjust. She would have found it difficult, if not impossible, to find another post, of course. And so you married her, my lord. It was very noble of you.”
Galloway had certainly done his homework, the earl thought. Had he told Frances merely to reassure her, to make her feel less humiliated by the loss of a prospective suitor? Or did he mean to cause mischief?
He smiled. “You have omitted one detail, Frances,” he said, “and the key one too. I fell in love with her.”
“Oh, dear,” she said, looking over his shoulder.
“Aunt Irene was very upset when that woman walked along the receiving line with Lord Sorenson and we were all obliged to be civil to her. Perhaps Lady Severn knew her before you elevated her socially, my lord. Or perhaps she does not know that it is not the thing to associate with her.”
The earl turned his head to look at his wife, who was no longer dancing with Chartleigh but was standing close to one of the windows with Mrs. Harper.
“Or perhaps they are merely exchanging courtesies,”he said. “What are your plans for the coming weeks, Frances?”
He knew the girl well enough to understand that answering that particular question would occupy her for the rest of the set.
They were not merely exchanging courtesies, he saw in another glance across the room. They were deep in conversation.
“I HEARD ABOUT YOUR MARRIAGE,” Mrs. Harper was saying to Abigail. “I was delighted for you.”
“Thank you.” Abigail had excused herself from completing the set of country dances with Lord Chartleigh, having seen that her stepmother was standing alone by one of the windows, smiling at her. On closer view she could see that Rachel was wearing cosmetics.
And surely one shrug of the shoulders would expose her bosom entirely. Abigail could feel herself flush. “Rachel, what are you doing here?”
“Dancing most of the time,” Mrs. Harper said. Her voice was lower-pitched than it had used to be, Abigail thought. It sounded seductive. “And enjoying myself, of course. These private balls are always quite lavish affairs.”
“But where did you go?” Abigail said. “What have you been doing all this time? We did not hear one word from you, even after Papa died.”
“Well,” her companion said, smiling, “I did not believe he would have left anything to me, Abigail. And I cannot pretend that I was consumed with grief at his death. I had wished him dead a hundred times when I lived with him.”
“He was ill,” Abigail said.
Mrs. Harper laughed. “Yes, I suppose he was,” she said. “Some people would be less kind, of course, and say that he merely drank himself to death.”
“Have you been in London all the time?” Abigail said. “But what have you been doing? How have you lived?”
“Very well, as it happens,” the other said. “I have prospered, Abigail.”
How old was she? Abigail thought. Thirty? Yes, thirty—six years older than she was herself. Rachel had been only eighteen when she had married Papa out of defiance of her father, who had whipped her one night after she had danced with Papa and walked with him in the garden at one of the local assemblies.
She had suffered many more whippings after her marriage. But Abigail shut the thought from her mind. Rachel looked older than thirty. The dyed hair and the cosmetics had the opposite effect from the one intended.
“And you have fallen into the lap of luxury,” Mrs. Harper said. “The Countess of Severn, Abigail! Should I curtsy down to the ground? Perhaps I can hope for a similar good fortune for my girls.”
The girls. The two reasons why Abigail had never been able to forgive Rachel for running away. Her life had been wretched with Papa, of course. But then, Beatrice and Clara had often been the butt of his drunken rages too, though they had been only two and four years old when Rachel had left six years before. Abigail had had to take on the task of protecting them.
“They are at Aunt Edwina’s?” Mrs. Harper said.
“I am going to have them to live with me again,” Abigail said. “Miles has said I might. When we move to Severn Park for the summer, they will be coming too.”
“How kind of you and of him,” the other woman said.
“Kind?” Abigail said indignantly. “I love them, Rachel. It broke my heart when I had to send them to your aunt after we sold the house. I love them as if they were my own. I can hardly wait to see them again.”
Her stepmother smiled. “I have something of a hankering to see them again myself,” she said. “They must be quite grown. I have even considered having them to live with me now that I am settled and doing well.”
Abigail felt herself grow cold.
“I am their mother, after all,” Mrs. Harper said. “Though I can understand your feelings, Abigail. You were always good to the girls, even when they were babies. Perhaps at some other, more convenient time we can discuss where it would be best for them to live. But now it is almost time for a new set, and time too to enjoy ourselves again. I shall send you a note?”
Abigail could see her husband approaching. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, do that, Rachel.”
“I am Mrs. Harper, by the way,” her stepmother said with a smile from beneath darkened lashes for the Earl of Severn.
“Abby,” he said, reaching out one hand, “this is my waltz, I believe.”
“Yes,” she said. “Do you know Mrs. Harper, Miles?”
“Ma’am?” he said with a half-bow.
Mrs. Harper smiled and waved a fan before her face.
“Abby,” he said as he led her into the dance a minute later, “do you know who Mrs. Harper is?”
She did not answer him.
“She has a house in a respectable neighborhood,” he said. “All is respectable on the surface and she is received by some—and by all, I suppose, when they are given no choice. But the house is reputedly a gaming hell. Darker dealings are rumored to go on there too. She is not someone I would wish you to associate with, dear.”
“I am being ordered to stay away from her?” she asked.
“Ordered?” He looked down at her with a laugh. “With a big stick and a ferocious frown? I would not express it quite so strongly, Abby. I don’t plan to start giving you orders. But I can give you advice, can I not, express my preferences to you? I would prefer that you stayed away from her. Is that better?”
“Perhaps circumstances forced her into this way of life,” she said. “Perhaps she had no choice. Perhaps she made a great mistake in her youth and could never get herself untangled from its effects.”
He was grinning at her. “I am not likely to find her in our house wielding a feather duster or checking the addition in my account books, am I?” he asked. “If so, you had better warn me, Abby.”
“No, of course not,” she said irritably. “Would I be likely to do such a thing without first consulting you?”
“In a word, yes,” he said, still grinning. “Are you cross with me?”
“No,” she said.
“Then why are you frowning and answering in those clipped tones?” he asked her.
She looked up into his smiling eyes. “For no reason,”she said. “I am counting my steps. One two three, one two three. Imagine how it would drive you insane if I did it out loud, Miles. I am doing it silently.”
“Then I will not talk and confuse you,” he said.
She was feeling cold about the heart. Almost panic-stricken. Rachel was running a gaming hell and perhaps a house of ill repute too. And she was thinking of visiting her children, even taking them to live with her, perhaps.
Would it be allowed? Could a woman abandon her own children and return six years later and take them away with her? Would not a court of law stop her?
She wanted to ask Miles, but she was afraid of what his answer would be. Besides, she did not want to tell him who Mrs. Harper really was. She should have told him right at the start, even before their marriage, just how disreputable her family was. She still planned to tell him. But in her own time and in her own way. Not like this.
And she could not lose Bea and Clara when she was so close to having them back again.
“Abby?” She was being drawn closer to her partner so that her bodice was almost touching his coat. “What is it?”
It was only when she looked up into his face that she realized that her vision was blurred.
“Nothing,” she said, smiling. “I am just overwhelmed by it all, Miles. At first I was terrified and now I am happy. I could sit down on the floor right here and bawl.”
“You had better not,” he said, his voice amused.
“Someone might put the wrong interpretation on your actions and think that I have been treading all over your feet. That would be most unfair.”
He had danced her close to the doorway. He took her by the elbow and guided her out into the hallway and along the corridor to a small lighted anteroom, which was empty, most of the guests either dancing or assembling for supper.
“Are you telling me the truth?” he asked. “There is nothing wrong? No one has been unkind?”
“What nonsense,” she said. “Everyone has been just the opposite. It is all very splendid, Miles. Until a few days ago I could only dream of attending such an event. And I keep seeing my new gown and feeling my diamond necklace at my throat and remembering that it is a wedding present from you. I am very happy. Really I am.”
“We should go in search of supper, then,” he said. “Are you hungry?”
She thought for a moment. “No,” she said, “but I will probably be able to eat a bear when I see all the food.”
“I don’t think bear is on the menu,” he said.
And quite unexpectedly he set his hands at her waist, drew her against him, and
lowered his head to kiss her.
“Abby,” he said, “you are the belle of the ball after all.”
“Oh, nonsense,” she said. “There are fifty ladies lovelier, and no one at all more beautiful than Miss Meighan.”
“Ah,” he said, “perhaps you are right. My claim was only that you are the belle of the ball.”
He kissed her again, drawing her right into his arms, opening his mouth over hers, tasting her with his lips and his tongue. Abigail could feel her temperature rising and found her arms about his neck when he finally lifted his head.
“Wouldn’t anyone who walked in think it was peculiar to find you kissing your wife?” she asked.
“Better that than finding me kissing someone else’s wife,” he said with a grin. “I am moving you into my own bed for tonight and all future nights, by the way. If you meant what you said about liking to have me sleep with you, that is. What an interesting shade of scarlet.”
“It is because I am embarrassed,” she said. “Yes, I did mean it. Is it what you want too?”
“What a strange combination of shyness and boldness you are, Abby,” he said. “Have you worked up an appetite for that bear yet?”
She nodded and smiled at him.
9
THE EARL OF SEVERN SMILED AT HIS wife, folded his newspaper, and set it beside his plate. He might have known that she would be up for breakfast despite the fact that they had not arrived home until the early hours of the morning and even then he had kept her awake for another half-hour, making love to her. He got to his feet and handed her to her place at the table.
“Good morning, Abby,” he said. “Aren’t you tired?”
“I must be,” she said. “I did not hear you get up. Was it long ago?”
She had indeed been very fast asleep, curled into his body like a kitten, one hand beneath her cheek. He had lain awake for all of ten minutes before getting up, wondering how severely it would distress her to be made love to by daylight. He had decided finally not to put the matter to the test quite so early in their marriage.