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Phillipa stepped back. She’d served her purpose. Her introductions made it possible for him to ask any of them to dance. She imagined their minds turning, calculating. He was only the younger son of an earl, but his looks more than made up for a lack of title. And he was reputed to have a good income.
Her friends were solidly on the marriage mart. They’d all been bred to hope for the perfect betrothal by the end of their first Season. Phillipa’s hopes had quickly become more modest and certainly did not include snaring the most handsome and exciting young man in the room. Not even ordinary eligible gentlemen paid her the least attention. Why should Xavier Campion?
In Brighton, when she’d been a young, foolish child, she’d been his companion. Although a few years older, he played children’s games with her. He filled buckets at the water’s edge with her and built castles out of the pebbles on the beach. They’d chased each other through the garden of the Pavilion and pressed their faces against its windows, peeking at the grandeur inside. Sometimes when they were at play, she’d stop and stare, awestruck at his beauty. Many a night she’d fall asleep dreaming that some day, when she was grown, Xavier would ride in like a prince on horseback and whisk her away to a romantic castle.
Well, she was grown now and the reality was that no man wanted a young lady with a scar on her face. She was eighteen years old and it was past time to put away such childhood fancies.
‘Phillipa?’ His voice again.
She turned.
Xavier extended his hand to her. ‘May I have the honour of this dance?’
She nodded, unable to speak, unable to believe her ears.
Her friends moaned in disappointment.
Xavier clasped her hand and led her to the dance floor as the orchestra began the first strains of a tune Phillipa easily identified, as she’d identified every tune played at the balls she’d attended.
‘The Nonesuch’.
How fitting. Xavier was a nonesuch, a man without equal. There were none such as he.
The dance began.
Somehow, as if part of the music, her legs and feet performed the figures. In fact, her step felt as light as air; her heart, joy-filled.
He smiled at her. He looked at her. Straight in her face. In her eyes.
‘How have you spent your time since last we played on the beach?’ he asked when the dance brought them together.
They parted and she had to wait until the dance joined them again to answer. ‘I went away to school,’ she told him.
School had been a mostly pleasant experience. So many of the girls had been kind and friendly, and a few had become dear friends. Others, however, had delighted in cruelty. The wounding words they’d spoken still felt etched in her memory.
He grinned. ‘And you grew up.’
‘That I could not prevent.’ Blast! Could she not contrive something intelligent to say?
He laughed. ‘I noticed.’
The dance parted them again, but his gaze did not leave her. The music connected them—the gaiety of the flute, the singing of the violin, the deep passion of the bass. She would not forget a note of it. In fact, she would wager she could play the tune on the pianoforte without a page of music in front of her.
The music was happiness, the happiness of having her childhood friend back.
She fondly recalled the boy he’d been and gladdened at the man he’d become. When his hand touched hers the music seemed to swell and that long-ago girlish fantasy sounded a strong refrain.
But eventually the musicians played the final note and Phillipa blinked as if waking from a lovely dream.
He escorted her back to where she had first been standing.
‘May I get you a glass of wine?’ he asked.
It was time for him to part from her, but she was thirsty from the dance. ‘I would like some, but only if it is not too much trouble for you.’
His blue eyes sparkled as if amused. ‘Your wish is my pleasure.’
Her insides skittered wildly as she watched him walk away. He returned quickly and handed her a glass. ‘Thank you,’ she murmured.
Showing no inclination to leave her side, he asked polite questions about the health of her parents and about the activities of her brothers, Ned and Hugh. He told her of encountering Hugh in Spain and she told him Hugh was also back from the war.
While they conversed, a part of her stood aside as if observing—and judging. Her responses displayed none of the wit and charm at which her friends so easily excelled, but he did not seem to mind.
* * *
She had no idea how long they chatted. It might have been ten minutes or it might have been half an hour, but it ended when his mother approached them.
‘How do you do, Phillipa?’ Lady Piermont asked.
‘I am well, ma’am.’ Phillipa exchanged pleasantries with her, but Lady Piermont seemed impatient.
She turned to her son. ‘I have need of you, Xavier. There is someone who wishes a word with you.’
He tossed Phillipa an apologetic look. ‘I fear I must leave you.’
He bowed.
She curtsied.
And he was gone.
No sooner had he walked away than her friend Felicia rushed up to her. ‘Oh, Phillipa! How thrilling! He danced with you.’
Phillipa could only smile. The pleasure of being with him lingered like a song played over and over in her head. She feared speaking would hasten its loss.
‘I want to hear about every minute of it!’ Felicia cried.
But Felicia’s betrothed came to collect her for the next set and she left without a glance back at her friend.
Another of Phillipa’s former schoolmates approached her, one of the young ladies to whom she had introduced Xavier. ‘It was kind of Mr Campion to dance with you, was it not?’
‘It was indeed,’ agreed Phillipa, still in perfect charity with the world, even though this girl had never precisely been a friend.
Her schoolmate leaned closer. ‘Your mother and Lady Piermont arranged it. Was that not clever of them? Now perhaps other gentlemen will dance with you, as well.’
‘My mother?’ Phillipa gripped the stem of the glass.
‘That is what I heard.’ The girl smirked. ‘The two ladies were discussing it while you danced with him.’
Phillipa felt the crash of cymbals and the air was knocked out of her just like the day in Brighton when she fell.
Prevailing on family connections to manage a dance invitation was precisely the sort of thing her mother would do.
Dance with her, Xavier dear, she could almost hear her mother say. If you dance with her, the others will wish to dance with her, too.
‘Mr Campion is an old friend,’ she managed to reply to the schoolmate.
‘I wish I had that kind of friend.’ The girl curtsied and walked away.
Phillipa held her ground and forced herself to casually finish sipping her glass of wine. When she’d drained the glass of its contents she strolled to a table against the wall and placed the empty glass on it.
Then she went in search of her mother and found her momentarily alone.
It was difficult to maintain composure. ‘Mama, I have a headache. I am going home.’
‘Phillipa! No.’ Her mother looked aghast. ‘Not when the ball is going so well for you.’
Because of her mother’s contrivance.
‘I cannot stay.’ Phillipa swallowed, trying desperately not to cry.
‘Do not do this to yourself,’ her mother scolded, through clenched teeth. ‘Stay. This is a good opportunity for you.’
‘I am leaving.’ Phillipa turned away and threaded her way quickly through the crush of people.
Her mother caught up with her in the hall and seized her arm. ‘Phillipa! You cannot go unescorted and your father and I are not about to leave when the evening is just beginning.’
‘Our town house is three doors away. I dare say I may walk it alone.’ Phillipa freed herself from her mother’s grasp. She collected her wrap from the footman attending the hall and was soon out in the cool evening air where no one could see.
Tears burst from her eyes.
How humiliating! To be made into Xavier Campion’s charity case. He’d danced with her purely out of pity. She was foolish in the extreme for thinking it could be anything else.
Phillipa set her trembling chin in resolve. She’d have no more of balls. No more of hopes to attract a suitor. She’d had enough. The truth of her situation was clear even if her mother refused to see it.
No gentleman would court a scar-faced lady.
Certainly not an Adonis.
Certainly not Xavier Campion.
Chapter One
London, August 1819
‘Enough!’ Phillipa slapped her hand flat on the mahogany side table.
The last time she’d felt such strength of resolve had been that night five years ago when she fled Lady Devine’s ball and removed herself out from the marriage mart for good.
To think she’d again wound up dancing with Xavier Campion just weeks ago at her mother’s ball. He’d once again taken pity on her.
No doubt her mother arranged those two dances as well as the first. More reason to be furious with her.
But never mind that. The matter at hand was her mother’s refusal to answer Phillipa’s questions, flouncing out the drawing room in a huff instead.
Phillipa had demanded her mother tell her where her brothers and father had gone. The three of them had been away for a week now. Her mother had forbidden the servants to speak of it with her and refused to say anything of it herself.
Ned and Hugh had a rather loud quarrel with their father, Phillipa knew. It occurred late at night and had been loud enough to wake her.
‘It is nothing for you to worry over,’ her mother insisted. She said no more.
If it were indeed nothing to worry over, then why not simply tell her?
Granted, in the past several days Phillipa had been closeted with her pianoforte, consumed by her latest composition, a sonatina. Pouring her passions into music had been Phillipa’s godsend. Music gave her a challenge. It gave her life meaning.
Like getting the phrasing exactly right in the sonatina. She’d been so preoccupied she’d not given her brothers or her father a thought. Sometimes she would work so diligently on her music that she would not see them for days at a time. It had finally become clear, though, that they were not at home. That in itself was not so unusual, but her mother’s refusal to explain where they had gone was very odd. Where were they? Why had her father left London when Parliament was still in session? Why had her brothers gone with him?
Her mother would only say, ‘They are away on business.’
Business, indeed. A strange business.
This whole Season had been strange. First her mother and brother Ned insisted she come to town when she’d much have preferred to remain in the country. Then the surprise of her mother’s ball—
And seeing Xavier again.
The purpose of that ball had been a further surprise. It was held for a person Phillipa had never known existed.
Perhaps that person would explain it all to her. His appearance, the ball, her brothers’ and father’s disappearance—all must be connected somehow.
She’d ask John Rhysdale.
No. She would demand Rhysdale tell her what was going on in her family and how he—her half-brother, her father’s illegitimate son—fit into it.
Rhysdale’s relationship to her had also been kept secret from her. Her brothers had known of him, apparently, but no one told her about him or why her mother gave the ball for him or why her parents introduced him to society as her father’s son.
A member of the Westleigh family.
Her mother had given her the task of writing the invitations to the ball, so she knew precisely where Rhysdale resided. Phillipa rushed out of the drawing room, collected her hat and gloves, and was out the door in seconds, walking with a determined step towards St James’s Street.
She’d met Rhysdale the night of the ball. He was very near to Ned’s age, she’d guess. In his thirties. He looked like her brothers, too, dark-haired and dark-eyed. Like her, as well, she supposed, minus the jagged scar on her face.
To Rhysdale’s credit, he’d only given her scar a fleeting glance and afterward looked her in the eye. He’d been gentlemanly and kind. There had been nothing to object in him, except for the circumstances of his birth.
And his choice of friends.
Why did Xavier Campion have to be his friend? Xavier, the one man Phillipa wished to avoid above all others.
Phillipa forced thoughts of Xavier Campion out of her mind and concentrated on being angry at her mother instead. How dared her mother refuse to confide in her?
