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Tanner looked at her curiously. “Really?”
“You’re surprised?”
“I suppose not. And we men probably spend nearly as much time in front of the mirror or with our tailors as do women. Thank you for that insight.”
“You’re welcome,” she said, her smile once again shy. But, then, he treasured all of Lydia’s smiles, which had been far too infrequent since he’d first met her. “Now tell me the rest. I’m sure there’s more to the story.”
“Oh, there most definitely is. Justin was bored with his beauty within a fortnight, as her conversations veered from demands that he compliment her every outfit to reciting endless minutiae about the outfits of other women of their acquaintance. He said—and I remember it well because he was so very serious at the time, if a bit in his cups—that she could probably recite the names of every fabric, gee-gaw and thingamabob known to man with much more ease than she could the alphabet.”
“Poor man. Poor wife.”
“She found solace,” Tanner said, deciding it was time he took advantage of a break in the endless train of vehicles, and turned his curricle toward a nearby exit to the street. Seeing Justin again had been a shock, albeit a good one. “From what I’ve heard, not from Justin, who would never have allowed such an indiscretion, she found a variety of ways to comfort herself. Gowns, jewels…a long line of other men more than willing to keep reassuring her she was beautiful.”
“Was beautiful? Does that mean—?”
“Yes, it does, but not soon enough to save Justin, I’m afraid, even though that sounds callous. A month before Danielle met an unfortunate end tripping down a length of marble stairs at Carlton House after catching a heel on the outrageously flounced hem of her gown—the Prince of Wales had to take to his bed for a week after the accident—one of her lovers made the mistake of bragging about his latest conquest. Justin felt bound to call the man out, defending the honor of his dishonorable wife.”
“He killed the man?”
“He hadn’t planned to, but yes. I served as one of Justin’s seconds, so I saw it all. His fool opponent turned to fire on the count of two. We called out to warn Justin. He turned at once, and fired in self-defense. But the man was still dead, and Justin had to flee the country. It’s only his valuable service to the Crown, I imagine, and the passing of years that has allowed him to return to England. I wonder how he’ll be received now, eight long years later. The man he killed was the second son of an earl, you understand. There’s always a new bit of gossip to keep the ton happy, but that old gossip couldn’t be so far beneath the surface of many memories. Not with Justin showing himself so boldly in the Park. It’s as if he’s encouraging everyone to talk about him.”
“But you’ll stand by him.”
Tanner looked at her. She hadn’t framed her words as a question. “Yes, I will. Even though—no, especially because the old hurts don’t seem so far beneath Justin’s own surface now that he’s returned to England. He may have been teasing with you, but the wounds of his failed marriage and the consequences seem to have served to jade his opinion toward women.”
“Or perhaps served to undermine his faith in his own judgment when it comes to women,” Lydia said, causing Tanner to look at her sharply.
“Justin Wilde? Unsure of himself? I wouldn’t think that possible.”
“‘Doubts are more cruel than the worst of truths,’”
Lydia said quietly. “After making what he has admitted to you was a terrible mistake on the part of his heart so many years ago, how can he now trust his own judgment?”
Tanner turned his pair of bays into Grosvenor Square, wishing he hadn’t chosen to desert the park so soon, for now he had no excuse to continue this unsettling conversation. “Molière again. And, again, from Le Misanthrope. He needs a friend, doesn’t he? For all his appearance of being so secure and confident.”
“He has a friend,” Lydia said, putting her gloved hand on Tanner’s arm. “And I know from personal experience that you make a very good friend.”
Tanner thanked her, feeling as if he’d just heard a death knell. Another quote, this one not from Molièire, slid into his head. Something about friendship being love without wings…
Chapter Three
Dearest Nicole,
You’ve been gone less than a day, and yet I find I have so many things I wish to tell you. At the moment, I should be dressing for Lady Chalfont’s ball, but you know I will put off that chore as long as possible in any event, as I find I loathe little in life, but balls definitely are near the top of that short list.
You’d be so proud of me. I had a tantrum today, nearly in the middle of Hyde Park during the Promenade (such a sad crush of mostly sad people). I believe I startled Tanner with my outburst, perhaps as much as I startled myself, but I will confess I get so weary of being coddled. Not that you have ever coddled me! I shall miss your forthrightness, so I have decided I must be forthright myself, for myself. After all, I am a Daughtry. Surely there must be fiery blood somewhere inside me? To that end, this afternoon I informed Tanner that I would rather he not feel obligated to me because of some promise to Captain Fitzgerald.
He seemed taken by surprise to think I should know that. I didn’t tell him about the captain’s last letter to me, the one Tanner himself unwittingly delivered that fateful day last spring. Perhaps one day I will. Suffice it for now that he knows I consider him a friend, and that I wish he would do me the same honor, rather than as the burden of a promise.
Oh, but there’s more! I met the most interesting man today, one Baron Justin Wilde. He has a Tragic Past, as you would certainly term it, and he seems to joke of it, even as his eyes clearly reveal his pain. Meeting him so soon after my tantrum, I fear I may have been more than a bit forward with the man, but he didn’t seem to be appalled by my amazingly blunt speech. Indeed, if you can imagine the thing, I made him smile. The Baron is a friend of Tanner’s, and we will see him again this evening at Lady Chalfont’s. It’s lovely to have something to look forward to besides sitting with my back against the wall, watching everyone else dance, offering up prayers no one will ask me to participate. You know something, Nicole? I just realized I perhaps do not fade into the wallpaper so much as I might intimidate the gentlemen who mistake my shyness and boredom for aloofness and haughty ways. My goodness, but that’s a thought to ponder!
I hope that by the time this letter reaches you, you are happily settled at Basingstoke, and am confident you have already charmed everyone there. I will save this letter until tomorrow, at which time I will report to you the happenings of this evening, as I know you will worry otherwise, and I promise I shall do my best to enjoy myself.
LYDIA READ WHAT she had written, frowned over the last line, and then crossed it out. Taking up her pen once more, she wrote:
And I know I will enjoy myself, most especially if there are swans.
Yes, that was better. If her evening was at all remarkable her letter would run to at least two sheets. But her brother was a duke, and he would frank her for the postage. How delightful! She had always been careful to keep her letters short, or to cross her lines in an attempt at economy, even if that made her letters difficult for the recipient to read. Well, that was just another silly, sensible habit she would dispense with as of today. This rather momentous day.
She slipped the page into the drawer of her dressing table before examining her reflection in the mirror. She liked what Sarah had done to her hair, sweeping it all severely back from her forehead and then massing long curls behind her left ear. When she moved, the shining blond curls tickled at her shoulder, making her feel very…female.
She looked most closely at her eyes, wondering if others could see sadness in them, as she had done when she’d looked into Baron Wilde’s eyes. Nicole would say they’d both been disappointed in love, although for quite different reasons.
“But at least you were not betrayed by love,” she told her reflection. “You have happy memories no one can take from you. You were not exiled from your own country for eight terrible years, so that you have become jaded or distrusting.”
She propped her elbow on the dressing table and rested her chin on her palm, continuing to examine her reflection until she’d come to a decision. “And you are going to stop feeling sorry for yourself right now. There are many worse things in life than having been loved, than having family and friends who care for you and wish you to be happy.”
“My lady? Were you wanting something? I’ve finished pressing off your gown.”
Lydia turned away from the mirror. “Oh, no, Sarah, I didn’t want anything. I’m afraid you caught me out scolding myself.” She got to her feet, smoothing down her silken undergarments. “And doesn’t that gown look nice. You’ve done a wonderful job with the crimping iron.”
Sarah curtsied. “Thank you, my lady, I do try. Only burned myself the once this time. Her Grace said to tell you that His Grace the Duke of Malvern is waiting on you downstairs in the drawing room. Such a well set up gentleman, my lady. I’ve always favored the blond ones. What a pair the two of you make, if you don’t mind my saying so.”
Lydia became at once uneasy. Had she somehow betrayed her feelings to her maid? And if she had, who else knew? She really had to be more careful. After all, the man was going to marry his cousin. “The duke is my friend, Sarah.”
“Yes, miss, he certainly is. But mayhap he wants to be more than a friend? Not that it’s my place to say so, but Maisie and I just happened to be looking out the front window from the attics as you went off with His Grace this afternoon, and he had quite the spring in his step, Maisie said, if you take m’meaning. Now if you’ll just duck yourself down and lift up your arms, my lady, we’ll have this gown on you without so much as mussing a hair on your head. Ah, that’s the trick. And are you sure you wouldn’t be wanting just a quick whisper of a touch from the rouge pot?”
Lydia emerged from the yards of palest blue watered silk, about to tell the maid that she would rather not color her cheeks. She would have liked to ask what Maisie had meant by Tanner having a spring in his step, but she was certain that wasn’t a proper question.
“Ah, never mind, my lady,” the maid said, motioning for Lydia to turn around so that she could do up the covered buttons. “You’ve got lovely color now, all on your own. And why would that be, I wonder? There you are, all done. Now I’ll just fetch your wrap whilst you tug on these gloves, and you’ll be all nice and tight.”
Lydia smiled weakly as Sarah skipped off to the dressing room, and then quickly returned to the dressing table, bending forward to check her reflection one more time. Goodness. Her cheeks were rather flushed, weren’t they? And were her eyes brighter? All because Tanner supposedly had a spring in his step?
She leaned in closer, and suddenly realized that the neckline of her gown—lovely with its fluted and crimped flounce that ran completely around the neckline and the off-the-shoulder design—was rather lower than she’d remembered it the day of her final fitting in Bond Street. A good two inches lower, in fact.
How could the seamstress have made such a—but wait! Hadn’t Nicole taken the woman to one side for a private chat that day? And then winked at her twin and told her that she was sure the watered silk would be quite the stunner?
“If I lean forward too far, it most certainly will be,” Lydia said, holding her hand to her neckline as she leaned forward, stood back, leaned forward once more, this time without pressing a hand to her bodice. Her eyes went as wide as saucers. “Oh, dear Lord, I—Sarah? Sarah!”
The maid reappeared with a fringed ivory cashmere shawl threaded through with silver draped over her arm. “My lady?”
“Sarah, I need to change my gown. The bodice is all wrong. It doesn’t fit.”
Sarah tipped her head to one side, running her gaze up and down Lydia’s length. “It doesn’t? I’d say it fits you a treat, my lady. Besides, Lady Nicole made sure that all of your party gowns were—well, she’s a good sister to you, my lady, and that’s a fact.”
The door to the hallway opened and Charlotte entered, carrying a dark blue velvet case. “Tanner’s waiting, Lydia, but I just remembered that Nicole had asked me to be certain to please lend you my sapphires if you were to wear the—oh, my.”
Sarah curtsied, beaming. “Yes, Your Grace. Just as I was telling her. Fits her a treat, don’t it?”
“A treat? Yes, I can see where that word comes first to mind,” Charlotte said rather tongue-in-cheek, approaching Lydia and then walking fully around her. “You may go, Sarah, thank you.”
“Oh, but I want her to—”
“Lydia, let her go. You look beautiful. You are beautiful.”
Would nobody listen to her? Couldn’t they see what she saw? “I’m…I’m hanging out, just like Mama!”
Charlotte giggled. “Darling, your mama would sacrifice an entire herd of goats to look like you do tonight. But, yes, the resemblance is rather startling. And Helen Daughtry was, and still is, an extraordinarily beautiful woman. Your beauty, however, is more refined. Which doesn’t mean that you should hide it.”
“I don’t think it means that I should flaunt—do you really think the gown is, well, proper?”
Charlotte opened the velvet case and withdrew a stunning diamond and sapphire necklace. “Proper is perhaps not the word I’d use. Not precisely, no. I would rather say the gown is stunning. Interesting. Even captivating. Everything that you are, Lydia, whether you wish to acknowledge that fact or not. Now, turn around and bend your knees, so I can clasp this piece around your neck. You won’t feel half so naked once it’s on.”
Lydia did as she was bid, albeit reluctantly. She was just so used to doing what other people said. But then she rallied, and stood straight once more. “You said it, Charlotte. You said naked. And that’s how I feel. And from what Sarah was grinning and mumbling about, I’m woefully certain Nicole has had all of my gowns altered this way. The mischief that lives in that girl’s head!”
‘I’m sure she had all the best of intentions.”
Lydia very nearly snorted. “Yes, the best of intentions. That’s what she said she had when we were seven, and she decided to save our shared maid the trouble of trimming my bangs. Granted, I was silly enough to believe she knew what she was doing. I had to wear caps for a month. What is it about my sister and scissors?”
“I wouldn’t know. Just bend your knees again, sweetheart, and let us see if the necklace makes you feel less—that is, more finished.”
Lydia felt the weight of the necklace and looked down to see that the largest sapphire, completely surrounded by diamonds and fashioned as a drop, now slid rather interestingly between the cleavage exposed by the neckline of the gown. As if that could make up for that same, truly outrageous neckline.
Charlotte nudged her toward the full-length mirror that stood in one corner of the room. “There,” she said rather smugly, “now how do you feel? Because you look wonderful. There are earrings as well, but I think they’d be too much for such a young, unmarried woman. Besides, look at your eyes, Lydia. They’re so blue they look like twin ponds on a clear, sunlight day. Dazzling. When Rafe sees you I’ll have to hold him back or else he’ll confine you to your room, even though you’re well within the bounds of propriety. Tanner, on the other hand, will be most appreciative, I’m sure.”
Lydia opened her mouth to ask if Tanner would be appreciative because men were basically lecherous, but quickly decided that neither Charlotte nor Rafe would allow her within fifty yards of a lech…or fifty inches from Grosvenor Square if either of them thought the gown too outrageous.
“I do feel…rather nice,” she admitted finally. “And more…confident, if that doesn’t sound silly.”
“It doesn’t. Now come along, Tanner is waiting. Along with his cousin, who seems a very lovely young woman, if prone to talking so much I wouldn’t be surprised to see that Rafe’s ears have quite fallen off his head by the time we get down to the drawing room.”
“She’s pretty, isn’t she? Jasmine Harburton, I mean. The cousin.”
“I would say beautiful, but a man sees such things differently. I’ll have to ask Rafe’s opinion, once his ears stop ringing,” Charlotte said with a smile. “Don’t forget your gloves.”
Lydia wanted to take one more peek at her reflection, as she still wasn’t quite sure who she had been looking at, but tamped down the urge, for it seemed indulgent, and perhaps even vain. She picked up her elbow-length gloves, pulling them on as she followed Charlotte toward the stairs, working the soft white kid over each finger, wondering idly why fashion had decreed that a female’s circulation be all but cut off in the pursuit of fashion.
She was just smoothing the kid over her left thumb when they reached the bottom of the stairs and she heard a sharp intake of breath and an awe-filled “Coo…” coming from one of the footmen.
Perhaps Nicole had been more right than Lydia would have guessed.
Buoyed by the footman’s involuntary flattery, she entered the drawing room, her confident step carrying her along very well, thank you, until she saw the faintly incredulous expression come and go on Tanner’s face as he stood at the mantelpiece, staring at her.
She resisted the urge to cross her hands over her bosom, and turned her attention to the dark-haired beauty just then getting to her feet so that she could curtsey to the newcomers.
Tanner stepped forward to make the introductions.
“I cannot tell you, Lady Lydia, how honored I am to make your acquaintance,” Jasmine said the moment the introductions were completed. “How delightful it will be to have company once we are through that depressingly long line waiting for our hostess to vet us, and we’re set loose into the ballroom like so many prisoners freed from the confines of their cells, only to find that they are now only in a larger prison, which is how I see ballrooms, and waiting to be rescued from the wallflowers by some gentleman who then assumes we are so flattered by his attention that, of course, we will want nothing more than to listen to him brag about himself and his prospects or even the cut of his waistcoat for the length of the dance. Don’t you think?”
Lydia, her mouth falling open unbidden, looked to Charlotte, who was busily examining her fingernails, and then to Rafe, who appeared ready to rip off his cravat and stuff it in Miss Harburton’s mouth.
“Um…” Lydia said at last, “yes, I agree?”
“Good, it’s safer,” Tanner whispered in her ear, as he’d somehow managed to be standing next to her. “Let me tell you now, Lydia, that you have never looked more beautiful. I say that because it’s true, and because I doubt either of us will get another word in edgewise between here and Lady Chalfont’s. Shall we go?”
Tanner’s words proved prophetic, for Jasmine talked nonstop all the way to Portland Place, all the time they were stalled on the stairs leading up into the ballroom, and she continued to talk as they were at last inside the cavernous ballroom and heading for the inevitable lines of chairs stuck against the long walls.
“You must need something to drink, Jasmine,” Tanner said once he had secured them seats, including one for the chaperone, Mrs. Shandy, a nearly stone deaf woman who had no idea how fortunate she was in her affliction. “Lydia?”
“Yes, please,” she said, although not before wondering if she would be too obvious if she’d fallen to her knees and begged him not to leave her with this sweet but incessant chatterbox.
“Oh, good,” Jasmine said with a heartfelt sigh once Tanner had gone off to find a servant with a tray of lemonade, and most probably something stronger for himself. “I’m so unconscionably nervous whenever Tanner is about. And then I prattle and prattle and my tongue runs on wheels, and I hear myself saying the most inane and silly things and I can’t stop myself. You must think me a ninny.”
“No, of course not,” Lydia said, crossing her gloved fingers in her lap. “But Tanner is your cousin. Why would he make you nervous?”
Jasmine rolled her expressive emerald eyes—really, with her coal dark hair and those lovely eyes, she was quite the beauty. “It’s Papa, of course. He keeps telling everyone and anyone that Tanner and I are to be married. It was his father’s dying wish, you understand. Tanner’s father, not mine. Oh, you’d know that, or otherwise Papa would be dead, wouldn’t he? Oh, dear, I’m doing it again. Prattling. At any rate, Tanner is such an honorable man, which is really quite vexing.”
“Why is that vexing?” Lydia asked, although she decided she might know the answer to that question. Wasn’t Tanner in her life right now because he was an honorable man?
“Why, because he’ll do what his father wished on his deathbed, of course. He’ll marry me. Eventually. And I really wish he wouldn’t.”
Lydia’s heart gave a distressingly revealing little flip inside her chest. “You do? I mean, you don’t? That is…”
“Good evening, beautiful ladies. May I say, you present a veritable landscape of loveliness. One so dark, the other so fair, and both the epitome of everything that pleases. I am all but overcome.”
Jasmine giggled nervously, snapping open the painted fan that hung from her wrist and frantically waving it in front of her face before turning to speak to her stone deaf chaperone, as if she knew she was not going to be necessary to the conversation between the gentleman and her new friend.
Lydia merely looked up to see Baron Justin Wilde executing a most elegant leg directly in front of her, and smiled. She doubted anyone could resist returning the man’s smile, even if the timing of his arrival on the scene couldn’t have been worse, what with Jasmine’s news about her disinclination to wed Tanner. “Well done, my lord. Any woman would think she’d been just delivered a most fulsome compliment, when, in fact, you harbor a distrust of all women. Most especially those whom you might deem lovely.”
He pressed his spread fingers against his immaculately white waistcoat. “Ah, I am cut to the quick. My friend Tanner has been whispering tales out of school since last we met, I presume?”
“Nothing too dire, sir. I do, however, remember your conversation of earlier today. Should I have been studying my Molière in the interim? Are you going to quiz me yet again?”
“A thousand apologies for that, Lady Lydia. You and Tanner were the first people I dared approach since my return to the scene of my disgrace. No, I fib. I did happen to be stopped by a few others in the park, one to tell me Society never forgives a murderer, and the other to confide that her husband was in the country for the week and she hoped I’d remembered her direction. All in all, not the most auspicious of homecomings, I think you’d agree? I fear my emotions were much too close to the surface for me to be fit company.”
“Your apology is accepted, sir, and there was really no need to explain. But I wonder, if you are so newly returned to England, how did you manage an invitation to this ball?”
He bent toward her, his remarkably green eyes twinkling with mischief. “Very simple, my dear. I remembered the lady’s direction. A sacrifice on my part, to be sure, but worth it in order to see you again this evening.”
Lydia felt hot color invading her cheeks, and was grateful she hadn’t given in to Sarah’s suggestion of the rouge pot, for otherwise she’d look like a painted doll at the moment. “You shouldn’t say such things to me.”
“Ah, but I always say such things. Being outrageous is a large part of my charm. Now tell me my sacrifice will not have been in vain, and that your dance card is not yet full.”
“Far from full, my lord, as you can see,” she told him, holding up the card she had been handed by one of the servants as she entered the ballroom.
“Is London peopled entirely with fools?” he asked her, snatching the card from her hand and using the small, attached bit of pencil to scribble on it before returning both to her. “I’d dare more, but convention limits me to three or else people will expect the banns to be posted tomorrow. Miss Harburton?” he then asked, bowing to Jasmine. “It would be my honor to be added to your dance card, as well.”
Jasmine looked to Lydia, who didn’t understand the question in the other young woman’s eyes. Was she actually turning to her for permission? But then she handed over her dance card and Justin signed it as well just as Tanner approached, carrying two glasses of lemonade.
