A Notorious Countess Confesses (PG7) (21 page)

He nodded at the lobbed return. They both had a certain amount to rue about their pasts.

“My sincere condolences on your loss, Lady Balmain. He was a good egg, Wareham.”

An unfortunate choice of words, but she knew Colin meant them. “Thank you,” was all she said.

“If it’s any consolation, the ton may yet write a song for you.”

She rolled her eyes. “It’s no consolation at all, but it’s given me something yet again to worry about, thank you, Colin. I’m aware of the multitudes of words that rhyme with ‘widow.”

“I don’t find my song a consolation, either. And it grows and grows, that song.”

“I sang it as a lullaby to the O’Flahertys’ baby. It’s never too soon to learn about the Everseas if you live in Pennyroyal Green.”

He laughed. And lightly tapped her glass of ratafia with his.

“I believe congratulations on your marriage are in order, Mr. Eversea,” she added.

“Thank you. I needed to do something to ease my heart after you broke it.”

Eve rolled her eyes. “I broke nothing but your streak of effortless conquests.”

He grinned at that. “Speaking of the O’Flahertys and lullabies, I hear you’ve been engaged in good works with our worthy Mrs. Sneath and her regiment of women?”

“I have, indeed.”

“You’ve been spending a good deal of time with my cousin Reverend Sylvaine in the process.”

She went still.

She slowly turned to look at him.

Met his eyes evenly.

And then anger did a slow flare. “Out with it, Colin.”

“He’s not like us, Eve. He possesses a sense of humor, but he’s not a light sort. If he’s just a diversion, and if you’ve a heart, play with someone else. Because of a certainty someone will be hurt.”

The anger and hurt spread through her, bitter and scalding as raw gin.

If she had a heart.

Her eyes burned. Her breath went ragged in a struggle to be polite. Her words emerged, measured as evenly as bricks.

“How would you know what I’m like, Colin?”

He stared at her. Then gave a short nod, acknowledging that he’d been gravely insulting.

But he didn’t apologize. And he didn’t relent.

“He’s just …” And he quirked his mouth humorlessly. “He’s just one of the few genuinely good people I know, Evie. That’s all.”

She stared at him.

He met her gaze steadily.

And I’m not good? I’m not worthy? I’ll ruin him?

How dare you?

She turned abruptly away from him. A million retorts crowded and closed her throat.

What must it be like for someone to worry whether she was hurt?

But she knew Colin was genuinely concerned. And despite it all, she couldn’t fault him for it. She would defend her family, too.

It still didn’t mean she owed him any explanations or promises.

She coldly gave him her profile and silence.

“Enjoy your evening, Lady Balmain,” he finally said quietly. He bowed and took his leave of her.

She fell back hard against the wall, and closed her eyes. Her entire body the battleground for dozens of warring emotions. She stayed that way, next to Hercules, as a quadrille reached its natural end. And she hoped she remained hidden.

But when she opened them again, her view was of a wall of a chest, and what she instinctively knew had once been her dead husband’s cravat. Because he would, of course, find her, no matter where she might be.

Adam Sylvaine stood before her.

And the strains of the third and final waltz beginning.

Chapter 15

HIS PRESENCE ROBBED her of her voice. She could only stare up at him. Heart too full and too afraid to speak.

“Is aught amiss?” he asked immediately. In a voice that suggested he would immediately remedy anything that troubled her.

Her face and eyes must still be burning from Colin’s little visit. He’d seen the high color.

“Naught is amiss. I’m recovering from a vigorous dance with a gentleman who wore stays.”

“That was quite a few dances ago. And then you rather disappeared.”

So he’d been watching her much the way she’d been watching him. How she admired him for not pretending otherwise, for never employing stratagems.

“I haven’t danced in some time. Perhaps I’m a bit rusty,” she suggested.

“I’m an excellent dancer. If you dance me with, you’ll scarcely need to make an effort at all.”

She smiled at that, she couldn’t help it.

There was a hesitation, touching and thrilling. “I’d hoped you would honor me with this waltz, Lady Wareham.”

And suddenly the moment was fraught.

He gazed down at her with those endless eyes.

Oh, Reverend Sylvaine. You shouldn’t have asked.

I cannot. We cannot. But saying it would acknowledge what there was between them. It was a conversation she didn’t want to have in the ballroom, or perhaps ever. It would be such a simple thing to beg a headache, or an ankle twist. Her acceptance here among the ladies was so tenuous. They would watch her. They always watched him.

Surely he knew it.

And all around them were young girls, never married, who yearned for a waltz with the vicar, who’d spent the entire evening in anticipation of it. A rogue surge of envy swept her. Oh, to be an innocent, for just a few minutes. To fall stupidly, freely, hopelessly in love, without reservation, without thought of the consequences. To fit into the circle of his arms and sail about the room, everything she felt aglow on her face.

His eyes held her fast.

He held out his arm.

She watched her hand go up, rest lightly on it. Like a bloody bee lighting on a flower, it seemed necessary, part of the natural order of things. She’d really had no choice in the matter.

And despite it all, the ballroom floor might as well have been a cloud when she took her first few steps touching him.

ADAM LED HER out to the floor as though he’d captured something wild and rare and precious.

He was stunned and wondering at his good fortune. He savored everything. The flush his gaze put in her cheeks and throat and how she’d dropped her eyes quickly, then raised them again, gathering composure. The fit of his hand against her waist, and the swift rise and fall of her breath beneath it, the warmth of her body against his hand that made him want to pull her closer and closer, to feel her the sway of her breath against his body. How small her hand felt in his, fragile as a bird, though this was a woman who’d conquered the O’Flahertys and wooed Lady Fennimore, and London, and survived St. Giles.

It all filled him too full to speak.

She said nothing at all. And neither did her eyes leave his face.

But a carousel of gazes on the perimeter of the ballroom watched the vicar and the countess move effortlessly, beautifully together, unsmiling, apparently not speaking. On first glance, one might not even think they were enjoying themselves.

And yet they never, never took their eyes from each other.

“How is your arm?” she finally asked.

“Better.”

He didn’t want to speak. He simply wanted to feel.

She smiled at this. “Your conversation never fails to dazzle.”

“Neither do you.”

He said this so seriously, so abruptly, it silenced her again.

Beneath his hand, he felt her take in a deep shuddering breath.

“Thank you,” she remembered to say.

Which made him laugh, for some reason.

She looked up at him as if everything about his face was a miracle. As if she was remembering him.

He smiled slightly.

She smiled slightly, gave her head a marveling shake.

“You are an excellent dancer.”

“I never lie,” he said easily.

“What else do you do well, Vicar?” she tried.

But in the moment, with their bodies touching in some places but not enough places, it emerged less as flirtation than a serious question. Almost an invitation.

She’d unnerved herself.

His hand flexed over hers, pressed against her waist. His eyes went nearly black.

“Everything,” he said softly. “And I never lie.”

And that put an end to the conversation.

And round and round the room they went, unraveling each other step by step by dangerous step.

THE MUSIC EVENTUALLY ended, and with it the world they’d created of a waltz.

Adam was loath to surface from it, but once the music ended, the ballroom intruded inexorably—people, colors, and sounds that had nothing to do with the countess. And he bowed and she curtsied as if they were ordinary people enjoying an ordinary waltz in an ordinary town, and not as though a number of women scattered about the room wore expressions ranging from incredulity to heartbreak to thunder.

He brought her to where Amy Pitney and Miss Josephine Charing stood—together, and apparently voluntarily. They seemed to have reached a sort of accord. Each wore similarly abstracted, rosy, hopeful expressions. Which Adam suspected were related to the men who stood next to them.

Mr. Simon Covington Adam knew well; he was a parishioner who often volunteered to help with the projects for the poor. Bookish and wiry and deceptively strong, he was a son of a country squire and had been raised much like Adam, amid dogs and horses and guns and books. An excellent young man,

The man standing with Amy was altogether different. ‘London’ was stamped upon him, from the cut of clothing and the shine of his boots to the flawless line of his profile and the Byronic tousle of his hair. His posture was languidly confident; hands folded behind his back, one knee casually bent. He gave Adam a polite white smile. It was courteous, entitled, assured, as though he was humoring the countryfolk of Sussex with his presence.

But his gray eyes pierced. He was, in fact, alarmingly good-looking—not a weak chin, nor bulbous nose or protruding ear or petulant lip or scar in sight. An artist’s interpretation of handsome, in fact.

Eve had gone rigid. She dropped her hand from Adam’s arm.

She was staring at him.

The man was staring at her in a way that made Adam want to reach out and, in a very un-Christian way, close his hands around his throat.

Amy breathlessly made the introduction. “Lady Balmain and Reverend Sylvaine, I’d like you to meet Lord Haynesworth.”

And much to Adam’s enormous displeasure, Haynesworth promptly said. “A pleasure to see you again, Lady Wareham. And to meet you, Reverend Sylvaine.”

It didn’t prevent Adam from politely making his bow.

A casual observer might not have noticed how rigid Evie’s spine had gone, or how immobile her face was. Her smile was bright, and her eyes continued to shine.

The clever eyes of Miss Pitney, upon whose face mingled hope and pride and that vulnerable hauteur, sensed something. Her smile faltered as she looked between the two of them.

“How do you do, Lord Haynesworth?” Eve said, as though she was disinclined to admit pleasure had anything at all to do with their acquaintance.

Or at least this was Adam’s hope.

“Oh! Are you … already acquainted, then?” Miss Pitney’s smile and her eyes officially became disengaged.

Josephine and Simon looked on, only half listening.

“I was a friend of the late Earl of Wareham’s, and my paths did cross with the countess now and again in London. My condolences again on your loss,” Haynesworth said smoothly. “He will be greatly missed.

“Very kind of you.” The words were entirely uninflected. “He is missed.”

She wasn’t blinking, Adam noticed. As though she didn’t trust herself for a moment to close her eyes in front of this man.

Haynesworth wasn’t blinking, either.

The music began again. And suddenly, his manners as smooth as expensive cognac. Haynesworth said, “My late arrival here tonight means I was unable to find dancing partners, and Amy—that is, Miss Pitney—has committed this dance. Would you be so kind, Lady Balmain, as to humor me? If at all possible? For the sake of the affection we shared for Wareham.”

It would be the height of impoliteness to refuse him. Everyone standing there knew it.

And her hesitation was brief. “I would be so kind,” Eve said. And smiled.

The kind of smile every skilled actress could produce.

“WOULD YOU LIKE to see my scar, Eve? It’s healed nicely. I understand some women find that sort of thing exciting.”

She nearly shivered with revulsion.

She didn’t want to touch the Haynesworth. She hadn’t wanted to touch him when he’d offer to pay for the privilege of touching her years ago when she’d first seen him at the Green Apple Theater, and she certainly hadn’t wanted to touch him now, with a smile pasted to her face, his hand resting where Adam Sylvaine’s hand had rested moments earlier, because any place Adam Sylvaine had touched her felt sacred now.

Lord Haynesworth would never forgive her for being a better judge of character than she was a singer.

“No one made you duel, Lord Haynesworth. That was your own foolish decision.”

“Oh, Evie,” he drawled, so condescendingly she was tempted to knee him in the cods then and there. “Just one night, Evie. That’s all I ever asked of you. The blunt I offered! And then I risked my life over you.”

She rolled her eyes. “Two bored aristocrats shooting each other for sport is not ‘risking your life’ for me. That was you posturing for other men.”

“You have to admit, Eve, you weren’t unmoved, Evie, when first we met.”

“That was before I realized you were attractive on the outside only.”

He gave a short laugh. “I’m a changed man, Eve. I’m in love.”

She stared at him stonily to show him she knew precisely how ridiculous this statement was.

Eyes locked in enmity, they circled the ballroom.

“Why Amy Pitney? She’s a decent, lovely person. And you are neither of those things.”

He was unruffled. “I like her. That decent girl has a decent fortune and a father who fancies himself related to a viscount and his daughter with a title, even one who’s been nearly drained of his fortune by his multiple impressive properties.”

“And by mounds of gambling debt. And his expensive, unusual habits when it comes to women.”

His eyes shone unpleasantly. “She likely has few prospects in this village. She’s had a London season or two and came up empty-handed. I’m rescuing her from spinsterhood. I’ll thrill her in bed a few times, then return to London, and we’ll live our separate lives the way every married couple does. I’m capable of being decent—after all, she’s a well-bred girl. She wasn’t an opera dancer or a prostitute. What she doesn’t know certainly won’t hurt her.”