A Regency Match (2 page)

Readying herself for the ball, she studied herself carefully in the mirror of her dressing table. Would he recognize her, she wondered? She had been a rather chubby little thing when he'd last seen her, her nose freckled and her bright red hair plaited down her back. Now she was stylishly slim, her skin was completely clear of the disfiguring freckles, her hair was more auburn than red, and it was cut in short ringlets that framed her face. He would not know her at all.

But she would know him. Of that she was certain. He had towered over her in their youth, so he would probably be quite tall. His skin would be swarthy from the Indian climate, but his blue eyes would be unchanged. She would know those blue eyes anywhere.

Lady Alicia had already taken a seat among the dowagers when Sophia (who had excused herself when they'd arrived at the Gilberts' to check her appearance in the mirror of the cloak room set aside for the ladies), decided it was time to make her entrance. Her smile was a bit wider than usual as she stood poised in the doorway of the Gilberts' ballroom. A number of eyes turned to watch the girl in the cherry-red silk dress as she hesitated on the threshold, her eyes roving over the faces in the enormous, crowded room. Although the many admiring eyes studied her appreciatively, they could not detect the rapid tremor of her pulse. Beneath the poised exterior, Sophy was quite tingling with anticipation.

She scanned the room carefully, paying particular attention to gentlemen who were above average height. Suddenly her eyes lit up and, lifting her skirts with a sweep of her arm, she flew across the room. “
Bertie
!” she cried as she neared a group of gentlemen who had been standing together near the dance floor chatting amiably. She made straight for a tall man who stood in their midst. His height, his dark skin and his remarkable blue eyes gave him away. “Bertie!” she exclaimed again as she approached. “Dearest boy, I'd have recognized you anywhere!” And she flung her arms around his neck with such ardor that he had to stagger to keep his balance.

Every dowager seated in the vicinity stared. Every stroller stopped and gaped. A number of dancers paused in their promenade to turn and watch the little drama being enacted nearby. The gentleman himself had looked startled and embarrassed in quick succession as she'd advanced on him, but before these emotions could be noted by the onlookers, his face became impassive. Taking her hands firmly from round his neck, he raised an eyebrow and said coldly. “I'm afraid, ma'am, that you've mistaken me.”

“Mistaken you? Oh, Bertie, as if I could!” Sophia laughed.

The gentleman's face remained impassive, but his annoyance was clearly noticeable in the glint of his eyes. “I assure you, ma'am, that my name is not Bertie,” he told her, smoothing the folds of his neckcloth, the pristine perfection of which Sophy had disturbed.

“Sophy, you goose,” chortled a voice at her ear. She whirled around to face a rather rotund, ruddy-cheeked young man who stood grinning at her from a height not an inch taller than her own. “
I'm
Bertie.”

Sophy stared at him for a moment, gasped, looked from him to the tall stranger and back again, and burst into giggles. “Oh, dear,” she exclaimed sheepishly, “now that I see you, Bertie, I
do
recognize you.”

“Still making a cake of yourself, I see,” he grinned, holding out his arms to hug her.

“Bertie,
dear
,” she responded warmly, hugging him in return, “it's been such an age!”

There was a loud laugh behind them. “Well, Marcus,” snorted one of the men in the circle to the fellow Sophy had first embraced, “what do you think of the likeness? Can't say
I
see much of a resemblance.”

The gentleman called Marcus merely flicked him an unamused glance and said nothing. Bertie, however, blushed furiously. “She's my cousin,” he explained. “Ain't seen her since she was ten. Best of chums we were then, but it's been a long time …”

The gentleman made a polite bow in acknowledgement and turned to go. But Sophia caught his arm and caused him to turn back. “I am
so
sorry, sir,” she said with her most disarming smile.

The gentleman stepped back out of her reach. “Think nothing more of the matter, ma'am,” he said with scrupulous politeness.

Sophia's eyes brightened with sudden interest. The gentleman's swarthy face was attractively lean, his eyes sharp and magnetic, and his shoulders broad and powerful-looking in his well-fitted evening coat. Her smile widened, her dimples very much in evidence, and her eyes shone with a look of supreme confidence in her ability to coax an answering warmth from any gentleman on whom that smile was bestowed. “I must have caused you extreme discomfort and embarrassment,” she insisted. “I'd been so looking forward to seeing my dear cousin again that I suppose I was overeager.” She extended her hand. “I most sincerely regret my error.”

The tall stranger did not respond to her smile with an answering one. Nor did he take the proffered hand. Instead, he raised his quizzing-glass and looked at her with cool scrutiny. Unaccustomed to such a reaction, Sophia felt herself blush. She suddenly became aware of a sense of embarrassment at the daringly low décolletage of her dress and its too-bright color. Her hand dropped awkwardly to her side. The gentleman dropped his quizzing-glass, bowed politely and turned away.

The blood drained from her cheeks. She'd been given the
cut direct
! The snub was unmistakable. Never in her life had she been rebuffed, and
this
had been done with such cold finesse! She clenched her fists to keep the world from noticing her trembling fingers.

Beside her, Bertie was watching the group move away from them as the rest of the onlookers turned away, grinning. “Hummmph!” he muttered. “Not a very friendly fellow, that.”

“No, not very,” she answered with a laugh that was compounded of equal parts of shock and chagrin. “Was it a very dreadful scene I made?”

“That fellow must have found it so,” Bertie shrugged. “But let's not bother our heads about him. Everyone will have forgotten the matter by tomorrow. Now, let me look at you.” He surveyed her admiringly. “I say, Sophy, you've grown up to be a regular out-and-outer.”

“Thank you, Bertie,” she smiled, but as she took a last, quick glance at the stranger who was disappearing with his friends into one of the card rooms, her expression changed. “But it appears,” she said ruefully, “that not everyone is in agreement with you.”

“Never mind him,” Bertie insisted, following her eyes. “Most any man would agree with me, whatever that fellow thinks. You cut a regular dash!”

Sophia couldn't help grinning. She turned her full attention to her cousin. “And you, Bertie,” she said with affectionate bluntness, “why, you've become a veritable butter-box. Oh, Bertie, I
am
so glad to see you! Let's find a quiet corner where we can sit down, and you can tell me
everything
that's happened to you in the last eleven years.”

“Nothing I'd like better,” Bertie agreed amiably, “but perhaps we'd better find Grandmama first. I haven't seen her yet.”

The rest of the evening flew for Sophia. She and Bertie found time for a comfortable coz behind the potted palms, and she and Lady Alicia went down to supper on his arm. After supper, when the dancing resumed, Sophia found herself surrounded by more than her usual number of admirers asking for her hand for the few dances that were left. Correctly attributing her rise in popularity to the attention she'd received for the little scene she'd caused earlier in the evening, she nevertheless enjoyed herself hugely, flirting and laughing and cavorting on the dance floor with more than her usual animation.

Bertie, escorting his grandmother and cousin to their carriage at the end of the festivities, remarked, as they walked down the curved stairway, that their little Sophy had taken the shine out of all the females in the room. “She made more conquests than anyone else, I'd warrant,” he said proudly.

Lady Alicia, who had been a witness to the entire episode of mistaken identity and knew that it was only a brief and vulgar notoriety that had caused the flurry of popularity for her granddaughter, merely grunted. At that moment, they arrived at the bottom of the stairway and came face to face with the stranger whom Sophy had so embarrassed. She met his eye and blushed to the roots of her hair. The gentleman's lips seemed to tighten; he nodded briefly and went quickly out the door. Sophy threw a nervous glance at her grandmother, who was frowning at her disdainfully. “Well, Bertie,” Sophia laughed uncomfortably, her eyes on the stranger's retreating back, “you'll have to admit that I didn't make a conquest
there
.”

Chapter Two

L
ADY ALICIA EDGERTON
had a few choice words to say to her granddaughter before they retired, and she delivered them in a voice whose vigor and venom were not in the least impaired by her advanced age, the lateness of the hour, or the fact that the servants (those that might be lurking about outside the drawing room door) could have, if they tried, heard every word. She told her granddaughter without any roundaboutation that the incident had been a humiliating one for all concerned, and that it had been brought about by Sophia's heedlessness, her impetuosity and her inexcusable lack of good manners.

“But Grandmama,” the girl protested, “it was only a little mistake—”

“One needn't make one's mistakes on quite so grand a scale,” her grandmother declared icily. “Surely you knew that everyone's eyes were on you when you made that grand entrance in that dreadful red dress—”

“You said you
liked
the dress when you saw it earlier!” Sophia cried in understandable annoyance.

“That was before I realized that you intended to make one of your scandalous entrances in it. When you lifted your skirts and ran across the room crying Bertie's name, no one could
miss
you. You should have
seen
Martha gape. And Gussie Derwent's eyes nearly popped from her head. I was so ashamed I didn't know where to look.”

“I'm truly sorry I embarrassed you, Grandmama, but—”

“There can be no ‘but.' Your behavior was
inexcusable
. You rushed headlong into a shocking scene without giving the least thought to what you were doing.”

“But I was so
sure
the gentleman was Bertie—!”

“
Bertie
, ha! Have you any idea whom you accosted in that vulgar way?”

Sophia shrugged. “They called him Marcus, I think,” she replied, “but that's all I know about him. Except, of course, that he's quite the rudest, most top-lofty coxcomb I've ever—”

“That ‘coxcomb,' I'll have you know, is none other than Marcus Harvey, Earl of Wynwood, a gentleman of impeccable character and laudable reputation, whose mother, Charlotte Harvey, happens to be one of my dearest friends.”

“Charlotte Harvey? Do you mean
Lady Wynwood
? The same Lady Wynwood who's invited us all to spend a fortnight in her home in Sussex?” Sophia asked incredulously.

“The very same. And how we are to face her now, I shudder to imagine.”

There was a moment of silence. “Well, I, for one, don't intend to hang my head,” Sophia said bravely, holding up her chin as if to demonstrate the manner in which she intended to face Lady Wynwood. “I've done nothing so very terrible to her son, after all.”

“Only made him a laughingstock,” her grandmother reminded her.

“I made
myself
a laughingstock. He was just the … er … recipient …”

“It is my understanding, young lady, that Lord Wynwood is extremely well-bred, and not the man to enjoy any sort of unwarranted notice or public scrutiny, both of which you forced upon him in good measure.”

“If he is so high in the instep as to be disturbed by a petty little incident at a private party, I have no sympathy for him.”

“A petty little incident at a private party indeed! There were three hundred people present who saw you fling your arms around the neck of a perfect stranger—a man who then had to remove himself from your clutches by sheer force!”

Sophia whitened. “Remove himself—? Oh, Grandmama, was it as bad as that?”

“Every bit of it,” her grandmother declared coldly.

Sophia's eyes filled with shame. Lady Alicia's anger melted at the look in her granddaughter's face, but she didn't permit the softening to show in her expression. The girl must be made to see that her rash behavior could have painful consequences.

Sophia stared at her grandmother, blinking away the tears that had welled up in her eyes. “Well, I don't see what g-good it will do to stand here and … and review the matter,” she said, her chin quivering. “I admit that I made a mistake. I thoroughly embarrassed myself … and you, too. I'm s-sorry. But it will do no good to t-talk about it.”

“Very well, then, I'll drop the subject. You may go to bed. But I hope that the incident will teach you to be less impetuous in future.”

The subject was destined to come up again, however, the very next morning. No sooner had the ladies sat down to breakfast when they were interrupted by the arrival of Bertie's parents, Sir Walter and Lady Isabel Edgerton. Lady Alicia's son and daughter-in-law could wait no longer to pay their respects to the parent whom they hadn't seen for eleven years. Sir Walter, Alicia's younger son, was a stocky, florid-faced man who was often described as blunt. From the top of his short-cropped hair to the tips of his square fingers, the adjective applied. His disposition exactly matched his physique, for Walter was incapable of subtlety. He said what he thought with unblinking directness.

His wife, on the other hand, felt that it was her mission in life to soften the effect of her husband's directness on the world. Soft, round and placid herself, she could not believe that people could like to hear her husband's flat, honest statements. She held that roundaboutation was the kindest way to put a point across.