Elisabeth Fairchild (12 page)

Patience, who was not so certain, given the person she was about to meet, yet felt bolstered by Lady Wilmington’s words. She must arm herself with just such an attitude, she decided.

Sophie Defoe turned a flat blue gaze in her direction as she was introduced, her eyes focusing more keenly as Patience made her curtsy, as if she had just been handed new cards and must sort them out.

“But we have met,” Miss Defoe said when given her name, the words uttered with such certainty that for a moment Patience was convinced. And yet she knew it was impossible. She would remember those raspberry-stained lips, the sweep of golden-ringleted hair, the proud angle of her tip-tilted nose.

“I’m sure of it,” Sophie stated emphatically.

Patience had no notion how to reply. She could not call Pip’s fiancée an out-and-out liar, nor could she think of any instance since her arrival in London that they might have met, even so much as to have cast eyes upon one another.

“You have been to Surrey?” she asked.

“Never,” Sophie Defoe said with the faintest curl of her lips, as if Surrey bore no reason for her exalted presence. “But we have met,” she insisted, her voice on the edge of laughter. The golden ringlets bobbed with her decisive nod, and a look that Patience could define as nothing short of crafty flickered across her features. “Do you not recall seeing Miss Ballard somewhere recently, Will?”

William Defoe, a gentleman as handsome as his stepsister was pretty, barring a certain crudeness to the turn of his nose and a thickness of lower lip and brow that added harshness to his features, turned from the discussion he was having with another young man to glance, first with disinterest, and then with growing attention, at Patience.

“Hmm.” He tapped at his teeth with the end of a manicured nail, his gaze sharpening. “Indeed. I never forget a face. Where was it?”

Patience shook her head, baffled. “I’ve no recollection.”

Sophie chuckled. “You shall remember eventually,” she insisted.

William smiled at her, as if he were accustomed to charming women with the turn of his lips, and yet Patience was not charmed. Intrigued, yes. But not charmed. She could not pin down exactly why.

Chapter Sixteen

Patience had no opportunity to question Miss Defoe further.

She forgot all about their odd introduction as Pip took her hand in his. Indeed, the noise of the room and everyone in it fell away to the magic of the music, and her anticipation of bodies moving as one to the high, sweet keening of the violins. He squeezed her fingers and looked into her eyes, the blue of his completely mesmerizing. Forget-me-not. And she did not—could not.

His lips were moving then, the lips Miss Sophie Defoe would steal away from her forever, and she mourned the loss of them and celebrated his hand in hers all in the same moment, for Miss Defoe was watching their exchange with . . . was it envy or suspicion in her eyes?

“You wanted to play cards, did you not?” Pip asked.

Patience stared at him blankly a moment.
Oh, Lord!
He really did mean to confine her to the card room looking for a phantom woman.

She smiled up at him as he led her toward the column-framed doorway to oblivion. Perhaps she could wheedle her way out of this stupid plan. “I would prefer to continue my conversation with your fiancée, unless, of course, you mean to ask me to dance,” she teased.

“You like her?” he asked.

She could not tell him no. “She intrigues me,” she said in all honesty. “As does her brother.”

“Really?” His brows shot upward. His gaze flitted from her to Will Defoe and back again.

Could it be he felt some pang of jealousy, she wondered, to match the pangs she suffered whenever she looked at, or spoke of, or so much as thought of Sophie Defoe? “Will you ask me to dance, Pip?” she asked hopefully, and gazed into his eyes, looking for some sign of the heat, the concern, the affection she had witnessed there when he had saved her from Chase’s charging horse.

“Later,” he agreed, giving her gloved hand a pat, his gaze flickering from the dancers to his fiancée, finally settling briefly on Patience with a look of surprise to find her watching him so intently. “I promise.”

Disappointed, she did not argue further, and allowed herself to be led away from the music, for it was Pip’s hand that did the leading, his gloved fingers clasping hers, and that in itself was something to treasure despite the fact that Sophie’s stepbrother Will eyed them rather intently as they skirted the ballroom.

The card room, designated the blue room by reason of the deep blue damask that had been applied to large areas within the painted and gilded framework molding, matched the eyes Pip turned upon her, the pleading look in them heart wrenching.

It was a shame, really, that she had promised—a most stupid promise—to look for a woman who did not exist. The woman in red. It was not she. Pip was not looking for her. If he were, he might have seen her by now. No. He was looking for something and someone else entirely, a woman more mysterious, elegant, attractive, and clever.

She wanted to shout at him as he found her a place at one of the tables,
Look at me. Please just look at me. See me for all that I can be. All of my potential.

But she did not shout. She did not explain that she was playing him for a fool as much as she played one herself. She followed where he led, and walked into the quiet murmur of tables big enough to accommodate eight to twelve players, and sat herself down to play. Every table was crowded with dedicated players, well-coiffed heads bent intently over colorful fans of pasteboard cards. She felt the novice here, which seemed odd, for at home she was often touted as the best card player in the area.

This was different, however. An aura of intensity hung above the bowed heads of this quiet group, sure sign that the play went as deep as it was steady.

Pip found her a free chair, introduced her to two of the players, and turned his attention back to the ballroom. Bereft, she settled into the chair and allowed herself to be dealt a hand of cards—stupid cards: whist and Ambigu, Hearts and Bluff. She found meager satisfaction only in that the placement of her chair gave view of the ballroom, of Pip, who came to poke his golden head in now and again, brows raised, blue eyes questioning.

Patience pretended interest in her cards—indeed, she focused well enough to win a hand or two—but all the while, feet tapping, body fidgeting, she kept darting looks toward the dancing, her mind on the music and the odd fascination Will Defoe seemed to have taken in her. Every time she glanced up he was peering in the doorway at her, sometimes from across the room, once from the edge of the doorway itself. And each time it looked as if he wanted to laugh, but refrained. The look in his eyes unnerved her, as if he knew something she did not, something he found vastly amusing, something she was fairly certain she would not.

Pip had promised her a dance—a waltz—and three waltzes had struck up without sign of him.

“Care to dance?”

It was not Pip who asked.

She threw down her cards and started up out of her chair with a cry of, “Richard! What are you doing here?”

He drew her aside, looking quite dapper in tails, dapper despite the shadows beneath his eyes.

“Lady Wilmington talked me into coming,” he said, and she knew at once that what he meant was that Melanie had talked him into coming away from tending his brother.

“But I thought . . . Pip said . . .” She looked about her and could not blurt out the truth, not in this crowded room, where she was sure to be overheard—that she knew his brother was refused entry to Almack’s, that Richard had been deemed equally unworthy. “He said you did not come here.”

Richard led her away from the table and leaned close to murmur, “You mean he told you I had been blackballed?”

She nodded, unable to meet his eyes.

“Chase’s injury has changed all that,” he said, his emotions masked, his voice flat, and yet she read a hint of bleak regret in the depths of his gaze. “I have been deemed a rising possibility.” His smile was rueful, and his voice fell in saying, “Odds have it he will not live out the year.”

“Dear Lord!” She caught at his hand. “People bet on such things?”

He nodded, and a small, rather tragic smile twisted his lips. “Chase used to bet on such things. Life’s a game, he would say.”

“Dreadful.” She shook her head. “Dreadful, too, that his injury should be the criteria by which you gain entry here.”

He shrugged. “I never would have bothered had not Lady Wilmington talked me into it.”

Lady Wilmington
, Patience thought.
Poor Richard.
He could not even bring himself to call her Melanie in public. How torturous to love from a distance, to avoid all mention of one’s true feelings—as she did—to wait for old age to offer—what had he called it?—rising possibilities.

“I shall have to thank Melanie for insisting.” She tucked her hand into the crook of his arm.

“Oh?” Mention of Lady Wilmington seemed to have arrested his attention.

“Yes.” She gave his arm a sympathetic squeeze. “I am very glad you have come.”

“Are you?” He sounded surprised. “I would have thought you preferred spending an evening with Pip all to yourself.”

“With his fiancée here? And his fiancée’s stepbrother, who keeps a watchful eye on me, as if . . . as if . . .”

“Afraid you might snatch Pip away from under his sister’s nose?”

She frowned, “No. Not that. It is something else. Only see how he watches us even now, with that odd smirk upon his lips.”

“Does he?”

“Yes.”

He might have turned to look had she not given his arm a squeeze. “Do not look, or he will know that we speak of him, which will only add to the intrigue, when what I really wish to do is dance. Pip has promised me a waltz, but instead I have been forced to sit here looking for a woman who does not exist. . . .”

“Forced?” he murmured. “That is not entirely correct, now, is it? When are you going to tell Pip the truth about your lady in red?” He looked and sounded disappointed in her, and she could not bear it that he should be disappointed.

“Soon,” she promised. “But for now I would dance.”

“As you will,” he said, his hand at her waist familiar, entirely comfortable as he led her onto the floor in a graceful whirl of skirt and tails. “I see what you mean about William Defoe,” he said. “He watches your every move.”

“Does he?” She gasped, and might have turned to stare had he not reminded her, “Do not look, or he will know that we speak of him.”

She laughed to hear him repeat her every word so precisely.

“Perhaps he is taken with your charms,” he suggested.

“If that is the case, I wish he were not,” she admitted. “There is something in the way he looks at me that . . .” She wrinkled her nose.

“What?”

“Makes me feel most uncomfortable. As if he knows a dreadful secret about me, and would not be above telling.” She slid a glance across the room. Will Defoe stood waiting, watching. He nodded ever so slightly at her, and smiled an unwanted smile.

“Do you think he could have been there the night we went to Vauxhall? Perhaps recognized me?”

“Ah!” Richard shot a look over her shoulder. “Quite possible. I do not know that I would recognize him masked.”

“Even Sophie claims to have met me, and I’ve never set eyes on her before this evening.”

“Sophie Defoe at Vauxhall? I cannot picture it.”

She remembered that Lady Wilmington had said much the same thing.

“Would not soil her slippers,” she murmured.

“What’s that?”

“Nothing,” she said. “Perhaps it is all nothing.”

He seemed willing enough to drop the subject, though his gaze drifted calmly over her shoulder on more than one occasion, and she knew he continued to watch Defoe watching her.

They danced well together, she and Richard, their movements comfortable and smooth, nothing awkward or self-conscious in her. Their conversation, broken only by the movements of the dance, went almost as smoothly.

With Pip it would be different. She had been looking forward to—and dreading—the moment dear Pip would ask her to dance. The very idea made her nervous. Fear of stepping on toes and tripping over her hem troubled her no end.

She wondered, as the music came to a close and they walked away from the dance floor, if such fears ever troubled Richard. “Do you mean to dance with Melanie?” she asked.

“Perhaps,” he said. “Though I had thought to stand talking with you over a cup of lemonade first. Why do you ask?”

She led the way to the tables in the dining room, where punch bowls full of orgeat and lemonade offered pale refreshment.

“It occurs to me,” she said carefully, as she dished up cups for both of them, “it must be difficult in some ways for a beautiful young woman to be married to a gentleman of advancing years who suffers from the gout.”

“Yes,” he agreed as he turned to study the dance floor. “She does not lack for partners, though. I believe Pip has the pleasure at the moment.”

“Do you ever suffer pangs of jealousy, dear Richard?” she asked.

He blinked, as if startled by the question. “I suppose I do—on occasion. What prompts the question? Are you troubled by jealousy, Patience?”

“Me? Whomever should I be jealous of?”

“Why, Miss Sophie Defoe.”

She was dancing, Miss Sophie Defoe, with a gentleman Richard identified as Lord Sumner. She was an elegant dancer, her posture proud, her head held high, each step taken with confidence and grace, and yet she did not display complete decorum in her circuit of the dance floor, for her gaze did not fix on her partner, as was considered proper. Instead she watched Pip and Lady Wilmington. Her attention remained so distracted that in the end Patience said emphatically, though it was not entirely true, “I am not at all jealous of Miss Sophie Defoe. I do in fact pity her.”

When Richard’s eyes narrowed quizzically, she went on, saying, “He does not love her, you know.”

“Who? Pip?” His voice was gentle. “No, I don’t suppose he does, but I must admit that I am surprised—and pleased, Patience—to hear that you find room in your heart to pity her.”

She frowned at this, and said, “Would you not pity her, if you were me?”

He swallowed the last of his lemonade and took her empty cup, and before he walked away with them, said enigmatically, “I would. I do, for I’ve reason to believe she will never snare our friend in marriage. He has given his heart to another.”

Never snare him? Given his heart?
Whatever did he mean by that?

She had no opportunity to ask him, for though she whirled to follow him, the music ended then, and someone tapped her on the shoulder, and when she turned, it was Pip, handsome Pip, glorious Pip, his face flushed with youth and beauty and the exertions of dancing.

“Shall we dance?” he asked.