In My Wildest Dreams (5 page)

“The question would be—with what is Ellery thinking?” Throckmorton murmured.

Lady Philberta whipped her head around to stare at him. “What?”

“Nothing, Mother.”

“You pick a poor time to show the first signs of a sense of humor.”

“Yes, Mother.” He supposed he had best keep his observations to himself. “It isn't as if I care whether the gardener's daughter comes to the party. I have no aristocratic pretensions. My own antecedents don't bear looking into”—he fixed her with a significant gaze—“on either side.”

“You're not going to mention the highwayman again? That was a hundred years ago, and at least
he
had the advantage of being romantic.”

“If you consider hanging from your neck until you are dead to be romantic.”

Without drawing breath, she continued, “My ancestors aren't nearly as scandalous as your father's, with his rebellious Scottish baron and Cromwell's commander and those dreadful pirates.”

It was an argument she had had often with his father. She had never won and his father was dead, but that didn't stop her from fighting.

“If anything, the family background makes this intrigue with Miss Milford all the more undesirable.” Lady Philberta pointed out what Throckmorton already knew. “The
ton
could easily be made to remember how precarious the Throckmorton toehold into society truly is, especially if, in a disgraceful spectacle, Ellery rejects his betrothed—one of our own—right before our eyes.”

“I realize that, Mother.”

In a quiet tone that barely reached his ears, she said,
“Garrick, for the sake of Her Majesty's realm, we need the Longshaw connection.”

“The capital won't hurt us, either.” If his family had a motto, it might be
Money and Patriotism.
“But we must move carefully. Right now, to Ellery, Miss Milford embodies the forbidden fruit.”

“I do get tired of having you be so eternally right,” she murmured.

“In the future, I will try to fail you, Mother.” He flashed a smile down at her. “But not this time.”

“No. But what will you do?”

His smile faded. “Miss Milford's handling of Ellery has proved one thing. He
can
be handled.”

All Throckmorton had to do was discover the method.

4

C
eleste had dreamed of this moment every night of her life.

“I have dreamed of this moment,” Ellery breathed in her ear.

He'd said just the right thing. They were dancing just the right dance. He was holding her in his manly arms . . .

His breath tickled her neck. “You waltz like a dream.”

The music entwined them with magic. The air sparkled like the finest champagne. The stars popped out, one by one, brilliant with light, and each and every torch around the veranda burned brightly just for her. She was waltzing with Ellery. Ellery, the man she'd loved since the time . . .

“I loved you since I first saw you,” he murmured.

She drew back to look up at him, and she couldn't help it. She laughed in his face. “The first time you saw me, I
was probably a sniveling babe. The first time you noticed me, I was eleven years old.”

“I meant . . .”

“You meant you loved me since the first time you saw me today.” He looked uncomfortable, and the merriment in her crested. “You don't remember me at eleven, do you?” Dear Ellery, he had lived a life of excitement, of glamour. Of course he didn't remember. She didn't care. Nothing could ruin this perfect evening. “You tripped me.”

“No!” he protested. “I could not have been so unchivalrous.”

“Indeed you could.” She kept her voice low pitched and soft, the way the Count de Rosselin had always instructed. “You were a boy! I was eleven and you were sixteen, and when I fell I tore my best Sunday dress.”

She had Ellery Throckmorton, the most dashing rogue in England, puzzled and intrigued. She wasn't ashamed of her past; she wouldn't let him pretend she was someone she wasn't. He would accept her as the gardener's daughter, or not at all. If she'd learned one thing in Paris, it was that a beautiful young woman who held herself in high esteem could have anything she wanted—and Celeste wanted Ellery.

“I cried, and you picked me up and hugged me, and carried me to your father's study.”

Their steps slowed as he listened.

“I was frightened to death of old Mr. Throckmorton, but you bravely confessed what you'd done and before Sunday next I had a new gown and my first—and only—infatuation.”

He liked that; his eyes crinkled and his dimple
flashed. “You were infatuated with my father?” he teased.

“All Throckmorton men are irresistible,” she answered.

“But I am the most irresistible, aren't I?”

She pretended to think.

He leaned closer. “Aren't I?”

He was almost kissing her on the dance floor, and such an action would be ruinous. She knew people were already buzzing, wondering who she was. She wouldn't give them any more ammunition than the truth. So she agreed. “You, Ellery, are by far the most irresistible.”

Gathering her close once more, he whirled her in a grand circle.

Over her shoulder, she glimpsed the one Throckmorton man who was quite resistible—Garrick Throckmorton, who stood watching them, holding a strawberry and talking to Lady Philberta.

Well, every dream worth having was worth fighting a few dragons for, and Garrick Throckmorton was a very worthy dragon.

He
was the one who had arranged this wretched betrothal which had almost overset Celeste's plans. Esther had confessed that Garrick Throckmorton had forced Ellery into the arms of little Lady Hyacinth, a girl whose only assets were a fortune and a title. A girl Celeste remembered as being awkward and spotted, and as infatuated with Ellery as Celeste herself.

Celeste had hated her for that.

At first Celeste had thought her dream of marrying Ellery had been crushed before it began. Then she remembered the words of the Count de Rosselin. “Celeste, a dream is worth having only if you are willing to fight for it.”

So she would fight. She would use every weapon at her disposal. This time the dream would not fade. She wouldn't let it. Because of Paris, and Count de Rosselin, and the past four years of loneliness and growing up and learning how to be the most fascinating woman on the continent. No gentleman as staid and dull as Garrick Throckmorton would stand in her way.

Dancing on her toes to get closer to Ellery's ear, she murmured, “I would relish some champagne. And I would like to drink it in the grand ballroom, while the moonlight glints on the gold leaf and we dance to the distant strains of music.”

Ellery drew back in amazement. “You little siren! Did you spy on me in there, too?”

For the grand ballroom, darkened on the night of the garden party, had been where Ellery took those other girls. There they had danced, and afterward he kissed them. Celeste had watched him through the window, wanting to be the girl in his arms.

“The ballroom.” She slipped out of his arms at the edge of the dance floor and drifted into the house, her feet scarcely touching the ground.

Lords and ladies moved through all the lighted rooms in the house. In the drawing rooms, the corridor, the library. Dancing, gossiping, eating and drinking. They smelled of perfume and talc, dressed in taffeta and lace, and laughed and cried and bled just like her. She knew most of them, although they didn't know her. As a child, she had studied them, wanting to be like them so she could be with Ellery. Her father had said it was impossible. He said there were the aristocrats, the middle class, and the poor, and never would the lines blur. He said she created misery for herself, and it was true, she had. But
in Paris she had transformed that misery into a possibility, and not even Father's disapproval could change that.

People glanced her way, discussed her behind their fans, tried to place her among their acquaintances. She didn't care. She could bear the gossip with Ellery's love to support her.

She could almost hear her practical father's voice saying, “He doesn't love ye yet.”

But she had hardly begun to fight.

As she made her way and turned the corner toward the ballroom, the candelabras became few and far between. By use of illumination, the family deliberately encouraged the guests to stay near the veranda, and the dimly lit corridor wound before her.

It didn't matter. She knew her way around every bit of Blythe Hall. During her childhood, she had learned each inch of the eighteenth-century house. It came into the Throckmorton family a mere forty years ago, but for her, this had always been home.

Pausing, she looked out a window onto the veranda. Ellery stood out there, trapped in an alcove. He couldn't come to meet her, for he was cornered by Lord and Lady Longshaw, and by a girl . . . a rather handsome girl, tall and pretty, if a little awkward.

Celeste leaned her hands against the windowpanes.

Who was she? She had black hair, each strand shining in the torchlight. Her lips were shaped like a bow, waiting to be kissed. Not a spot was to be seen on her fair complexion. And her eyes . . . her eyes were violet and wide, and fixed on Ellery in slavish adoration.

Celeste snapped to attention.

It was Lady Hyacinth. Her rival. That pretty, soft,
sweet-looking female was the girl Celeste would relieve of a husband.

Pressing her hand to her chest, Celeste took a breath.

She wished she hadn't seen Hyacinth. It would have been better if she hadn't. Then she wouldn't be feeling this flood of . . . oh . . . call it what it was. Guilt. She felt guilty at the thought of hurting Hyacinth.

She didn't know why she should. The girl had everything. A title, a fortune, two parents who adored her. She never had to work, she certainly didn't have to stay up late remaking clothing she had accepted from the ambassador's wife.

But there was something about the expression on her face as she looked at Ellery . . . as if she really loved him.

Celeste glared through the window. Well, too bad. If someone had to suffer, it might as well be her. Not Celeste. Not now. Not again.

Then someone joined the little group, and Celeste glared more fiercely. Garrick Throckmorton. The architect of this whole disaster. He was the one who deserved to suffer.

Of course, if one were to be fair, one might say Celeste wouldn't be here now except for his offer of a position. But she didn't feel like being fair.

He bowed, he spoke, he observed the little group solemnly. For as long as Celeste could remember, he had been the dark, cool, remote Mr. Throckmorton, cast in the shadows by the blazingly bright Ellery. He was equitable to a fault; none of the servants would hear a cross word about him, for he pensioned their elderly, cared for their sick and treated each of them with the respect due another human being.

Indeed, Celeste well knew what she owed Mr. Throckmorton. It was Mr. Throckmorton who had declared she should go to the Distinguished Academy of Governesses to further her education and learn a trade, and Mr. Throckmorton who had paid the initial cost. She had paid him back from her earliest earnings; Celeste couldn't bear to think herself any further indebted to the Throckmorton family. So when the offer of a job as governess to Throckmorton's daughters had arrived from Blythe Hall, she had been able to decide without feeling undue pressure.

Not that there had ever been any doubt. Ellery resided at Blythe Hall.

The little group outside the window appeared to be suffering an altercation, with Lord Longshaw speaking in a heated manner to Ellery while Lady Longshaw tugged at one arm. Lady Hyacinth tugged at the other while casting anxious glances at her betrothed. Ellery looked distracted, glancing at the house as if he wished to be elsewhere—and Celeste knew where that elsewhere was. She wanted him to be there almost as much as she wanted him to end his betrothal right now . . .

And with a bustle of skirts and an entourage of three footmen carrying covered silver trays, Frau Wieland arrived.

Celeste stared. Old Mr. Throckmorton had adored pastry and desserts and had begged Frau Wieland, famous for her strudel, to come from Vienna for a good salary and the promise of the best of the servants' quarters. She had lorded it over the other servants ever since, and to a one they hated her. Now she waltzed into the middle of a
ton
party into the center of a lordly fight and demanded attention. And Mr. Garrick Throckmorton
apparently thought she should have it. He gestured for quiet and indicated she should speak.

She did, so loudly that by leaning close to the window and by watching her lips, Celeste could catch a word or so.

“Magnificent new concoction . . . deserves attention . . . by invitation . . . Mr. Throckmorton said . . .”

Frustrated, Celeste put her ear right to the glass in time to hear her trumpet, “I present . . .
la crème moka gateau.”

The footmen whisked the covers away and presented glasses filled with frothy brown, pink and white concoctions.

Mr. Throckmorton accepted the first one with an exclamation of pleasure. It appeared he had his father's weakness for desserts.

By their expressions Lady Philberta, Lord and Lady Longshaw, Hyacinth and Ellery were as befuddled as Celeste, but they all took a spoon, tasted and nodded. Hyacinth nodded with a great deal of enthusiasm, Ellery with much less.

By his gestures Throckmorton urged him to eat more. Yielding, Ellery ate as rapidly as he could. Clapping Throckmorton on the shoulder, he tried to edge away.

Throckmorton smiled the kind of smile that raised goosebumps on Celeste's arms, and glanced toward the window, his gray eyes wickedly amused.

She jumped back.

She didn't know why. He surely couldn't see her. The lights were bright outside. No candles glimmered in this part of the house. And she had no reason to hide from Mr. Throckmorton. None at all. But for some reason she
didn't want Mr. Throckmorton to think she spied on them.

He smiled toward the window, then moved Hyacinth to stand beside Ellery.

Celeste fled toward the ballroom.