Miss Westlake's Windfall (21 page)

Chas saw Ada’s glass fall to the carpet, and saw her sway on her feet, her face pale beneath the glittering mask, but he could not go to her, not while everyone was watching him. He raised his glass, even though some of the latest arrivals from the ballroom did not have theirs filled yet. “A toast,” he called. “To poor lost lamby. May no one else who is pierced by Cupid’s darts suffer so grievously.”

Everyone laughed and drank and returned to the dancing, except for a few who stayed to sample the lobster patties. Lady Esther tripped off with a brown-robed friar, restored to good humor by his less than fatherly flattery.

Chas stepped toward Ada and picked her glass up from the carpet. He set it aside and signaled a waiter for a fresh one, while he pressed his own into her hand. “Drink, Ada. You look like you can use a restorative. Are you all right? Shall I fetch Tess? Find you a quiet seat?”

“I am fine, Chas, truly.”

“You did not look fine for a moment there. What happened? Did a goose walk over your grave?” he teased.

“You ... you aren’t going to offer for her, are you?”

Chas nearly dropped his new glass of champagne. “Who? That is, for whom am I not going to offer?”

“Lady Esther, of course. Everyone is expecting an announcement tonight at your mother’s ball.”

“Everyone? Not Lady Esther, by God. I made deuced sure she understood enough not to entertain expectations, no matter what my mother said or did. Even Lady Esther could hold that thought in her mind. Besides, I swore never to make another proposal of marriage, remember?”

Ada remembered all too well. She’d give her last breath to have those words back; perhaps not her very last breath, because then she’d miss Chas’s closeness. She could smell the lemony scent of his soap, and the spices of his cologne. Why did they have to be at a ball with hundreds of people watching? “Silly,” she told him now, “you only promised not to offer for me again.”

Chas struck his brow in mock astonishment. “Deuce take it! Now I have no excuse not to offer for Lady Esther, except that I’d throttle her in a fortnight.”

“Truly?”

“Knight’s honor. Viscount’s too.”

Ada would have kissed him, right then, in front of whomever wished to watch, and to the devil with her reputation. She was already known to be related to the erratic Eros and the mystical—to be polite—mermaid and the blue Bird of Paradise. Let Lady Ashmead’s guests think the rest of the family was as mad. She leaned toward him.

“Ahem.” Epps the butler had banged his baton twice before, to get their attention. He cleared his throat once more to bring order to the supper room and quiet to the company, before his momentous introduction. “Sebastian the Pirate,” he pronounced. “And Lieutenant Sir Emery Westlake.”

Once more mayhem reigned as word went out of the two newcomers’ identities, their true identities, that was. Leo Tobin, here at the Meadows? The Westlake heir home at last? Lady Ashmead’s ball was quickly growing to be the event of the Season, in the country, if not the City.

Chas found a secluded spot in his library for the baronet’s family to be reunited in private. Tess and Ada were weeping, while Emery was looking tired and embarrassed but pleased by his welcome. He was thinner than Ada recalled, with harsh lines across his forehead, but he did not seem to be ailing. His arm was strapped across his body—but he had his arm.

“It might not be good for anything again,” he told them once they were all three settled on a couch. “Though it is too soon to say. Leo’s first mate thinks exercise might restore some of it, depending on how many muscles got cut. I cannot go back to the Army, that is for certain.”

“Thank God,” Ada said, then quickly added, “Not that I am glad to see your chosen career ended so unhappily, of course. I am just so relieved to have you home safe with us again.”

Emery understood. “Tobin explained how things were left in such a mare’s nest. I’ll fix them, Ada, I swear. I’ll meet with the solicitors tomorrow.”

Ada mopped at her eyes, having discarded the mask to get an unobstructed view of her beloved sibling. “They have waited this long, they can wait a day or two, dearest, while you recover from your ordeal.”

Tess asked, “Was it an ordeal? I mean the trip, of course, not getting shot or lying in a filthy Army hospital.”

“The sail home was fine, except for the storm, naturally. I like your Leo, Tess. At first I was upset, a smuggler and all, helping put funds in the enemy’s coffers. But then he explained what he was doing and why, so I came to admire the chap for his efforts. And his deuced fine brandy.”

“And the other?” Tess pressed one of her trailing seaweed fronds between her fingers.

“What, that Tobin is bigger and better looking than I am, and richer, too? Don’t be a peahen, Tess. I forgave him all that when he rescued me off the troop ship right in Portsmouth harbor.”

“You know what I mean: Leo’s birth.”

Emery put his good arm around his older sister’s shoulder. “I suppose we’ll have to thank heaven for his birth, if he’s the one to make you happy, love.” He handed her his handkerchief—Lud knew there was nothing like a pocket to her gown—and turned to his other sister. “What about you, Addie? I heard how you whistled a fortune down the wind and then found another.”

Tess was still weeping and Ada was still explaining when Jane and her uncle entered the library. Jane hated to leave the dancing, but unless some cavalier was going to sweep her off her feet this night—and he’d better hurry, for her ankles were swelling—she’d be going back to Westlake Hall, Sir Emery’s house. As Uncle Filbert reminded her, they’d better show some sympathy for the returning hero.

“Oh, do not get up, brother!” she exclaimed, rushing to his side, as if she had not waited to finish the dance set before coming to welcome him home. Bending over to kiss Emery’s cheek, she almost smothered him in pink flesh.

Wedged between his sisters. Emery could only blush and nod as Jane and her uncle went on about his fearlessness and fortitude.

Jane was still pouring the butter boat over poor Emery when Chas and Leo returned from the viscount’s office, where they’d caught up on the news.

“Here now,” Chas said, “you ladies cannot monopolize our returning warrior all evening, you know. The rest of the company is eager to view the celebrities, too. Leo and the lieutenant are quite the lions of the night, Epps tells me.” He turned to the young officer. “Are you up to greeting my mother yet, Emery?”

Emery grinned, having known Lady Ashmead for most of his life. “Of course. Greeting your mother cannot be worse than facing the French cannonade, not by much, anyway. She is certain to blame me for getting injured, for signing up in the first place, for old Rodney sticking his spoon in the wall.”

Showing unusual diplomacy, Tess took Leo off in the opposite direction from Lady Ashmead when they reached the ballroom. Showing unusual acumen about such matters, she held tightly to his bare, muscle-corded arm. The ladies might stare at Leo’s nearly naked chest, covered only by a black leather vest. They might even grow short of breath at the sight of his narrow waist cinched with a scarlet sash, his skin-tight pants tucked into high boots, the sword at his side and the gold hoop in his ear. Let them look, Miss Westlake’s possessive stance said; he was hers. The other ladies could look their fill when the book came out—if they paid for the privilege.

Ada and the viscount flanked Emery as they walked toward Lady Ashmead’s throne, greeting old friends and neighbors on the way, accepting felicitations and welcome homes. Ada kept wanting to touch Emery, to cling to his scarlet regimental coat, to make sure he really was home, relatively healthy, ready to take over some of the family burdens. Champagne was not nearly as exhilarating as seeing her brother. In fact, walking with these two men, Ada could not recall being so happy, so at peace with the world. Emery was home, and Chas was not engaged.

Emery was correct about Lady Ashmead trotting out all his faults as a form of affection. He’d simply not considered that she could blame him for Tess’s outfit, Ada’s unmarried state, or Cupid’s misplaced arrows.

“My sisters’ waywardness you might be able to lay at my door, Lady Ashmead, but I refuse to take responsibility for Love’s vagaries. If Tess and Leo love each other, that’s enough for me.”

“I am not speaking of those two,” the viscountess said with a toss of her turbaned head. “I might never speak to those two either. I was referring to Lady Esther’s stuffed sheep that got skewered.”

Emery declared he was still all asea, and he’d been on dry land for hours. Lady Esther, sitting beside her hostess between dances, giggled, so Lady Ashmead recalled her duty and introduced the handsome wounded soldier to the beautiful blond heiress. No one needed a poet or novelist to predict what would happen next; it was inevitable. Emery fell at Lady Esther’s feet. Literally.

One of the servants had located a shepherd’s crook to replace the missing mutton, lest anyone be confused about the lady’s costume and mistake her for a spun-sugar statuette. Lambikin’s ribbons had been transferred to the rounded staff, which rested alongside Lady Esther’s chair.

Overtaken by the loveliest sight he’d seen since leaving for the Peninsula, deciding on the instant that this was what he’d been fighting for in the first place, Emery was not watching his feet. He fell over the decorated crook, skidded forward, and landed half in the little beauty’s lap.

Never one to refuse a gift, Lady Esther murmured, “Oh, my,” and he was. Hers, that is.

They got Emery back to his feet, uninjured, then onto a chair with a glass of wine in his hand to restore the color to his cheeks. Lady Esther waved away her next partner, declaring that she would sit by the hero instead. That was the least she could do, since she had almost broken his head.

“Oh, dear,” Ada whispered to Chas as he led her out for a dance. “I fear she’ll break his heart next.”

Chapter Twenty-three

“Even widgeons fall in love, I suppose.” Chas shook his head at Emery, who was leaning toward the golden ringlets as if pulled by a magnet, hanging on every word that lisped through perfectly bowed lips. “They must, there are so many around.”

“But nothing can come of it,” Ada fretted. “Her father is an earl.”

Chas shrugged. “Not everyone puts pounds and pence ahead of happiness.”

If that was a gentle rebuke it missed its mark. “Her father is a wealthy earl,” Ada repeated. “He will never give his blessings to a half-pay officer.”

“Devil take it, Ada, they just met. The lad set foot on English soil mere hours ago after years abroad. Why not let him catch his breath before landing him in parson’s mousetrap?”

“You are right, of course. I am simply concerned about him and his future.”

“I know you are, puss, but Emery is a man grown, so let him do some of the worrying from now on. The whole world need not rest on your shoulders. Your lovely shoulders, with your hair hanging down. Tonight is a masquerade, remember? It’s meant for flirting and folly and forgetting who you are. Tonight you are Princess Pretty, and I your gallant knight. No banks or brothers or bothersome house guests should intrude on our pleasure, only music and magic and champagne. Come, my love, dance with me.”

His love? Ada floated into his arms.

The dance was a waltz.

The dance was not intended to be a waltz, Lady Ashmead predictably frowning on the licentious touching. Still, the orchestra definitely began the strains of a waltz, setting the young misses into a dither. Did the Almack’s rules apply here? Were they supposed to keep the same partners who’d been promised the scheduled quadrille? Were they proficient enough at the new dance to dare it in public?

Ada looked about her at the confusion. “How did you convince your mother to permit a waltz?”

“Easily. I pay the orchestra, remember?”

Then he swung her into the lilting tempo, and Ada stopped wondering about anything. They danced together like well-practiced partners, for hadn’t Chas been the one to teach the Westlake girls, after a trip to London? They turned and twirled, glided and flowed, without the need for words. Whatever they needed to say, they said with their bodies, nearly touching in the movements, and their eyes, never leaving each other’s. Flirting, aye. Folly, perhaps. Forgetting who they were with? Never.

Magic, indeed.

* * * *

While Viscount Ashmead waltzed with the lady who had turned him down so often and so openly, tongues wagged. Goodness, those two were not marking time to the music, they were making love! Lady Esther took note, and took another look at the handsome officer at her side. Lady Ashmead watched in disgust as her son and Ada Westlake made a spectacle of themselves, without one official step toward making her a grandmother. There was no hope whatsoever of Charles ever offering for Lady Esther, the viscountess was forced to admit, and there was nothing Lady Ashmead liked less than being forced to admit her errors. Besides, now she was stuck with the little ninny for another fortnight at least. To her additional aggravation, the other topic of conversation at her ball was her husband’s bastard. Look at him, flaunting himself and his chest hair at her party. It was enough to make a body bilious.

The sight of Sebastian’s strong torso had quite another effect on the ladies at the masquerade, who suddenly found themselves wishing to be marooned on a desert island with the pirate. Their gentlemen were equally as entranced with Tess, in her flowing, not quite transparent, costume. Talk swirled around the pair as they, too, danced.

Leo did not know the steps of the waltz, but that made no difference to Tess. She drifted around him like waves to the shore, eddying, ebbing, her lithe form weaving trailing fronds of green and blue gauze about his swaying figure, choreographing a ballet—or a seduction.

“It’s part of the play,” the chaperones whispered among themselves, to stave off being scandalized.

“It’s only the lunatic Westlake chit following her Muse,” others said knowingly. “Means nothing by it.”

“No, I tell you, they are going to put on a production called Sebastian and the Sea Goddess. This is by way of being an introduction to the drama.”