The Secret Mistress (18 page)

Vauxhall Gardens!

The thought of going there was sufficient to send Angeline into transports of delight. It was the most famous pleasure grounds in the world. Well, in Britain anyway. She was not sure about the
world
. There was a pavilion and there were private boxes and sumptuous food. There were music and dancing and fireworks and broad avenues and shadier paths. There were lanterns in the trees and a boat to take one across the river.

But the fact that she was going there was not all.

The evening was being arranged for Lady Heyward’s benefit. But Lady Heyward had apparently shown some unease over any impression of carelessness or heartlessness she was giving her late husband’s family, so Leonard was going to make it a family party—or a two-family party, to be more accurate. Perhaps, he said, Tresham and Ferdinand would come.

The Earl of Heyward
was sure to be there too, then, Angeline thought while she stared dreamily into the darkness beyond the carriage windows as they drove home. The earl and Vauxhall all in one evening.

“I daresay,” Rosalie said from the seat beside her, just as if she had read Angeline’s thoughts, “the Earl of Heyward will accept Leonard’s invitation to Vauxhall. Do you like him, Angeline? Did you enjoy your drive in the park with him this afternoon?”

He had given her permission to continue wearing the bonnets she liked.
Not
that she needed his permission or anyone else’s. But he had made her feel that it was the right thing to continue wearing them, that it would be the
wrong
thing to bow to popular opinion.

He had said something else too. Angeline thought a moment, bringing the exact words to mind again in his own voice.

Some will even envy them and emulate them because they will assume that it is the bonnets that give you the bright sparkle that characterizes you
.

 … the bright sparkle that characterizes you
.

No one else had ever said anything even half as lovely to her.

And he had advised her to set fashion rather than follow it—even if no one followed her.

But the loveliest memory of all from this afternoon—oh, by far the loveliest—had come when he had
joked
with her. And it
had been
a joke, not an insult as it was when Tresham or Ferdinand said similar things.

I think it quite the most ghastly thing I have ever seen
, he had said when she had pressed him for an opinion on her gorgeous green and orange bonnet,
with the possible exception of the riding hat you wore the other morning
.

And then, while she had laughed with genuine amusement because the words were so unexpected, he had
smiled
. He really had. A full-on smile that had set his blue eyes dancing and had shown his teeth and creased his cheek on the right side.

“Oh, I did,” she said in answer to Rosalie’s question. “It is the loveliest place in the world to be on a sunny afternoon. Though I daresay Vauxhall at night will be even lovelier.”

She gazed out at a streetlamp that broke up the darkness for a moment.

“And yes,” she said. “I like the Earl of Heyward well enough.”

“I am delighted to hear it,” Rosalie said briskly. “Though there are plenty of other gentlemen worthy of your consideration if it turns out on further acquaintance that you do not like him
quite
well enough. I am not the sort of chaperon, I hope, who expects her charge to marry the first gentleman presented for her inspection.”

“I know,” Angeline said. “I am very fortunate to have you, Cousin Rosalie. More than fortunate. I am
happy.
”

Happier than she would be if it were her own mother presenting her to society and the marriage mart? But she made no attempt to answer the question, which was pointless anyway. Mama was dead.

Cousin Rosalie reached out and patted her hand.

I think it quite the most ghastly thing I have ever seen, with the possible exception of the riding hat you wore the other morning
.

Angeline smiled secretly into the darkness.

D
AMNATION
, E
DWARD THOUGHT
the following morning when he opened the invitation Lorraine had warned him would be coming.

Vauxhall!

It was famous for its glitter, its vulgarity, its artificiality. He had never been there. He had never wanted to go. He still did not. He could not think of many places he would less like to go.

But go he must.

Lorraine had been close to tears in the drawing room before dinner last evening when she had spoken of the planned visit to Vauxhall. Both he and his mother had been present as well as Alma and Augustine.

“It has been only a little over a year since Maurice’s passing,” she had said. “I would not offend any of you or appear uncaring or … or
fast
by engaging in too many social pleasures too soon or giving the appearance that perhaps I have a … a
beau
. Will you all please come too to Vauxhall, and persuade Juliana and Christopher to come, so that it will be in the nature of a
family
outing?”

“I doubt if Christopher will risk the dangers of night air and the smoke of fireworks clogging his lungs,” Augustine had said, looking at Edward with a twinkle in his eye. “Unless Juliana persuades him that it is safe, of course, or that going to Vauxhall is essential for
her
good health. That would do it. He is soft in the head where she is concerned.”

Edward’s mother had got to her feet and hugged Lorraine tightly.

“Lorraine,” she had said, “no one could have been a better wife to my son, and no one could be a better mother to my granddaughter. But Maurice is dead and you are alive. You must not be ruled by guilt or the fear that we will think you somehow unfaithful to his
memory. I assure you we will not. But Vauxhall? My dear! It is for young people. I will certainly not go there with you. But Alma and Augustine surely will, and I daresay Juliana and Christopher will too. And Edward, of course.”

Of course. Of course he would and of course he must.
Not
just because his mother had given him little choice, but because he was fond of his sister-in-law and could see that she already had a genuine regard for Fenner—and he for her. And Fenner was a steady character. He was not just another Maurice.

Duty called, then. Oh, and affection too. Duty did not preclude love. Indeed, it could hardly exist
without
love to impel it onward.

So he would go. To Vauxhall of all the undesirable places. With the near certainty that Lady Angeline Dudley would be a fellow guest. If Fenner was inviting all of Lorraine’s family, it stood to reason that he would invite all of his too. And devil take it, that included the Duke of Tresham as well as his sister.

“Send an acceptance of this one,” he told his secretary, waving the invitation in one hand before setting it down on the desk.

She would
love
Vauxhall. She would bubble over with exuberance. He could picture it already in his mind. Lady Angeline Dudley, that was, not Lorraine. Lorraine’s enjoyment would be altogether quieter, more dignified, more decorous.

A
NGELINE WAS SITTING
very upright in a small boat on the River Thames, wishing that somehow she could open up her senses even wider than they already were and will them to take in every sensation of sight, sound, smell, and touch and commit them to memory for all time.

Not that she would have trouble remembering anyway.

It was evening and darkness had fallen. But the world—
her
world—had not been deprived of light. Rather, the darkness enhanced the glory of dozens of colored lanterns at Vauxhall on the opposite bank and their long reflections shivering across the water. The water lapped the sides of the boat in time with the boatmen’s oars. There were the sounds of water and distant voices. She was on her way to Vauxhall—at last. The hours of the day had seemed to drag by. The air was cool on her arms. It was a little shivery cool actually, but it was more shivers of excitement she felt than of cold. She held her shawl about her shoulders with both hands.

Tresham had insisted upon the boat, though there was a bridge close by that would have taken the carriage across in perfect comfort. Angeline was very glad he had insisted. And she was still surprised he had accepted his invitation from Cousin Leonard. She
knew
he had been about to refuse it, but then he had heard that Belinda, Lady Eagan, Leonard and Rosalie’s cousin on their mother’s side, having arrived unexpectedly in town just last week, was also to be of the party. Lady Eagan’s husband had run off to America with
her maid a year or so ago, and Angeline could hardly wait to meet her. She hoped she was not gaunt and abjectly grieving, however. That would be distressing.

Tresham was reclining indolently beside Angeline, one long-fingered hand trailing in the water alongside the boat. He was looking at her rather than at the lights.

“You do not have a fashionable air, Angeline,” he said. “You are fairly bursting with enthusiasm. Have you not heard of ennui?
Fashionable
ennui? Of looking bored and jaded as though you were a hundred years old and had already seen and experienced all there is to be seen and experienced?”

Of course she had heard of it—and seen it in action. Many people, both men and women, seemed to believe that behaving with languid world-weariness lent them an air of maturity and sophistication, whereas in reality it merely made them look silly. Tresham did it to a certain extent, but he was saved from silliness by the air of dark danger that always seemed to lurk about him.

“I have no interest in following fashion,” she said. “I would prefer to
set
it.”

“Even if no one follows your lead?” he asked her.

“Even then,” she said.

“Good girl,” he said, a rare note of approval in his voice. “Dudleys never follow the crowd, Angeline. They let the crowd follow
them
if it chooses. Or not, as the case may be.”

Remarkable, she thought. Absolutely remarkable. Tresham and the Earl of Heyward agreed upon something. Tresham would expire of horror if she told him.

“You know why you have been invited this evening, I suppose,” he said.

“Because Leonard is our cousin?” she asked, keeping her eyes on the lights, which were becoming more dazzling and more magical by the minute. They looked even more glorious if she squinted her eyes.

“Because Lady Heyward and her family have singled you out as the most eligible bride for Heyward,” he said. “And for some reason that eludes my understanding, Rosalie seems just as eager to
promote the match. I was always under the impression that she was a sensible woman, but matchmaking does have a tendency to distort female judgment quite atrociously. You had better watch your step, Angeline, or it will be the earl himself who will be turning up at Dudley House next to petition for your hand. And you know how much you love having to confront and reject unwanted suitors.”

There had been two more since the Marquess of Exwich. And the embarrassing thing with the second of the two had been that when Tresham had come to the drawing room to inform her that Sir Dunstan Lang was waiting in the library to propose marriage to her, she had been unable even to put a face to the name. And when she had gone down and had a faint memory of dancing the evening before with the young gentleman standing there looking as though his neckcloth had been tied by a ruthlessly sadistic valet, she had no longer been able to recall his name.

Embarrassed
was not a strong enough word for how she had felt.

“I will be careful,” she promised.

“It would be an almighty yawn to have the man as a brother-in-law,” he said. “I can only imagine what it would be like to have him for a husband. No, actually, I cannot imagine it and have no intention of trying.”

“Why do you dislike him so much?” she asked.

“Dislike?” he said. “There is nothing either to like or to dislike in the man. He is just a giant bore. You ought to have known his brother, Angeline. Now,
there
was a man worth knowing. Though I daresay I would not have wanted you to know him—not before his marriage anyway. He might have been the devil of a fine fellow, but he was not the sort to whom one would want to expose one’s sister.”

It was odd, Angeline thought, that he did not want her to marry anyone like himself, and yet at the same time he did not want her to marry someone altogether more worthy, like Lord Heyward. She wondered if she would feel similarly when it came time for him to choose a bride. Would no lady be good enough for him in her eyes?

Or would she be warning every lady in sight away from him?

Would he ever be in love? She doubted it. But the thought saddened
her, and the very last thing she wanted to feel tonight was sadness. Besides, the boat was drawing into the bank, and Tresham was vaulting out even before it was quite there and offering her his hand, and excitement bubbled up in her again until she thought she might well be sick.