The Secret Mistress (32 page)

“No,” he said.

“Did you love him?” she asked.

“I did,” he said. “He was my brother.”

“Did you
want
to be Earl of Heyward?” she asked.

He closed his eyes and pressed his head back against the wall.

“I did,” he said. “I always felt I could do a better job of it than he did. I wanted the title and position for myself. Until I had them—and did not have him. And now I have to watch his wife marry someone else. I am going to have to watch another man bring up my brother’s child. And I have to
know
that for Lorraine it is a
happily-ever-after. I have to be
happy
for her because I am fond of her and know her life with Maurice was hell. But he was my
brother
.”

She gripped his thigh and said nothing. What was there to say? Except that no one is without pain, that pain is part of the human condition. And there was nothing terribly original in
that
thought, was there?

“As Tresham and Ferdinand are my brothers,” she said. “Perhaps they will never marry. Perhaps—But I will always love them, no matter what.”

He opened his eyes and turned his head toward her.

“It was your brother with whom mine was racing that day, you know,” he said.

“Tresham?”
She frowned, and her stomach churned.

“I have always blamed him,” he said. “I even did it to his face at Maurice’s funeral. I suppose when sudden tragedies occur, we always feel the need to nominate some living scapegoat. But in reality Tresham was no more to blame for what happened than I was. For even if he was the one who suggested the race—and it was just as likely to have been Maurice—my brother did not have to accept. And even if Tresham overtook him just before that bend, he did not force Maurice to take the risk of pursuing him around it at suicidal speed. And Tresham did apparently turn back as soon as he saw the hay cart and realized the danger. He did try to avert the collision. He must have done, else he would not have seen it happen—he would have been another mile farther along the road. And he
did
see it. I have been unfair to your brother, Lady Angeline.”

“As you have been unfair to yourself,” she said. Oh, it could just as easily have been Tresham who had died in that race. How would she have borne it? Would she have blamed Maurice, Earl of Heyward? She probably would have.

“Yes.” He sighed. “Love hurts. And how is
that
for a cliché?”

She sighed. They were growing maudlin.

“I suppose my bonnet is lost for all time,” she said. “I liked it particularly well when I bought it last week. The blue and yellow reminded
me of a summer sky, and the pink—well, I always have loved pink.”

“Last week,” he said. “It is number fifteen, then?”

“Seventeen, actually,” she said. “And today was the first time I had worn it. Well, perhaps the birds will enjoy it until it fades and rots into shreds.”

“Let’s go and have a look,” he said, getting to his feet and reaching down a hand to help her to hers.

They made their way carefully down the ladder and out of the tower back to the path. They stepped off it a little farther along and looked downward. The slope, covered with long grass that rippled when the wind gusted, was long and far steeper than the one they had climbed. Her bonnet was an impossible distance away, though
impossible
had never figured large in the Dudley vocabulary.

“I can get down there if I go carefully,” he said.

“Carefully?” She laughed. “One does not go down a hill like that
carefully
, Lord Heyward.”

And she grasped his hand in hers and started downward with him—with long strides and at a dead run. She whooped and screeched as they went and felt a few more hairpins part company with her hair. And then they were both laughing again and hurtling along as fast as their feet would carry them—and ultimately, alas, faster even than that. Angeline lost her footing first and then he came tumbling down too and they rolled together until the level ground with its longer grass close to the lake brought them to a halt. By some miracle they had missed colliding with any trees.

They lay still for a few moments, laughing and half winded, side by side, hand in hand. And then he raised himself up on one elbow and gazed down at her, their laughter suddenly gone, their eyes locking.

Her arms came up about his neck at the same moment as his pushed beneath her, and they were kissing in the long grass as though their lives depended upon melding together with no space between them or
in
them or
through
them. As though they could somehow become one person, one whole, and never
ever
be lonely or loveless or unhappy again.

When he lifted his head and gazed down at her, into her eyes and into her very soul, Angeline gazed back, and knew only that she had been
right
. Oh, she had been right to fall in love with him on sight, to continue to love him, to want more than anything else in life to spend the rest of it loving him. And she had known—oh, she had
known
that he was not a dry old stick at all but capable of extraordinary passion. She had known that he was capable of loving
her
with that forever-after sort of love that sometimes seems not to exist outside the pages of a novel from the Minerva Press but actually, on rare occasions,
does
.

Oh, she had been
right
. She had
known
.

She loved him and he loved her and all was right with the world.

His eyes were bluer than the sky.

And then, in a flash, she remembered something else and could not
believe
she had forgotten. She had resolved to be
noble
and self-sacrificing. For Miss Goddard loved him too, and in his heart of hearts
he
loved
her
. They were suited to each other. They belonged with each other. And not only had Angeline pledged herself to bringing them together, but she had also
told Miss Goddard about her plan and enlisted her collaboration
.

Oh, what had she
done
?

When Lord Heyward opened his mouth to speak, Angeline placed one finger over his lips and then removed it again hastily.

“And
this
time,” she said, smiling brightly at him, “you do not owe me a proposal of marriage. You do
not
. I would only refuse again.”

He searched her eyes with his own and then moved without another word to sit beside her. He was silent for a while. So was she. She doubted she had ever felt more wretched in her life. For not only was her heart broken, but—worse—she had betrayed a friend.

She was going to have to redouble her efforts.

Lord Heyward was looking up into the tree in which her bonnet was stuck. It was an awfully tall tree, and the bonnet was awfully high up it.

“It can stay there,” she said. “I have sixteen others, not counting all the old ones.”

“Plus all the ones that will take your fancy before you leave London for the summer,” he said. “But that is a particularly, ah,
fancy
one.”

He got to his feet, and almost before Angeline could sit up he was climbing the tree with dogged determination. It seemed to her that there were simply not enough foot- and handholds, but up he went anyway. Her heart was in her mouth long before he was high enough to unhook her bonnet from the branch with which it had become entangled and toss it down to her. Which was strange really because her heart also seemed to be crushed beneath the soles of her shoes. How could it be in both places at once?

And her stomach was churning with terror.

“Oh, do be careful,” she called to him as he made his way down again. And she spread her arms, her bonnet clutched in one hand, as if she could catch him and keep him from harm if he fell.

He did not fall. Within minutes he was on the ground beside her again, watching while she tied the ribbons of the bonnet beneath her chin and tucked up all the untidy locks of her hair beneath it.

“Thank you,” she said.

“I am sorry,” he said simultaneously.

“Do not be,” she told him. “Sorry, I mean. You are not responsible for everyone who crosses paths with you.”

“Even when I kiss them?” he asked.

“Even then,” she said firmly, and turned to make her way along the bank of the lake toward the more cultivated lawn that led in a long slope up toward the house. Now that they had moved clear of the trees, she could see Mr. and Mrs. Lynd and the Reverend Martin on the far bank. They were talking with Ferdinand and Miss Briden. There was no sign of Miss Goddard and Lord Windrow—or of any of the others for that matter.

Lord Heyward fell into step beside her. He did not offer his arm. She made no move to take it. They walked in silence.

How could she, Angeline thought. How
could
she have fallen in love with him again when she had pledged herself to bring him to a happy union with Miss Goddard, who was her
friend
? No, not fallen
in love
again
, she thought bitterly. She had never stopped loving him, had she?

Would she
never
make sense to herself?

“I do apologize,” he said as they made their way up the long lawn to the house, “if I have offended you.”

“You have
not
,” she said crossly, turning to him. “Why must you always worry about
offending
me? Perhaps
I
have offended
you
. If I had not untied the ribbons of my bonnet because I was hot after the climb, it would not have blown off and we would not have run down the hill so that you could put your life in danger to rescue it, and we would not have kissed, and you would not have thought that you owed me a marriage offer again, and I would not have had to tell you that it is unnecessary and that I would refuse it anyway. And do notice that I said
we
would not have kissed, not
you
would not have kissed me. It takes two to kiss, you know, unless it is forced, which it clearly was not either just now or in Vauxhall.
We kissed
. And we do not need to marry just because of it. I will never marry you, so if you are still devising a way to do the gentlemanly thing, forget it. Sometimes I wish you were not such a gentleman, though the fact that you
are
was precisely why I liked you so much the very first time I saw you.”

The lawn was sloping. She was fairly gasping for air.

He took her hand in his own and drew it through his arm. He bent his head toward hers and looked into her face.

“Don’t cry,” he said softly. “I am sorry. Whatever it is I said or did to hurt you, I am sorry. And don’t tell me
not
to be. It is not in my nature to hurt others and not be sorry for it. It is who I am, Lady Angeline. Forgive me, if you will, for asking forgiveness.”

He smiled at her. A real smile. Except that it looked a little sad.

She was not
crying. Was
she?

Oh, what was she going to
do
?

But it was not a valid question, because it had only one possible answer.

L
ORD
W
INDROW CAST
a glance back over his shoulder after he had been walking for a few moments with Eunice.

“Ah,” he said, “as I suspected. Lady Angeline Dudley is not to be left to remove the rock from her shoe unassisted after all. Heyward has rushed to her rescue and is on one knee before her. It is an affecting scene and would not be without romantic appeal were he not such a dull fellow.”

“Edward is
not
dull,” Eunice said. “And of course you were quite right to suspect this would happen. Anyone would have predicted it—except Lady Angeline herself.”

“It was not, ah,
planned
, then?” he asked.

“The stone in the shoe?” she said. “Yes, that part was, or some such action anyway. But it was a quite different outcome that Lady Angeline planned. I really must tell you about it, for it is quite mad, and rather touching—and not at all honorable where you are concerned.”

“My dear Miss Goddard,” he said, touching his fingertips to her hand as it rested in his arm and dipping his head closer to hers—and turning with her so that they veered off the route to the lake and moved in the direction of a grove of trees a short distance away, “I am intrigued. And I am all ears.”

“Edward and I have known each other for a number of years,” she told him. “We are close friends. We even talked some years ago about marrying each other, but we spoke of it as a possible but by no
means certain event comfortably far in the future. We did not consider ourselves betrothed. At the time he was an earnest young student and I was—well, an earnest young woman. If either of us had ever heard the word
romance
, it was in a purely academic context.”

“Ah,” he said, his fingertips lightly patting her hand. “You were merely a
budding
flower at that time, then, were you? I wish I had known you then, for academic learning ought always to be reinforced with practical action, you know.”