The Secret Mistress (33 page)

She slanted him a glance as they stepped between an ancient oak and a beech tree and walked on into the deeper shade of the grove.

“But when you were a student, Lord Windrow,” she said, “did you reinforce practical action with academic learning?”

“Ah, touché,” he said. “You make a point. A rather barbed one, it is true, but a point nonetheless.”

“After Lady Angeline refused Edward’s marriage offer,” Eunice said, “she—”

“She did
that
?” he asked, sounding vastly amused. “You astonish me.”

“He could not assure her that he loved her,” Eunice explained.

“Ah,” Lord Windrow said. “
Another
word that has only academic meaning for Heyward? But did he not have sense enough to lie?”

“Afterward,” Eunice continued, “she befriended me and then she conceived the idea that Edward and I love each other passionately but are held back from marrying by his sense of duty and his family’s expectations that he marry well. She saw us—she
sees
us—as star-crossed lovers who must be helped to our happily-ever-after.”

Lord Windrow regarded her with laughing, lazy eyes.

“She is willing to give up the man for whom she pines to her new best friend?” he asked. “I assume she
is
pining. Her partiality for Heyward, mystifying as it is, is also as plain as the nose on your face. Which is a particularly fine specimen of nosehood, I must add.”

Eunice gave him a speaking glance.

“Lady Angeline is very sweet,” she said, “and very kind and very
confused. I like her exceedingly well, you know. If you think to mock her in my hearing, think again.”

“Mock a lady?” he said, his free hand over his heart. “You do me an injustice, Miss Goddard. You have wounded me to the soul.”

“She gave me her blessing a while ago,” Eunice said, “but she believes that circumstances have contrived to keep us apart—Edward and me, that is. And so she has decided that she must lend an active hand. She arranged to have me invited to this house party.”

“I must remember,” he said, “to thank her.”

“And she arranged,” she said, “to have
you
invited here.”

Their footsteps had already slowed as they progressed deeper among the trees. Now they stopped walking altogether, and he released her arm in order to turn to face her. He regarded her with half-lowered eyelids, beneath which his eyes looked both keen and amused.

“Ah,” he said. “But this brain of mine is dense, Miss Goddard. Perhaps I ought to have given more of my attention to academic learning when I was a student after all. We both have Lady Angeline Dudley to thank for bringing us here and, presumably, for throwing us together this afternoon—I never did for a moment believe the boulder-in-the-shoe story—so that we may end up here in this secluded and, ah,
romantic
part of the park. And yet she is intent upon promoting a match between you and
Heyward
?”

Eunice sighed.

“Edward bristles at the mere mention of your name, you know,” she said. “You represent for him all that is most depraved in the ranks of bored aristocrats. He considers you a rake of the first order. And his opinion has
some
justification, you must confess. I know what happened at that inn outside Reading, and it was not well done of you.”

“Alas,” he said, one hand over his heart again, “I was guilty of a colossal error of judgment on that occasion, Miss Goddard. It was
not
my finest moment. Lady Angeline Dudley was alone in the taproom, her back to me, and she was dressed—well,
loudly
. I mistook her for something she most certainly was
not
, and I reacted as almost
any red-blooded male would, who had no ties of marriage or like commitments to hold him back.”

“
Edward
did not,” she said.

His eyes laughed.

“Not all of us can be saints, Miss Goddard,” he said. “Some of us are sinners, sad to say. But even sinners are capable of redemption. Be gentle with me.”

She shook her head and smiled.

“What was supposed to have happened,” she said, “at least, what Lady Angeline expected to happen, was that Edward would come rushing to my rescue as soon as he saw us alone together and wrest me from your evil clutches and bear me off—well, here, I suppose, or somewhere just like it. Somewhere secluded and—
romantic.
”

“And you were a party to this scheme, Miss Goddard?” he asked.

“Since this morning,” she admitted. “She feared that all her careful scheming would come to naught if I did not know that I was to lure you off when my cue came, so that Edward could come and rescue me.”

“But instead,” he said, “he rescued
her
. One only wonders if he is capable of taking advantage of opportunity when it comes knocking at his door.”

“Edward is
not
the dull, unimaginative man you take him for,” she said. “He grew up in the shadow of a charismatic wastrel of a brother, and he has spent his life trying to compensate for the careless neglect with which the late earl treated those nearest and dearest to him. He takes duty seriously. He takes
life
seriously. But I have always known that he is capable of deep feeling and deep passion. And now he is in love, poor Edward, and thoroughly bewildered, especially over the fact that the object of his love is totally the opposite in every conceivable way of the sort of lady he would expect to choose for a bride. He has not yet understood, of course, that that is what makes her so perfect for him.”

“Ah,” Lord Windrow said, “what an excellent person you are,
Miss Goddard. You are not only intelligent, but you have a female’s logic too.”

“I
am
female,” she said.

He looked her over lazily from head to foot—from her unadorned straw bonnet and the smooth brown hair beneath it, over her plain but serviceable muslin dress of pale green, on down to her sensible brown walking shoes.

“Yes,” he said before lifting his eyes to hers, “I had noticed.”

“Well,” Eunice said after swallowing, “thank goodness for that.”

“And so Heyward is supposed to believe that I am having my wicked way with you in the forest, is he?” he asked.

“He is.” She smiled at him. “He knows better, though. He trusts my good sense.”

“Does he indeed?” His lazy eyes searched her face. “But does he trust
me
?”

“He trusts my ability to handle you,” she said.

He took one step forward, and she took a half-step back in order to steady her back against the sturdy trunk of a tree.

“That sounds fascinating,” he said. “How
would
you handle me, Miss Goddard?”

“Since I have no experience,” she said, “and therefore cannot answer your question directly, Lord Windrow, I can only suggest that I answer it with—how did you phrase it?—with practical action.”

“Ah,” he said, taking another step forward, so that his body, from shoulders to thighs, brushed against hers, “take your time, Miss Goddard. There is no hurry at all for your answer. And do feel free to handle me to your heart’s content.”

“Thank you,” she said. “I will.”

And he brought his mouth down, open, across hers.

“And now,” he said several minutes later, his lips still brushing hers, “you have no need to answer my question. Sometimes action speaks far louder than words. And that pearl of wisdom is the academic portion of your lesson for today. Heyward would be shocked at how misplaced his trust in you is.” His lips moved down to her
throat. “Although if his trust was merely in your ability to handle me, then it could be argued just as forcefully that his trust was
well
placed.”

“Yes,” she said. “But poor Lady Angeline. She will doubtless believe she has failed and will wish to try again.”

“A plan I thoroughly applaud,” he said, stepping back and looking with keen approval at her flushed face and rosy, just-kissed lips. “Can you persuade her to try again this evening?”

He grinned.

“Oh,” she said, “I will do no such thing. I would not have agreed to this afternoon if I had not felt that Lady Angeline needed a nudge in Edward’s direction. I knew he would not come after me, but I hoped he might spend some time with her and that the two of them might come to their senses. Whether it has worked or not, I do not know. But I was not cut out for intrigue. I shall tell her later that I have no romantic interest at all in Edward or he in me and that she must put aside her schemes. I daresay she will be relieved, for of course she loves him herself and must be heartbroken over her conviction that he belongs to me. She really is a
very
sweet girl and my first female friend ever. I value her friendship and will not toy with it any longer.”

“I am sorry to hear that,” he said. “I
am
cut out for intrigue, you see, and I believe it would be perfectly splendid to play Lady Angeline Dudley at her own game and at the same time accelerate her into the arms of her dull swain, who you insist is
not
dull at all. I have been used, Miss Goddard, and I am deeply offended. I am entitled, it would seem, to revenge in kind.”

“Oh.” Eunice looked at him with sharp interest. “What did you have in mind?”

He smiled slowly.

D
INNER THAT EVENING
was an elaborate affair in official celebration of Lorraine and Fenner’s betrothal. The meal consisted of twelve courses and was followed by speeches and toasts and dancing
in the drawing room afterward to music provided by a small group—pianist, violinist, and flautist—from the village nearby.

It was a happy and merry occasion, for which Edward was glad. It might have been rather melancholy for his own family to see Maurice’s widow move on in her life with a different partner. But they had all taken her so thoroughly to their hearts from the moment of her marriage to Maurice that she felt like one of their own, and they
were
happy for her, despite the fact that Edward noticed his mother wipe a tear from her eye when she thought herself unobserved.

For himself, he was distracted. The events of the afternoon had shaken him quite considerably, for he had discovered himself quite unexpectedly and not altogether happily in love. Yes, it really was the only term he could use to describe his feelings, but it was not at all the sort of silly, shallow, wishful-thinking feeling he had expected it to be.

He was in love with Lady Angeline Dudley. He was enchanted by her and invigorated by her. And it was not just a sexual feeling, though it certainly was that too. It was more a longing for … well, he did not have the language for a sensation he had always despised and distrusted and really not believed in at all as a serious emotion.

It was a longing for
her
. For her as a part of himself. For … No, there was no way of expressing it in words.
Happily-ever-after
was not it at all, though it was the only phrase that came close. It all sounded so very trivial in words.

It was very serious.

Perhaps what he had learned most about himself during the afternoon was that he had surely always wanted simply to have
fun
, to let go and enjoy himself, to
laugh
. To laugh with someone else, to enjoy himself with someone else. He kept reliving that run down the hill. It had been mad—the slope was
far
too long and steep to be negotiated safely—and he never did mad things. It was one of the most wonderfully
free
things he had done in his life—running and falling and rolling and laughing. And kissing. And feeling grass all around them, and smelling it, and seeing blue sky above and the
branches of trees and her yellow, blue, and pink bonnet wedged in an upper branch, its ribbons fluttering gaily in the breeze.

Feeling
young
.

Not that the afternoon had been all carefree enjoyment. It had not. She had spilled out her soul to him up on the battlements of that folly. Or that was how it had felt anyway, and he had understood all the loneliness of her girlhood and all the surprising insecurities that had been instilled in her by a vain, insensitive mother and dull, insensitive governesses. She was not at all the sort of woman she appeared to be. Well, she
was
. The exuberance, the boldness often amounting to indiscretion, the sheer zest for life were all real. But there was more than just that aspect of her person. Far more. Even the bold colors she liked to wear and the extravagant, garish hats made more sense now. She could never get her appearance and fashions right, she thought, so why not get them defiantly
wrong
?

He had poured out his heart to her too—almost deliberately, to start with. He had wanted her to feel less embarrassed about her disclosures by sharing some of his own. But real pain had surfaced—and she had understood and comforted him. She had confirmed what he had always known, of course—that he had been
in no way
responsible for Maurice’s accident and death.

And yet …

And yet she had made it very clear after their kiss that she did not want to marry him. She would refuse if he asked, she had told him. And then she had got definitely upset. She had been cross and crying.

Why?

She had admitted that she had kissed him as much as he had kissed her. And … what else had she said?

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
.

What the devil did
that
mean?

She wished he were not such a gentleman? But he had
kissed
her, had he not? That was not a very gentlemanly thing to do when they were not even betrothed. If he offered for her now, she meant, it
would be only because a gentleman offers marriage to the woman whose virtue he compromises. Just as he had done last time.

Did that mean she did not love him?

Or did it mean that she loved him too much to accept an offer from him only because he felt duty-bound to make it?

Was that why she had refused him last time? Not so much because he had neglected to tell her that he loved her, but because she did love him?