Fortune's Lady (7 page)

But his cousin sat for some time looking out the window at the square beyond and the lacy greenery of the trees softening what had been the stark branches of winter. Why was the Marquess of Harwood so averse to marriage, and what was it about the women of the
ton
that made him avoid them? Certainly his mother was eager enough for him to meet them. And she herself was all that was charming. She must have been a great beauty in her day.

Althea frowned thoughtfully. Her own mother had also been a great beauty, and Althea was well aware of the uncertain effects past glamorous reputations could have on present temperaments. Former beauties demanded a great deal from their children and everyone else around them. The more she considered it, the more she recalled the air of tension that appeared to exist between mother and son. Perhaps Lady Althea Beauchamp and the Marquess of Harwood had more in common than a head for figures and a proficiency at cards.

Chapter 8

The marquess intruded into Althea’s thoughts a good deal during the ensuing days, but it was not his relationship with his mother or with other women that attracted her attention. It was her cousin’s revelation that the marquess had recouped his family’s lost fortune at the gaming table.
He needed to find funds in a hurry and gaming was the only way,
Reggie had said.

What if she had a fortune all her own with no one— no father, no husband—holding the purse strings? The thought of such independence was dizzying. But perhaps now it was no longer an impossible dream. If the marquess had done it, and she had been able to beat the marquess, then surely, she too could win enough to purchase a snug little estate somewhere where she could live on her own, in control of her own life, far from those who sought to influence her every action, or to fashion her in their own images. The marquess apparently had won enough to pay off mortgages on large estates; all she needed to be comfortable was one small manor house. Surely that could not be too difficult?

“Do pay attention. Althea, and tell me if you prefer the Gloucester hat to the Leghorn bonnet.” The Duchess of Clarendon’s voice broke in on her daughter’s reveries as they stood at the counter in one of Bond Street’s most elegant establishments.

“It really makes no difference to me, Mama.” Althea knew that the duchess would make her own decisions about her daughter’s headgear as a matter of course despite any opinion that Althea might offer. It was simpler and easier to avoid all possibility of argument by letting her choose at the outset.

“Very well. We shall take the Leghorn.” The duchess nodded at the hovering attendant. But once outside the shop and in their carriage, safely out of earshot, she reproved her daughter. “Do try for a little more interest in these things, Althea. A gentleman does not want a wife who is careless of her appearance.’’

“I do try, Mama. But both bonnets were comfortable and they were equally attractive.”

“My dear, the difference between being an incomparable and being just anyone is the exquisite taste that distinguishes an incomparable from the hordes of young women trying to capture the attention of an eligible and appropriate gentleman.”

“And I thought it was the Beauchamp name, excellent breeding, gracious manners, and immense fortune that made them seek me out.”

“And how, pray tell, is any gentleman to discover anything about your breeding and manners if he is not first attracted to you by a decided air of fashion?” The duchess was too annoyed to hear the ironic note in her daughter’s voice or notice the glint of humor in the depths of her blue eyes. But even if she had, she would not have approved. Cleverness in a young woman could be the kiss of death in the marriage mart, no matter how illustrious her family or how large her fortune. Men were not looking for wives who saw or understood too much, and they certainly did not want someone who was inclined to see the humor or absurdity in things. Women were supposed to enhance a man’s sense of self-importance by being decorative, not threaten it by being too quick or too observant.

What the duchess did not understand was that cleverness and acute powers of observation could be as unwelcome to a woman as they were to a man, as uncomfortable for the observer as for the observed. Gliding around the brilliantly lit ballroom at Wroxleigh House that evening on the arm of Lord Foxworthy, Althea tried her best to ignore his frequent sidelong glances at her bosom, or the almost imperceptible squeezing of her hands.

Althea, who had no use for what fluttering eyelashes and coy smiles could win from a man, did not spend an inordinate amount of time examining her physiognomy or her figure in the looking glass, nor did she rate her own physical attractions very high, if she thought about them at all. But at the moment, she was uncomfortably aware that others in the room, including her partner, were of a different mind.

Happening to glance in the direction of the refreshment room, she caught sight of Lord Rupert leaning against a pillar and sniggering with his cronies as they ogled her through their quizzing glasses. And he was only one of a number of young bucks who stared pointedly at her and then leaned over to whisper a remark into a friend’s ear.

Althea’s spine stiffened. She loathed being the object of attention and speculation, and she detested even more the covetousness and lust she saw in men’s eyes as they looked at her. It was not only in the eyes of this particular partner that she saw it, but any partner, every partner—or so it seemed to someone who simply longed for intelligent conversation, or even a friendly discussion. Whether it was desire for her body, or for the connections and fortune she would bring with her, did not much matter. Either way she was simply an object to these people, an object to be acquired, an object whose acquisition would confer glory and wealth on the fortunate gentleman who managed to capture it.

The room felt stifling. Her partner’s hands were sweaty even through their gloves, and Althea wanted nothing more than to escape the lascivious glances and calculating looks for just one moment of peace and solitude. Desperately she willed the music to end, and then, with a barely muttered thank-you she hastily slipped behind a convenient nearby pillar to gather her wits before her partner could even think about returning her to her mother. Moving as unobtrusively as possible, and keeping an eye out for the duchess, she glided from one pillar to the next until she reached an inviting set of French doors at the end of the ballroom.

The doors opened out onto a balcony. Glancing hurriedly around to make sure she was unobserved, Althea carefully opened the doors and stole out, pulling them gently closed behind her. The air was crisp and cool. She gulped it in gratefully as, hugging the wall, she moved as far out of sight as possible.

Tears of anger and frustration rose in her eyes as she clung to one of the gnarled vines on the wall for support and tried to steady her erratic breathing. It was not fair. She had no wish to make a brilliant match, no wish to be married at all, and yet she was on display to be observed and criticized by anyone and everyone—to be stared at and commented on by men whom her parents would never consider eligible, as well as by the very few whom they would. She felt like a captive animal in some menagerie instead of the much vaunted incomparable of incomparables.

There was a click and a slight creak as the French doors swung open. Althea pressed herself back into the shadows, hoping desperately that she would not be discovered, a hope that dwindled rapidly as she heard footsteps moving purposefully toward her. Was she never going to have peace from prying eyes?

“Are you all right?” Gareth could barely make out her features in the darkness, but he was ready to swear that the light filtering through the windows caught the gleam of unshed tears in her eyes.

As always, he had been acutely aware of Althea’s presence in the ballroom, and though he told himself that he was just keeping an eye out to see if she went into the card room, he knew deep in his heart that it was not just the hope of matching wits against a very fine card player that made him seek her out among the crowd. He was still inexplicably and unwillingly attracted to her, and that attraction had increased rather than lessened with their acquaintance—a most unusual circumstance for a man who more often than not had found that familiarity with a woman bred contempt rather than a desire to know more about her.

He had observed Althea making her escape from the ballroom and been instantly intrigued. His first reaction had been to suspect her of an assignation, but when careful scrutiny had revealed no one else making his way to the French doors, he had decided that her furtiveness had been to secure the privacy of the balcony for herself.

“What are you doing here?”

It was not the response Gareth had expected. Usually women greeted him with pleasure, not barely concealed hostility. “I? Well, I saw you slip out of the ballroom, and you did it in such a way that you, ah ... well ... You seemed to be trying to escape something. So I came to see if you needed help.”

“I was. Escaping, I mean. The crush, the heat. I just wanted to be alone.”

Her voice quavered ever so slightly, and he could not tell whether it was from annoyance or distress. Whichever it was, it was abundantly clear that she wanted to be alone. The gentlemanly thing to do would be to leave her to regain her composure, but for some reason he could not fathom, Gareth found he could not. He was intrigued, and not a little touched, by a woman who, though clearly upset, was keeping her problem to herself. Anyone else would have made a play with wet lashes and heartfelt sighs designed to attract his attention and sympathy, but not Lady Althea Beauchamp. Could it be that she actually wanted to deal with whatever was troubling her on her own, solve her own problem? It was such a novel idea that Gareth found himself wanting to know more about a woman who did not appear to expect a man to take care of her and make all her difficulties disappear.

“Is there anything I can do?” What on earth possessed him? He had broken one of his cardinal rules, which was not to offer assistance to a woman unless absolutely forced to. The marquess knew from bitter experience how quickly and unpleasantly one could become entangled in a woman’s affairs. His mother was amazingly adept at embroiling people in all of her life’s little complications before they even knew they had offered to help her.

“No. Thank you. There is nothing wrong.”

Her dismissal was firm and deliberate, but even at this distance, he could see the tears welling in her eyes.

Althea blinked rapidly. How could she be such a ninnyhammer? If her exacting father had taught her nothing else, he had taught her to exhibit majestic calm in the most trying of situations, yet here she was on the verge of tears.
Beauchamps are always in command of every situation,
he had constantly intoned at the most trying moments of her life. She had been expected to remain composed when she had fallen off her pony at the age of three, or lost her favorite doll, scraped her knee, or found a dead bird. Nothing, not even the death of that first pony was to affect her. Yet here she was now, dissolving into a watering pot because some stranger inquired after her well-being.

“Forgive me, but that is clearly not so.”

Not trusting herself to speak, Althea shook her head. But he drew closer. Long, lean fingers tilted her chin up to face into compelling gray eyes.

“Surely we have played enough against each other at cards for you to know that I am not a fool.”

“Yes, but at the moment I am.” Althea gulped down the sob that rose up from nowhere.

He was completely disarmed by this unladylike noise. “My dear girl, whatever is amiss?” Letting go of her chin, he gently grasped the hands that were clenching and unclenching at her sides and pulled her toward him. “I have pitted my wits against yours enough to know that you can risk everything without blinking an eye. If you are as agitated as this, something is seriously wrong.”

“No. I am just being foolish. That is all. It is simply fatigue.”

“Nonsense.”

The gray eyes bored into her as though looking into the innermost depths of her soul. It was useless to prevaricate. “I ... It is nothing. I mean, it is quite absurd, really. I just feel as though I am constantly on display like some trinket in a shop, an object in a museum, a picture at an exhibition.”

“And you are. But is not that the sum total of what all young ladies aspire to? Especially if they are being displayed in such exclusive circles and to such acclaim?”

“I loathe it.”

She spoke so softly that he had to bend his head to catch her words, and even then he was not entirely certain that he had heard correctly. “But why? You are the incomparable of incomparables, the envy of every woman in the
ton,
young or old.”

“But it is not I they are seeing when they stare at me. I see them, everyone, dissecting every detail of my appearance. The woman are looking for every flaw, the men ...” She shuddered, and the tears that had been threatening to flow now spilled over and ran down her cheeks. “I am utterly alone, isolated by being on display, and I feel like a freak in a traveling show. It is not necessarily that I dislike being alone or that I long for friends, but these people do not care who I am. They are judging me on my appearance alone, not my character. And it is an appearance I have very little to do with. I was born looking as I do. I see the envy in their eyes, the greed. I feel as though I am being poked and prodded and examined like some piece of livestock at a fair. I have no protection from it. I cannot escape it.” She bowed her head and covered her face with her hands.

“My poor girl.” Aching for the anguish he read in her eyes and heard in her voice, Gareth pulled her close, gently stroking the dark hair until the violent trembling that overcame her ceased.

He had never stopped to think about the
ton
in such terms, at least where women were concerned. He had simply assumed that all women were like his mother, that they flourished on public display and admiration. But the more he considered it, the more he supposed that it was logical to assume that if he despised being the object of marriage-mad misses’ schemes, then a young woman might very well feel the same way he did, especially a young woman of the sort that Lady Althea Beauchamp was proving to be.