Secrets of a Spinster (16 page)

He glowered for a moment, hoping she might notice him this time, as she had sent for him. When it was clear she would not, he grabbed the arm of a footman.

“Kindly inform Miss Hamilton that her carriage is ready, as she requested,” he growled.

“Yes, Mr. Harris,” the footman said obediently, surprised by his tone.

Geoff could not even bring himself to care.

He watched as the footman made his way through the throng and informed Mary, then saw her look around and meet his eye. Very briefly, he saw a light of relief enter her eyes, and the darkness in his chest lifted a bit.

After a few moments of bidding farewell to her followers, she finally made her way over to him. She said nothing, but the widening of her eyes in exasperation made him smile. He helped her with her cloak and into the carriage, and only when they were off did she speak.

“Oh, tell me I can stop smiling now!” she moaned, rubbing her face.

He chuckled. “You can stop smiling now.”

“Thank you,” she muttered with a roll of her eyes. “I didn’t think that was going to end.”

“We could have left sooner,” he told her, shifting in his seat to face her. “All you had to do was say so.”

She leaned her head back and looked at him. “Well, it was fine for a while. It was splendid, actually, for quite a long while. Everybody was so kind and complimentary after my song, and I have never had that before, not for something I can actually do and not pretend to do.”

“What about when you sing for our friends?” he offered, feeling the need to remind her that not everybody in the world ignored her.

She waved it off. “That’s not the same, and you know it. Our friends like me in spite of everything, and so one never really knows if they are being truthful or merely kind.”

He frowned now, his irritation returning. “What about when I compliment you?”

“You I believe, of course,” she said with a smile, “but only because I know you hate to compliment anybody if you can help it.”

That offered him only the smallest of comforts.

He waited a long moment, letting the silence of the carriage speak for them both. “Well, you sang beautifully tonight.”

“Thank you,” she replied softly.

“I hope you enjoyed yourself.”

“I did.”

Another series of minutes passed in awkward silence.

“I didn’t know Miss Arden was so gifted.”

“Nor I. I hope others noticed besides us.”

“I didn’t see anyone approach her.”

He heard Mary sigh with disappointment. “That’s unfortunate. I’ll call on her tomorrow, and set it right. Perhaps she would let me host a party and she would be able to have further opportunity to play without any… additional distractions.”

Geoff smiled and glanced over at her. “I knew you would do something, Goose.”

Her eyes rose just enough to meet his. “And just this once, you were right.” Then her brow furrowed. “Why didn’t you approach Miss Arden yourself? You had ample opportunity.”

He was not prepared to have the tables so aptly turned on him and found himself without a reply. “I… I meant to, but…”

She rolled her eyes and frowned at him. “Geoff. You could have done something.”

He thought it best not to tell her that he’d been too upset with her ignoring him that he’d ignored Miss Arden. “Tell you what, Goose, you have that party and invite Miss Arden and I will be her chief admirer for the entire evening. I will be so full of compliments that you will think you invited one of your fops instead of me.”

Mary snorted and sat back against the cushions. “I shall warn her to expect your attentions and to think nothing of them.”

“Who says it will be nothing?” he demanded, raising a brow at her.

Mary gave him a doubtful look, then sighed and closed her eyes. “I wished that Mr. Burlington and Mr. Ashwood had stayed longer. And it would have been so nice to see Lord Godfrey or Mr. Timmons in attendance, I know they are fond of music. But I did meet a few other gentlemen this evening that I hope I shall get to know better in time.”

Geoffrey stared at her in complete and utter confusion. “Correct me if I am wrong, Mary, but I thought only a few hours ago you expressed an interest in thinning your throng of admirers.”

She didn’t even bat an eyelash. “I still do.”

“Then…” He hesitated, struggling to grasp any semblance of understanding. “Then why do you want to know more of these gentlemen?”

Mary opened her eyes and looked at him as if he had sprouted an additional three heads. “Because most of those gentlemen were a far cry better than the majority of the ones I have had to endure as yet. I’m not thinning the crowd purely for the number, I also want to ensure that the ones I do keep are ones worth spending any period of time with. Surely you can understand that.”

He did. He wished he didn’t, but he did. “So Marianne will help you there?” he asked, keeping his voice level.

“I hope so. She has more practice than I do with this sort of thing.”

“Just be careful, Mary.”

Mary laughed and tilted her head at him in the coy fashion he’d seen her adopt of late. “Are you getting protective of me, Geoffrey?”

He did not return her smile. “You don’t enjoy injuring people, and Marianne does. I would hate to see you lose any respect by becoming more like her.”

Mary’s brows snapped together. “I hardly think Marianne actually enjoys injuring people.”

“You don’t know her like I do.”

“You may not know her as well as you think you do.”

He tossed his hands into the air. “For heaven’s sake, Mary, I’m only trying to help.”

“By telling me to be careful with your friend’s sister because the poor girl might turn me wicked?”

“I never said that.”

She snorted and shook her head. “Obviously, we aren’t having the conversation you think we are.”

“She has a reputation for breaking hearts and being cruel about it,” he said, his voice louder than he liked, but he couldn’t help it.

“At least she has a reputation and one that involves something other than being dull and lifeless!”

His jaw dropped and he reared back a little. “Are you jealous of her?”

One brow rose in his direction. “And if I am?”

“Mary, you have so much more to offer than she does! Would you rather be the brunt of scorn and disdain than the ideal of respect and propriety?”

“What I would like,” Mary said, sounding very much as though she were gritting her teeth, “is to be allowed to make my own decisions about my own life and behavior without reference to anybody else or their idea of me. Marianne Bray will never know what it feels like to stand in the corner of a ballroom and wish, just once, that someone she doesn’t know would dance with her for no other reason than because they want to. She will never know what it feels like to be passed over for someone more attractive or younger or better dressed. She will never understand what it feels like to be twenty-seven and never have a single man want to spend more than five minutes together in her company. And for that, yes, I envy her.”

Geoffrey stared at her in stunned silence for a long moment. “Mary…” he finally said softly, reaching out.

She held up a hand to stop him. “Spare me the pity, Geoff. I’m in no mood for it.”

The carriage chose that precise moment to arrive at Mary’s home and she wasted no time extricating herself from the carriage and the situation without waiting for any aid. “Thank you for escorting me, Geoffrey. It was a most pleasant evening,” she said as she hurried away. “Good night.”

“Good night,” he murmured, his brow furrowing as he stared after her. The evening had turned into quite a confusing one. They had never fought like that, had never even raised their voices at each other except in jest or calling over distances. And she had never accused him of pitying her, ever. Had he pitied her?

He respected her right to do as she pleased, and certainly without any consideration for him, he had no claim on her at all. But their plan, his plan, if he were to be completely honest, had been to attend events together, watch her ever-improving acting skills doled out on Society, and then laugh about it on the carriage rides home. Yet here she was, enjoying herself and sorting out suitors, real suitors it appeared, and speaking of courtship.

“Sir?” the coachman’s voice cut into his reverie. “Sir? Shall we make for home?”

He looked up at him, only to realize that he was hanging halfway out of the carriage like an idiot and had been since Mary had bolted from it.

“Yes, Dawes, home,” he instructed as he hastily reentered the carriage and took his seat.

He didn’t like what was happening here. He did not like being pushed aside, particularly by his best friend. He did not like that he was so bothered by all of this, and he very much did not like that Mary was not.

Her words about envying Marianne replayed in his mind. She had never expressed herself in such a passionate way before, and had never told him how Society’s treatment bothered her. He thought she had accepted it, had gotten over it, no longer cared. Now he could see that was far from the truth. She cared very much, as any other girl would. She just hid it within herself, kept her feelings inside, and put on a façade of indifference. And now she was through with hiding anything at all.

His dark and sinking feelings returned as he continued home. Things were changing faster than he could keep up with and far more than he liked.

C
hapter
E
leven

H
e was frantically running down a London street with only one thing on his mind; he was late. He had no idea how he had gotten to this point, he was never late. Was he suitably dressed? He glanced down at himself to find that while he was technically wearing the appropriate attire, he had never been in more disarray in his entire life.

He didn’t care.

He was very late, and he was running out of time. He shoved open a heavy set of thick, wooden doors and turned the corner, his heart pounding so hard in his chest he could hardly breathe for the pain. He was running down the ancient stone corridor frantically, dodging in and out of faceless people, all dressed in their finery and talking so loudly he couldn’t hear himself think. The walls kept shifting and changing, becoming longer, thicker, taller, more like a maze than any building he had ever known.

He had to get there in time. He had to.

“You’re going to be late, Geoff,” came a low, scolding voice. Duncan? He turned to face his friend, but he was not there.

No one was.

Geoff’s eyes popped open and he found himself lying in his bed, just as he should be in the middle of the night. He sat up and wiped his brow, his arm coming away drenched in sweat. His chest ached as if he had actually been running through an endless corridor, and the panic… He had never felt emotion like that in his entire life. Which was entirely ridiculous, it had only been a dream about being late, and as much as he really did hate being late, he would never be so upset about it. Why should this dream give him such anxiety?

He didn’t even know what he had been late for or what he had been doing or why it was so important. All he could remember was his sheer panic and terror at being too late.

Geoff swung his legs off of the bed and shook his head. He didn’t normally dream so vividly. And he had never seen that corridor before. It had been old, almost falling apart, like some place they would have studied at school. Had he been in some ruins? 

He exhaled sharply and pushed himself up off of the bed, walking over to the grand windows facing the east. The sky was beginning to change to a pinkish hue, the remaining clouds still the thick purple of the night. It was morning, then, not night. All the better.

He rubbed his hands over his face repeatedly, trying to scrub the night off of his face. He felt tense, ill at ease, anxious… It was almost as if he should find some warning in the dream he had just had.

Geoff snorted and shook his head. Trying to find answers in a dream that he had had only once? It was preposterous. He must have still been agitated from his fight with Mary, nothing more.

Mary was entertaining Marianne Bray along with her coterie of nitwitted admirers this morning. He frowned and moved to his bureau and pulled out a shirt and trousers, changing quickly in the dark. He would go for a ride, work out some of his agitation through exertion and fresh air, and then he would find something else to entertain his mind until the general populace would awaken.