Under the Kissing Bough (3 page)

How wonderful to love and be loved so passionately that nothing else mattered.

She let out a small sigh, and then became aware that a pair of gentlemen's evening slippers had moved into her view. Her stare traveled up from those black slippers, over strong calves encased in white, clocked stockings, over buff satin breeches that lay smooth over muscular legs, to a gold-shot brocade waistcoat and a dark green evening coat, and to the impassive face of Lord Staines.

Her mouth dried and her heart thudded into her throat, leaving her unable to speak.

He took her breath away, with those burnished locks and the heart-stopping perfection of his face. But he regarded her without fire or flash in eyes as chilly as winter ice.

She smiled and stammered out a good evening.

With a short bow, he held out his hand. "May I have this dance?"

Startled, she glanced around herself. No one ever asked her to dance. And she remembered that, of course, he would have to ask her. They were to be married, after all.

Putting her gloved hand in his, she rose. He held her hand firmly, but he kept a polite distance between them. Remembering all the lessons she'd had with the dancing master this past season, she kept her stare fixed not on her feet—as she longed to—but on the glinting emerald tucked into the folds of his perfect, white cravat. She had to look somewhere, and she did not trust herself to stare into his face and remain the sensible girl that he expected.

The small orchestra engaged for the evening played the opening bars to the dance. Lord Staines bowed, she curtsied, and they moved into the steps. The dance had them separate, and then they came together and he took her hands to turn her.

"Is this punishment for my being late?" he asked.

Her gaze flew to his face, but those devastating blue eyes regarded her only with slight curiosity.

"I beg your pardon," she said. "I...I was just minding my steps."

The dance separated them again—thankfully—and when they came together, he leaned closer. "Are the steps more interesting than I am?"

Her stare shot back up again to his face. This time she glimpsed a spark of devilment in his eyes. She tensed. She was done for if he started flirting with her. She was not like Emma. If he started to tease her, she might fall under the spell of his charm, and that would be a fatal mistake in what was only a marriage of convenience. No, she must honestly be sensible about this.

The dance forced them apart and Geoff cursed himself for thinking a country dance any place for conversation. He felt like a damn jack-in-the-box, popping up at odd moments to say something to her and popping away before she answered. However, he had seen the flare of panic in her eyes when he had teased her about minding her steps. He felt as if he had kicked a kitten. He wanted at once to say something to reassure her, but the movement in the dance took him away.

When they met again as partners, she took his hands for another turn. With a smile fixed in place, she said, "It is my company that is not very good, I fear."

He had been thinking just that, but her admission—made in such a soft, wrenching voice—instantly had him wanting to deny any such thing.

They reached the end of the line of dancers and had to stand out, and at last he could talk to her. And he decided that a new approach was needed. Something more direct, for they had dealt better than this when they had both spoken plainly this morning.

"Why do you think you are not good company?" he asked.

She glanced up at him, and he saw the gears turning behind those wide brown eyes.
Well, it is not a dull mind that keeps her silent.
And his shoulders relaxed a little. Like his father, he did not suffer fools well, and he had not even realized until now how unbearable it would be to be shackled to a dull woman.

Hesitating over her words, she wet her lips and said, "Good company in London seems to consist of either making cutting comments about others, or smiling stupidly and giggling at everything a gentleman says. I don't do either."

Her answer amused him. She had described the catty ladies and the simpering misses that he knew all too well. "Your smile is intriguing, Miss Eleanor. Quite intriguing. In fact, I wonder what it is that makes you smile? It is not, I gather, a cutting comment?"

He had stepped closer as he spoke, and now fear sparked at the back of her eyes. Cursing himself, he stepped away at once. He must remember to keep himself in check. He would not let that side of himself out again. Not with a lady at least. He did not want her knowing what sort of monster courted her.

The dance shifted, pulling them back into the line.

Allowing her to keep her stare focused on his chest, he tried not to feel like such a bloody idiot. He had presumed too much. In that brief moment of companionship, he had acted as if they knew each other, when in fact they were utter strangers. No wonder she looked at him with alarm.

This was not going well, he thought, angry with himself for making such a botch of it.

At last the dance ended. Eleanor made her curtsy and stood there, wondering what she ought to do. Did she ask him to take her back to her parents? Or did he just do that on his own? He looked so terrifying, so perfect and terrifying. She did not know what to do with him.

Normally, the very few gentlemen she danced with were friends of her fathers. Older men who joked with her and made her forget her nervousness. They did not have intense blue eyes. They did not have powerful shoulders. And the touch of their gloved hands on hers did not make her stomach flutter. For an instant, when Lord Staines had stepped close to her, she had felt that sweep of intense male virility close around her, and she had frozen.

Would he touch more than her hand? She had wanted him to, and the strength of that desire shocked and frightened her.

She had been grateful when he stepped away—but she had almost reached out her hand to him to make him come back to her.

Oh, you stupid girl. He wants a sensible bride, not some half-infatuated ninny!

Straightening, she swallowed the dryness in her mouth and smiled at him. "Thank you for the dance."

He took her hand and started to lead her off the floor, but the first notes of a lively jig sounded. She glanced over her shoulder, at the other dancers starting to assemble—the ladies with eager faces, the laughing gentlemen. Oh, how much fun they were having, she thought, the smile already forming on her lips for their pleasure.

When she turned back, she found Lord Staines staring down at her, his eyes narrowed and his look measuring. She blushed, glanced down, but looked up again. She would not have him thinking that she found the floor more interesting than him.

The mischief glinted again in his eyes, as irresistible as fairy gold. "Shall we shock the gossips and dance a second time in a row?"

"We shall have everyone talking. It is just not done, you know."

He grinned. "It's past time London noticed you, Miss Eleanor Glover."

And he led her into the fast-paced jig.

The dance gave her no time and no breath for talk. But Eleanor needed neither. With him smiling at her and dancing her up and down the line, she needed nothing. The world whirled past in bright music and sweet colors, and she even allowed herself to laugh. She threw back her head and let the happiness out for the world to see. She had never danced like this. Not even at home with her sisters.

It ended before she was ready. The musicians struck the last chord, drawing it out for the dancers to pay honors to their partners. But the music still hummed in her—and so did a rare delight.

He led her from the dance floor, taking her all the way to the sidelines this time. And she turned to him, thinking that now she could talk to him. After all, how could anyone feel shy with someone who had spun them about. But the smiling man she had danced with was gone.

He was looking elsewhere, and she followed his gaze to see him staring at a man who must be his brother, for the straight nose and tall, handsome form was so like him. The man gave a nod to Lord Staines, who returned the greeting with a gesture.

Turning to her, polite and distant, the perfect gentleman, he gave her a bow. "Thank you for the dances, Miss Eleanor."

Then he was gone.

It was like stepping from sunshine into deep shade. She blinked and glanced about her. The ladies around her whispered and gossiped behind their fans—probably about her having danced twice with the same man. With the reckless Lord Staines, in fact. Gentlemen eyed her, their stares now assessing, as if seeing to find what it was that had attracted Staines's attention. Blood rushed into her cheeks in a fierce heat. Too conscious of being in the center of things, the panic caught in her chest.

Taking deep breaths, she forced herself to walk back to her chair, her back straight, her face on fire. And she knew suddenly that the biggest danger before her was that it would be all too easy to fall in love with her husband-to-be.

Only would that really be so awful?

She glanced over to him, to the fine line of his back which he presented to the room. Already, some other lady—beautiful and dark, wearing diamonds and a gown cut to reveal almost everything—had come up to him. She leaned on his arm to whisper something in his ear and he turned and leaned closer to her. A twisted smile curved his lips, and a dangerous light glittered in his eyes.

Oh, yes, it would be awful to love him. Awful and wonderful, and heart-breaking.

Eleanor folded her hands tight together on her laps, and wondered what Lord Staines would do if she simply wrote on the back of his cards—
I want your heart
.

Of course, she would not. She could not. She'd die if she did so and he laughed—and of course he would, for such words were ludicrous coming from a mouse of a girl such as her.

But if she didn't write that, what was she to write?

"So, what did he say? And what did you say? And what did he say in answer to your having asked?" Emma asked, sounding more as she had at thirteen than the sophisticated sixteen she had recently become.

"You sound such a magpie," Elizabeth scolded, and turned back to Eleanor. "But when he proposed, did you really ask for a... a..."

"A
carte blanche
," Evelyn said, now lying upside down on the sofa in what had once been the nursery. The room, with its scarred floor, faded carpets and worn green velvet draperies, seemed to Eleanor, at the moment, to be the safest of havens.

For Eleanor, it held both treasured toys and memories: Poor Anne Boleyn, who had been so named after Evelyn somehow lost the doll's head; George the much tattered hobby-horse who had been christened after the uncle who presented him one Christmas, and whose color had changed to suit each girl in turn. The walls held their youthful efforts in watercolors and embroidery, including Emma's dreadful still-life paintings, and Elizabeth's colorful but crooked needlepoint homilies. During all the years that the girls had come to London with their parents, even before they stepped into society, this had been their home from home.

Eleanor let out a sigh. All too soon this would no longer be her home. She would be married and moved elsewhere. The thought terrified her.

She had retreated that morning to the nursery to be with her sisters and ask their advice about her card, and about this marriage that loomed before her. Now she wondered if that had been such a wise thing, for they seemed more inclined to pelt her with questions than to offer any wisdom.

In response to Evelyn's pert answer about Eleanor having asked for a
carte blanche
, Elizabeth scolded, "You are not supposed to know such things!"

"Rubbish. I'm just not supposed to talk about them," Evelyn said, and grinned. They all knew that Elizabeth's anger came out as soft as her words.

Eleanor regarded her sisters, her upcoming loss starting to weigh on her. Would she see them often after she married? Or would she live most of the year at Westerley? Well, if that happened, she would just have to invite them to stay, for she could not bear the thought of not seeing them.

Elizabeth, the eldest, was the beauty of the family, with her cloud of warm brown hair and her deep green eyes. But Emma, with her bright blue eyes, her infectious laugh and her plump curves, drew almost many eyes as Elizabeth's quiet beauty. Even Evelyn, only fourteen and still in that age of being more legs and arms than anything else, seemed blessed with the promise of beauty in her dark hair and eyes.

Eleanor loved her sisters too well to begrudge them their gifts, but there were times she had wished that she were something more than their sensible Eleanor. Now she was to be that something else. She was to be Lady Staines. And she had that wretched blank card hanging over her. Why could she think of nothing to wish for from him?

"It is all true," she said. "And there is no getting out of it." She held out the copy of
The London Times
that she had pirated from her father's morning mail and pointed to the pertinent column. It had been nearly a week since her dances with Lord Staines at the Farquar's ball, but apparently that evening had not given his lordship second thoughts about sending in the notice that let the world know their plans.

She had seen little of his lordship, but that did not surprise her. Her days seemed full of shopping—hats to buy, and dresses, and linen, and china, and calling cards to order with her new title and direction. She had had so many fittings for so many dresses that she had begun to feel like a pin cushion.

Emma leaned over Elizabeth's shoulder, and even Evelyn sat up for a better look at the announcement, which made the engagement official to the world, and iron-clad, as far as Society was concerned. If Eleanor were to reject Lord Staines now, the world would brand her a foolish jilt, and she could not endure thrusting her family into such horrible scandal. Better to marry and live quietly in the country forever than that.

Lowering the paper, Elizabeth watched her sister with worry deepening the green in her eyes. "Oh, Ellie, I do wish you could marry for love, not just because you must marry someone."
"Love!" Evelyn wrinkled her nose. "Ellie doesn't need that. She's going to be a countess. Ellie, you should ask him for your own stable."

"But he must have a stable already, silly," Emma protested. She had just come out of the school room this year and more often than not forgot to act like a lady rather than a boisterous schoolgirl.

"That's not the same as having your own," Evelyn insisted, returning to her upside down position, with her long, dark brown hair hanging onto the floor and her heels hooked over the back of the sofa.

Emma turned back to Eleanor, her expression serious as she strove for a superior sophistication that would put Evelyn in her place. "Ignore that child. You should ask him to be faithful and honor his vows to you."

Eleanor drew back, shocked. Over the past week, she had learned more of Lord Staines's reputation with the ladies—not respectable ladies, of course, but with those creatures who existed on the tattered edge of Society and whose business it was to give men pleasure. There was no one woman she knew of whose name had been linked with his. However, Eleanor had gone out of her way to listen to every conversation that concerned Lord Staines, and there seemed to have been a depressing list of lightskirts who had caught his eye over the past season.

"But what if I make him miserable with such a demand?" she said. "What an awful marriage we should have then."

Gracefully, Elizabeth rose. She took Emma's hand, and then urged Evelyn upright and ushered both girls from the room. "I wish to talk to Eleanor alone. Emma, why do you not go and read to mother, you know how she loves your voice, and…"

"I know, I know. I should be at my studies," Evelyn said, with a deep sigh and her heels dragging.

Reluctantly, both girls left, but as soon as the door had shut, it popped open again, and Evelyn poked her head in the doorway, her dark eyes sparkling. "Ask him for a black phaeton picked out in purple trim," she said, and ducked out as Elizabeth shied a faded velvet pillow at the door.

"I hope you know that they only want the best for you," Elizabeth said, coming over to sit next to Eleanor.

Eleanor smiled as Elisabeth took her hand. "Of course I know. It's just...oh, Liz, I was so stupid to ask him for this
carte blanche
. Now I must ask him for something. And he will feel honor-bound to oblige me, no matter how it ultimately festers inside him. I thought I was being clever at the time, and that it would make him recant his offer. But I have put myself in a corner!"

And I want to ask him for something I haven't the nerve to ask for
, she added silently. Not even to her sister could she confess the desire that had taken root inside her that she might ask him for just a little of his affection.

Elizabeth's eyes darkened, and a worried frown drew her eyebrows together. "I do wish, my dear, that you had waited to find someone who loves you."

Eleanor had to look down as she bit off the sharp words that she might have waited forever in that case. Elizabeth's face glowed with love, and the jab of jealousy twisting inside Eleanor shocked her. She, like Emma and Evelyn, had been so happy when Elizabeth had fallen in love with her Captain Singleton. Of course, they had taken it for granted that he would love her. Everyone loved Elizabeth. Who could not love such a sweet and kind and beautiful creature?

But now Eleanor feared that she would spoil Elizabeth's happiness with this loveless match she had made for herself, and with these silly notions that she had begun to indulge. She must get hold of herself, and simply stop daydreaming about Lord Staines as if he were some golden creature from a fairy story. She really must. She would be reasonable about this, and she would think up a nice, reasonable request. Maybe she would ask for that stable, as Evelyn had advised.

"Just promise me one thing, Ellie," Elizabeth said, her voice unusually firm.

Eleanor looked up. "I will if I can."

"Please, make certain that you ask him for something you honestly do want. I cannot imagine that any man would care to find out his gift is not truly valued."

Blinking, Eleanor stared at her sister. She had not thought of this, but she saw at once that Elizabeth was exactly right. She could picture Lord Staines's eyes icing over if she trivialize her demand by asking for something inane—such as a stable. He would find out, too, if she asked for something that did not really matter to her. He was not a stupid man, and she was all too transparent with her emotions.

Eleanor looked down at the newspaper in her hands. She wet her lips, pulled together her courage, and asked, "Do you think, then, that I should ask him for his…"

A knock on the door interrupted, and their mother swept in, all bustling smiles. "There you are. Emma said you were hiding up here. But you must hurry and change for we are to go out. And, Eleanor, you cannot wear that old gown. You must change quickly into that new, fawn dress of yours."

"Change? But why? Where are we going?" Eleanor asked as her mother shepherded them out of the nursery. She glanced at Elizabeth, who could only stare back, a helpless sympathy in her eyes. Eleanor looked back at her mother.

Lady Rushton's smile took on a set look, and a chill shivered inside Eleanor. That look always foretold something that was for the girls' best interest—whether they liked it or not.

Her mother said, "Lord Staines has come to escort us shopping. And we must do our best to please him, and make him realize what a wonderful treasure he has gotten in our dear Eleanor."

Eleanor smiled weakly. She disliked shopping. All those choices. All those opportunities to choose wrong. And now she would have to make all those mistakes that she always made about selecting too strong a color and too garish a design under Lord Staines's all-too-uncomfortable stare.

* * *

"My God, I hope that child's not the one you're marrying. She looks an utter handful."

Geoff glanced over to the entrance of Lady Rushton's drawing room. He and Patrick stood near the fireplace at the far end of the room, and Patrick had spoken low enough so as not to have been heard by the girl who had just danced into the room, bobbed a curtsy and then darted out again with a giggle.

"That's not her," Geoff said, fretting his watch fob with his fingers. His cravat seemed ready to strangle him, and he wished that he had not thought of this idea to go shopping. With November now gone, however, and the days shortening to Christmas, it seemed an ideal way both to amuse the Glovers before they left London for Westerley, and to gain a better idea of Eleanor's about that damn card by observing her tastes.

Patrick had offered to come along.

A simple shopping expedition had now become an outing that included Patrick, Lady Rushton, and two more of the Glover daughters. They would need a bloody wagon to haul them about if anyone else joined the fray. To add the final delight to the day, the windows showed a view of gathering clouds that hung low and heavy over London.

Rain and a parcel of chattering women. Just lovely.

The door opened again, and this time three young ladies came in with Lady Rushton. Geoff assumed that the child they had glimpsed must have been banished for her impertinence in showing herself. She had certainly been far too young to be seen outside the schoolroom.

As the ladies came forward, Geoff leaned closer to his brother. "Mine's the one in fawn. The invisible one."

Patrick glanced at him, eyebrows raised, but Lady Rushton was upon them and introducing her offspring to Patrick.

Recognizing the tallest of the three as Miss Glover, Geoff studied the girl. Classically beautiful, he could admire her fine-spun golden-brown hair, her delicate features and her green eyes with dispassionate interest. In the other times he had met her, she had struck him as a sweet enough girl, a lady who would never trouble any man overmuch.

Her sister, Emma, seemed a different proposition.

Clad in blue to match her eyes, Emma Glover came forward to make her curtsy, confident and smiling, her chin up and her assessing stare almost too bold. Pretty chit, Geoff judged, with an eye honed by his recent months of indulgence with the female form. All curves and mischievous smiles. He liked her at once for that pert stare of hers—the one that measured him up and almost dared him not to be good enough for her sister. But she was no more in his style than were her sisters, really. He had always preferred fair women. Fair and charming.

Like Cynthia.

He tried to banish that ghost, and forced his attention back to these ladies, to his sensible Miss Eleanor, and to Lady Rushton who was still rattling on, sounding too anxious to please.

Devil take her, what is she so worried about
, Geoff wondered? Emma's possible misbehavior? Eleanor's being too withdrawn?

Geoff made the ladies known to his brother, and some imp prompted him to ask, just to see what Lady Rushton would say, "But did we not see one more Glover daughter a moment ago? Are we to be denied her acquaintance?"

Flustered, Lady Rushton forced a stilted laugh. "Dear Evelyn. She so wanted to meet you, which is why she came in to see you, but she has her studies to finish."

A smile twitched at Geoff's lips, and he wondered if "Dear Evelyn" was now studying decorum, and writing a hundred times, "I will not introduce myself to gentlemen."

Lady Rushton went on with shopping plans, all the while seeking Geoff's approval for every possibility. The beginnings of boredom nibbled at him. It would be a dull afternoon if Lady Rushton was intent on treating him with all the awkward deference due his station.

The unpleasant sensation flashed through him that the woman's careful treatment of him smacked of his being a prize trout about to be netted. Immediately, an image of Lady Rushton hip deep in water, a net in one hand and a pole in the other, flashed into his mind. His lips twitched and he cleared his throat to cover his smile. Awareness of being watched feathered across the back of his neck and he glanced to his right.