Under the Kissing Bough (6 page)

Eleanor's hand tugged on Geoff's arm and he half turned towards her, expecting that she wanted something. Then he saw her face. Bewilderment, irritation and the fear that it was happening again mixed inside him in a swirling confusion.

Devil take it, but she looked ready to bolt.

Not again
, he thought, clamping his arm to his side to trap her hand against him and prevent her flight. It had been bad enough when Cynthia had fled, and that had only been during a small affair at Westerley. His pride could not endure another woman running from him, and certainly not in the midst of a London ball.

He realized that she was not looking at him. Her fear seemed to be focused on the crowd around them.

At least it's not me
, he thought. Relief coursed through him, easing the tension in his back. Still, it would not do to have her run from his side as if he were a monster, or she a fool. He glanced around, seeking the source of her distress, but saw nothing out of the ordinary. He looked back down at her.

Fear lay stark in a pale sheen on her skin. Her chest rose and fell with rapid, shallow breaths, and her eyes had lightened to the color of weak tea. What the devil had frightened her?

The crowd closed around them, glances speculative as Lord Rushton asked those assembled to take up a glass and toast the happy couple, and he beamed and the crowd pressed closer to offer their best wishes. Eleanor muttered something, and tried to tug her arm free. Geoff realized what it must be.

Of course. The crowd. The attention. She had asked him if he could teach her how to look uncaring. And had his future countess not perfected her art of disappearing to avoid such situations just as these?

A touch of displeasure tugged a frown from him. How the devil could she act a countess if she could not even bear this small amount of attention?

He glanced down at that pale face, thinking that his annoyance would deepen, but instead his mood softened.

She looked like a fawn caught by a pack of slavering hounds. She had stopped tugging on his arm, and seemed to be trying her best to withstand the stares, but he could see that she winced at each whispered speculation as if under a lash. Her stare remained fixed on the floor, and he could readily believe she was trying to will the parquet to part and swallow her.

The tightness around his mouth and his chest loosened.

She had asked him for his help, and that should count for something. It also meant that he ought to do something. Only he would need both hands free if he were to do anything.

Glancing around, he found one of the other Glover girls—Emma, he thought it was—on his other side. He thrust his empty wine glass at her, and she took it, her response automatic and her eyebrows rising in surprise. But he only turned and took Eleanor's glass from her hand and thrust it at Emma as well. Let her juggle the dashed crystal.

Eleanor glanced up at him, her eyes glazed and distant. Before she could do more, he captured her hand firmly in his and tucked his arm around her waist, quite aware that even though they were engaged he was taking shocking liberties to so hold her. Society, however, would expect no less of a gentleman with his reputation, and Eleanor hardly seemed to notice.

"Look at me," he ordered, his voice low and firm.

She glanced up, and her throat moved with a convulsive swallow. "Please. I don't feel well. You must excuse me."

"And you will have to forgive me later, for I'm not letting you go anywhere. No, don't look at them," he commanded, as her frightened stare fixed on the crowd again. "Look at me. Only me. I am the only one who matters here. Not them. Not their chatter."

A brief smile barely lifted her lips and disappeared. "You must think me the worst coward."

"I think that if you really wish to learn how to act like an arrogant, smug dolt, such as myself, then you must focus upon me to learn my secrets."

The lines eased from her tightened forehead, and he wished that they were in private so that he could drop a grateful kiss upon that now smooth brow. But if he kissed his intended in front of everyone and God that
would
cause a sensation. Lord, but it tempted him to do so. Only she'd bolt for certain.

He glanced at the avid stares cast at him—and Eleanor—at the speculation in the ladies' eyes; at the commiserating looks from the gentlemen who knew that they, too, must someday marry to please their families, not themselves. And a desire—clear and certain—rose in him to shield this wretched, trembling girl next to him from all these damnable gossips.

"The first trick," he said, leaning down to whisper into her ear, "is to imagine they are all naked."

She pulled back, alarmed, her cheeks as pink as a child's. "Naked?"

He glanced around him, noticed that others had heard her. Lovely, he had just made things even worse.

"Well, not completely so, but in their shifts with their garters and stockings showing, and their faces red from the shame of it."

She lifted her stare just for a moment to scan the room, and her lips twitched slightly before she lost her courage again and her glance dropped. Well, it was progress.

"And now," he went on, keeping his tone light, trying to put into it every ounce of coaxing charm that he owned, "I want you to tell me if you care what I think of you?"

Her stare flew up to his face, and her lips parted and trembled. For an instant, he was struck with the desperate need in her eyes. He knew that feeling too well. She glanced away. When she looked back, she had mastery of herself again and had hidden away whatever desires had seemed about to be revealed.

"I want to please you," she said. "I am to be your wife."

Voice harsh, he told her, "Well, stop caring. Think of pleasing yourself."
"If I were to do that, I would leave," she muttered, a stubborn threat of rebellion rising in her voice.

There might be hope for her, he thought, a smile loosening inside him. "And so you shall," he said. "So think of an exit to make. Do you want a sweeping one?"

"A quick one. I want to be unnoticed."

"Then do not notice others. You know that trick. I've seen you use it."

Her glance rose up to his, startled, but the glazed, mindless panic in her eyes had receded. At least he had distracted her.

"What do you mean? I don't have any tricks."

"Yes, you do. A dozen at least. Tricks that let you vanish as if you're made of mist. You can't make yourself disappear just now, but you can make others disappear from your notice if you but turn that trick around. What do you think about when you want to become invisible?"

She wet her lips and hesitated, and he wondered if she would be honest with him. But she said, her voice firm, "I just pretend I am part of the chair, or that I really am a flower on the wall coverings."

"Good. Then just picture everyone here as furniture. That fellow over there with the large stomach, he ought to be an over-stuffed divan. And the too-tall, too-thin lady surely is a standing candelabra."

Covering her mouth, Eleanor stifled a smile. "You really should not say so."

"If it amuses you, I would say anything," he said, and he smiled at her, his blue eyes glinting and warm, and the smallest dimple appearing at the left corner of his mouth.

Eleanor's heart skipped to a faster beat, and this time not from fear. She stared up at him, fascinated by the silver glints in his blue eyes and the endless depths that seemed to draw her towards them. Awareness of the others in the room—the cloying perfumes, the hum of whispers, the drone of her father's speech about the alliance of these two families—still hovered near, just as did her fear, but it no longer swamped her. She no longer felt as if an ocean wave were about to close over her head.

The fear that had haunted her since childhood lay close, drumming under her skin with a hot urgency. She no longer worried that all the whispers must be condemning her. But she dared not lose the warmth of his arm around her waist, and the sight of his blue eyes smiling down at her.

Gratitude that he stood between her and them made her glance shyly up to him. "Thank you," she said, and meant it deeply.

His smile twisted with a cynical touch. "It is not something to thank me for, that I shall give you hard armor. But if you so desire, I shall toughen you so that you can walk with kings, and even make you able to speak before Parliament."

For a moment, the image flashed in her mind of herself as daring and bold as he. Scornful, sweeping into and out of ballrooms. Proud and haughty. She twisted her mouth to one side. She'd be more like to trip on her hem if walking with any king, and she would be tongue-tied with terror if she even had to stand before Parliament to give them a good-day.

"I would settle for simply not shaking like a blancmange pudding set on a trotting horse every time someone looks at me."

He gave her a grin, and started to say something, but Lord Rushton had at last finished his speech and raised his glass. The toast was drunk and people began to press forward to shake Lord Staines's hand and wish him well, and give Eleanor sly glances that said, "And how did an insignificant girl such as you ever catch an earl's son?"

Eleanor wished that she could die.

It would be so much less painful.

Instead, she clung to Lord Staines, pressing as close as she dared to his strong, tall body. She allowed him to answer, and she pasted on a smile and muttered inaudible words to anyone who addressed her, and she tried to keep up his game of making all these strangers and acquaintances into furniture.

It helped, but nothing could ease the strain which left her temples pounding.

At last she heard Lord Staines tell those around them, "Now you must pardon us. For I have obligations elsewhere, and I would rather take leave of my intended in more a private setting."

One matron smiled coyly at him, and batted his arm with her fan, telling him he was such a rogue. And a red-faced gentleman in a brown coat winked knowingly at him. Eleanor's face warmed, but she did not care what excuse got her from the room.

Lord Staines led her through the crowd, and she had to control her steps so that she did not seem to drag him to the doorway, even though she wanted to run ahead, pulling him with her.

When they stepped from the ballroom into the empty hall that led to the front stairs, she let out a deep breath.

Lord Staines turned an appraising stare on her. "We have run one gauntlet and survived. But I shall have to present you at court as Lady Staines after we are married, you know."

Eleanor's relief faded. "Court? Oh, no. I never made it through my first presentation at the Queen's drawing room. That is why Emma came out this year, you know. So we could make our curtsy together. Her chatter kept me from being wretchedly ill this time on the drive to St. James's."

His expression seemed torn between a laugh and disapproval and Eleanor knew that she should not have said all that to him. But a smile relaxed his face. "You shall have plenty of time to learn to be a countess, and I do believe I can instruct anyone in how to have an indifferent heart."

She frowned at the bitter tone that lay under his words, and almost said something, but he stopped her with a touch to her cheek. Just a light caress with the back of a bare knuckle. A soft sweep beside her mouth, and a smile that stopped her heart for an instant.

He gave her a short bow and turned on his heel, striding down the hall to the front entrance.

Alone in the hall, she stood quite still, listening to his firm steps on the white marble, and to the low rumble of his voice as he asked the porter at the front door for his hat and coat. The heavy, oak front door opened and closed, and there was nothing but the faint music from the ballroom and the fading pine scent around her from his person.

She put her hand up to her cheek, dazed, knowing that he had somehow bewitched her, and not caring that he had. He had not been disappointed in her. He had smiled at her. And he had saved her tonight.

She could have danced a jig up the stairs to her bedroom.

The click of a door latch scattered the daydreams she had started to weave. Someone else was leaving the ballroom.

Eleanor fled at once to a shadowed alcove where the half-burnt candles in the hall did not cast any light. She squeezed tight behind a statue of Diana, for she simply was not up to any more congratulations tonight.

From the ballroom, Lady Terrance and her daughter, Harriet, stepped into the hall. The sound of music and the swell of voice faded as the door closed behind them again. But Eleanor could hear their voices all too clearly.

"...sorry for the poor, little thing," Lady Terrance was saying, her shrill voice quite recognizable.

"Really, mother. She is going to be a countess. What is to be sorry for there?"

"Titles do not come for free, my dear. And she will have to pay a steep price for that one. I caution you, Harriet. It is one thing to marry without love. But it is quite another to marry a gentleman who loves elsewhere. That is always disaster."

Eleanor's skin iced as their words flowed over her.
A gentleman who loves elsewhere?
She had no doubt of whom they spoke, but she had the strongest sensation that Lady Terrance's reference applied to something more than the gossip over Lord Staines's casual affairs.

A gentleman who loves elsewhere.

Lady Terrance and her daughter began to move toward the front door, and Eleanor leaned forward, her curiosity driving her to listen, even though she knew that eavesdropper never heard well of themselves.

"Do you think she knows?" Harriet asked, her voice eager.

"How can she not? Her mother must have cautioned her that Staines's heart had been given to another and rejected. But did I tell you what I heard Lady Davenport say about how he…"

The voices faded into the shadows of the hallway, and Eleanor let them go. A hollow emptiness lay inside her, as if she were a doll whose stuffing had been pulled out.

Now she understood that wounded look that sometimes appeared in his eyes. And she understood the bitterness behind his words. He could teach anyone how to have a hard heart, because he had learned how to shield his own from everything.