Eloisa's Adventure (28 page)

“I know
that he won’t,” Eloisa countered, and quietly left.

She knew
Cissy meant well, but Eloisa was aware that anyone who was
heartless enough to cast someone aside the way Simeon had turned
his back on her, wouldn’t re-establish their acquaintance. Not only
that but before they had left the castle, the harsh way he had
treated her had left her with no doubt that he considered what they
had shared to be nothing more than a terrible mistake.

She, on
the other hand, was completely heartbroken. It wasn’t that she
expected any declarations of affection, or promises of a future
courtship from him. She just wanted to know that she mattered to
him in some way. Her wounded pride wanted confirmation that he
hadn’t just been using her. She wanted to know that he had come to
care for her just as much as she cared for him. She hardly knew him
so what she felt couldn’t be love, could it? She just liked him – a
lot. This wasn’t love. It couldn’t be love.

What did
it feel like to be in love with someone? The ache around her heart
was something that had certainly settled in after Simeon’s
departure. She had loved her father, but hadn’t been this
heartbroken when he had passed away. The yearning to see Simeon
again was so strong that she wanted to go to Mitchelham and demand
answers from him. On the other hand, she didn’t want to see him
again. She couldn’t stand the thought of coming face to face with
that cold, aloof man who had said goodbye to her the other
morning.

No, she
was better off trying to find some way of putting him, and
Mitchelham, out of her life once and for all. Then she could set
about getting on with the rest of her life. If only she knew
how.

She had
no sooner turned out of the end of the road than a quite
resplendent carriage pulled up outside of her house. The liveried
footman jumped down and hurriedly dropped the step before he stood
to one side to allow the rather dapper gentleman inside to step
down.

Simeon
groaned when he tried to sit upright and sharp pain lanced his
shoulder and stole his breath. He sat perfectly still while he
waited for the discomfort to subside, and then tried
again.

“You
really must keep still, you know,” his butler, Henry,
chided.

“I have
to get up, Henry. I can’t lie here all day,” Simeon
protested.

“You
have been here all week, sir,” Henry informed him
briskly.

“A week,
you say?” Simeon’s voice was querulous. He landed a look on his
butler that was so vicious that the man took a wary step away from
the side of the bed.

“I am
afraid so, sir,” the butler replied warily.

“Why did
you let me sleep so long?”

“You are
poorly. You have stitches in your arm where you were shot. The
doctor said that you needed to rest,” Henry explained, but Simeon
was having none of it.

“I have
to get to her,” he grunted as he swung his legs over the side of
the bed.

“Her,
sir?” Henry queried with a frown. He didn’t say as much to the
master but, over the course of the past week, the master had been
found to mumble in his sleep on numerous occasions about a young
lady called Eloisa. He rather suspected that was the woman the
master was talking about now.

The
thought that darling Eloisa had waited to hear from him for a whole
week was something that riled Simeon’s temper. He was almost
snarling by the time he forced himself to his feet. Unfortunately,
the room immediately began to swirl around him and he collapsed
onto the bed with a bitter curse.

The
doorbell peeled suddenly at the back of the house. The sound of it
made Henry glance worriedly at the door.

“Go and
see who it is, Henry. I will be alright.” Simeon eyed his breeches
with renewed determination, but the thought of having to put them
on, along with his shirt and boots, and then walk all the way
downstairs was, he knew, beyond him.

When
Henry reappeared minutes later, he looked a little
worried.

“What is
it?” Simeon sighed as he slumped back against his pillows with a
sigh.

“It’s
Lord Aldwich, sir. He requests a meeting with you. I have told him
you are not receiving visitors, but he was most
insistent.”

“Senior
or junior?” Simeon grunted, mentally crossing his fingers that it
was Rafael.

“Junior,
sir.”

Simeon
scowled. “Good. Send him up, Henry,” he grunted.

If he
was not able to get out of bed, Rafael Aldwich could be his eyes
and ears in Hollywell. Right now, he needed as much help as he
could get. The butler was at the door by the time Simeon’s eyes
opened again.

“When
you come back up, bring me some parchment and my quill, Henry. I
have a letter to write. Oh, and bring my correspondence as
well.”

“Correspondence, sir? But, you are not well.”

“I need
to write some letters,” Simeon explained.

“What do
you mean, Lord Aldwich called by? What did he want?” Eloisa’s voice
was loud in the small kitchen, but Eloisa didn’t care. She pinned
her sister with such a look of horror that Cissy looked hesitant to
mention it further.

“He
wanted to speak to you,” Cissy replied somewhat evasively. “He
seemed most reluctant to speak to me. He said that he will be back
at about eleven o’clock tomorrow, and requested you be here to
speak with him.”

“He
sounds like a pompous nincompoop,” Eloisa replied with an affronted
sniff.

“He
wasn’t,” Cissy declared quietly. “He is quite an amiable man,
really. I like him.”

“What
was he like?” Eloisa asked, suddenly full of curiosity. She took a
seat at the table and poked absently at some pastry while Cissy
continued to make the pie for their dinner.

“Well,
he was smaller than your Simeon.”

“He is
not my Simeon,” Eloisa snapped defensively. She muttered an apology
when Cissy stopped kneading and looked at her knowingly. “Well, he
isn’t.”

“I am afraid that as far as you are concerned, he is very
much
your
Simeon,” Cissy declared darkly. She carefully plucked pastry
off her fingers and took a seat at the table. “Look, I don’t know
what went on between the two of you while you were stuck together.
That is between you and him. I doubt that he will be spreading
whatever happened about town. However, he has gone back to his
world and, well, there is no reason why you shouldn’t go about your
life. He has undoubtedly gone back to London now anyway, so you can
go to Lord Aldwich’s ball and not worry about crossing Simeon’s
path again.”

Her
voice was conciliatory, but there was a ring of steel in it that
warned Eloisa that she wouldn’t give in until she got what she
wanted, and that was Eloisa’s attendance at Lord Aldwich’s next
ball.

“Why are
you so persistent that I go? Just a few days in Simeon’s world has
left me struggling to fit back in to my normal life. Being in it,
even temporarily, has already opened up a world of hurt. I should
have thought you would want me to keep my feet on the ground.
Instead, you want me to go and socialise with his set. Is it in the
hopes that I understand just how out of my depth I am?” Eloisa knew
she was being unreasonable, but couldn’t stop.

She had
spent the past week trying to convince her sister that she wasn’t
ever going to get stars in her eyes again, but Cissy just wasn’t
listening.

“I am
not saying that at all, Eloisa. I don’t want to set you up for a
fall. You were just so excited to go to the ball the other week
that it seems a shame for you to abandon your dreams. You have
worked and worked at those dances for weeks.” Cissy frowned and
stared at the table top. Now that she came to think about it,
Eloisa didn’t dance any more. It was an indication of just how
deeply she was upset she was.

“You
love him, don’t you?” Cissy asked in a voice that was as unassuming
and nondescript as she could make it.

“I don’t
know,” Eloisa sighed tearfully. “I just don’t know. I hardly know
the man. He comes from a different world to me. We are complete
opposites in that regard. While we spent a lot of time together, we
were being chased by Renwick. How could I love him?”

“Your
morose behaviour since you came back through that door, Eloisa,”
Cissy declared firmly. “That’s what tells me that you have fallen
for the man. Now, are you going to be ball or not?”

“Not,”
Eloisa declared firmly. “And I should thank you not to mention it
again.”

“Fine,”
Cissy snapped.

“Fine,”
Eloisa declared flatly, and stomped out of the room before the
argument could get any worse.

A week
later, Simeon was starting to feel a little more malleable as he
let himself into his town house in Mayfair. He slammed the door
closed behind him and stalked into his study without slowing his
stride. Once he had poured himself a large brandy, he took a seat
behind the desk and rifled through his post. His heart leapt at the
familiar crest on one of the envelopes and he quickly tore it open
and read the contents.

“It’s
your invitation to Lord Aldwich’s ball like you requested, sir,”
Henry declared triumphantly from the doorway.

Simeon
grinned at him. For the first time in the past fortnight, he
finally felt as though matters were going his way. It was a
circumstance he wanted to continue for as long as
possible.

“Two
weeks hence,” he murmured with an air of satisfaction.

“Mr
Rafael delivered it himself, sir. He said to tell you that the one
to Misses Delaney has been delivered this morning too. He also said
to tell you that the carriage will arrive as planned, but there is
a little objection.”

“Objection?” Simeon lifted his brows at stared at his butler,
who sidled toward the door as though he was about to impart news
that he knew the master of the house wasn’t going to
like.

“He said
that Miss Eloisa was adamantly refusing to go. He has spoken to her
sister, sir, and she said that Miss Eloisa has stated quite firmly
that she will never attempt to go to a ball again.” Curiosity laced
Henry’s voice but he was far too well trained to ask. “He said to
inform you that he has set his father onto it.”

Simeon
took pity on him. “Well, I think I had better come up with some
plan to persuade her to go then, hadn’t I?”

“A plan,
sir?”

“Yes,
Henry. A plan,” he flicked open the broadsheet and read the
headlines before he turned his attention back to his butler, who
was still waiting at the door. “Send word to Pendlebury House that
I shall be taking up residence after Lord Aldwich’s ball, Henry.
While you are at it, close this house, would you? I shall be
leaving next week, and won’t be back for a while. Tell them at
Pendlebury that I shall arrive three weeks hence and will have a
new resident with me.”

Henry
paused in the doorway, his eyes alight with curiosity. “A new
resident, sir?”

Simeon
grinned at him. “Yes, Henry. A resident of the more permanent
variety.”

“Yes,
sir. As you like sir,” Henry replied and quietly let himself
out.

He
sensed that Henry was curious but turned his attention to reading
the rest of the broadsheet rather than explain further. Over the
past week, news of Renwick’s sordid desertion from the army had
been broadcast, and it had taken the whole of the front sheet for
several days. Now that Renwick had been formally court-marshalled,
and Martin Huffleton’s family informed of the deception, the news
had moved on to other matters.

So far, people had remained, for the most part, exactly the
same toward Simeon. It had helped that the broadsheets had
confirmed that Simeon had been the one to notify the authorities of
Renwick’s crimes, and that Simeon had been shot by his cousin, who
had now been charged with attempted murder as well. Although there
were some snide whispers that Simeon must have known because he was
related to the man, there was no public vilification of the
Calversham family. Indeed, several notable families within
the
Ton
had made
their support of Simeon well know.
Lord
Aldwich had pointedly assured
everyone only at a ball last week that Simeon was most welcome at
his home anytime he wanted to visit.

Finally,
having reassurance that the Calversham name was still intact and,
with a shoulder that was now well on its way toward healing being
fully healed, Simeon was able to turn his attention to the most
important problem in his life.

Eloisa.

He knew
he had a lot of bridges to build with her, but could relax a
little, confident in the knowledge that they had the rest of their
lives to resolve their problems. He was painfully aware that he was
solely responsible for the way they had parted, and it was down to
him to put matters right. He could think of no finer way of doing
that than getting Eloisa to Lord Aldwich’s ball so they could
talk.

The only
slight shadow that hovered over his plans was Lord Aldwich senior’s
obvious determination to get not only Eloisa, but Cissy also, to
the ball. Although Simeon was grateful for Arthur and Rafael’s
help, he had to wonder why they were so determined to get two
unconnected young ladies to their ball.