“Let me come to you tonight,” he said. “I am no longer cut out for casual affairs either, Sophie.” He was not sure quite what he meant by that—or perhaps he did not want to know. But he did know that he wanted her. Not just in bed, but—he wanted her back. He had been lonely without her.
She pulled away from him, found a handkerchief in a pocket, turned away, and wiped her eyes and blew her nose.
“Yes,” she said then without looking at him. She bent to pick up the box and the pearls.
“I will not mention the other to you again, then, Sophie,” he said, “unless you mention it first. But know that I am always here, that I will always listen, always help. If you are desperate for money—well, you would not come to me, would you? But know that you could, that matters are never so desperate that there is not that way out. There, I will say no more. Shall I come at midnight?”
“Yes,” she said. “I will watch for you.”
“Thank you,” he said. And he turned without another word and let himself out of the room.
But he had a strong feeling that he had let himself into something from which he would never free himself. And perhaps he would never want to. It was a bewildering and a thoroughly alarming thought.
Lady Honeymere’s ball on Hanover Square was set for that evening. Even before setting out, Nathaniel had stated his intention of leaving early, but Georgina and Lavinia would be able to stay until the end, since both Margaret and John were to be there to chaperon them and accompany them home.
Lavinia would have been quite content to leave early with her cousin in the normal course of events. Although she enjoyed the social activities of the Season, she did believe they were conducted to excess. As she had told Sophia on a visit the previous day, one became mortally tired of seeing the same silly gentlemen wherever one went and hearing the same silly compliments and fielding the same silly advances. Did gentlemen not harbor an
un
silly thought in their heads?
She and Sophia had enjoyed a good laugh on the topic. But Sophie, Lavinia had not failed to notice, though she had made no mention of it, no longer attended ton functions, even though her brother and sister-in-law did.
On this particular evening Lavinia was quite happy to remain at the ball—once she had discovered that Nathaniel’s early departure did not take away his friends too. She had thought that just might happen. They were very close, those four, and were very obviously enjoying a few months of one another’s company. But he was the only one who left. Lady Gullis had not appeared at all at the ball, Lavinia had not failed to notice. Doubtless there was some connection.
She had been granted permission to waltz at Almack’s the previous Wednesday. Having been utterly contemptuous of the strange rule ever since her first ball, and having threatened a dozen times to waltz whether she had been granted permission or not, she then, of course, had felt obliged out of sheer principle to refuse to waltz even after permission had been granted. But tonight she intended to waltz—it was the set before supper.
She sought out Eden before it began—he was standing with a group of people, mostly gentlemen, but Lavinia did not allow that fact to deter her. She tapped him on the arm with her fan. He turned toward her, his eyebrows lifting in surprise. He was very good at that look of hauteur, as she had conceded before tonight. Though if he expected to cow her with the look, he was going to be disappointed.
“I have been granted permission to waltz,” she told him. Lavinia had decided years before that if there was a bush to be beaten about, doing so was a waste of time.
“Ah.” His hand had gone to the handle of his quizzing glass. He had turned away from his companions to give her a little more privacy. “My most heartfelt congratulations, Miss Bergland.”
“The next set is a waltz,” she said.
“I do believe you are right.” He had the glass halfway to his eye.
“I want you to dance it with me,” she said.
If gentlemen knew how a quizzing glass enlarged one eye while leaving the other incongruously small, Lavinia thought, they would not use it so freely.
“Indeed?” he said. “I am your charity case, ma‘am? You fear I cannot find a partner of my own?”
“Oh,” she said impatiently, “how ridiculous men can be. Have you enjoyed that little piece of revenge?”
“I have been enormously tickled by it,” he said, sounding decidedly bored. “Miss Bergland, will you do me the honor of waltzing with me?”
“If you can perform the steps without treading all over my toes,” she said.
“Hmm.” He dropped his glass on its ribbon and extended an arm for hers. “Are your feet that large, then? I am too well-bred to stare down at them.”
He did not tread on her toes. Indeed, she had the strange feeling as he whirled her about the ballroom during the following half hour, making all the colors of gowns and coats and the glitter of jewels blur into a wondrous kaleidoscope, that her toes did not touch the floor at all. If she had but known that he danced this well, she thought, she she would have danced with him that very first time. No, she would not—he had been far too condescending and far too certain that those blue eyes of his would smite her into dithering incoherence.
They were quite gorgeous blue eyes, of course, but that was beside the point.
“Allow me to escort you in to supper,” he said when the set came to an end—far too soon. “Or are you now about to assert your perfect confidence in being able to find a place for yourself and to fill a plate of your own?”
“I am not hungry,” she said, taking his arm. “Take me into the garden.”
His eyebrows shot up and his hand reached for his quizzing glass again. “Feeling amorous are we, Miss Bergland?” he asked.
“I cannot answer for you, my lord,” she said, “but I am certainly not. I wish to speak with you.”
“Ah,” he said. “Interesting.”
The garden was very prettily lit with lanterns and set about with rustic seats. The evening was a little chilly but at least the garden was deserted, all the other guests doubtless feeling ravenously hungry after the exertions of half an evening.
“I want to know more about Mr. Boris Pinter,” Lavinia said when they were outside.
“I would not if I were you,” Lord Pelham said. “Nat would have an apoplexy or two if you were to develop an interest in the man.”
“Try not to be ridiculous,” she told him. “He is blackmailing Sophie.”
He was quiet for a few moments and his steps slowed. “You know that?” he said. “Has she admitted as much to you, then? She would not admit it to Nat when he returned her ring and pearls to her earlier today. But it would be as well anyway for you not to be involved in this. It might possibly become nasty.”
Lavinia clucked her tongue. “I spent three days with Nat pretending to be besotted with him despite the fact that he had just gambled away his family fortune and could not afford to buy me a
new
wedding ring or wedding gift,” she said. “I simply must be granted either sainthood or involvement as a reward. I never did fancy being a saint—wearing a halo and plucking the strings of a harp would become a mite tedious after the first century or so.”
“Ah,” he said, “Nat did not tell us you had been his accomplice.”
“Now tell me all you know of Mr. Pinter,” she said.
“So that your indignation against him can increase?” he said. “Nothing can be served by that. Nat wants simply to kill the bast- ‘ Lord Pelham discovered the necessity of clearing his throat. ”But we do not fancy watching him swing. If you have any influence with him, talk sense into him. Though perhaps I am commissioning the wrong person to do that.“
“Nat told me about Mr. Pinter’s cruelty,” she said. “About his trapping men into doing wrong and then ordering them to be whipped—and watching the punishment with great enjoyment.”
“Mmm,” he said noncommittally.
“He blushed and looked horridly embarrassed when I suggested that Mr. Pinter must have arranged all that rather than take a whore,” she said.
Lord Pelham’s cough was getting worse. “I will be eternally thankful,” he said when the spell had passed, “that we are strolling in the dark. Is it just a malicious rumor that you are a lady?”
“Is it true, do you think?” she asked him. “Is he
peculiar?”
“I hardly think—” Lord Pelham was using his pokering-up voice and Lavinia was having none of it.
“Yes, yes,” she said impatiently. “But do you not
see?
One does not deal with a blackmailer by wagging a finger in his face and admonishing him to stop it and be a good boy. Neither does one stop it by killing him and then having to swing for it, as you put it. One stops it by matching fire with fire.”
“Meaning?” he asked her, stopping and turning to face her, though they could not see each other clearly since they were in among some trees from which no lanterns hung.
“Meaning,” she said, “that we find something that
he
would certainly not wish to come into the light.”
“Blackmail,” he said.
“Of course,” she said briskly. “What do you think I have been talking about? If he carries out any of his threats to Sophie—though what he could possibly have on her I cannot even begin to imagine—but
if
he does, even in the smallest of ways, then we let the world know about him. But first we let him know what the consequences of his behavior are to be.”
“Good Lord,” he said, “you are pure unadulterated poison, ma‘am.”
“In defense of my friends, yes,” she said. “If it is true that Mr. Pinter derives enjoyment—
that
sort of enjoyment—from watching men stripped and whipped, and if we can find enough proof to worry him, then we can put a stop to this business with Sophie. Shall we do it?”
“We?” he said faintly.
“We,”
she said firmly. “As in you and me. Nat would send me back to Bowood with instructions to the coachman to spring his horses if I made the suggestion to him.”
“No,” he said firmly. “We as in Nat and me and Rex and Ken, Miss Bergland. But I will grant you that it is a brilliant idea and I am ashamed we have not thought of it for ourselves. I daresay we are not devious enough.”
She thought for a few moments. “Oh very well,” she said finally. “But only provided I am given a full account of what happens. I do not want to hear when it is all over that the details are not fit for a lady’s delicate ears.”
“Yours?” he said, raising his quizzing glass even in the near darkness and training it on one of her ears. “I daresay they are made of cast iron.”
She smiled at him. “You are going to save Sophie,” she said. “All of you. I would not wish to be in Mr. Pinter’s shoes. I think the four of you pokering up all together would be quite a formidable sight.”
They grinned at each other, in unusual accord.
“I suppose,” he said, “if I were to kiss you I would have my face thoroughly slapped and would have to endure the embarrassment of reappearing in the ballroom with five red fingermarks across one cheek?”
She looked at him consideringly. “Do you want to kiss me?” she asked.
“The thought had crossed my mind,” he admitted.
“Would
I be slapped?”
She thought again, taking her time about doing so. “No,” she said finally.
“Ah,” he said, and bent down and set his lips to hers. But he lifted his head almost immediately. “Child’s stuff,” he murmured, his arms coming about her. “If we are going to do this—and by some mutual madness it appears that we are—let us at least do it properly.”
He did it properly.
Lavinia drew back her head when it occurred to her after some considerable time that perhaps she ought. She frowned at him. “Do all gentlemen kiss like that?” she asked him. She clarified. “With their mouths open?”
“I have absolutely no idea,” he said, sounding surprised. “I have never crept up close and watched. But
this
gentleman kisses like that. Did you mind?”
“It had a strange effect on my insides,” she said.
“Dear me,” he said. “It was not by any chance your first kiss, was it, Miss Bergland? At
your
age?”
“Oh, you will not make me ashamed,” she said, “and scrambling to lie and claim that I have been kissed so many times that I have lost count. I have never before
wished
to be kissed and so I have not been.”
“But this time you did wish it?” he asked her.
She had not really intended to make that revealing admission, but she had talked her way into it and would not deny it now. “I suppose,” she said, “you have had a great deal of practice, and if one is to experience something at least once in one’s lifetime one might as well experience it with someone who knows what he is doing.”
“Ah,” he said. “Shall we try once more? Perhaps this time you might refrain from puckering up and try opening your mouth.”
She followed his advice. And if she had thought the first time that strange things happened to her insides, well, the sensations were beyond thought the second time.
“Much more of this,” he said sometime later, at which point she noticed that he was
withdrawing
his hand from about one of her breasts and was sliding it out from the low neckline of her gown, “and I am going to have to be paying Nat a formal morning call tomorrow. I am sure neither of us would want that to be happening.”
“The very thought!” she agreed, shuddering and glancing down at herself to make sure nothing was showing that ought not to be showing.
“I will have a conference on that other matter with Nat and the others during our early-morning ride,” he said. “Perhaps we can come up with something.”
“There is to be no perhaps about it,” she said, taking his offered arm in order to return to the ballroom with him—other guests were beginning to appear outdoors again and the members of the orchestra were tuning their instruments. “You must come up with something. Sophie is your friend and mine. Do it.”