Sharon Sobel (9 page)

“That is quite true,” Wentworth said, and scratched near his ear. “And much depends on that person.”

Camille’s face turned from one to the other and said nothing.

“Shall we go in to dinner?” Wentworth asked, offering an elbow to each lady. “I find I have quite an appetite.”

“Yes, I expect so,” Claire said softly, though she knew full well that Camille was poised to hear every word they uttered. “It must be exhausting to hide behind a tree, spying on what others are doing.”

“It is. Worry and fear are great expenses on the spirit, and I needed to know that the object of my interest was safe.”

“How very noble of you, Lord Wentworth. And once you established that the object of your interest had escaped the roaring brook, was it equally as exhausting to watch that person put her clothing to rights?”

“Even more exhausting,” he said, leaning towards her as they walked through the door of the dining room.

“What was it you said?” Camille asked.

“Nothing of importance, Lady Camille,” Claire responded, telling herself it was absolutely true. A brief kiss in the woods, an overly attentive host, and a guest who was a bit of a tease. It all meant nothing at all.

“I only wished to know who was leaving, Sister,” Wentworth said. “You were speaking of this when I came into the room.” He delivered Camille to her place at the table, opposite his, and then sat Claire between them.

“Oh, yes, I forgot,” Camille said. “Claire tells me she is leaving, very soon.”

“Yes, Lord Wentworth, this is to be my last dinner in Brookside Cottage,” Claire said, avoiding looking at him.

“Is that why you are dressed in such a celebratory costume?” he asked. “I assume you do not wear emerald silk and diamonds about your lovely neck for an ordinary, quiet dinner at home. Or is that how people dress in London?”

“It is, my lord. I did pack this costume in my wardrobe for a special occasion, and now it appears I will not have anything other than this evening to dress accordingly.”

“And why must you leave?” Lord Wentworth asked, deliberately unfolding his linen napkin. One of the servants hovered over him, waiting to pour his wine.

“My friend, Lady Fayreweather, is not well, and needs me. You may remember you were introduced to her at the Armadale Ball.”

Wentworth gestured for his wine, and then took his time swirling the potent liquid in his glass and sniffing its bouquet. From the pale, greenish color, Claire guessed it to be vinho verde, perhaps returned with him from Portugal. Wentworth nodded his approval, and looked at Claire.

“I am sure your friend has many who will attend on her through her illness, including her husband. Do you suspect her to be on her deathbed?”

Claire did not suspect Marissa to be anywhere but at the theatre or at a dinner with friends, but Wentworth was not to know that.

“I do not know, but I believe she needs me,” Claire said, hearing the paucity in her own reasoning.

“My sister needs you as well,” he said. “We are to attend the Assembly Ball, I understand, and I do not know how Camille will manage without you. It is a very popular event in our little community of Middlebury, and Camille wishes to attend.”

Claire glanced at Camille, who seemed to be gazing at the ceiling, looking a bit like the helpless blind girl she most certainly was not.

“Lady Camille will manage very well, I am sure. After all, my lord, she now has you to escort her to the party.”

Wentworth sipped his wine and stifled a cough. “I intend to escort two ladies to the party.”

“Is your Aunt Adelaide joining you, then?” Claire asked, and drank rather more of her wine than was considered delicate. But she did not cough. “I seem to recall she enjoys dancing.”

“I would like you to join us, Lady Claire. Was that not part of your bargain with our aunt?”

“Oh, indeed, but things have changed, you see,” Claire said, a bit distractedly. It was the wine, she realized. She was overly warm, and not quite sure what she said.

“They have changed,” he said, “more than I imagined.”

They had, and a good deal more than she had dared to imagine as well. She could not deny her attraction to him, ignited at a mere glance while she was in the arms of another man. But Wentworth was a man with an unfortunate past and a present that was both secretive and possibly dangerous. Claire had once before bound herself to a man fighting his own demons and had vowed she would never do so again. Certainly Wentworth was a man with an abundant reserve of demons, pursuing him at every turn, making the situation quite impossible.

“Please stay, Claire,” Camille begged. “I would like to look very fine, and Maxwell will insist I wear something very plain and very modest.”

“I certainly will not allow you to show off your . . .” He stopped, and Claire wondered if the wine had gotten to him as well. Although, as to that, neither of them had had much to drink.

“Diamonds,” he finished lamely.

Camille laughed. “Diamonds? You know very well I do not own diamonds, and if you never let me go to a ball, I doubt if I ever will. Mother wore diamonds, and emeralds, and those splendid pearl earrings, but they are gone now.”

Claire looked at Wentworth, wondering if they needed to sell their mother’s jewels out of financial necessity. And yet they appeared to live quite comfortably on what remained of their estate.

He shook his head, reading her mind. “Our mother’s jewels were never found. Though other things in her dressing room were nearly intact, the ivory box and the collection it contained perished.” His voice caught on the last words, and Claire realized how much it cost him to say them.

“Jewels are only baubles, no matter how much people value their worth,” Claire said kindly. “I am sure the two of you would spend a king’s ransom if it would only bring your parents back.”

She wondered if she had gone too far. Neither of her companions said a word, and Wentworth took several deep breaths. Camille looked to the ceiling again, and the candlelight reflected tears on her pale cheeks.

“Would you do the same for your late husband, Lady Claire?” Camille asked.

It seemed all of London knew how dreadfully Glastonbury treated her, and how the titles and jewels and level of comfort she now enjoyed seemed some compensation for years of misery and abuse. It was no great secret and still Claire could not yet bring herself to speak of Glastonbury’s cruelty to her friends at Brookside Cottage. Perhaps it was because Camille was becoming a great romantic under Claire’s tutelage, and the knowledge of Claire’s unhappiness in marriage would be a great disillusionment. Perhaps it was because Brookside Cottage provided sanctuary from the knowing glances of society’s minions, full of pity and speculation.

Claire might have been content to preserve illusions and innocence but for her keen awareness of Wentworth’s frankly assessing gaze. Here was a man who was altogether too familiar with painful truths, who suffered hurts deeper than most people could even imagine.

Suddenly, she wanted him to know that her ghosts were long buried.

“No,” she said. “But I would have given all I had if he would have left me sooner, to heaven or hell or some distant earthly place.”

Camille brushed her finger across her damp cheek and tried to stifle a laugh. But Wentworth gazed at her, seeming to understand something only he could know.

“Stay with us, Lady Claire,” he said. “I feel we will be missing a great deal if you decide to abandon us now.”

Her eyes met his, and for the first time in the day or so since he returned from his adventure in Portugal, she quite forgot that they had an audience, someone who was so perceptive she could read them like an open book.

***

He really should let her go, for there was no place in his ragged heart for a woman like her, who knew everything of life and had the freedom to enjoy it to the fullest.

And yet her odd confession, in which a light tone seemed to cover a great depth of unhappiness, suggested her life was not as it seemed or as she allowed others to believe. He knew nothing of Glastonbury before he met his widow, and would have naturally assumed he was a fellow worthy of capturing a beauty of such grace and goodness. He hoped the man would have treated his wife kindly and might even have loved her. But the woman he himself kissed at the brook seemed an innocent, tentative, and quite unsure of herself. Such was his first impression, before he doubted her and himself, and decided she was a temptress.

Now he conceded that first impression might well have been precisely right.

He looked at her through the filter of his glass of wine, casting a lovely glow upon her pale shoulders and barely covered breasts. Her gown glistened like a fresh meadow, made brighter by the green wine.

He put down his glass. Truly, the gown was remarkable without any enhancement, as it was made of some shimmery cloth that managed to disguise and reveal everything that lay beneath, all at once. Her diamonds, a reminder of what she escaped, and what was now available for another man, dipped in a low V at her cleavage and reflected every color in the dining room.

“Do you have a mote in your eye, Lord Wentworth?” Lady Claire asked.

He blinked at her, realizing he might have been a bit boorish, studying her with one eye and then the other.

“Dab at your eye with a bit of water, Maxwell,” Camille chirped. “Have a care with it.”

“I am able to manage on my own,” he answered quickly.

“Yes, of course,” Lady Claire said. “After all, a man who has been on his own in a foreign land, speaking in a strange tongue, must be very competent. What were you doing for your cousin in Portugal, Lord Wentworth? Or am I not at liberty to ask?”

“You are not,” he said. And then he reconsidered, for that would likely make her only more curious. “That is, I do not think it would be of much interest to two ladies. I was seeing to Armadale’s business interests and the importation of fine wine.”

Lady Claire swirled her wine in her glass. “You have done very well in your selection, my lord, for the vinho verde is very smooth. But I wonder why it was necessary to disguise yourself in the process. Or is heavy facial hair the current fashion in Lisbon?”

The woman missed nothing.

“Yes, it is all the rage,” he said.

“How remarkable in a warm climate. And for you to be so compliant, though you have already confessed to little interest in fashion and society.”

“I am not altogether indifferent,” he muttered and reached for his glass again. It provided greater comfort than the roasted duck on his plate.

“Then you will be glad to know what I am wearing to the Assembly,” Camille said. “Claire helped me decide on the fabric and style, and I think it will fit me to perfection. The neckline is framed with embroidery from Normandy, with little yellow rosebuds to complement the underskirt. There is a lovely green jacket, though I shall remove it when the room becomes too warm and then . . .”

“This is your doing,” Max said to Lady Claire, just as his sister began her detailed description of her slippers.

“Yes,” she said. “Are you not very glad of it?”

And, oddly enough, he realized he was.

***

Of course she stayed for the Assembly Ball, for had she not promised Camille she would do so? It really had nothing to do with Lord Wentworth, nor with his interest in all they did each day, nor in the walks they took every afternoon, nor in his surprising collection of seaside fossils, nor in his willingness to be in the room when Claire read to Camille each morning and evening. It had nothing to do with the way he looked at her over his glass of wine, nor caught her hand to steady her when she tripped on a rock along the woodland path, nor when he chose the gentlest horse in the stable for her to ride upon. It was none of this.

And she imagined Marissa fared altogether well in her sudden illness, for she doubted her friend even knew she was ill. Her recovery, Claire reported to her friends, was nothing short of remarkable.

And so she stayed.

Concerned that she might give her host a heart attack if she wore her green gown again, she had several of her own dresses brought up from London so she might choose between her favorites. The yellow silk, blue chine, and golden damask arrived with much fuss and bother with her maid Arista, who packed a wardrobe into one small carriage. Claire appreciated Arista for her honesty, good taste, and superb hairdressing talents. All this she wished to be applied to Camille, whose own maid, Alice, could stand a few lessons reflecting the styles of the present century. If Arista could be spared to boss them all about, her journey would be treble the value.

Arista Dopley walked into Brookside Cottage without bothering to wait for an introduction or welcome, and bumped directly into Lady Camille. Claire did not know what they said to each other, but somehow they became close conspirators almost immediately, excluding her from discussions of plaits and coronets, necklines and lace trims. Claire preferred to believe Arista saw Camille as a young lady who desperately needed fashion advice. But she guessed some of their conversation over the next days had to do with other things, such as herself and Lord Wentworth.

“It will be the golden damask,” Arista said with her tone of unanswerable authority.

They were to leave for the Assembly in two hours’ time, and Claire examined a little tear in her yellow silk. It could be repaired in a minute or two, but she wondered if anyone would notice.

“I am fond of the silk, Arista. It is a beautiful gown, but not so extraordinary that the neighborhood women would resent me for it.”

“The neighborhood women expect Lord Wentworth’s London visitor to outshine them all; they will be disappointed if you do not manage it. I imagine my lord will be disappointed as well.”

Claire decided to ignore that last statement. “It is true the damask is very fine.”

“And even better, it should fit you. All this walking around in the country and nonsense like that has made you slimmer. One good country dance and the silk will slip right off your shoulders.”

“I daresay that will disappoint no one,” Claire murmured.