“And you never went back to London after that first time?” he asked. “Not in six years? Memories are notoriously short among the beau monde. Yesterday’s scandal is soon swallowed up by today’s indiscretion and that by tomorrow’s catastrophe. And it was not you who had eloped. Who was the man you loved?”
His eyes raked over her from head to toe and she clutched the ends of her shawl again.
“What?”
“You told me you had known love once,” he reminded her, “but that it had proved deceptive and painful.”
Ah.
“He was wealthy and titled and handsome,” she said without really answering his question, “and attentive from the moment of our introduction at my very first ball. He seemed like a dream come true, and of course I tumbled into love with him as though I did not have a brain in my head. But why would I not have done? Mama encouraged the connection. We danced at almost every ball and sat beside each other at concerts. We conversed at soirees and strolled together at picnics. I was in theater parties that included him. He paid me lavish compliments and even declared a lasting affection for me. My head was thoroughly turned. I expected every day that he would speak formally with my father and I would be the happiest girl in the world. I call myself a girl because that was what I was then even though I was twenty-one years of age. I thought he loved me. And indeed I was the envy of many other young ladies of my acquaintance.”
She paused to draw a deep breath and let it out on a sigh.
“There was a ball a week or so after Lucy ran away with Mr. Nelson. Mama and I went despite everything. I was engaged to dance the opening set with the man who had so recently paid court to me. He approached as expected when the time came and smiled dazzlingly as he made a flourishing bow and held out his hand toward . . . the lady standing next to me. It was a very deliberate cut, and of course every eye in the ballroom was upon me. Everyone saw me smile with happy relief after such a distressing week and step forward and begin to stretch out my own hand.”
She had to stop for a moment to draw a steadying breath.
“We packed our bags that night, Mama and I,” she said, “and went home the next day. Love is a strange phenomenon, my lord. It can die so abruptly and so completely that one sees it immediately for the empty illusion it is.”
“But painful,” he reminded her.
“At the time,” she admitted. “But I got over it. I survived. And it was a lesson well learned. You need not be afraid that I will ever turn sentimental and imagine myself in love with you—if you should choose to accept my bargain, that is.”
“A survivor,” he said softly. “You did not ever go back?”
“Yes, I did.” She half smiled. “Last year. I went at the persuasion of my aunt, Lady Easterly, who was feeling lonely with all her daughters, my cousins, married and scattered about the country. She told me exactly what you just told me, that the collective memory of the ton is short. And five years had gone by. I attended a few concerts and soirees with her. I had agreed to accompany her to some parties and even one ball that was being given by a cousin of my uncle’s. But suddenly the gossip began, strange whisperings and significant glances my way. I thought at first it must be the old scandal rearing its head, but it was something else. Something totally unexpected and terribly silly. Aunt Julia told me what it was about one morning when I was getting ready to go out to the library. And Graham arrived soon after to confirm what she had said.”
She clasped her hands behind her back. She closed her eyes for a moment before opening them and continuing.
“I daresay,” she said, “that if you were in London last spring you met Lady Angela Allandale, daughter of the Marquess of Hitching? She had come from the north of England to make her debut and took the ton by storm.”
She risked a glance at him.
“I remember hearing she was a diamond of the first water,” he said, “with half the bachelor population of England dangling after her. I never saw her. I made sure not to. At that time I was still avoiding all possible danger of being trapped into marriage.”
“She had hair and eyes the exact color and shade of mine,” she said. “She had my pale complexion too. When a few people began to remark upon the likeness between us, there were those among the older members of the ton who remembered the handsome, red-haired marquess, her father, as a young man in London, paying court to the lovely Miss West, my mother, before financial distress caused him to change his affections and propose marriage to the heiress of a vast fortune who is now the Marchioness of Hitching.”
The Earl of Berwick offered no comment when she paused.
“My mother and father married before the end of that Season,” she said. “Mama always spoke of their whirlwind courtship as a great love story. I did not believe any of the gossip that was soon in full flight last year. I still do not. I tried to brazen it out, just as I had five years before. But at a picnic I attended with my aunt, I had the misfortune of coming face to face with Lord— I came face to face with my former beau and greeted him by name. He raised his quizzing glass to his eye, looked pointedly through it at my hair, made me a slight and distant bow, and walked away, making sure I heard the remark he made to the gentleman who was with him. The word bastard was part of it. I went home the next day.”
She had been standing too long in the same position, she realized. There was a buzzing in her ears, a coldness about her head and in her nostrils, and she feared she was close to fainting. She drew breath, shook her head, looked about, dug her fingers into her palms, and willed herself not to do anything so utterly humiliating.