One Good Earl Deserves a Lover Page 9

  But on her . . . the gown made her look thinner, longer, more reedy. “It makes me look like the Ardea cinerea.”

  Penelope blinked.

  “A heron.”

  “Nonsense. You are beautiful.”

  Pippa ran her palms over the perfectly worked fabric. “Then I think it’s best I stay here and keep that illusion intact.”

  Penelope chuckled. “You are postponing the inevitable.”

  It was the truth.

  And because it was the truth, Pippa allowed her sister to lead them down the narrow stairs to the back entrance of the ballroom, where they released Trotula onto the Dolby House grounds before inserting themselves, unnoticed, into the throngs of well-wishers, as though they’d been present for the entire time.

  Her future mother-in-law found them within moments. “Philippa, my dear!” she effused, waving a fan of peacock feathers madly about her face. “Your mother said it would be just a little fête! And what a fête it is! A fête to fête my young Robert and his soon-to-be-bride!”

  Pippa smiled. “And do not forget Lady Tottenham’s young James and his soon-to-be-bride.”

  For a moment, it seemed that Countess of Castleton did not follow. Pippa waited. Understanding dawned, and her future mother-in-law laughed, loud and high-pitched. “Oh, of course! Your sister is lovely! As are you! Isn’t she, Robert?” She swatted the earl on his arm. “Isn’t she lovely!”

  He leapt to agree. “She is! Er—you are, Lady Philippa! You are! Lovely!”

  Pippa smiled. “Thank you.”

  Her mother bore down upon them, the Marchioness of Needham and Dolby eager to compete for the most-excited-mother award. “Lady Castleton! Are they not the most handsome of couples!”

  “So very handsome!” Lady Castleton agreed, maneuvering her son to stand close to Pippa. “You simply must dance! Everyone is desperate to see you dance!”

  Pippa was virtually certain that there were only two people in the room with any interest whatsoever in watching them dance. In fact, anyone who had ever seen Pippa dance knew not to expect much in the way of grace or skill, and her experience with Castleton indicated similar failings on his part. But, unfortunately, the two in question were mothers. And unavoidable.

  And, dancing would limit the number of exclamations in her proximity by a good amount.

  She smiled up at her fiancé. “It seems we are required to dance, my lord.”

  “Right! Right!” Castleton leapt to attention, clicking his heels together and giving her a small bow. “Would you afford me the very great honor of a dance, my lady?”

  Pippa resisted the urge to laugh at the formality of the question and instead took his hand and allowed him to lead her into the dance.

  It was a disaster.

  They all but stumbled across the floor, creating a devastating spectacle of themselves. When they were together, they trod on each other’s toes and tripped over each other’s feet—at one point, he actually clutched her to him, having lost his balance. And when they were apart, they tripped over their own feet.

  When he was not counting his steps to keep time with the orchestra, Castleton kept up conversation by fairly bellowing across the dance floor.

  The couples nearby did their best not to stare, but Pippa had to admit, it was near impossible when Castleton announced from ten feet away on the opposite side of the line, “Oh! I nearly forgot to tell you! I’ve a new bitch!”

  He was discussing his dogs, of course—a topic in which they had a shared interest—but Pippa imagined it was something of a shock to Louisa Holbrooke when Castleton hurled the announcement right over her perfectly coiffed head.

  Pippa could not help it. She began to snicker, drawing a strange look from her own partner. She lifted a hand to hide her twitching lips when Castleton added, “She’s a beauty! Brindled fur! Brown and yellow . . . yellow like yours!”

  Eyes around them went wide at the comparison of her blond hair to the golden fur of Castleton’s most recent four-legged acquisition. And that’s when the snicker became a laugh. It was, after all, the strangest—and loudest—conversation she’d ever had while dancing.

  She laughed through the final steps of the quadrille, her shoulders shaking as she dipped into the curtsy ladies were required to make. If there was one thing she would not miss upon her marriage, it was dancing.

  She rose, and Castleton came instantly to her side, shepherding her to one end of the room, where they stood in awkward silence for a long moment. She watched the other attendees fall gracefully into the party, keenly aware of Castleton beside her. Robert.

  How many times had she heard Penny refer to her husband as Michael in that tone of utter devotion?

  Pippa turned to look up at Castleton. She could not imagine ever calling him Robert.

  “Would you like some lemonade?” He broke their silence.

  She shook her head, returning her gaze to the room. “No, thank you.”

  “I should have waited to tell you about the dog until we were through dancing,” he said, drawing her attention once more. Color rose on his cheeks.

  She did not like the idea that he was embarrassed. He did not deserve it. “No!” she protested, grateful for the return of the topic. It was easy to talk about dogs. “She sounds lovely. What do you call her?”

  He smiled, bright and honest. He did that a lot. It was another good quality. “I thought perhaps you would have an idea.”

  The words set her back. It would never occur to her to ask Castleton for his opinion on such a thing. She’d simply name the hound and announce her as part of the family. Her surprise must have shown on her face, because he added, “After all, we are to be married. She will be our hound.”

  Our hound.

  The hound was Castleton’s ruby ring. A living, breathing chromium-filled crystal.

  Suddenly, it all seemed very serious.

  They were to be married. They were to have a hound. And she was to name it.

  A hound was much more than betrothal balls and trousseaus and wedding plans—all things that seemed utterly inconsequential when it came right down to it.

  A hound made the future real.

  A hound meant a home, and seasons passing and visits from neighbors and Sunday masses and harvest festivals. A hound meant a family. Children. His children.

  She looked up into the kind, smiling eyes of her fiancé. He was waiting, eager for her to speak.

  “I—” She stopped, not knowing what to say. “I haven’t any good ideas.”

  He chuckled. “Well, she doesn’t know the difference. You are welcome to think about it.” He leaned low, one blond lock falling over his brow. “You should meet her first. Perhaps that would help.”

  She forced a smile. “Perhaps it would.”

  Perhaps it would make her want to marry him more.

  She liked dogs. They had that in common.

  The thought reminded her of her conversation with Mr. Cross, during which she’d told him the same as proof of her compatibility with the earl. He’d scoffed at her, and she’d ignored it.

  It was all they’d said of the earl . . . until Mr. Cross had refused her request and sent her home, with a comment that echoed through her now, as she stood awkwardly beside her future husband. I suggest you query another. Perhaps your fiancé?

  Perhaps she should query her fiancé. Surely he knew more than he revealed about the . . . intricacies of marriage. It did not matter that he’d never once given her even the slightest suggestion that he cared a bit for those intricacies.

  Gentlemen knew about them. Far more than ladies did.

  That this was a horrendously unequal truth was not the point, currently.

  She peered up at Castleton, who was not looking at her. Instead, he appeared to be looking anywhere but her. She took the moment to consider her next step. He was close, a
fter all—close enough to touch. Perhaps she ought to touch him.

  He looked down at her, surprise flaring in his warm brown gaze when he discovered her notice. He smiled.

  It was now or never.

  She reached out and touched him, letting her silk-clad fingers slide over his kid-clad hand. His smile did not waver. Instead, he lifted his other arm and patted her hand twice, as he might do a hound’s head. It was the least carnal touch she could imagine. Not at all reminiscent of the wedding vows. Indeed, it indicated that he had no trouble with the bit about not entering into marriage like a brute beast.

  She extricated her hand.

  “All right?” he asked, already returning his attention to the room at large.

  It did not take a woman of great experience to know that her touch had had no effect on him. Which she supposed was only fair, as his touch was absent an effect on her.

  A lady laughed nearby, and Pippa turned toward the sound, light and airy and false. It was the kind of laugh she’d never perfected—her laughs were always too loud, or came at the wrong time, or not at all.

  “I think I would like some lemonade, if the offer remains,” she said.

  He jolted to attention at the words, “I shall fetch it for you!”

  She smiled. “That would be lovely.”

  He pointed to the floor. “I shall return!”

  “Excellent.”

  And then he was gone, pushing through the crowd with an eagerness that one might associate with something more exciting than lemonade.

  Pippa planned to wait, but it was something of a bore, and with the pressing heat of the room and the hundreds of people, it might take Castleton a quarter of an hour to return, and waiting alone, rather publicly, felt strange. So instead, she slipped away to a darker, quieter edge of the room where she could stand back and observe the crowd.

  People appeared to be having a lovely time. Olivia was holding court on the far end of the room, she and Tottenham surrounded by a throng of people who wanted the ear of the next prime minister. Pippa’s mother and Lady Castleton had collected Tottenham’s mother and a clutch of doyennes who were no doubt engaged in a round of scathing gossip.

  As she scanned the crowd, her attention was drawn to an alcove directly across from her, where a tall, dark-haired gentleman leaned too close to his companion, lips nearly touching her ear in a manner that spoke clearly of a clandestine assignation. The couple appeared to care not a bit for their public locale, and were no doubt causing tongues to wag throughout the ballroom.

  Not that such a thing was out of the ordinary for those two.

  Pippa smiled. Bourne had arrived and, as ever, had eyes only for her sister.

  Few understood how Penny had landed the cold, aloof, immovable Bourne—Pippa rarely saw the marquess smile or show any emotion whatsoever outside of his interactions with his doting wife—but there was no doubt that he had been landed, and was utterly smitten.

  Penny swore it was love, and that was the bit that Pippa did not understand. She never liked the idea of love matches—there was too much about them that could not be explained. Too much that was ethereal. Pippa did not believe in ethereal. She believed in factual.

  She watched as her proper sister placed her hands on her husband’s chest and pushed him away, laughing and blushing like a newly out debutante. He caught her close once more, pressing a kiss to her temple before she pulled away and dove back into the crowd. Bourne followed, as if on a string.

  Pippa shook her head at the strange, unlikely sight.

  Love, if it were a thing, was an odd thing, indeed.

  A draft of cold air rustled her skirts, and she turned to find that a set of great double doors behind her had been opened—no doubt to combat the stifling heat in the room—and one had blown wide. She moved to close it, leaning out onto the great stone balcony to reach the door’s handle.

  That’s when she heard it.

  “You need me.”

  “I need no such thing. I have taken care of myself without you for some time.”

  Pippa paused. Someone was out there. Two someones.

  “I can fix this. I can help. Just give me time. Six days.”

  “Since when are you interested in helping?”

  Pippa’s hand closed on the edge of the glass-paneled door, and she willed herself to close it. To pretend she had heard nothing. To return to the ball.

  She did not move.

  “I’ve always wanted to help.” The man’s voice was soft and urgent. Pippa stepped out onto the balcony.

  “You certainly haven’t showed it.” The lady’s voice was steel. Angry and unwavering. “In fact, you have never helped. You have only hindered.”

  “You’re in trouble.”

  “It is not the first time.”

  A hesitation. When the man spoke, his whispered words were clipped and filled with concern. “What else?”

  She laughed quietly, but there was no humor in the sound—only bitterness. “Nothing you can repair now.”

  “You shouldn’t have married him.”

  “I didn’t have a choice. You didn’t leave me with one.”

  Pippa’s eyes went wide. She’d stumbled into a lover’s quarrel. Well, not current lovers by the sound of it . . . past lovers. The question was, who where the lovers in question?

  “I should have stopped it,” he whispered.

  “Well, you didn’t,” she shot back.

  Pippa pressed against a great stone column that provided a lovely shadow in which to hide, and edged her head to one side, holding her breath, unable to resist her attempt to discover their identity.

  The balcony was empty.

  She poked her head out from behind the column.

  Totally empty.

  Where were they?

  “I can repair the damage. But you must stay away from him. Far away. He mustn’t have access to you.”

  In the gardens below.

  Pippa moved quietly toward the stone balustrade, curiosity piqued in the extreme.

  “Oh, I am to believe you now? Suddenly, you are willing to keep me safe?”

  Pippa winced. The lady’s tone was scathing. The gentleman in question—who was no gentleman at all, if Pippa had to guess—had most definitely wronged her in the past. She increased her pace, nearly to the edge, almost able to peer over the side of the balcony and identify the mysterious ex-lovers below.

  “Lavinia . . .” he began softly, pleading, and excitement coursed through Pippa. A name!

  That’s when she kicked the flowerpot.

  They might not have heard the little scrape that came as she made contact with the great, footed beast of a thing . . . if only she hadn’t cried out in pain. It did not matter that her hand immediately flew to cover her mouth, turning her very loud “Oh!” into a very garbled “Oof.”

  But the instant silence from below was enough to prove that they’d heard her quite clearly.

  “I shouldn’t be here,” the lady whispered, and Pippa heard a rustle of skirts fading away.

  There was a long moment of silence, during which she remained still as stone, biting her lip against the throbbing pain in her foot before he finally spoke, cursing in the darkness. “Goddammit.”

  Pippa crouched low, feeling for her toes, and muttered, “You no doubt deserved that,” before realizing that taunting an unidentified man in the darkened gardens of her ancestral home was not a sound idea.

  “I beg your pardon?” he asked quietly, no longer whispering.

  She should return to the ball. Instead, she said, “It does not sound as though you have been very kind to the lady.”

  Silence. “I haven’t been.”

  “Well then, you deserve her desertion.” She squeezed her smallest toe and hissed in pain. “Likely more than that.”

  “You hurt
yourself.”

  She was distracted by the pain, or she wouldn’t have responded. “I stubbed my toe.”

  “Punishment for eavesdropping?”

  “No doubt.”

  “That will teach you.”

  She smiled. “I hardly think so.”

  She couldn’t be sure, but she was almost positive that he chuckled. “You had best be certain that your partners do not tread upon your toes when you return.”

  A vision of Castleton flashed. “I am afraid it is very likely that at least one of them will do just that.” She paused. “It seems you gravely wronged the lady. How?”

  He was quiet for so long that she thought he might have left. “I was not there for her when she needed me.”

  “Ah,” she said.

  “Ah?” he asked.

  “One need not read romantic novels as frequently as my sister does to understand what happened.”

  “You don’t read romantic novels, of course.”

  “Not often,” Pippa said.

  “I imagine you read books on more important things.”

  “I do, as a matter of fact,” she said, proudly.

  “Tomes on physics and horticulture.” Pippa’s eyes went wide. “Those are the purview of Lady Philippa Marbury.”

  She shot to her feet and peered over the edge of the balcony, into the pit of darkness below. She couldn’t see anything. She heard the swipe of wool as his arms shifted, or perhaps his legs. He was right there. Directly beneath her.

  She moved without thinking, reaching for him, arms extending toward him as she whispered, “Who are you?”

  Even through the silk of her gloves, his hair was soft—like thick sable. She let her fingers sink into the strands until they rested on his scalp, the heat of it a stark contrast against the cold March air.

  It was gone before she could revel in it, replaced by one large, strong hand, no more than a shadow in the yawning blackness, capturing both of hers with ease.

  She gasped and tugged.