A Perfect Likeness (29 page)

Long tables covered with starched white cloths were set to one side, groaning beneath the weight of the magnificent cold feast Petra’s chefs had provided. There were cold meats, pies, shellfish of every description, salmon mousses of a particularly splendid appearance, cheese, salads, breads, and fruit, to say nothing of a seemingly endless selection of cold sweets, including sorbets, each one nestling on a tray of broken ice. Footmen dispensed chilled champagne as if it had been drawn from a spring, and already the atmosphere was lighthearted, the gentlemen laughing and the ladies smiling, their parasols twirling. The party seemed set to be yet another of Petra’s famous successes.

The track leading to the waterside site was cluttered with carriages, while in a clearing nearby the gentlemen’s horses were being looked after by a small army of Tremont grooms. Bryony was looking toward this clearing when suddenly she noticed Sebastian. He was standing in conversation with several army officers. He was taller than his companions and had for the moment discarded his top hat so that the sun shone directly on his golden hair. There was something very distinguished about him, from his undisputed good looks to the elegance of his clothes and the grace with which he wore them. His coat was brown and his breeches the palest of fawns; his silk cravat had been tied in a loose, informal way; and spurs gleamed at the heels of his highly polished boots.

Almost as if he sensed her gaze, he turned and their eyes met. He excused himself from those he was with and began to walk toward the barouche.

Felix had already dismounted and was handing Delphine down. He then held his hand up to Bryony, and she very reluctantly accepted. He glanced across at Sebastian and his fingers tightened urgently around hers. “I must speak privately with you, Bryony.”

“No, sir.”

“Please, for I must apologize for my actions last night—”

“Consider yourself to have apologized then, sir,” she replied coolly, uncomfortably aware that Sebastian might again misconstrue what he was seeing.

“Please, Bryony,” insisted Felix, “is it so very much to ask? You will be safe, I promise you, but please agree to speak with me a little later.”

“Very well,” she said hastily, “but only for a moment and only where others may see us at all times.”

He nodded, releasing her. He withdrew at the very moment Sebastian came to her, and she was aware of the flush on her cheeks as she turned. “Good afternoon, Sir Sebastian.”

He watched Felix disappear among the other guests. “Good afternoon, Bryony,” he murmured. “You look very fresh and charming in yellow and white.” He offered her his arm.

She saw many faces she had seen the evening before as they circulated, and many that she had not. Word of events at the assembly had evidently spread very rapidly and she was aware of a certain sly curiosity on many faces, that curiosity becoming out-and-out inquisitiveness when at last she and Petra came face to face on the shore, just as Petra was alighting from one of the little pleasure boats.

She looked very bright in marigold silk, the gown having no adornment at all save the richness of its material, and little white ribbons trailed prettily from the knot of hair at the back of her head. She was laughing with her gentleman companion, but her laughter died away as she saw Bryony. Her glance was decidedly cool. “Good afternoon, Miss St. Charles, how very ... er, charming you look.” The pause was very deliberate, bringing attention to Bryony’s Liskillen clothes.

“Good
afternoon, my lady, how very sweet of you to say so,” replied Bryony, glancing at Sebastian. Today his mistress had been the guilty one, but was there any anger on his face? No, there wasn’t.

Petra smiled a little and then turned to her companion again and they strolled away toward the tables.

Bryony could sense the disappointment of the guests who had witnessed the brief exchange, for they had evidently been hoping for a repetition of the evening before, but she wasn’t concerned with what they were thinking, she was concerned about Sebastian’s apparent indifference to his mistress’s rudeness toward his intended wife. Oh, how different a matter it would have been had the wife been rude to the mistress!

He did not seem aware of her anger as they strolled on, for suddenly he turned to her. “You appear very collected today, Bryony.”

Nothing could have been calculated to goad her more. “I’m always collected, sir, until I am provoked,” she replied icily.

“Provoked? You’re referring to last night, no doubt. It seems to me that there was a great deal of provocation on all sides. Let’s hope it doesn’t happen again.”

She halted furiously. “Yes, sir, do let us hope that, but then, it will rather depend upon you, won’t it? To say nothing of the countess.”

His face was very still. “So nothing I said last night has changed your mind: you
still
believe Petra is my mistress.”

“I have the evidence of my own eyes to tell me that you are lying.”

His face was angry now, and he drew her farther away from the nearest guests. “You cannot possibly have seen
anything
to prove I am lying, because I am telling the truth!”

“But I have, sir, I have seen a copy of the countess’s loving letter to you.”

He seemed taken aback. “What letter?”

“The one she wrote after you had explained to her the real reason for wanting to marry me.”

“There was no such letter.”

“She wrote it, the writing was hers.”

“Was? Where is this letter now?”

“It was accidentally destroyed.”

“So its authenticity cannot be proved.”

“I do not need it to be proved, sir, for I
know
it was genuine. It was hidden in my reticule during the night I spent in Falmouth on first arriving from Liskillen. It was couched in most intimate and loving terms and left no doubt as to the nature of your friendship with the author. It also told of your great desire to succeed to your kinsman’s fortune, but that in order to do so you must first find a suitable wife, one who would not object to or make trouble about the way of life you intend to pursue to the full once the marriage has taken place.”

“So that is where that particular story originated,” he breathed angrily. “It wasn’t Felix, it was you!”

“I told him, yes, but I did not originate the story, sir, you originated it yourself when you told your sly mistress! She will do all in her power to stop you from marrying me—that much was obvious from the tone of the letter—but then, it isn’t as if you intend the marriage to be all sweetness and light anyway, is it? I am to be a cipher, Sir Sebastian, no matter what you might pretend to the contrary, for when you say that I will be your wife ‘in every sense of the word,’ you merely mean that you will consummate the marriage and thus deny me a legal loophole which might deny you your ill-gotten extra inheritance!”

“None of this is true!”

“Oh, spare me any more, for I know that it is, I knew it last night when you saw fit to blame me for everything your mistress caused to happen. You deny that she is your lover, but you defend her at every turn. Of
course
the letter was true, and I was a fool ever to hesitate for a moment, wondering if just maybe I should believe you. You are a convincing liar, Sir Sebastian Sheringham!”

“Don’t go too far, Bryony,” he warned, “for I will not be called a liar!”

“Don’t you tell me not to go too far, sirrah,” she breathed, “not you who have had the arrogance this morning to praise me for being collected! Collected? Since my arrival in this place I have been provoked most cruelly, the victim of your mistress’s jealous spite! First there was the letter to Felix, and then the one hidden in my reticule, then the miniature which replaced the one I carried of you! There was the so-called accident with the trained lurcher, an accident after which I saw running away the same cloaked figure I had interrupted in my room in Falmouth! Oh, she was clever then, wasn’t she? How smooth to liken the whole thing to an incident in a book! She did that because she knew I’d seen that figure, and wished to discredit anything I might say about it!

“And you supported her, Sir Sebastian, you supported everything she told you, ridiculing me when I attempted to tell you the truth! Last night she did everything she could to make a fool of me: she had her footman spill wine over my gown, she had one of her gentleman friends wreck a dancing set and make out that the fault was mine, and then she had three more gentlemen come and each claim I had promised them the same dance. I wasn’t responsible for any of those things, sir, but I was blamed all the same.
You
blamed me, sir, and you were angry when I at last turned upon her! I’ve endured so very much and I’ve been more unhappy than you will ever know or care, and so perhaps it’s small wonder that I fleetingly turned to your cousin. Oh, I do not deny it, for what point is there? Besides, you no doubt believe I’ve graced his bed every night since the first—and why should you not believe it, when you will be judging everyone else by your own low standards?”

Tears hung brightly on her lashes and her lips were trembling. “I came to England determined to do all I could to be a credit to you—I was going to be a Lady Sheringham you could escort with pride.” She gave a short, ironic laugh. “I was going to try to turn my cold marriage of convenience into something much more, I was even going to try to love you and earn your love in return if I possibly could. I have had all that slowly squeezed from me, and I can now only see the marriage for what it will be, a hollow thing, made hollow because you will take everything from it and give nothing in return. I know all this about you and still I will go through with it, but don’t ever again prate to me about how
collected
I am! Don’t patronize me, Sir Sebastian Sheringham, for I’m not the fool you and your mistress appear to think I am, and I’m no longer prepared to let you go on thinking it!”

The tears were wet on her cheeks now and suddenly she could bear it no more. She gathered her skirts and hurried away through the gathering, drawing many surprised glances as she did so.

Her precipitate flight gave Sebastian no time to reply and no time to prevent her from leaving. And as she hurried away, she did not once look back.

She kept her eyes lowered as she made her way quickly through the party, afraid that if she looked up someone might engage her in conversation and thus perceive that she was once again upset after a scene of some sort. Passing through the main gathering, she found herself on the wide, rhododendron-lined track where the carriages were drawn up waiting. Groups of coachmen stood talking together, and she hesitated, glancing across the track to where a path led away through the trees. Walking slowly, as if all was well, she followed the path, but although outwardly she looked collected and relaxed, she really wished she could run and run until she was safely away from everyone.

The sound of the party dwindled away behind her and was replaced by the gentle whispering of the breeze through the trees. She heard voices somewhere nearby and she thought she recognized Delphine’s among them, and so she hurried a little then, anxious to avoid all chance of encountering someone she knew. At last she found herself in a sheltered dell that trees hid almost completely from view of the path. There, on the quiet fern-edged grass, she sat down and took off her bonnet.

She gazed straight ahead at the gently moving leaves. She had told him everything at last; the only thing she had omitted saying was that she loved him with all her heart. She closed her eyes and bowed her head. Oh, how she wanted to believe him when he denied all the charges she had laid against him, how she wanted him to convince her that he was telling the truth. But she couldn’t believe him, the evidence all pointed the other way, and she would be deluding herself if she refused to face the facts. Her eyes filled with tears then, but she made no sound as she wept.

How long she had been there, hiding away from everything, she did not know, but suddenly she heard a twig breaking nearby, and she gave a start. There was only the sound of the trees, no voices to tell her that there were people nearby. Then she heard a rustling sound and her heart almost stopped as she heard Felix. “Bryony?” he called. “Are you there?”

For a moment she froze, and then she scrambled to her feet, edging away toward a spot where the bushes seemed thicker and would offer more concealment. But she had hardly retreated three steps when suddenly he was there, stepping into the clearing and seeing her immediately. He paused, his eyes unfathomable for a second, and then he smiled.

“Ah, there you are. Are you all right? I saw you hurrying away and knew you were upset again. I thought it best to follow you and see that you came to no harm.”

“Please leave me alone, Felix, I’m perfectly all right.”

“So I perceive,” he murmured, coming closer and standing in the middle of the clearing. His gaze moved slowly over her tearstained face. “Am I still not to be forgiven for last night?”

“I don’t wish to speak to you here, Felix, please go!” she said again, glancing anxiously all around.

“I can hardly leave you when I know you’re overwrought; that would not be the action of a gentleman.”

“I have yet to see you conduct yourself as a gentleman, sir.’’

A light passed through his eyes. “I hardly think it wise to antagonize me, do you?” he said softly, coming a little closer.

With a gasp she moved away, but she had chosen her hiding place too well; the cloak of bushes was too thick and there was no way out, save the way she had entered, and Felix stood between her and that small avenue.

Suddenly he darted forward, grabbing her by the wrist and twisting her roughly away from the bushes. She screamed as she stumbled and fell heavily to the grass. He made good his advantage, pinning her where she lay, his hand forced over her mouth so that she could not cry out again. His face was within inches of hers. Her eyes were huge and frightened, and he could feel her body quivering against his.

“Oh, my pretty, pretty Bryony,” he said softly, “how very desirable you are right now. No, don’t struggle, for it will do no good, you are about to be mine and there is nothing you can do to prevent it. If you have believed anything I’ve said to you, you’ve been a fool, for since returning from London my sole purpose has been to seduce you—and my sole reason has been the need for revenge upon my damned cousin. He’s made a fool of me, he cheated me out of a small fortune at cards, and ... well, I’m about to make a fool of him—by making sure that his precious bride is soiled before she enters his marriage bed. Once I’ve sampled your charms, my lovely, you can go to him—oh, you’ll go to him, you have too much to lose not to, and then I’ll tell the world about you, Bryony, and Sebastian will be the fool.