A Scandalous Secret (20 page)

‘And we shall be leaving Dominick,’ he said. Then, quick as a wink, he ran over to her and put his arms around her. ‘I wish we did not have to go, Mama. And I wish Dominick were not to marry Miss Thornwood.’

‘There are some things we cannot change, Nicky,’ she said, returning his embrace.

His face brightened. ‘Perhaps I should talk to him?’ he suggested helpfully. ‘He might marry you if I asked him to.’

‘No, no!’ Elizabeth cried, her imagination picturing the scene all too vividly. ‘On no account must you plague Mr Markham with such things, Nicky. I forbid it.’

‘Now listen to me, Nicky,’ Alastair cut in, speaking for the first time. ‘I want you - and Selina, too - to promise me that you will never tell anyone what you saw today in the garden. It is a great secret, you understand.’

He was very serious, and the two children were equally solemn in their assurances that they would never tell another soul. Alastair suggested that it was time they went up to bed. Selina’s old nurse
appeared but a moment later and shepherded them both out of the room.

‘I am mortified,’ Elizabeth said, her head bowed, as the door closed behind them. ‘Whatever must you be thinking of me?’

‘You must love Dominick very much,’ Alastair said, with infinite gentleness. ‘I wish things could be different, my dear.’

‘You do not believe our meeting today was arranged?’ She got the words out with some difficulty.

‘I know very well that it was not,’ Alastair answered. ‘But it is an immeasurable relief that nobody else was present tonight to hear Nicky’s tale.’

‘But to have taken such a risk, not even thinking....’ Elizabeth shook her head. ‘We could even have been seen from the house!’

‘In future—’ Dorinda began to say, but Elizabeth intervened sharply.

There is no future for Dominick and me,’ she asserted, forcing herself to accept that truth, however bitter. ‘I will attend the ball, since it is expected of me. But afterwards I intend to return to Dorset and never see Dominick Markham again.’

Chapter 13

Elizabeth prepared for the ball with even more care than usual. Her gown was of willow-green satin cut low across the bosom. She wore a single strand of pearls with a small diamond pendant at the base of the throat. A longer strand of pearls had been cunningly braided into her hair, which was arranged to fall in simple ringlets from an elaborate knot at the back of her head.

‘I declare,’ Dorinda said, as she came down with Alastair, ‘you make me feel like a positive frump, Lizzy.’

‘You look very pretty, Sister,’ Elizabeth assured her, eyeing with approval Dorinda’s gown of amaranthus silk with large bouffant sleeves. The Armenian toque had been all the rage last year, and would do very well for a country ball.

The gentlemen were both well turned-out. Oswald’s eye was now just presentable enough for him to venture out more boldly; and it had gained him a flattering degree of attention and sympathy, which he seemed to enjoy enormously.

It was a short ride to the Hall, and she was curious to see what Dominick had done with the place. Passing under a crescent-shaped portico supported by four Doric columns, they moved into the lofty entrance hall. At the end of it was an ornately carved stairway. By day, the hall would be lit by sunlight from the
windowed cupola that topped the roof. The furnishings were elegant but quite restrained, she noted with approval.

Miss Trottson had exerted herself to assist her nephew in greeting his guests. She had so far acceded to the dictates of fashion as to exchange her usual grey or black for a gown of corbeau colour and a fringed cashmere shawl. Miss Thornwood was arrayed, as befitted her youth and rank, in the creamy satin she had previously described, with a pert aigrette of matching white feathers in her hair.

But it was Dominick who held Elizabeth’s attention from the first. In his exquisitely simple coat, his neckcloth arranged in a perfect Mathematical, he was the most handsome man in the room.

‘Very well for a Somerset merchant, I must say,’ Lady Penroth, standing at Elizabeth’s left, remarked, with quite unconscious condescension. ‘But a large income these days buys a multitude of friends.’

‘As your presence tonight undoubtedly attests,’ Elizabeth said sweetly.

Lady Penroth was not precisely quick-witted, but even she could not mistake this pointed set-down. She stiffened at once, becoming even more alarmingly perpendicular than usual, but Dorinda stepped into the breach before she could reply in kind.

‘Mr Markham’s manners are universally admired,’ she said with quiet deliberation. ‘Indeed, Alastair and I already consider him as one of our dearest friends.’

Whether Lady Penroth was abashed at this spirited championship, or whether she realized belatedly that her own plain-faced daughter hoped to be united to Peter Thornwood - and might one day be related to the merchant by marriage - she suffered the rebuff without any further comment.

Everyone in the county had turned out for this occasion in all
their seldom-displayed finery. It should have been a highly enjoyable evening, but Elizabeth knew at least one other person present who was as unhappy as herself.

Perhaps the most painful moment came when Dominick led off the dancing with Gwendolyn. He was merely doing his duty, but that was small consolation to the woman who was forced to watch an impudent chit dance away with the man she loved.

Elizabeth was partnered first by Oswald, who was a very fine dancer, even if he smelled a little too strongly of eau-de-Cologne. In the next set she danced with Alastair, and then joined in a quadrille with Peter Thornwood.

At length the time came when her host, having fulfilled his social obligations, approached her.

As the opening strains of the stately country dance sounded, they came together, hands clasped, and she savoured every instant as they moved in time with the music. Each movement became a covert act of bittersweet love and leave-taking.

‘I must speak with you alone,’ he said, low-pitched. He executed a neat turn. ‘Try, if you can, to be the last to leave tonight. Contrive some excuse to return while the others are at the carriage. Promise me.’

‘Very well. I promise.’

Another clandestine meeting. What folly! And after all she had told herself only days before. But when had she ever acted rationally where he was concerned?

The set ended all too soon. Elizabeth seated herself for a few minutes beside Dorinda who, collapsed on a finely carved chair, was fanning herself vigorously.

‘What a splendid ball!’ her sister exclaimed. ‘I am quite fagged to death.’

‘Wonderful indeed.’

‘Oh, Lizzy!
’
Dorinda was immediately contrite. ‘I had forgotten
how difficult this must be for you.’

‘He wants to see me alone.’

‘But is that wise?’ Dorinda queried, looking around surreptitiously to ensure that they were not overheard.

‘I am very sure that it is not.’ She plied her own fan a little more briskly.

‘My dear, is there any way in which I can help?’

‘Do you think you might prevail upon Alastair to remain till the end?’ Elizabeth asked, adopting Dominick’s suggestion.

‘Oh, I can manage Alastair, never fear,’ she said saucily.

There was no time for more, as Squire Thornwood was upon them, being his usual simple, hearty self. He congratulated himself a half-dozen times on his daughter’s splendid catch, praising everything about Lammerton Hall, its owner and the ball.

The evening wore on, and Elizabeth was forced to watch Dominick partnering other young ladies up and down the room. He did not claim her hand again, but she never lacked for partners.

Gradually, the company thinned. By midnight, the only other guests remaining were the Thornwoods, who looked as if they were ready to take up residence.

It began to seem that the party from the Manor would outstay those from Merrywood. But Gwendolyn was quite exhausted, and Oswald was growing restive. In the end, their departures were almost simultaneous, Alastair taking care to ensure that the squire’s carriage was brought round just ahead of their own.

Dorinda entered the conveyance first. But just as she prepared to squeeze in, she cried, ‘Oh dear! I have left my fan.’

‘I will fetch it for you, Dorrie.’ Elizabeth gave no one else time to offer. ‘I believe I know just where it was lying.’

‘Surely one of the servants can get it?’ Oswald objected.

Miss Trottson, standing in the doorway, snorted at this. ‘Servants? Not a one of them can tell a fan from a fiddle!’

‘Let me accompany you, Lady Dansmere,’ Dominick suggested, already moving down the hall beside her.

They hurried back to the now deserted ballroom, where Elizabeth at once discovered the fan where Dorinda had hidden it, behind a small Grecian urn in a niche in the wall. Thus far, neither she nor Dominick had spoken.

‘Dominick,’ she whispered at last, clutching the fan, ‘I must leave.’

‘But we have not even spoken,’ he protested.

‘No,’ she stopped him. ‘I must leave Wiltshire - at once.’

‘Running away again?’ he questioned.

She clenched her teeth, struggling for self-control before she said, ‘You know as well as I that it is impossible for me to remain here.’

He seemed offended. ‘You do not trust me?’

‘I do not trust myself,’ she admitted, facing him with no attempt to conceal her feelings.

‘In time you will forget.’

‘Would to God that were possible!’ she cried. Then, as he looked at her with sad resignation, she went on, ‘Will you never understand, Dominick? For eight years I have lived on the memory of the night we spent together. In all my life, there has been only one night when I have ever felt truly loved; one night when everything I ever desired was mine.’

‘Sweet Bess,’ he said, taking her into his arms.

‘How,’ she asked him, her words muffled in his coat, ‘can I make you see what that has meant to me? It was a kind of talisman. Whatever life might bring, I could always say, “At least I have that one night.” My greatest sin is that I cannot regret it - even though I know that it is all I shall ever have.’

His arms tightened around her till she felt she must break, yet she made no sound. ‘How can I let you go, Bess?’ he muttered
into her hair. ‘Everything I have achieved, every plan I have made for eight years, has been for you. I have lived to find you, and now—’

‘Now,’ she said, releasing herself slowly, ‘it ends.’ She watched his jaw tighten.

‘You must not leave the country too precipitately,’ he said, descending to the practical. ‘You are expected to remain another sennight at least with your sister, and any sudden change of plan will be too much cause for speculation.’

‘We cannot meet again,’ she insisted.

‘No,’ he agreed. ‘I go to London again the day after tomorrow. My business should take some ten days.’

‘I will return to Dorset on Wednesday next, then.’ ‘Oh, my love,’ he whispered. ‘Let me hold you but once more.’ With an effort almost more than human, she forced herself to turn away from him - and from her last hope of happiness. ‘I dare not,’ she told him, her voice unsteady despite herself. ‘We can offer each other nothing but grief.’

One touch from him and she would have yielded. He must have known that as well as she did. But he restrained himself, allowing her to slip from the room and walk on alone to the waiting carriage.

* * * *

As they pulled away from Lammerton Hall, Dorinda said to her, ‘Thank you for finding my fan for me.’

‘You certainly took long enough about it,’ Oswald added, with unveiled sarcasm. ‘Was Mr Markham showing you the portraits of
his
ancestors? The fishmonger from Penzance, perhaps?’

‘He was not making love to me, if that is what you intend to insinuate, sir.’ She was too heartsick to bother with polite pretence.

‘Lizzy!’ Dorinda squeaked.

Elizabeth shifted the velvet cape which she wore over her gown.

‘Pardon me, Dorrie,’ she said, ‘but Lord Maples is so intimately acquainted with my affairs that I feel I need not scruple to speak plainly.’

‘You are upset, my dear,’ Alastair said, with his usual calm deliberation. ‘But do not be too hasty. This is all much ado about nothing.’

‘I did not mean to offend.’ Oswald was the quintessence of innocent surprise. ‘I beg pardon if I have done so.’

‘No offence has been taken, Lord Maples, I assure you,’ Dorinda replied to his apology, since no one else seemed inclined to comment. ‘We are all tired and not in the best of spirits.’

Oswald, however, was not prepared to let the matter rest there, but must insist on the role of injured innocence. ‘I would not for the world have dreamed of suggesting anything—’ he began.

‘Stubble it, Oswald,’ Elizabeth rudely interrupted, borrowing a phrase from Nicky’s stablehand vocabulary.

‘
Lizzy
,
please!’ Dorinda begged her.

Recognizing belatedly the difficult position in which she had placed them, she relented enough to say, ‘I am more than willing to forget this sorry incident. However,’ she continued wickedly, ‘to put everyone’s mind at ease, let me inform you all that Mr Markham goes to London again the day after tomorrow. By the time he returns, I shall be safe in Dorset. I hope you will now be satisfied.’

Chapter 14

The sound of someone pounding loudly upon the door of her chamber roused Elizabeth from her slumber the next morning. She hunched her shoulders and pulled the covers over her head.

Once again the head-splitting knocks were heard - even louder this time. Perhaps the house was on fire. Well, what did it matter? What did
anything
matter?

‘Lizzy!’ her sister’s voice called from the other side of the door. ‘Let me in.’

‘Go away, Dorrie,’ she cried, uncovering her face.

‘But you cannot sleep at a time like this!’

‘No, my dear sister,’ Elizabeth mumbled, ‘you have seen to that.’ Dragging herself out of bed, she stumbled to the door and flung it open.

‘Have you no heart, Dorrie?’ she wailed. ‘It is monstrous of you to wake me so early.’