Her Heart's Captain (20 page)

“N-Now?” She felt her pulse flutter alarmingly.

“I'm afraid to wait any longer. It seems that the longer I keep myself away from you, the cooler you grow toward me. Please, Jenny. If you knew how impatiently I've been wishing away the hours …”

It would, she felt, be utterly heartless not to grant his request. She nodded, let him take her arm and lead her out of the ballroom. She knew that almost everyone had noted their departure, but the captain seemed completely oblivious to the murmurings and surreptitious glances that followed in their wake. She supposed that her reputation would be permanently ruined, but it didn't seem to matter.

The library was, as he surmised, unoccupied. He couldn't in good conscience close the door, but he led her to a sofa against the furthest wall in the hope that there they would be safe from prying eyes. “Please sit down, Jenny. And don't gaze up at me so beguilingly with that look of bewilderment or I shall find it impossible to speak. Don't you know what I want to say to you?”

“No, I haven't the slightest idea. If it had anything to do with Robbie, I don't believe you'd be so ill-at-ease.”

He gave a snorting laugh. “You are charmingly frank, ma'am. But why did you suppose I'd want to speak to you about your brother?”

“Only because he sails under you. I thought that perhaps you had some complaint about him and didn't wish to discuss it with Mama.”

He couldn't help smiling at her. “If I
had
such a complaint, you goose, I'd not discuss it with his family. He's in the Navy, not a boy's school, and I'm his captain, not a headmaster. No term reports are sent out to a seaman's parents. His conduct on shipboard, my dear, has nothing whatever to do with you.”

“I see. Excuse me for sounding so foolish. But if you didn't wish to discuss Robbie, then what—?”

“You truly have no idea, do you?” He shook his head in dismay and took a turn across the room. “You're not making this at all easy for me,” he said from the fireplace and then walked back and stood looking down at her. “I've been brooding for the past two days about how to say what I must say to you, and I still don't know how to begin. I don't feel comfortable about starting by telling you that I love you, for I fear I haven't properly prepared you for it; but if I start by asking you what you meant when you said that you wished you could dislike me, you would be quite justified in telling me it was none of my business. So I've been going round in circles in my mind without finding a solution to the dilemma.”

She stared up at him, her face quite pale. “I don't think I … I could have … heard you properly,” she managed.

“Damnation!” he muttered, sitting down beside her and taking one of her hands in his. “I
knew
you weren't prepared for this. I've had no experience in this sort of thing, you know, and I'm sure to make a botch of it. But, Jenny, the truth is that
never took I do
love you … and have from that first afternoon at Portsmouth. I thought of nothing else all during the voyage—never took so little interest in ship's business in all my days. I couldn't wait to come back and see you again. But when I did, it was plain you wanted nothing to do with me. Yet there was a moment, the other afternoon in the sleet, when I thought … Dash it all, Jenny, I'm adrift in a dinghy without compass or oar! Tell me what to do!”

Her eyes were wide with shock, and she could barely speak. “Oh,
Tris
—!” she breathed.

The same impulse that had gripped him in the curricle two days before took hold of him now. Words seemed suddenly quite unnecessary. He gathered her in his arms and kissed her with all the passion that six months of dreaming had built up in him.

At the doorway, Andrea Clement stood frozen to the spot. Her cousin Tris and
Jenny
! She couldn't believe her eyes. She'd seen them leave the ballroom together, but even then she'd not been able to believe that the fascinating Tris Allenby could be taken with mousy little Jenny. Never, in all the years of their friendship, had Jenny been able to win a beau away from her. Why,
everyone
said that Andrea Clement was the most beautiful girl in Wyndham. Why was Cousin Tris unable to see it?

A knot of jealous fury solidified in her breast, and she tore her eyes from the still-embracing couple and turned away. She couldn't let herself cry, or shout, or even show by the slightest twitch of her lips her inner agitation. There were a hundred and fifty guests in the ballroom; none of them must know the extent of her humiliation.

She put her head up and strode back down the hall in the direction of the music. There were at least four young men waiting for a chance to dance with her. She would dance the night away. There was time, tomorrow, to think about what to do about Jenny and her cousin Tris.

Just before reaching her destination, she spied Lady Garvin approaching her from the ballroom. Jenny's mother's head was lowered, and she was rubbing the bridge of her nose with her fingertips. “Lady Garvin,” Andrea said, her voice artificially bright, “what are you doing out here? Are you unwell?”

Lady Garvin had not been enjoying herself. She'd looked forward to the occasion with eagerness, but the affair had been a disappointment from the start. For one thing, her gown was too tight at the waist and made her uncomfortable when she sat down. As a result, she'd spent too much time standing about, and now her feet pinched. Then, too, Lady Rowcliffe had, for the second time, indicated a lack of interest in her company. Lady Garvin, considered by everyone in Wyndham to be a woman of enormous charm, was unaccustomed to being rebuffed. It spoiled all her pleasure in the proceedings. Lastly, she'd foolishly indulged in two glasses of champagne, hoping the French potation would elevate her spirit, but her sensitive stomach would not stand for it. She was now suffering from a most unpleasant aftereffect and wanted nothing more than to return home to her bed. “Yes, Andrea, my dear, I'm afraid my delicate constitution is giving me difficulty. Have you by chance seen Jenny?”

Andrea's eyes flickered away from Lady Garvin's face. “Yes, I think I have. If I'm not mistaken, I saw her go down the hall in that direction. Perhaps you'll find her in the library.”

“I don't know what the girl would be doing
there
,” Lady Garvin muttered in irritation, “but thank you, Andrea, my love. I'll go along and see if I can find her,”

Why can't the chit be on the dance floor like the other girls?
Lady Garvin thought as she hurried down the hall. She had been too engrossed in her own concerns to have noticed what almost every other mother in the room had observed: that Jenny had snared the finest catch of the season and left the room with him. But Lady Garvin's mind did not dwell long on the problem of her reticent daughter. She was feeling too ill. Getting home was her prime goal.

In the library, Jenny was trying to gather her wits. She'd been shaken as much by Tris's words as by the shattering embrace from which she'd just been released. Breathless and on the verge of tears, she tried to hold him off. “Tris, don't—! I can't—”

“There you are, my dear,” came her mother's voice from the doorway. “I find I'm not feeling at all the thing. I've ordered the carriage. Will you ask the butler to find our cloaks? I'd like to leave right—”

All at once the import of Jenny's situation burst upon her consciousness. Her daughter was sitting on the sofa with Captain Allenby, and he had his hands on her arms! From the expressions on both their faces, it was plain that she'd interrupted a scene of high emotion. There was no question at all that her daughter and Allenby were in some manner
involved
.

She felt her heart leap. Captain Allenby might be a brute as a captain, but there was not one mother of a marriageable girl in that ballroom who wouldn't wish for him as a son-in-law. She, more than any of the others, wished for it, for Robbie's future would be affected, too. The thought had crossed her mind the other day that there was something between Jenny and the captain, but she'd dismissed it as impossible. But now …

Jenny had jumped to her feet, and the captain, looking utterly chagrined, had followed suit. “I'm sorry, Mama,” Jenny said, starting toward her. “I'll come at once.”

Lady Garvin would have liked to cut her tongue out. She wasn't as sick as all
that
. “Oh … well, my dear, I'm not in a
great
hurry. If you wish to finish your conversation with Captain Allenby, I—”

“No, it isn't … I mean, we're quite … finished. I'm ready to leave,” Jenny assured her.

Lady Garvin almost stamped her foot in frustration. Jenny hadn't an ounce of cunning in her. Couldn't she have read her mother's signal? Couldn't she have grasped at the pretext her mother offered and remained long enough to conclude her
tête-à-tête
?
This
way, she'd
never
win herself a suitor. No girl could possibly succeed in winning a proper husband if she didn't have a trace of guile.

But Captain Allenby didn't give up easily. “If you must go, Jenny,” he said, detaining her by keeping hold of one of her hands, “may we continue this conversation tomorrow? May I call on you?”

“I … don't think there's anything to be gained …” She tried to wriggle her fingers out of his hold. “There's no use in pursuing the subject further, Captain. I don't have … anything to say.”

“But you must at least explain—” he begged, quietly urgent.

“Of
course
you may call, Captain,” Lady Garvin interjected, smiling at him broadly. If her daughter was too idiotic to play the game, she'd take matters into her own hands. “Will eleven suit you? Jenny is always available to callers at that hour,
aren't
you, my dear?”

Jenny looked from her mother's face (with its expression that clearly ordered her daughter to acquiesce or face her wrath) to Tris's entreating eyes.
Very well
, she thought, surrendering to the inevitable,
I'll see him one more time
. Once more could not make the situation more painful to her than it was already. She nodded meekly. “Yes, I
am
available at that hour, Captain, if it's convenient for you.”

He bowed over the hand he still held captive in his own. “Eleven, then. I look forward to it.”

“Good night, sir,” she said in her low, shy voice.

His eyes locked on hers until hers fell. Then he released her hand with a sigh. “Until tomorrow,” he said as he watched her go.

Chapter Seventeen

The next morning Sally Clement came downstairs in her dressing gown, a solecism she would not have permitted herself if she expected anyone else to be up and about. But the ball the night before had lasted until two, and she was certain that nobody in the household but the servants would stir before noon. She padded into the breakfast room on her slippered feet, eager for a cup of her morning coffee, and found to her surprise that Tris was already there, wide awake and fully clothed. She paused on the threshold, pink with embarrassment. “Oh, Tris! Down so early? I didn't dream … that is, I was certain everyone would stay abed 'til noon. Here I've come down so informally attired, while you are dressed up to the nines. I should at least have dressed my hair.”

Tris laughed and held a chair for her. “Nevertheless your appearance is a delight, Aunt Sally. I've come down early because I've a call to make this morning. I was afraid I'd be forced to breakfast alone. Do sit down and join me.”

But they were not destined to remain a twosome. A few minutes later Lady Rowcliffe floated in, dressed in a filmy morning gown, her grey locks still plaited in their nighttime style and falling in two short ropes over her shoulders. “Heavens, what early birds,” she exclaimed. “I was convinced I'd have the breakfast room all to myself. If I'd known, I would have dressed my hair.”

Her remark brought a burst of laughter from her son and sister-in-law, and she sat down at the table amid much merriment. Tris, in a mood of bouyant optimism about the forthcoming interview with his beloved, teased the ladies about their
dishabille
quite unmercifully, causing Lady Clement to giggle and blush and his mother to slap him playfully on the wrist for his sauciness. But she couldn't help throwing him a glowing look at the same time, for she hadn't seen him looking so content since the day they'd arrived.

Tris winked at his mother in acknowledgment of her questioning glance. He was indeed much happier than he'd been in days. His optimism, he realized, was based more on conjecture than on actuality, but he'd convinced himself that he had good reason for high spirits. It had taken him half the night to come to that conclusion, for when Jenny had left the ball last evening, his frustration at the interruption of their talk had been overwhelming. But he'd lain awake for hours, reviewing the circumstances of their entire relationship, and he'd concluded that he had no reason to despair. While her
words
to him had been reticent and unencouraging, her
behavior
had been quite the opposite. There was no doubt the girl was drawn to him. There was a feeling between them—and he couldn't be mistaken!—of being able to understand each other without mere words, a strong awareness of the other's presence in a crowd, and a physical attraction so powerful that their embraces had seemed almost inevitable. He knew she felt those things as much as he. Some sort of artificial impediment existed in her mind which kept her from opening up to him, but this morning he would make her face that impediment and they would overcome it. He had no doubt of imminent success. She was, at heart, a straightforward, honest, clear-thinking young woman. All he had to do was help her to see the truth.

When Sally left the table to help herself to a dish of kippers and eggs from the buffet, Lady Rowcliffe snatched at the opportunity to ask her son the reason for his high spirits.