More than a Mistress/No Man's Mistress (16 page)

“I will even say please, Jane,” the Duke of Tresham said, his voice falsely humble.

She looked reproachfully at him. Was there even the remotest chance that the earl would be among the guests? There was one way of finding out, of course. She could ask Mr. Quincy if she could look at the guest list.

“I will think about it,” she told him while her stomach performed an uncomfortable flip-flop.

“I suppose,” he said, “that is the best I can expect from you for now, is it, Jane? You cannot capitulate too soon or it will seem that you have allowed yourself to be overpowered. Very well. But your answer must be yes. My mind is set upon it. We will do some rehearsing tomorrow afternoon.”

“You are rubbing your leg again,” she said. “I suppose you will not admit that you were foolish to go out today and more foolish to stay out so long. Let me call someone
to help you up to your room, and let me have some cold water sent up to you.”

“I have been attempting to teach my brother to distinguish the front end of a horse from the rear,” he said. “I have wagered a hefty amount on him at White’s, Miss Ingleby, and am quite determined that he will win the race.”

“How terribly foolish men are,” she said. “Their minds are totally bent on trivialities, their energies spent on matters of insignificance. If Lord Ferdinand is hurt on Friday, you will perhaps realize that he is of far more importance to you than the mere winning of a bet.”

“If you have finished your scolding,” he told her, “you may do what you yourself suggested, Miss Ingleby, and summon the heftiest footman you can find.”

She left the room without another word.

What if her description was circulating London? she thought suddenly. What if she stepped into the music room on Thursday evening and the assembled guests arose en masse to point accusing fingers at her?

She could not help the foolish feeling that in some way it would be a relief.

OCELYN DID NOT OFTEN ENTERTAIN, BUT WHEN
he did, he did it in lavish style. His chef grumbled belowstairs at having been given no notice at all of the monumental task of preparing a grand dinner to begin the evening and a tasty supper to sustain it at midnight. But he set about the task with a flurry of creative energy instead of resigning on the spot as he threatened to do whenever he stopped work long enough to draw breath.

The housekeeper did not complain, but marshaled her troops with grim determination to banish every speck of dust from the rooms that would be used for the entertainment and to have every surface polished and gleaming. She arranged the lavish mounds of flowers that Michael Quincy had ordered.

As Jocelyn had predicted, almost everyone accepted his invitation even though doing so doubtless involved the breaking of other commitments at the last moment. The chance to attend a dinner and soiree at Dudley House did not come often.

Jocelyn instructed his housekeeper to select or to hire a maid accomplished at dressing a lady’s hair. He did toy with the idea of also taking Jane Ingleby to a fashionable modiste and commanding that an evening gown be made up with all haste—he had considerable influence with two or three of London’s most exclusive dressmakers—but he did not do so. She would without doubt
make a fuss and end up refusing to sing. Besides, he must not make her look too much the lady, he decided, or his guests would be wondering about the propriety of her having spent almost three weeks beneath his roof as his nurse.

He spent some time during the afternoon in the music room with her, rehearsing two contrasting songs to show off her voice as well as an encore, the possibility of which she protested was nonsense, but which he insisted was not.

He found, as he dressed for the evening, that he was feeling nervous. A fact that thoroughly alarmed him and made him despise himself heartily.

W
HEN SHE HAD BEEN
younger, when her parents had both been alive and healthy, there had been frequent picnics, dinners, and dances at Candleford Abbey. They had loved entertaining. But Jane did not believe they had ever invited anywhere near fifty guests at one time. And even those parties she remembered had been a long time ago. She had been just a girl.

She sat in her room for several hours before getting ready to go downstairs, listening to the distant sounds of voices and laughter, imagining what was happening, what was yet to happen before she was summoned to sing. But it was impossible to predict the exact time of the summons.
Ton
parties, Jane was aware, were quite unlike their counterparts in the country, which almost never continued past eleven o’clock or midnight at the very latest. Here in town no one seemed to consider it strange to be up all night—and then, of course, to sleep all the following day.

She might not be called down before midnight. She would collapse in a heap of the jitters if she had to wait that long.

But finally she could see from the clock on the mantel that Adele, the French maid who had been hired for the evening just to dress her hair, would be knocking on her door in ten minutes’ time. It was time to get dressed.

It was far too late to regret agreeing to this madness. There was no one among the guests—she had perused the guest list with great care—who might know her identity. But the Earl of Durbury was in town. What if everyone at tonight’s gathering had been furnished with her description? Her stomach lurched. But it was too late.

She determinedly pulled off her maid’s frock and drew over her head the carefully ironed sprigged muslin dress she had set out on her bed earlier. It was a dress perfectly suited to afternoon tea in the country. It was not at all appropriate for an evening party even there, of course, but that did not matter. She was not a guest at tonight’s entertainment, after all.

She shivered with mingled cold, excitement, and fear.

She had never meant to hide when she fled to London. What she should have done after making the ghastly discovery that Lady Webb was not at home, Jane thought belatedly, was to stay at the hotel where she had taken a room and apply to the earl’s man of business in town for funds. She should have boldly proclaimed to all the world that she had been abused and assaulted by a drunken rogue during the earl and countess’s absence from Candleford and had quite justifiably defended herself by hitting him with a book and removing herself far from proximity to him.

But she had not done it, and it was too late now.

She was in hiding. And about to show herself to fifty members of the crème de la crème of British society.

What
utter
madness.

A female voice laughed shrilly in the distance.

Someone tapped on Jane’s door, making her jump foolishly. Adele had arrived to dress her hair.

A
T ELEVEN O’CLOCK
L
ADY
Heyward, Jocelyn’s hostess for the evening, announced the end of the card games that were in progress, while Jocelyn himself directed a few footmen in the moving of the drawing room pianoforte to the center of the room and the arrangement of chairs about the room’s perimeter. The musical part of the evening was about to begin.

Several of the younger ladies volunteered or were persuaded to play the pianoforte or to sing. One gentleman—Lord Riding—was brave enough to sing a duet with his betrothed. All the recitals were competent. The guests listened more or less attentively and applauded politely. This was, after all, a familiar form of evening entertainment to them all. Only a few of the acknowledged patrons of the arts ever hired professional artists, but on those occasions the evening was heralded as a private concert.

Finally Jocelyn got to his feet with the aid of his cane.

“Do feel free to stand up and move about for a few minutes,” he said when he had everyone’s attention. “I have engaged a special guest for your entertainment before supper. I shall go and bring her down.”

His sister looked at him in surprise. “Whoever can she be, Tresham?” she asked. “Is she waiting in the
kitchen? Where on earth did you find her when you have been almost shut up here for the past three weeks?”

But he merely inclined his head and left the room. Fool that he was, he had scarce been able to think of anything else all evening but this moment. He just hoped she had not changed her mind. Five hundred pounds was a considerable inducement, of course, but he was of the opinion that if Jane Ingleby had decided she did not want to sing, even five thousand pounds would not convince her.

He had been pacing the hall, leaning heavily on his cane, for two minutes after sending Hawkins up for her before she appeared on the staircase. She stopped on the third stair up and turned into a decent imitation of a statue—a pale, grim statue with its lips set in a thin, hard line, who nevertheless looked like an angel. The light, simply styled muslin dress did wonders for her form, accentuating her tall, slender grace. Her hair—well, he simply could not remove his eyes from it for a long moment. It was not elaborately styled. It was not a mass of curls and ringlets, as he had half expected. It was dressed up, but all the usual severity was gone. It looked soft and healthy and shiny and elegant. And pure gold.

“Well, well,” he said, “the butterfly has fluttered free of its cocoon.”

“It would be much better if we did not do this,” she said.

But he moved to the bottom of the staircase and reached up a hand for hers, holding her eyes with his own.

“You will not turn craven on me now, Jane,” he said. “My guests await my special guest.”

“They will be disappointed,” she warned him.

It was entirely unlike her to cower. Not that she was doing that exactly. She was standing straight with her chin lifted proudly. She also looked as if she might have sent roots down into the third stair.

“Come,” he said, using his eyes shamelessly to compel her.

She came down to the second stair, and when he turned his hand palm down, she set her own hand on his and allowed him to lead her toward the drawing room. She had the bearing of a duchess, he thought with what might have been amusement under different circumstances. And in the same moment he felt as if scales had fallen from his eyes. An orphan? Raised in an orphanage? Turned out on the world to make her own way in life now that she had grown up? He did not think so. He was a fool ever to have been taken in by that story.

Which made Jane Ingleby a liar.

“ ‘Barbara Allen’ first,” he said. “Something that is familiar to my fingers while they limber up.”

“Yes. Very well,” she agreed. “Are
all
your guests still here?”

“Hoping that forty-eight or forty-nine of them have retired to their homes for their beauty sleep, are you?” he asked her. “Not one has left, Jane.”

He felt her draw deep, steadying breaths as a liveried footman leaped forward to open the drawing room doors. She lifted her chin a little higher.

She looked like a fresh garden flower amid hothouse plants, he thought as he led her inside and between two lines of chairs, on which his guests were seating themselves
again and from which they looked with curiosity at his guest.

“Oh, I say.” It was Conan Brougham’s voice. “It is Miss Ingleby.”

There was a buzz as those who knew who Miss Ingleby was explained to those who did not. They all, of course, knew about the milliner’s assistant who had distracted the Duke of Tresham’s attention during his duel with Lord Oliver and had then become his nurse.

Jocelyn led her into the open space occupied by the pianoforte at the center of the room. He released her hand.

“Ladies, gentlemen,” he said, “I have persuaded Miss Ingleby to share with you what is surely the most glorious singing voice it has ever been my privilege to hear. Unfortunately she does not have an accompanist who can do her justice, only me. I dabble along, you see, with five thumbs on each hand. But I daresay no one will notice once she begins to sing.”

He arranged the tails of his coat behind him as he seated himself on the bench, set his cane on the floor beside him, and curved his fingers over the keys. Jane was standing exactly where he had left her, but in truth he was not paying her much mind. He was terrified. He who had faced the wrong end of a pistol in four separate duels without flinching shied away from playing the pianoforte for an audience who would not even be listening to him, but to Jane. He felt exposed, almost naked.

He concentrated his mind on the task at hand and began playing the opening bars of “Barbara Allen.”

Her voice was breathless and slightly shaking for the first two lines of the first verse. But then she settled
down, as did he. Indeed, he soon forgot his own task and played more from instinct than deliberate intent. She sang the song better, more feelingly, than he had yet heard it, if that were possible. She was the sort of singer, he realized, who responded instinctively to an audience. And his guests were a very attentive audience indeed. He was sure no one moved in any way at all until the last syllable of the ballad had faded away. And even then there was a pause, a moment of absolute silence.

And then applause. Not the muted applause of a gathering of the
beau monde
being polite to one of its own, but the enthusiastic appreciation of an audience who had for a number of minutes been transported into another dimension by a truly talented artist.