More than a Mistress/No Man's Mistress (85 page)

He could see the moment at which anger drained out of her and a certain wistfulness took its place, parting her lips and making her eyes more luminous.

“Ferdinand,” she said softly, “it cannot be, my dear. You must not do this.” Tears welled into her eyes.

He possessed himself of both her hands. What he was about to do might look ridiculous, but he felt an overwhelming need to pay homage to her courage and loyalty and unfailing love—to her superiority over him. He went down on one knee and set his forehead against the backs of her hands.

“My love,” he said. “Do me the honor of marrying me. If you truly do not love me, I will understand. I will send you home to Pinewood in my own carriage the day after the reception. But I love you. I’ll always love you. It is my dream that you will marry me and that we will go home to Pinewood together and raise a family there.”

She drew her hands free of his, and he waited for rejection. But then he felt them come to rest lightly on his head, like a benediction.

“Ferdinand,” she said. “Oh, my dear love.”

He was on his feet then and scooping her up into his arms with a whoop that had her laughing. He twirled her about and carried her to the chair by the fireplace,
where he sat with her cradled in his arms, her head nestled in the warm hollow between his neck and shoulder.

“Of course,” he said, “everyone will be expecting our betrothal announcement at Tresham’s reception. Angie will want to insist upon a grand wedding in St. George’s and a lavish breakfast for five hundred or so afterward. All of it preceded the night before by a great ball.”

“Oh, no,” she said, real horror in her voice.

“Ghastly thought, is it not?” he agreed. “She will be even more eager this time because Tresham foiled all her grandiose plans by marrying Jane quietly by special license.”

“Can
we
marry quietly?” she begged him. “At Trellick, perhaps?”

He chuckled. “You don’t know my sister,” he said, “though I daresay you soon will.”

“Ferdinand.” She tipped back her head and gazed up at him. “Are you sure? Are you quite, quite—”

There was only one way to deal with such foolishness. He covered her mouth with his own and silenced her. After a few moments her arm crept up about his neck and she sighed her surrender.

Ferdinand found himself thinking all sorts of mindless drivel—about being surely the happiest man in the world, for example.

IOLA WAS SEATED IN THE EARL OF BAMBER’S
opulent town carriage, her mother beside her, the earl opposite. They were on their way to Dudley House.

It had been a turbulent week. The Duchess of Tresham had called at the White Horse Inn the day after Ferdinand stopped Viola from leaving on the stagecoach. She had issued a formal invitation to Viola and her mother to attend the reception she and her husband were giving. She had stayed for twenty minutes and had shown an interest in Claire, who was not working downstairs at the time. Her grace had mentioned that her godmother, Lady Webb, was considering employing a companion to live with her—she spent half the year in London and the other half in Bath. The duchess had wondered if Claire would be interested in the position.

The day after, Claire had gone with their mother, by invitation, to call upon Lady Webb, and the two had appeared delighted with each other. Claire was to begin her new position in two weeks’ time and had looked during the past few days as if she were walking on air.

“This is very kind of you, my lord,” Viola’s mother said to the earl.

He was looking stout and florid and very fine indeed in his evening clothes. He must be eight or nine years her
senior, Viola guessed. She had not asked her mother how it had come about that she had progressed from being the boy’s governess to becoming his father’s mistress. That was her mother’s private, secret life.

“Not at all, ma’am,” he said, stiffly inclining his head.

He too had called on them during the week. His manner to his former governess had been distant, but not discourteous. With Viola herself he had been scrupulously polite. He had requested the honor of escorting both ladies to the Duke of Tresham’s reception. Viola wondered now why he was doing it. Her mother had been his father’s mistress, and she was the offspring of that illicit union. But he answered her question even as she thought it.

“M’father wanted Miss Thornhill to be recognized as a lady,” he said. “I will have no part in thwarting his wishes.”

“She
is
a lady,” Viola’s mother said. “My father …”

But Viola was not listening. She was nervous. Yes, of course she was. It would be pointless to deny it. Even without her scarlet past—and even if she had been Clarence Wilding’s legitimate daughter—she could never have hoped to be on her way to a
ton
party. Although both he and her mother were of the gentry class, they were not high enough on the social scale to mingle with the
beau monde
.

But she refused to give in to her nerves. She had decided to trust Ferdinand and his family to know what they were doing. In a sense, it was a relief to have everything out in the open. To have no more secrets. No more hidden fears. And no more doubts.

She was wearing a white satin gown with a delicately scalloped hem and short train but with no other adornment.
She had been to several tedious fittings during the week with one of Bond Street’s most prestigious dressmakers. The gown, as well as the silver slippers and gloves and fan she had chosen to wear with it, had been exorbitantly costly, but the loan she had asked of Uncle Wesley until she could send the money from Pinewood had turned into a gift. Her mother had told him everything and he had been angry with Viola—but in a tearful, hugging sort of way. It had hurt him that she had borne the burden of her stepfather’s debts instead of going to him.

She had scarcely seen Ferdinand all week. He had called once formally to ask her mother’s and her uncle’s permission to marry her, even though she was twenty-five years old and he need not have asked at all. She had seen him only once—briefly—since then. Her hands closed firmly about her fan, and she smiled.

Tomorrow she was going home.

The carriage turned into Grosvenor Square and rolled to a halt before the doors of Dudley House.

S
HE LOOKED LIKE
Miss Thornhill of Pinewood Manor. That was Ferdinand’s thought as he watched her through much of the evening. She was the picture of understated elegance in her deceptively simple white gown. She wore her hair in the familiar braids, but they were looped and coiled in an intricate design. She bore herself with regal grace. If she was nervous—and she undoubtedly was—she did not show it.

He kept his distance. Everyone at Dudley House—and the drawing room and the adjoining salons beyond it were thronged with the crème de la crème of society—would
know what he had done on her behalf in Hyde Park the week before. He would not have it said, then, that she had to cling to him tonight, that without him she could not have done what she clearly was doing quite magnificently.

She was mingling with the
ton
. She was conversing with ladies whom one might expect under other circumstances to avert their faces from her and gather their skirts about them lest they rub against her. She was talking and laughing with gentlemen who had known her in her other, now-dead persona.

And she was doing it alone.

It was true that Bamber, distinguishing himself by his good manners as he had perhaps never done before, hovered at her elbow for the first hour until he had personally introduced her to every guest as his half-sister. And Jane, Angie, Tresham, and even Heyward made sure that one of them was always in any group that gathered about her.

But she behaved like Miss Thornhill of Pinewood. However she was feeling inside, she appeared to be perfectly at her ease.

Ferdinand watched her, at first with some anxiety, then with pride.

He had not been at all sure that day he had stopped her from leaving London that she would agree to the daring scheme he and Tresham had conceived. Perhaps in her own way, he thought, Viola was as drawn to a difficult challenge as irresistibly as he ever was. Nothing had been more chancy than her appearance here tonight.

But she had done it, and it had worked. Oh, he knew she had no wish to mingle with the
ton
after tonight. He
knew she longed to go home to Pinewood and to resume her life there. But she had done this first, and now it would be known that society had accepted her and she could return anytime she wished.

“Well, Ferdie.” His sister had come up beside him without his noticing. “I can see now why she was always so celebrated for her beauty. If I were a few years younger and still on the marriage mart, I would doubtless hate her.” She laughed merrily. “Heyward said you were mad, you and Tresh, and that you could never pull this off. But you have, as I told him you would—and of course Heyward is pleased about it. He says he always knew that when you finally did fall in love, it would be with someone wildly ineligible, but that he was going to have to throw his support behind you because you are my brother.”

“That is magnanimous of him.” He grinned.

“Well, it is,” she agreed. “There is no higher stickler than Heyward, you know. I believe it is why I decided the first time I set eyes on him that I would marry him. He was so
different
from us.”

It had always been a source of amusement to Ferdinand and his brother that their shatterbrained, chatterbox Angie and a dry old stick like Heyward were locked up tight in a love match.

“Ferdie.” She set one gloved hand on his arm. “I simply
must
tell you, even though Heyward said I must not because it would be vulgar to talk about such a thing at a public event. Just you, though. I have already whispered it to Jane and Tresh. Ferdie, I am in an
interesting condition
. I saw a physician today and it is quite, quite certain. After
six years.
”

Her eyes were swimming with tears, he saw when
he looked down at her and set his hand warmly over hers.

“Angie,” he said.

“I hope,” she said. “Oh, I
do
hope I can present Heyward with an heir, though he says that he does not mind if it is a girl as long as both she and I come safely through the ordeal.”

“Of course he will not mind,” Ferdinand said, raising her hand to his lips. “He loves you, after all.”

“Yes.” She searched out her husband with her eyes and beamed at him while he looked back with an expression of pained resignation—he knew very well, of course, that she was spreading the embarrassing news of his impending fatherhood. “Yes, he does.”

She chattered on.

There was a formal supper later in the evening, during which Ferdinand sat with Mrs. Wilding and Lady Webb, who had taken Viola’s mother under her wing during most of the evening. Viola was at the opposite side of the room with Bamber and Angie and Heyward. But they were very aware of each other. Their eyes met halfway through the meal, and they smiled at each other—though it was more a smile of the eyes than of the face.

I am so proud of you
, his look said.

I am so happy
, hers replied.

I love you
.

I love you
.

And then Tresham was touching his shoulder and bending his head to speak quietly.

“You want the announcement made, then?” he asked. “And you still want me to make it?”

“It is your house and reception,” Ferdinand said. “And you are the head of the family.”

His brother squeezed his shoulder, straightened up, and cleared his throat. The Duke of Tresham never needed to do more than that to command the attention of a large number of people. The room was silent within moments.

“I have an announcement to make,” his grace said. “I daresay most, if not all of you, have half guessed it.”

There was a murmuring as all eyes moved between Ferdinand and Viola. His own were on her. She was flushed, her gaze lowered.

“But only half,” Tresham continued. “Lord Ferdinand Dudley asked me several days ago if I would announce his betrothal to Miss Viola Thornhill this evening.”

There was a swell of sound and a smattering of applause. Viola was biting her lower lip. Tresham held up one hand for quiet.

“I prepared a suitable speech,” he said, “of congratulation to my brother, of sincere welcome to our family of my future sister-in-law. But we Dudleys can never behave ourselves as we ought, you know.”

There was laughter.

“My sister and my duchess were already planning a grand wedding at St. George’s and a breakfast and ball,” Tresham continued. “It was to be the event of the Season.”

“What do you mean by
were
and
was
, Tresh?” Angeline cried, her voice filled with sudden suspicion. “Ferdie has not—”

“Yes, I am afraid he has,” Tresham said. “This morning I was informed an hour after the event that Ferdinand and Miss Thornhill were married by special license, his valet and her maid the only witnesses. Ladies
and gentlemen, I proudly present to you my brother and sister-in-law, Lord and Lady Ferdinand Dudley.”