Until You (23 page)
Authors: Judith McNaught
Tags: #Man-Woman Relationships, #England, #Historical Fiction, #Americans - England, #Contemporary, #Fiction, #Romance, #Americans, #Amnesia, #Historical, #English Fiction, #General, #Love Stories
"I heard her and so did Stephen," Clayton said, his unease and suspicion vibrating in his voice. "However, I believe her exact words were that she was sorry she hadn't been able to find some other unfortunate, gullible male for Miss Bromleigh to deceive and abandon, instead of her dear Langford."
"Well, that's almost the same thing…"
"Only if you consider idiocy almost the same thing as sense. Why," he said with gravest reservations about hearing the answer, "are we having this discussion right now?"
"Because I—I invited her to stay with us for a while."
To Whitney it seemed as if he had stopped breathing. "I thought she could help look after Noel."
"It would make more sense to ask Noel to look after her."
Uncertain whether his mocking tone disguised annoyance or amusement, she said, "Naturally, Noel's governess would be secretly in charge."
"In charge of who—Noel or Charity Thornton?"
Whitney bit back a nervous smile. "Are you angry?"
"No. I am… awed."
"By what?"
"By your sense of timing. An hour ago, before I wore us both out making love, I might have reacted more violently to having her in my house than I am able to now—when I'm too weak to hold my eyes open."
"I rather thought that would be the case," she admitted guiltily after he deliberately let the silence lengthen.
"I rather thought you did."
He sounded almost disapproving of that, and she bit her lip, carefully lifting her gaze to his face, searching his inscrutable features, one by one. "Finding what you're looking for, my love?" he asked mildly.
"I was looking for… forgiveness?" she hinted, and her glowing eyes were almost Clayton's undoing as he struggled to keep his face straight. "A manly attitude of benevolence toward his overwrought wife? A certain nobility of spirit that manifests itself in the quality of tolerance for others? Perhaps a sense of humor?"
"All of that?" Clayton said, a helpless grin tugging at his lips. "All of those qualities in one beleaguered male with a wife who has just invited the world's oldest living henwit into his home?"
She bit her lip to keep from laughing, and nodded.
"In that case," he announced, closing his eyes, a smile on his lips, "you may count yourself fortunate to have married just such a paragon."
"I
've come to ask you a favor," Stephen announced without preamble two weeks later as he walked into the morning room of his brother's house, where Whitney was supervising the installation of sunny yellow draperies.
Startled by his abrupt arrival and curt tone, Whitney left the seamstresses alone, and walked with Stephen into the drawing room. In the past three weeks since the aborted wedding, she'd seen him at different functions, but only at night and always with a different woman on his arm. Rumor had it that he had also been seen at the theatre with Helene Devernay. In the revealing daylight, it was obvious to Whitney that time wasn't soothing him. His face looked as hard and cold as granite, his attitude even to her was distant and curt, and there were deep lines of fatigue etched at his eyes and mouth. He looked as if he hadn't been to sleep in a week and hadn't stopped drinking while he was awake. "I'd do anything you asked of me, you know that," Whitney said gently, her heart aching for him.
"Can you make a place for an old man—an under-butler? I want him out of my sight."
"Of course," she said, and then cautiously she added, "Could you tell me why you want him out of your sight?"
"He was Burleton's butler, and I don't ever want to see anyone or anything that reminds me of her."
Clayton looked up from the papers he was studying as Whitney walked into his study, her face stricken. Alarm brought him quickly to his feet and around his desk. "What's wrong?"
"Stephen was just here," she said in a choked voice. "He
looks
awful, he
sounds
awful. He doesn't even want Burleton's servant around because the man reminds him of her. His pride wasn't all that suffered when she left. He loved her," she said vehemently, her green eyes shimmering with frustrated tears. "I knew he did!"
"It's over," Clayton said with soft finality. "She's gone and it's over. Stephen will come around."
"Not at this rate!"
"He has a different woman on his arm every night," he told her. "I can assure you he's a long way from becoming a recluse."
"He has shut himself away, even from me," she argued. "I can
feel
it, and I'll tell you something else. The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that Sheridan Bromleigh wasn't playacting about anything, including her feelings for Stephen."
"She was an ambitious schemer, and a gifted one. It would take a miracle to convince me otherwise," he stated flatly, walking back around his desk.
Hodgkin stared at his employer in stricken silence. "I—I am to be dismissed, milord? Was it something I did, or did not do, or—"
"I've arranged for you to work in my brother's home. That's all."
"But was I derelict in any
of my
duties, or—"
"NO!" Stephen snapped, turning away. "It has nothing to do with anything you've done." Normally he never interfered with the hiring or dismissal or discipline of the household staff, and he should have left this unpleasant task to his secretary, he realized.
The old man's shoulders sagged. Stephen watched him shuffle off, moving like a man who was ten years older than he'd been when he walked in.
I
t was a mistake to seek Stephen out, even from this safe distance, and Sherry knew it, but she couldn't seem to help herself. He'd told her he went to the opera on most Thursdays, and she wanted—needed—to see him just one more time before she left England. She'd written to her aunt three weeks ago, the day after her aborted wedding, explaining everything that had happened and asking Cornelia to send her enough money for passage home. In the meantime, Sherry had secured a position as governess to a large family without the means to hire a more desirable, older woman or the sense to verify the recommendation letter Nicholas DuVille had given her with Charity Thornton's name listed as a secondary reference—a reference that Sherry suspected the elderly lady knew nothing about.
The crowded pit at Covent Garden was occupied by boisterous, restless people who stepped on Sherry's feet and bumped her shoulder constantly, but she scarcely noticed. Her eyes were on the empty box, the seventh from the front, and she stared at it until the gilt flowers and stars on the front of it began to blur and merge. Time ticked past and the ruckus within the opera house rose to a deafening roar. The curtains behind the seventh box suddenly parted and Sherry froze, panicked because she was finally going to see him… and then she was devastated because she did not see him in the group at all.
She must have miscounted, she thought wildly, and began to count each box, searching the aristocratic faces of its occupants. Each box was separated from its neighbor by a slender gold pillar, and from each pillar a cut-glass chandelier was suspended. Sherry counted and recounted them, then she looked at her hands in her lap, clasping them tightly to stop their trembling. He wasn't coming tonight. He'd given his box to others. It would be another week before she could come again, providing she saved enough money to buy another ticket.
The orchestra gave out a blast of sound, the crimson curtains swept open, and Sherry mentally counted the minutes, ignoring the music she had once loved, glancing up compulsively at the two empty seats in the box, willing to see him there, and when she didn't, praying that he would be there when she looked again.
He arrived between the first and second acts, without her seeing him enter the box or take his seat—a dark spectre from the mists of her memory who materialized into the realm of her reality and made her heart thunder. Her eyes clung to his hard, handsome face, memorizing it, worshipping it, as she blinked away the sheen of tears that blurred her vision.
He hadn't loved her, she reminded herself, torturing herself with the sight of him, she'd merely been a responsibility he'd mistakenly assumed. She knew all that, but it didn't stop her from looking at his chiseled lips and remembering how softly they had touched hers, or from gazing at his rugged profile and remembering how his slow dazzling smile could transform his entire face.
Sheridan was not the only woman whose attention wasn't on the performance. On the opposite side of the theatre, in the Duke of Claymore's box, Victoria Fielding, Marchioness of Wakefield, was staring hard at the occupants of the pit, searching for the young woman she'd glimpsed earlier making her way into the opera house. "I
know
the woman I saw was Charise Lanc—I mean Sheridan Bromleigh," Victoria whispered to Whitney. "She was in the lines going into the pit. Wait—there she is!" she exclaimed in a low voice. "She's wearing a dark blue bonnet."
Oblivious to the curious looks of their husbands, who were seated behind them, the two friends peered hard at the woman in question, their shoulders so close together that Victoria's auburn hair nearly touched the glossy dark strands of Whitney's.
"If only she didn't have that bonnet on, we'd know her in a minute by the color of her hair!"
Whitney didn't need to see the color of her hair. For the next half hour, the woman in question never looked anywhere but at Stephen's box, and it was confirmation enough. "She hasn't stopped looking at him," Victoria said, her voice filled with some of the same confusion and sorrow that Whitney felt about the sudden disappearance and behavior of Stephen's fiancée. "Do you suppose she knew he would be here tonight?"
Whitney nodded, willing the young woman to look in her direction for just a moment, instead of the opposite one. "She knows Stephen comes here on Thursday nights and that he has that box. She was here with him a few days before she… vanished." Vanished was the least damning thing Whitney could say at the moment, which was why she chose the word. Victoria and Jason Fielding, who were also friends of Stephen's, were two of the very few people amongst the ton who were privy to most of the full story because they'd been invited to attend the small celebration that had been planned for after the private affair.
"Do you think she intends to meet him 'accidentally' for some reason?"
"I don't know," Whitney whispered back.
Behind them, their husbands observed the pretty pair who were ignoring a rather excellent performance. "What is that all about?" Clayton murmured to Jason Fielding, tipping his head toward their two wives.
"Someone must have the gown of the century on."
"Not if she's down there in the pits," Clayton pointed out. "The last time Whitney and Victoria indulged in a similar huddle, it was because Stephen's mistress was in his box with him and Monica Fitzwaring was in the next box with Bakersfield, trying to look as if she didn't know who was one narrow pillar away from her shoulder."
"I remember," Jason said with a grin. "As I recall, they were on the side of Helene Devernay that night."
"Whitney laughed all the way home," Clayton said.
"Victoria declared it the most diverting three hours of the entire Season," Jason added, and leaning forward he whispered jokingly, "Victoria, you are in imminent danger of toppling out of this box."
She sent him an abashed smile but did not cease her scrutiny of whatever they were watching.
"She's leaving!" Whitney said, feeling both relieved and crestfallen. "She didn't wait for the performance to end, and she didn't leave her seat between acts, which means she doesn't intend to meet him here accidentally."
As puzzled as he was amused by their girlish whispering, Clayton leaned sideways, scanning the rows in the pit, but he waited until they were on their way to their next engagement—a lavish midnight supper—before he brought the subject up to his preoccupied wife. "What were you and Victoria doing all that whispering about tonight?"
Whitney hesitated, knowing he would not be pleased that Sheridan Bromleigh had reentered their sphere or be interested in the reasons. "Victoria thought she saw Sheridan Bromleigh tonight. I couldn't get a good enough look at her face to say for certain that Victoria was correct." Clayton's brows drew together into a dark hostile frown at the mention of the woman's name, and Whitney decided to let the subject drop.
The following Thursday, after seeing that their husbands were occupied elsewhere, Victoria and Whitney arrived early at Covent Garden, and from the vantage point of their box, scanned the faces of every new arrival who entered the pit and the gallery, searching for one particular face. "Do you see her?" Victoria asked.
"No, but it's a miracle you noticed her in the crowd at all last week. It's impossible to see everyone's features clearly from up here."
"I don't know whether to be relieved or disappointed," Victoria said, sitting back in her chair when the curtain went up, and they still hadn't had a glimpse of the woman they'd thought was Sheridan Bromleigh last week.
Whitney sat back too, silently sorting out her own reaction.
"Your brother-in-law just arrived," Victoria said a few minutes later. "Is that Georgette Porter with him?"
Whitney looked across the theatre at Stephen's box and nodded absently.
"She's exceedingly lovely," Victoria added in the tone of one who is trying very hard to find and give encouragement about a situation that is not particularly encouraging at all. She liked Stephen Westmoreland very well, and he was one of a very few people whom her husband considered among his close friends. She had also felt an instantaneous liking for Sheridan Bromleigh, who, like herself, was also an American.
Whitney contemplated Stephen's attitude toward the woman at his side, who was smiling at him and talking animatedly. He was listening with a look of fixed courtesy, and Whitney had the impression he didn't know Georgette Porter was talking, or that she had a face, or that she was even in his box. Her gaze shifted inexorably to the seats below in the pits, scanning the rows of heads again. "She's here, I
know
she is. I mean, I have a feeling she is," she amended as Victoria glanced sharply at her.
"If I hadn't seen her arriving last week and been watching for her to come into the pit, I'd never have been able to point her out to you. We could never find her now, among all these rows of people."
"I know a way!" Whitney said on an inspired stroke. "Look for a head that is turned toward Stephen's box instead of the stage." A few minutes later, Victoria grabbed her arm in her excitement. "Right there!" she said. "The same bonnet too! She's practically beneath us, which is why we didn't see her."
Now that she'd spotted the other woman, Whitney observed her steadily, but not until she stood up to leave did she get a clear look at the other woman's wistful face. "It
is
her!" Whitney said fiercely, feeling a swift stab of helpless sympathy for the naked sorrow and longing she'd seen on Sheridan's face as she stood up to leave just before the opera's end.
Sympathy was not an emotion her husband was likely to share—at least not unless he too saw the way Sheridan Bromleigh had sat in silence, her gaze on Stephen. But if he were to see it, and if his attitude toward Sheridan were to soften, then Whitney thought he might be persuaded to talk to Stephen, to urge him to seek her out. Clayton was the only one, she knew, who had enough influence on Stephen to possibly sway him.
"W
e mustn't be late." Whitney cast an anxious look at the clock as her husband lingered over a glass of sherry. "I think we ought to leave now."
"How is it I never realized you were so inordinately fond of opera?" Clayton said, studying her curiously.
"Lately the… the performance has been quite riveting," she said. Bending down, she wrapped their son in a tight hug before he padded off sleepily between his governess and Charity Thornton.
"Riveting, really?" Clayton repeated, eyeing her with puzzled amusement over the top of his glass.
"Yes. Oh, and I exchanged our box for the Rutherfords' just for tonight."
"May I ask why?"
"The view from Stephen's side is much better."
"The view of what?"
"The audience."
When he tried to question her further about that baffling answer, Whitney said, "Please, just trust me and don't ask more questions until I can show you what I mean."
"Look," Whitney whispered, clutching Clayton's wrist in her agitation, "there she is. No—don't let her see you looking. Just turn your eyes, not your head."
He did not turn his head, but instead of looking in the direction she indicated, her husband slanted his gaze at her and said, "It would help immensely were I to have some slight idea whom I'm supposed to be looking for."
Nervous because so much could hinge on his reaction and his help, Whitney admitted, "It's Sheridan Bromleigh. I didn't want to tell you in advance for fear she wouldn't be here, or you wouldn't come."
His expression hardened instantly at the mention of the other woman's name, and she lifted beseeching green eyes to his cool gray ones. "Please, Clayton, do not condemn her out of hand. We have never heard her side in the matter."
"Because she ran off like the guilty little bitch she is. The fact that she likes opera, which we already knew, doesn't change that."
"Your loyalty to Stephen is clouding your judgment." When that didn't have any noticeable effect, Whitney persevered with gentle but firm determination. "She doesn't come here for the performances. She never even looks at the stage, she only looks at Stephen, and she always sits in rows behind his box so that he wouldn't see her if his attention wandered from the stage. Please, darling, just look for yourself."
He hesitated for an endless moment, then conceded with a curt, wordless nod, and slid a glance in the direction she'd indicated, off to their right. "Plain dark blue bonnet with a blue ribbon," Whitney added to help, "and a dark blue dress with a white collar."
She knew the moment Clayton found Sheridan in the crowd, because his jaw hardened, his gaze snapped back to the stage, and it remained there until the curtain went up. Disappointed, but not defeated, she watched him from the corner of her eye, waiting for the merest change in his posture that might indicate he was taking a second look. The moment she felt it, she stole a swift glance at him. He'd moved his head only a fraction of an inch to the right, away from the stage, but his gaze was far off to the right. Praying that this was not the only time in weeks that Sheridan Bromleigh had decided to watch the performance, Whitney leaned slightly forward to peer around Clayton's shoulders and smiled with relief.
For the next two hours, Whitney kept her husband and Sheridan Bromleigh under cautious surveillance, careful not to move her body in any way that would alert him. By the end of the evening, her eye sockets hurt, but she was feeling absolutely triumphant. Clayton's gaze had returned to Sheridan throughout the entire evening, but Whitney did not bring the topic up again until two days later, when she felt he'd had time to perhaps readjust his attitude toward Stephen's former fiancée.
"D
o you recall the other night at the opera?" she began cautiously as the footmen cleared away their breakfast dishes.
"I thought it was a 'riveting' performance, just as you'd said," Clayton said straight-faced. "The tenor who—"
"You were not watching the performance," she interrupted firmly.
"You're right." He grinned. "I was watching you watch me."
"Clayton, please be serious. This is important."
His brows lifted inquiringly, and he gave her his fullest attention, but he looked amused, wary, and prepared.
"I want to do something to bring Stephen and Sheridan Bromleigh face to face. I discussed it yesterday with Victoria, and she agreed they ought to at least be forced to talk to each other."
She braced herself for an argument and ended up gaping at him as he said casually, "Actually, a similar thought occurred to me, so I discussed it with Stephen last night when I saw him at The Strathmore."
"Why didn't you tell me! What did you say? What did he say?"
"I said," Clayton recited, "that I wanted to discuss Sheridan Bromleigh with him. I told him that I believe she goes to the opera specifically to see him."
"And then what happened?"
"Nothing happened. He got up and walked out."
"That's all? He didn't say anything?"
"As a matter of fact he did. He said that, out of respect for our mother, he would ignore the temptation to resort to physical violence against my person, but that if I ever brought up Sheridan Bromleigh's name to him again, I should not depend on his ability to exercise similar restraint."
"He actually
said
that?"
"Not in exactly those words," Clayton said with grim irony. "Stephen's were shorter and more—colorful."
"Well, he can't threaten me. There must be something I could do."
"Have you considered prayer? A pilgrimage? Sorcery?" Despite his light tone, he wanted her to let matters rest, and she could see that he did. When she didn't smile, he put his cup onto the saucer and leaned back in his chair, frowning a little. "You're absolutely determined to get involved in this, no matter what Stephen says or I say, is that it?"
She hesitated, and then nodded. "I have to try. I keep remembering the expression on Sheridan's face when she looks at him in the opera, and the way she was looking at him at the Rutherfords' ball. And Stephen looks more haggard and grim each time I see him, so being apart isn't doing either of them any good."
"I see," he said, studying her face with a reluctant smile lurking at the corners of his mouth. "Is there anything I can say to persuade you it's a mistake?"
"I'm afraid not."
"I see."
"I may as well confess—I've contacted Matthew Bennett to ask him to have his firm make inquiries about where she is. I can't do anything to bring them together until I can find her."
"I'm surprised you didn't decide to hire a lackey during the intermission to follow her home from the opera, and
then
have Bennett's firm make inquiries."
"I didn't think of it!"
"I did."
His voice had been so unemotional, his expression so marvelously bland, that it took a moment for the true import of those two words to register. When they did, she felt the familiar fierce surge of love that had grown stronger over the four years of their marriage. "Clayton," she said. "I love you."
"She's working as a governess for a baronet and his family," he informed her. "Surname is Skeffington. Three children. I've never heard of them. Bennett has their direction."
Whitney put her teacup down and stood up, intending to send a note to the solicitor's firm at once, asking for all the information they had.
"Whitney?"
She turned in the doorway of the morning room. "My lord?"
"I love you too." She smiled at him in answer, and he waited a moment before issuing a serious warning: "If you persist in your determination to bring them face to face, be very cautious how you handle this, and be prepared for Stephen to leave the moment he sees her. You should also be prepared for the possibility that he will not forgive you for this, not for a very long time. Think carefully before you take steps you may sorely regret."
"I will," she promised.
Clayton watched her leave and slowly shook his head, knowing damned well she wasn't going to waste time in contemplation and inaction. It simply was not in her nature to watch life happen and not wade in. It was, he decided wryly, one of the things he most loved about her.
He did not, however, expect her to act as swiftly as she did.
"What's that?" he asked late that same afternoon as he strolled past the salon and saw her sitting at a rosewood secretary, thoughtfully brushing the feathered end of a quill against her cheek while she studied a sheet of paper in her hand.
She looked up as if she'd been far away, and then smiled swiftly. "A guest list."
The frenetic activities of the Season were finally winding to a close, and they'd both been looking forward to returning to the peace and serenity of the country for the summer, so Clayton was naturally surprised she was evidently planning to entertain. "I thought we were going back to Claymore the day after tomorrow."
"We are. This party is three weeks off—it's a birthday party for Noel. Nothing too large, of course."
Over her shoulder, Clayton glanced at her list and muffled a laugh as he read the first item aloud, " 'One small elephant, safe for children to touch—' "
"I was thinking of a circus theme, with clowns and jugglers and such, with all the festivities and meals taking place on the lawn. That's so much more relaxed, and the children will be able to enjoy everything right alongside with the adults."
"Isn't Noel a little young for all this?"
"He needs the society of other children."
"I thought that was the reason he spends every day with the Fieldings' and the Thorntons' children when we come to London."
"Oh, it is," she said, giving him a breezy smile. "Stephen volunteered to give Noel's party at Montclair when I told him about it today."
"Having been to enough parties in the last six weeks to last a lifetime, I rather wish you'd have let him," he joked. "As Noel's uncle
and
godfather, it's Stephen's prerogative to have
his
country house overrun with parents who'll stay for a week and expect to be entertained, children's party or no."
"I suggested Stephen give your mother's sixtieth birthday ball at Montclair instead, and let us have Noel's birthday party at Claymore. Since her birthday is only three days after Noel's, that seemed the best plan."
"Clever girl," Clayton replied, instantly reversing his opinion of who ought to have the party. "Mother's ball will be a huge crush."
"Our party will be small—a few carefully chosen guests with their children and governesses."
As she spoke, Clayton glanced idly at the sheet of paper near her wrist and his eyes riveted on the name Skeffington. He straightened, and when he spoke, his voice was filled with amused irony. "Interesting guest list."
"
Isn't
it?" she replied with an incorrigible smile. "Five couples whose absolute discretion we can depend upon, no matter what they see or hear, and who already know most of the situation. And the Skeffingtons."
"And their governess, of course."
Whitney nodded. "Of course. And the beauty of the plan is that Sheridan won't be able to leave, no matter how badly she wishes, because she works for the Skeffingtons."
"How do you intend to prevent
Stephen
from leaving when he sets eyes on her?"
"Leave?" she repeated, looking even more pleased. "And abandon his nephew who adores him? The nephew he positively dotes on? How would that look to Noel? And how would it look to everyone else if he's so overset by the presence of a mere governess in a house with over a hundred rooms that he can't bear being there and has to leave? I wish there were a less public way to bring them together, but since Stephen clearly won't countenance a private meeting, I had to find a method of getting him where we want him to be and then preventing him from leaving. Even if he could rationalize that Noel wouldn't notice his absence, he'd still lose face in front of the Fieldings and Townsendes and everyone else. He has a great deal of pride, and Sheridan already trampled it. I doubt he'll be willing to sacrifice one iota more by leaving when he sees her. And by keeping the party outdoors, the governesses will be in constant view of the guests, so Stephen won't be able to avoid Sherry, even in the evenings."
She paused, glancing thoughtfully at the guest list. "I daren't invite Nicki. For one thing, he'll try to dissuade me, and even if he didn't, he'd refuse to come under these circumstances. He disapproved of everything Stephen did where Sheridan was concerned, including the fact that Stephen didn't try to find her and explain. Nicki is very hostile on the entire subject. He admitted to me the day after I saw her at the opera for the first time that he knew where she was, but he refused to tell me where when I asked. Nicki's never refused me anything. He said very firmly that she's suffered enough from Stephen and she doesn't wish to be found."
"She left. Stephen didn't," Clayton pointed out curtly.
"I'm inclined to agree, but Nicki is adamant."
"Then you're wise not to maneuver them into the same shire, let alone the same house."
Whitney heard that with a troubled frown. "Why not?"
"Because Stephen has developed a pronounced, highly refined loathing for DuVille since Sheridan vanished."
She looked so distressed that Clayton shifted his thoughts back to the plan to bring Sheridan into Stephen's presence. Her scheme was fraught with possibilities for failure, but he could not think of another that was better. "What if the Skeffingtons decline?" he said idly.
His wife dismissed that possibility by tapping her fingers on a folded missive on her desk. "According to the information in this letter from Matthew Bennett's firm, Lady Skeffington persuaded her husband, Sir John, to bring the family to London for the Season, specifically so they could mingle with the 'right sort of people.' Lady Skeffington has very little money, but very big social aspirations, it seems."
"She sounds delightful," Clayton said ironically. "I can hardly wait to have them occupy my home for seventy-two consecutive hours, twelve meals, three teas…"
Preoccupied with making her point, Whitney continued, "They came to London in high hopes of gaining an entree into the sort of elevated circles where their seventeen-year-old daughter might have an opportunity to make a brilliant match. As of yesterday, they'd succeeded in neither goal. Now, given all that, can you honestly believe the Skeffingtons will decline a personal invitation from the Duke of Claymore to attend a party at his country seat?"
"No," Clayton said, "but there is always hope."
"No, there isn't," his incorrigible wife said as she turned back to her note making with a laugh, "not when your brother happens to be considered the most splendid match in England."
"Maybe it will snow that weekend," he said, looking appalled by the forthcoming house party. "Surely at some time in the history of the world, it must have snowed on this continent in June."
W
ith her aching feet propped up on a footstool, Lady Skeffington sat in blissful silence in the salon of their small rented London house. On the opposite side of the room, her husband read the
Times
, his gouty foot propped up on another footstool. "Listen to how quiet it is," she said, tipping her head to the side, her expression blissful. "Miss Bromleigh has taken the children for ice cream. They will return at any moment, and all I can think about is how nice it is to have them gone."
"Yes, my dove," her husband replied without missing a word of text.
She was about to continue that topic when their footman, who doubled as coachman and also butler, intruded on the solitude, a missive in his outstretched hand. "If this is another notice about our rent—" she began, then her fingers registered the extraordinary thickness of the heavy cream paper in her hand, and she turned it over, staring at the seal embedded in the wax. "Skeffington," she breathed, "I think—I am almost certain—we have just received our first important invitation—"
"Yes, my dove."
She broke the seal, unfolded the note, and her mouth dropped open as she beheld the gold crest at the top of the parchment. Her hands began to shake as she read each word, and she stood up as excitement flowed through her shaking limbs. "
Claymore
!" she uttered in awe, her free hand clutching her chest, where her heart was beginning to thunder. "We have been invited… to
Claymore
!"
"Yes, my dove."
"The Duke and Duchess of Claymore request the honor of our company at a small party to celebrate the birthday of their son. And—" Lady Skeffington paused to reach out for her hartshorn on the table, before she could continue, "the Duchess of Claymore has written me a note in her own hand. She says she is sorry that she did not have the pleasure of making our acquaintance during the Season, but is hoping to remedy that at…
Claymore
…" She stopped for a dose of hartshorn before she continued. "… in three weeks. And we are to bring the children. How does that sound to you?"
"Devilish queer."
She pressed the invitation to her ample bosom, her voice a reverent whisper. "Skeffington, do you know what this means?" she breathed.
"Yes, my dove. It means we have received an invitation intended for someone else."
Lady Skeffington whitened at the possibility, snatched the paper from her chest, reread it, and shook her head. "No, it is directed to us, right there—look."
His attention finally drawn away from the
Times
, Sir John took the note from her outstretched hand and read it, his expression going from disbelief to smug satisfaction. "I told you there was no need to hare all over London hither, thither, and yon, hoping for invitations. This letter would have found us had we stayed right at home in Blintonfield, where we belong."
"Oh, this is not merely an invitation!" she said, her voice gaining girlish strength. "This means a great deal more than that!"
He picked his paper back up. "How so?"
"This has to do with Julianna."
The paper lowered a scant inch, and his eyes, red-rimmed from a pronounced fondness for Madeira, appeared over the top. "Julianna? How so?"
"Think, Skeffington, think! Julianna has been in London all Season, and though we could never get her vouchers to Almack's or anywhere else where she'd be seen by the best people, I did insist she stroll in Green Park each day. I was very regular about it, and we saw
him
there one day. He looked straight at Julianna, and I thought then… I thought, Yes, he sees her. And
that
is why we have received an invitation to Claymore. He noticed how lovely she is and has spent all this time searching for her and thinking of a way to bring her into his company."
"Rotten way for him to go about it—having his own wife send the invitation for him. I can't say I approve. Smacks of bad taste."
She rounded on him in dismayed disbelief. "What? Whatever are you talking about?"
"Our daughter and Claymore."
"The duke?" she cried in frustration. "I want her to have Langford!"
"I don't see how you'll pull that off. If Claymore has set his heart on her, and Langford were to want her too, there's bound to be trouble. You'll have to make up your mind before we go, dearest."
She opened her mouth to launch an angry tirade at him for his obtuseness, but was diverted by the outburst of animated voices in the hall. "Children!" she exclaimed, rushing down the hall and hugging the one she encountered first. "Miss Bromleigh!" she cried, so excited she inadvertently hugged the governess too. "We shall be working night and day to prepare for a trip. I can't think what all we will need for a house party of this magnitude."
"Julianna, where are you, dear?" she said belatedly, momentarily nonplussed when all she saw were two ruddy-faced dark-haired boys between the ages of four and nine.
"Julianna went up to her room, Lady Skeffington," Sheridan said, hiding a weary smile at her employer's excitement and a wary fear of what sort of extra work was likely to be required of her to get the children ready for "a house party of this magnitude." As it was, she only had one evening off each week, and in order to have it, she worked from dawn to eleven every evening, doing an endless variety of additional chores that were normally relegated to seamstresses and maids, not governesses. Sherry took advantage of the uproar about the house party to escape to her own room in the attic for a while. Standing over the pitcher and bowl on her bureau, she washed her face, reassured herself that her hair was neatly bound in its coil, then she sat down by the little attic window and picked up her sewing. There was bound to be more mending, more ironing, more work for her involved in the house party being discussed, but Sheridan didn't actually object to the extra work. Being governess to five children kept her too busy during the day to think about Stephen Westmoreland and those magical days she'd been an integral part of his life. At night, when the house was quiet and she was sewing by candlelight, then she could give free reign to her memories and her daydreams, even though there were times she feared her hopeless obsession with him would someday make her quite insane. With her head bent over her sewing, she invented entire scenes with him and improved on others that had been real.
Time after time, she rewrote in her mind the awful ending to their betrothal. She started most of those imaginary scenes the same way—with Charise Lancaster storming into her bedchamber—and in the midst of Charise's damning tirade about Sherry's motives and trickery, Stephen always walked in. From there Sheridan had several favorite variations on possible endings:
… Stephen listened to Charise's incriminating lies, threw Charise out of his house, then he turned to Sheridan, listened sympathetically to her side of the story, and they were married that day as planned.
… Stephen refused to listen to a word Charise said before throwing her out of his house, then he listened sympathetically to Sheridan's side of the story, and they were married that day as planned.
… They were already married when Charise appeared, and so he had to listen to Sherry's side of the story and believe her.
None of that solved Nicholas DuVille's painful revelation that Stephen had felt bound to wed her out of guilt and responsibility, but Sherry circumvented that mortifying fact with a simple solution—Stephen also loved her. She had variations aplenty for that ending too:
… He had always loved her but didn't realize it until after she had gone away, then he searched for her until he found her. And they were married.
… They were already married, and he learned to love her despite everything.
She vastly preferred the first ending, because that was the only possible reality, and she kept the dream so close to her that sometimes she found herself looking out the window, half expecting to see him striding to the door. In addition to her fantasies, she had the real-life pleasure—as well as torture—of seeing him at the opera.
She had to stop going there, had to stop tormenting herself by waiting for the moment when he would finally turn to whatever woman was with him and focus his lazy, intimate smile on her. That, Sherry knew, would mark her last trip to the pits of Covent Garden. That she could never endure.
Sometimes, she even imagined that her disappearance was the reason he looked stern and distant when he sat beside the women he escorted to his private opera box. He looked weary and cold because he missed Sherry… because he regretted losing her…
It was still full daylight and too early for sweet dreams, and Sherry gave her head a shake to banish the thoughts, then she looked up with a determined smile as Julianna Skeffington slipped into the room.
"Miss Bromleigh, may I hide in here?" the seventeen-year-old said, her lovely face a mirror of dismay as she closed the door with a silent click and walked over to the bed. Careful not to mess the coverlet, she sat down, looking like a drooping angel. In her more uncharitable moments, Sherry wondered how two dreadful people like Sir John and Lady Skeffington could have produced this sweet, sensible, intelligent golden girl. "The worst thing imaginable has happened!" Julianna said with disgust.
"The
very
worst thing?" Sheridan teased. "Not merely a horrid thing or a disastrous thing, but the worst thing imaginable?"
A hint of an answering smile touched her lips then vanished as Julianna sighed. "Mama is up in the boughs, believing some nobleman has developed a partiality for me, when the truth is that he scarcely glanced in my direction, and he never spoke a word to me.
"I see," Sheridan said gravely, and she did see. She empathized as well. She was thinking of something to say when Lady Skeffington threw open the door, looking wild-eyed.
"I can't think what we have that is suitable to wear in such illustrious company. Miss Bromleigh, you came recommended by a duke's sister, could you possibly advise us? We shall have to go to Bond Street straightaway. Julianna, straighten your shoulders. Gentlemen do not like a female who slouches. What shall we do, Miss Bromleigh? There are coaches to hire, and we shall have to go with a full retinue of servants, including you, of course."
Sherry let that summation of her status pass without flinching. It was the truth, especially in this household. That was what she was, and she was fortunate to have the position. "I am not an expert on how the Quality dresses," she said carefully, "but I shall be happy to lend you an opinion, ma'am. Where is the party taking place?"
Lady Skeffington straightened her shoulders and puffed out her ample chest, reminding Sheridan of a herald announcing the arrival of the king and queen: "At the country seat of the Duke and Duchess of Claymore!"
Sherry felt the room tip, then right itself. Her ears were deceiving her, of course.
"The Duke and Duchess of Claymore have invited all of us to an intimate gathering at their home!"
Sherry groped behind her for the bedpost, gripping it and staring at the other woman. Based on what she'd seen firsthand of the ton's social ladder, the Westmorelands occupied the very pinnacle of it, while the Skeffingtons were on the bottom rung, completely beneath the Westmoreland family's notice. Even if it weren't for the ludicrous differences in wealth and prestige between the two families, there was the matter of good breeding. The Westmorelands had it and so did everyone they knew. Sir John and Lady Glenda Skeffington had none. This was impossible, Sherry thought. She was dreaming one of her daydreams, and it had turned into a nightmare.
"Miss Bromleigh, you are losing your color, and I must caution you that there simply isn't time for you to have vapors over this. If I haven't time for a nice swoon," she added with a robust smile, "then neither do you, my good girl."
Sherry swallowed and swallowed again, trying to find her voice. "Are you—" she rasped, "are you acquainted with them, with the duke and duchess, I mean?"
Lady Skeffington issued a warning before she confided the truth: "I trust you would not betray a confidence, and risk losing your position with us?"
Sherry swallowed again and shook her head, which Lady Skeffington correctly interpreted was Sherry's promise of confidentiality. "Sir John and I have never met them in our lives."
"Then how, that is, why—?"
"I have very good reason to believe," Lady Skeffington confided, proudly, "that Julianna has caught the eye of the most eligible bachelor in all England! This party is merely a ploy, in my opinion—a clever method devised by the Earl of Langford—to bring Julianna into his own circle so that he may look her over at his leisure."
Sheridan was beginning to see bright flashes of vivid color at the edges of her eyes.
"Miss Bromleigh?"
Sheridan blinked, warily surveying the woman who had obviously devised this entire Banbury tale as some form of diabolical torture designed to break down Sheridan's carefully constructed foundation for sanity.
"Miss Bromleigh, THIS WILL NOT DO!"
"Mama, give me your smelling salts quickly," Julianna said, her voice coming from farther and farther away, as if Sheridan were hurtling down a tunnel.
"I'm quite all right," Sheridan managed, turning her head away from the odious salts that Lady Skeffington was determined to wave under her nose. "I was just a little… dizzy."