Yours Until Dawn (30 page)

Cecily bit back a protest as Estelle melted into the crowd, the white muslin train of her gown flashing behind her.

She peered around the heavily thronged ballroom, fixing an awkward smile on her lips. Estelle had insisted that she twine a fetching ribbon that matched her peach gown through her silky curls.

Although the dancing had yet to begin, a string quartet was warming up on the balcony at the far end of the ballroom. Cecily had just caught the hopeful eye of a young militia soldier when a lone violinist began to pick out the plaintive notes of “Barbara Allen.”

Cecily closed her eyes, remembering all too clearly another ballroom, another man.

When she opened them, the young soldier was making his way through the crowd toward her. She turned away, thinking only of escape.

It had been a mistake to let Estelle coax her into coming here. She scanned the crowd, but her friend was nowhere in sight. She would simply have to find their carriage and demand that the driver take her back to the Carstairs’ town house immediately. He could return for Estelle later.

Glancing over her shoulder to find the soldier still pursuing her, she hastened toward the stairs, trodding heavily on a slippered foot.

“Watch it, girl!” a scowling matron bit off.

“I’m so sorry,” she murmured, shouldering her way past a squat man with a bulbous red nose.

She finally emerged from the milling throng, nearly trembling with relief to find herself at the foot of the stairs. Only a few more steps and she would be free.

Already feeling as if a crushing weight were slipping from her shoulders, she glanced toward the top of the stairs, only to find herself gazing directly into a pair of mocking sea-foam-green eyes.

My dearest Gabriel,

(There I have said it! I hope you are satisfied!)

G
abriel Fairchild stood at the head of the stairs, garbed in the full dress uniform of a Royal Navy officer. He wore a dark blue frock coat with brass buttons and a narrow ribbon of white piping around the lapels. A plain blue stock had replaced his ruffled cravat. His waistcoat, shirt, and knee breeches were a dazzling white while a pair of shiny black Hessians hugged his lean calves. His tawny hair was still unfashionably long and drawn back in a leather queue.

A flurry of murmurs and admiring glances greeted his arrival. Just as Estelle had predicted, the scar only added to his mystique, made him seem even more of a dashing and heroic figure. Only Cecily knew how much of a hero he really was. She wouldn’t be standing at the foot of those stairs if he hadn’t risked his life to save hers.

Her heart staggered beneath the blow of seeing him this way. She had expected him to resume the frivolous lifestyle he had enjoyed before they met at Lady Langley’s house party. But this was an entirely different Gabriel—more somber, yet somehow more irresistible.

There was some reckless part of her that almost wanted him to recognize her as Samantha instead of Cecily. She’d rather see loathing in his eyes than have him look at her as if she were of less consequence than a stranger.

She stood frozen into place as he started down the stairs. But his graceful strides carried him right past her, almost as if he’d been struck blind all over again.

Her eyes widened. There could be no mistaking it. She’d just been given the cut direct with a rapier twist. She glanced down at her bodice, surprised to find that it wasn’t stained with her heart’s blood.

“Excuse me, miss?”

Cecily turned to find herself gazing into the eager young face of the militia soldier. “I know we haven’t been properly introduced yet, but I was wondering if you would care to join the dance with me?”

From the corner of her eye, Cecily could see Gabriel greeting their hostess, smiling as he lifted her hand to his lips. A dangerous thread of defiance curled through her veins.

“I most certainly would,” she informed the young man, tucking her gloved hands in his.

Fortunately, the sprightly notes of the country dance made conversation impossible. Even as they joined the rollicking line of dancers, she was keenly aware of every step Gabriel took, every hand he kissed, every hungry glance he received from some of the bolder women. It wasn’t difficult to follow his path. He towered head and shoulders over most of the men in the room.

In all that time, he didn’t seem to spare her a single glance…or a single thought.

She lost sight of him just as the musicians began to play the first tinkling notes of an old-fashioned minuet. After guiding them through an intricate set of figures, the music swept into a new key, signaling a change in partners. Grateful to escape the sweaty-palmed young soldier, Cecily gracefully pivoted.

Suddenly she and Gabriel were face to face, hand to hand, palm to palm. She swallowed hard, half expecting him to turn on his heel and cut her dead in front of the entire assembly.

“Miss March,” he murmured, proving he wasn’t quite as oblivious to her presence as he’d pretended to be.

“Lord Sheffield,” she returned as they circled each other warily.

Even through her glove, she could feel the heat of the hand pressed to hers. She tried not to remember the tenderness with which he had once touched her, the shattering pleasure his hands had given her.

Her greatest fear was that he might recognize her voice. She had modeled Samantha Wickersham’s stern tones after a spinster aunt. But she knew her natural voice had slipped through on more than one occasion—such as when she’d cried out his name in ecstasy.

“It’s gratifying to see you looking so well,” she said, deliberately affecting a breathy cadence. It wasn’t difficult when she felt as if she were drowning in his crisp masculine scent. “I heard rumors about the miraculous recovery of your sight. I’m glad to learn they were true.”

He surveyed her through hooded eyes. “Perhaps it was fate that brought us together tonight. I’ve never had the opportunity to thank you.”

“For what?”

“For coming to visit me in the hospital after I was wounded.”

Cecily felt her heart lurch as he gave the rapier another twist. For the first time, she almost pitied the French. This was not a man to lightly engage as an enemy.

Tilting her face to his, she gave him her most dazzling smile. “You don’t have to thank me. It was no more than my Christian duty.”

His eyes darkened. It seemed she had finally succeeded in getting a reaction from him. But her triumph was short-lived. Before he could make any sort of response, the musicians finished their song. The last brittle note of the minuet hung in the air between them.

He bowed over her hand, brushing his lips across her knuckles in a perfunctory kiss. “It was a pleasure to renew our acquaintance, Miss March, if only to remind myself how very little I ever really knew you.”

As the quartet launched into the sweeping notes of an Austrian waltz, the other dancers began to drift off the floor, seeking gossip and refreshments. Nothing cleared a ballroom floor faster than a waltz. No one wanted anyone else to suspect that they even knew the steps of the scandalous dance.

As Gabriel straightened, Cecily fought a rush of panic. In another minute, he would turn his back on her and stalk out of her life forever. They had already attracted several curious stares. She saw Estelle watching them from the other side of the ballroom, her face nearly as white as her dress.

What did she have left to lose? Cecily thought. Her good name? Her reputation? Society might not know it, but she was already ruined for any other man.

Before Gabriel could move away from her, she lightly rested her hand on his sleeve. “Hasn’t anyone ever told you that it’s ill-mannered for a gentleman to abandon a lady who wishes to dance?”

He gazed down at her, his expression both mocking and wary. “Never let it be said that Gabriel Fairchild could deny a lady anything.”

With those familiar words, he slipped one arm around her slender waist and drew her against him. As he swept her into the dance, Cecily closed her eyes, recognizing in that moment that she was willing to take any risk, pay any price, just to be in his arms again.

“I must confess that I was surprised to find you here tonight,” he said as they whirled around the deserted floor, their bodies moving in perfect rhythm. “I thought by now you’d be wed to some country squire or gentleman farmer. I know you prize respectability in a man above all else.”

She gave him a dimpled smile. “Just as you used to prize the quality of being easily seduced in a woman?”

“That was one quality you most certainly never possessed,” he muttered, gazing straight over the top of her head.

“Unlike most of the women ogling you here tonight. Shall I step aside and let one of them take my place in your arms?”

“I appreciate your generosity, but I’m afraid I’ve no time for such dalliances. I’m shipping out on the
Defiance
tomorrow afternoon.”

Cecily stumbled over her own feet. If he hadn’t tightened his arm around her, she might have fallen. Fighting to keep her feet moving in the rhythm of the dance, she gazed up at him disbelief. “You’re going back to sea? Have you completely lost your wits?”

“I find your concern touching, Miss March, if a bit belated. There’s really no need for you to trouble your pretty little head about my fate.”

“But the last time you sailed, you almost didn’t come back! You were nearly killed! It cost you your sight, your health, your—”

“I’m perfectly aware of what it cost me,” Gabriel said softly. As he studied her face, the last trace of mockery disappeared from his eyes.

Cecily desperately wanted to touch him, to cup his scarred cheek in her hand. But the jagged shards of broken promises and shattered dreams littered the space between them, making it impossible to breach.

She lowered her eyes to his lapel. “Why do you feel compelled to play the hero again? After nearly sacrificing your life on behalf of king and country, I should think you’d have nothing left to prove.”

“Not to you, perhaps, but to someone else.”

“Ah! I should have known there would be a woman involved.” Although she knew she could hardly expect him to spend the rest of his life pining for a woman who had never existed, jealousy still rose up in her throat, more bitter than bile. It was agony picturing him in another woman’s arms, another woman’s bed, doing all of the tender, wicked things that he had done to her. “You always were willing to sacrifice everything for love, weren’t you?”

The music ceased, leaving them standing awkwardly in the middle of the floor. Cecily could see the sidelong glances, hear the curious murmurs.

This time there was only pity in Gabriel’s gaze. “I didn’t even know what love was until I met—and lost—my Samantha. Forgive me for speaking so bluntly, Miss March, but you’re not fit to polish her boots.”

Offering her a curt bow, he turned on his heel and strode toward the stairs, leaving both Cecily and everyone else in the ballroom staring after him.

She stood there for a long time after he was gone before finally whispering, “No. I don’t suppose I am.”

Gabriel slammed his way into his town house, thankful the servants were long abed. He stalked into the drawing room. One of the footmen had left a fire burning in the grate to take the edge off of the November chill.

Shrugging off his damp coat, Gabriel poured himself a generous splash of scotch from the crystal decanter on the sideboard. As the smoky liquor scorched its way down his throat, he remembered another dark night when he had drunk too much scotch and contemplated ending his life. Samantha had come to him out of the darkness like an angel that night, giving him a reason and the will to live. It was the first time he had tasted her lips, held her warm body against his.

He tossed back the rest of the scotch in a single swallow. A carved dragon smirked at him from the pedestal of a glass occasional table. The room had been decorated in the Chinese style, but tonight the hangings of crimson silk, lacquered furniture, and miniature pagodas looked more ridiculous than exotic.

He didn’t want to admit that seeing Cecily again could have put him in such a savage temper. He had thought himself immune to her charms. But when he had seen her standing there at the foot of those stairs, looking as lost and forlorn as a little girl, he’d felt an unexpected jolt.

She’d been thinner than he remembered. Her cropped curls had given him a start at first, but in some strange way they suited her. They gave her beauty a mature edge, made her graceful neck look longer, her luminous blue eyes even larger. It was the inexplicable sadness he had glimpsed in their depths that had jarred him the most.

Gabriel poured himself another glass of scotch. Perhaps he’d been a fool to believe seeing her again would have no effect on him. He’d spent countless nights at sea with nothing but her memory and her written promises to warm him. Promises she’d dismissed tonight with nothing more than a mocking quip and a dimpled smile.

He raked a hand through his hair. The scotch was only fueling the reckless fever racing through his veins. Once he would have sought relief for such a fever in the arms and bed of some skilled courtesan or opera dancer. Now all he had to console him were the ghosts of the only two women he had ever loved.