Almost Heaven (11 page)

“I believe,” Valerie said in a cool voice, “that she was last seen going out into the garden. And it appears Mr. Thornton has also vanished –” She broke off in astonishment as Elizabeth made her poised descent down the staircase she’d hurtled up only moments before.

“Heavens,” Elizabeth said sheepishly, smiling at Penelope and then Valerie, “I don’t know why the heat seems so oppressive this evening. I thought to escape it in the garden, and when that failed I went upstairs to lie down for a short while.”

Together the girls strolled through the ballroom, then past the card room, where several gentlemen were playing billiards. Elizabeth’s pulse gave a nervous leap when she saw Ian Thornton leaning over the table closest to the door, a billiard cue poised in his hand. He glanced up and saw the three young ladies, two of whom were staring at him. With cool civility he nodded to all three of them, then he let fly with the cue stick. Elizabeth listened to the sound of balls flying against wood and dropping into pockets, followed by the Duke of Hammund’s admiring laugh.

“He
is
wondrously handsome in a dark, frightening sort of way,” admitted Georgina in a whisper. “There’s something – well – dangerous about him, too,” she added with a delicate shiver of delight.

“True,” remarked Valerie with a shrug, “but you were right earlier – he
is
without background, breeding, or connections.”

Elizabeth heard the gist of their whispered conversation, but she paid it little heed. Her miraculous good fortune of the last few minutes had convinced her that there
was
a God who watched over her now and then, and she was uttering a silent prayer of thanks to Him, along with a promise that she would never,
ever
put herself in such a compromising situation again. She had just said a silent “Amen” when it occurred to her that she’d counted four billiard balls dropping into the pockets after Ian had taken his shot.
Four!
When she played with Robert, the most he’d ever been able to drop was three, and he claimed to excel at billiards.

Elizabeth’s sense of buoyant relief remained with her as she went down to supper on Lord Howard’s arm. Oddly, it began to disintegrate as she talked with the gentlemen and ladies seated around them at their table. Despite their lively conversation, it took all Elizabeth’s control to keep herself from looking about the lavishly decorated, huge room to at which of the blue-linen-covered tables Ian was seated. A footman who was serving lobster stopped at her elbow, offering to serve her, and Elizabeth looked up at him and nodded. Unable to endure the suspense any longer, she used the footman’s presence as an excuse to idly glance about the room. She scanned the sea of jeweled coiffures that shifted and bobbed like brightly colored corks, the glasses being raised and lowered, and then she saw him – seated at the head table between the Duke of Hammund and Valerie’s beautiful sister Charise. The duke was talking with a gorgeous blonde who was said to be his current mistress; Ian was listening attentively to Charise’s animated discourse, a lazy grin on his tanned face, her hand resting possessively on the sleeve of his jacket. He laughed at something she said, and Elizabeth snapped her gaze from the pair, but her stomach felt as if she’d been punched. They seemed so right together both of them sophisticated, dark-haired, and striking; no doubt they had much in common, she thought a little dismally as she picked up her knife and fork and to work on her lobster.

Beside her, Lord Howard leaned close and teased, “It’s dead, you know.”

Elizabeth glanced blankly at him, and he nodded to the lobster she was still sawing needlessly upon. “It’s dead,” he repeated. “There’s no need to try to kill it twice.”

Mortified, Elizabeth smiled and sighed and thereafter’ made an all-out effort to ingratiate herself with the rest of the party at their table. As Lord Howard had forewarned, the gentlemen, who by now had all seen or heard about her escapade in the card room, were noticeably cooler, and so Elizabeth tried ever harder to be her most engaging self. It was only the second time in her life she’d actually used the feminine wiles she was born with the first time being her first encounter with Ian Thornton in the garden and she was a little amazed by her easy success. One by one the men at the table unbent enough to talk and laugh with her. During that long, trying hour Elizabeth repeatedly had the strange feeling that Ian was watching her, and toward the end, when she could endure it no longer, she did glance at the place where he was seated. His narrowed amber eyes were leveled on her face, and Elizabeth couldn’t tell whether he disapproved of this flirtatious side of her or whether he was puzzled by it.

“Would you permit me to offer to stand in for my cousin tomorrow,” Lord Howard said as the endless meal came to an end and the guests began to arise, “and escort you to the village?”

It was the moment of reckoning, the moment when Elizabeth had to decide whether she was going to meet Ian at the cottage or not. Actually, there was no real decision to make, and she knew it. With a bright, artificial smile Elizabeth said, “Thank you.”

“We’re to leave at half past ten, and I understand there are to be the usual entertainments – shopping and a late luncheon at the local inn, followed by a ride to enjoy the various prospects of the local countryside.”

It sounded horribly dull to Elizabeth at that moment. “It sounds lovely,” she exclaimed with such fervor that Lord Howard shot her a startled look.

“Are you feeling well?” he asked, his worried gaze taking in her flushed cheeks and overbright eyes.

“I’ve never felt better,” she said, her mind on getting away – upstairs to the sanity and quiet of her bedchamber. “And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have the headache and should like to retire,” she said, leaving behind her a baffled Lord Howard.

She was partway up the stairs before it dawned on her what she’d actually said. She stopped in midstep, then gave her head a shake and slowly continued on. She didn’t particularly care what Lord Howard, her fiancé’s own cousin thought. And she was too miserable to stop and consider how very odd that was.

“Wake me at eight, please, Berta,” she said as her maid helped her undress. Without answering Berta bustled about, dropping objects onto the dressing table and floor – a sure sign the nervous maid was in a taking over something. “What’s wrong?” Elizabeth asked, pausing as she brushed her hair.

“The whole staff is gossipin’ about what you did in the card room, and that hatchet-faced duenna of yours is going to blame me for it, you’ll see,” Berta replied miserably. “She’ll say the first time she let you out of her sight and left you in my charge you got yourself in the briars!”

“I’ll explain to her what happened,” Elizabeth promised wearily.

“Well, what
did
happen?” Berta cried, almost wringing her hands in dismayed anticipation of the tongue-lashing the anticipated from the formidable Miss Throckmorton-Jones.

Elizabeth wearily related the tale, and Berta’s expression softened as her young mistress spoke. She turned back the rose brocade coverlet and helped Elizabeth into bed. “So you see,” Elizabeth finished with a yawn, “I couldn’t just keep quiet and let everyone think he’d cheated, which was what they
would
do, because he isn’t one of them.”

Lightning streaked across the sky, illuminating the entire room, and thunder boomed until the windows shook. Elizabeth closed her eyes and prayed the jaunt to the village would take place, because the thought of spending the entire day in the same house with Ian Thornton – without being able to look at him or speak to him – was more than she wanted to contemplate. I’m almost obsessed, she thought to herself, and exhaustion overtook her,

She dreamed of wild storms, of strong arms reaching out to rescue her, drawing her forward, then pitching her into the storm-tossed sea . . .

CHAPTER 6

Watery sunlight filled the room, and Elizabeth rolled reluctantly onto her back. No matter how much or how little sleep she got, she was the sort of person who always woke up feeling dazed and disoriented. While Robert could bound out of bed feeling fit and alert, she had to drag herself up onto the pillows, where she usually spent a full half hour staring vacantly at the room, forcing herself to wakefulness. On the other hand, when Robert was stifling yawns at ten P.M., Elizabeth was wide awake and ready to play cards or billiards or read for hours more. For that reason she was ideally suited to the London season, during which one slept until noon at least and then stayed out until dawn. Last night had been the rare exception.

Her head felt like a leaden weight upon the pillow as she forced her eyes open. On the table beside her bed was a tray with her customary breakfast: a small pot of hot chocolate and a slice of buttered toast. Sighing, Elizabeth forced herself to go through the ritual of waking up. Bracing her hands on the bed, she shoved herself upright until she was sitting back against the pillows, then she stared blankly at her hands – willing them to reach for the pot of hot, restorative chocolate.

This morning it took more of an effort than ever; her head ached dully, and she had the uneasy feeling that something disturbing had happened.

Still caught somewhere between sleep and awareness, she removed the quilted cover from the porcelain pot and poured chocolate into the delicate cup beside it. And then she remembered, and her stomach plummeted. Today a dark-haired man would be waiting for her in the woodcutter’s cottage. He would wait for an hour, and then he would leave – because Elizabeth wasn’t going to be there. She couldn’t. She absolutely could not!

Her hands trembled a little as she lifted the cup and saucer and raised it to her lips. Over the cup’s rim she watched Berta bustle into the room with a worried look on her face that faded to a relieved smile. “Oh, good. I was worried you’d taken ill.”

“Why?” Elizabeth asked as she took a sip of the chocolate. It was cold as ice!

“Because I couldn’t wake –”

“What
time
is it?” Elizabeth cried.

“Nearly eleven.”

“Eleven! But I told you to wake me at eight! How could you let me oversleep this way?” she said, her sleep drugged mind already groping wildly for a solution. She could dress quickly and catch up with everyone. Or . . .

“I
did
try,” Berta exclaimed, hurt by the uncharacteristic sharpness in Elizabeth’s tone, “but you didn’t want to wake up”

“I
never
want to awaken, Berta, you know that!”

“But you were worse this morning than normal. You said your head ached.”

“I
always
say things like that. I don’t know what I’m saying when I’m asleep. I’ll say anything to bargain for a few minutes’ more sleep. You’ve known that for years, and you always shake me awake anyway.”

“But you said,” Berta persisted, tugging unhappily at her apron, “that since it rained so much last night you were sure the trip to the village wouldn’t take place, so you didn’t have to arise at all.”

“Berta, for heaven’s sake!” Elizabeth cried, throwing off the covers and jumping out of bed with more energy than she’d ever shown after such a short period of wakefulness.

“I’ve told you I’m dying of diphtheria to make you go away, and that didn’t succeed!”

“Well,” Berta shot back, marching over to the bell pull and ringing for a bath to be brought up, “when you told me
that,
your face wasn’t pale and your head didn’t feel hot to my touch. And you hadn’t dragged yourself into bed as if you could hardly stand when it was but half past one in the morning!”

Contrite, Elizabeth slumped down on the bed. “It’s not your fault that I sleep like a hibernating bear. And besides, if they didn’t go to the village, it makes no difference at all that I overslept.”

She was trying to resign herself to the notion of spending the day in the house with a man who could look at her across a roomful of diners and make her heart leap when Berta said, “They did go to the village. Last night’s storm was more noise and threat than rain.”

Closing her eyes for a brief moment, Elizabeth emitted a long sigh. It was already eleven, which meant Ian had already begun his useless vigil at the cottage. “Very well, I’ll ride to the village and catch up with them there. There’s no need to hurry,” she said firmly when Berta rushed to the door to admit the maids carrying buckets of hot water for Elizabeth’s bath.

It was already half past noon when Elizabeth descended the stairs clad in a festive peach riding habit. A matching bonnet with a feather curling at her right ear hid her hair, and riding gloves covered her hands to the wrists. A few masculine voices could be heard in the game room, testifying to the fact that not all the guests had chosen to make the jaunt to the village. Elizabeth’s steps faltered in the hallway as she deliberated whether or not to take a peek into the room to see if Ian Thornton had already returned from the cottage. Certain that he had, and unwilling to see him, she turned in the opposite direction and left the house by the front door.

Elizabeth waited at the stable while the grooms saddled a horse for her, but her heart seemed to be beating in heavy time to the passing minutes, and her mind kept tormenting her with a picture of a solitary man who’d waited alone in the cottage for a woman who hadn’t come.

“Will you be wantin’ a groom ‘tar ride wit’ ye, milady?” the stablekeep asked. “We’re shorthanded, what with so many o’ them bein’ needed by the party what went for the day’s outin’ to the village. Some of ‘em ought to be comin’ back here in an hour or less, if you’d want to wait. If not, the road is safe, and no harm will come t’you. Her ladyship rides alone to the village all the time.”

The thing Elizabeth wanted most was to gallop hell-bent down a country lane and leave everything else behind her. “I’ll go alone,” she said, smiling at him with the same friendly candor to which she treated Havenhurst’s grooms. “We passed the village the day we arrived it’s straight down the main road about five miles, isn’t it?”

“Aye,” he said. A flash of heat lightning lit up the pale sky, and Elizabeth cast an anxious glance overhead. She did
not
want to stay there, yet the prospect of being caught in a summer downpour wasn’t pleasant, either.

“I doubt it’ll rain ‘til tonight,” the stablekeep told her when she hesitated. “We gets this kinda lightnin’ hereabout this time o’ year. Did it all night, it did, and nary a drop o’ rain fell.”