Almost Heaven (45 page)

“The Earl of Titchley!  
. . .
The Count and Countess of Rindell!
. . .”

The dowager held up her hand to silence one of her friends and leaned toward Elizabeth. “What did you say, Elizabeth?”

“His Grace, the Duke of Stanhope!
. . .
The Marquess of Kensington!”

“I said,” Elizabeth began, but the dowager’s eyes had snapped to the landing where the butler was stationed, and her face was blanching. “I wish to leave!” Elizabeth cried, but an odd silence was sweeping over the room, and her voice was unnaturally loud.

Instead of replying to Elizabeth’s statement, the dowager was doing what everyone else was doing, staring at the landing. “Tonight only wanted
this!”
the older woman said in a furious voice.

“I-I beg your pardon?” Elizabeth asked.

“Do you swoon?” the duchess demanded, dragging her eyes from the landing and pinning Elizabeth with the direst of looks”

“No, not in the past, but I really don’t feel well.” Behind her Valerie and Georgina erupted into laughter.

“Do not even
consider
leaving until I say you may,” the dowager said tersely, sending a speaking look to Lord Anthony Townsende, a pleasant, unaffected man who’d been her escort tonight, and who suddenly clamped Elizabeth’s elbow in a supporting grip. The entire crowd in the ballroom seemed to be pressing infinitesimally closer to the staircase, and the ones who weren’t were turning to look at Elizabeth with raised brows. Elizabeth had been the cynosure of so many eyes tonight that she took no notice of the hundreds of pairs glancing her way now. But she felt the sudden tension growing in the room, the excitement building, and she glanced uncertainly in the direction of whatever seemed to be causing it. The vision she beheld made her knees tremble violently and a scream rise in her throat; for a split second she thought she was having a distorted double vision, and she blinked, but the vision didn’t clear. Descending the staircase side by side were two men of identical height, clad in matching black evening clothes, wearing matching expressions of mild amusement on their very similar faces. And one of them was Ian Thornton.

“Elizabeth,” Tony whispered urgently. “Come with me. We’re going to dance.”

“Dance?” she uttered.

“Dance,” he averred, half pulling her toward the dance floor. Once there, Elizabeth’s shock was superseded by a blissful sense of unreality. Rather than deal with the horrible fact that the gossip about her former relationship with Ian was now going to erupt like a full-fledged volcano, and the equally appalling fact that Ian was there, her mind simply went blank, oblivious. No longer did the noise in the ballroom pound in her ears; she scarcely heard it at all. No longer did the watchful eyes wound her; she saw only Tony’s shoulder, covered in dark blue superfine. Even when he reluctantly guided her back to the group around the Townsendes. which still included Valerie and Georgina and Viscount Mondevale, Elizabeth felt . . . nothing.

“Are you all right?” Tony asked worriedly.

“Perfectly,” she replied with a sweet smile.

“Do you have any hartshorn with you?”

“I never faint.”

“That’s good. Your friends are still standing around to watch and listen, eager to see what happens now.”

“Yes, they will not want to miss this.”

“What do you think he will do?”

Elizabeth raised her eyes and looked at Ian without a tremor. He was still beside the gray-haired man who looked so like him, and they were both surrounded by people who were gathering around and seemed to be congratulating them on something. “Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Why should he do anything?”

“Do you mean he’ll cut you?”

“I never know what to expect from him. Does it matter?”

At that moment Ian lifted his gaze and saw her, and the only cut he thought of was a way to cut through the drivel and good wishes so that he could get to her. But he couldn’t yet. Even though she looked pale and stricken and heartbreakingly beautiful, he had to meet her casually, if there was any hope of putting the right face on it. With infuriating persistence the well-wishers gathered around, the men toadying, the women curtsying; and those who weren’t, Ian noticed with fury, were whispering and looking at Elizabeth.

Ian lasted five minutes before he signaled his grandfather with a curt nod, and they both disengaged themselves from three dozen people who were waiting to be formally presented to the Marquess of Kensington. Together they started through the crowd, Ian nodding absently to acquaintances and trying to avoid being waylaid, but pausing to bow and shake hands now and then so it wouldn’t seem that he was heading straight for Elizabeth. His grandfather, who had been apprised of the plan in the coach, carried the whole thing off with aplomb. “Stanhope!” someone boomed. “Introduce us to your grandson.”

The stupid charade chafed against Ian’s straining patience. He’d already been introduced to half these people as Ian Thornton, and the pretense that he
hadn’t
was an infuriating farce. But he endured it for the sake of appearances.

“How are you, Wilson?” Ian said at one of their innumerable pauses. “Suzanne,” he said, smiling at Wilson’s wife while he watched Elizabeth out of the corner of his eye. She hadn’t moved, didn’t seem to be capable of movement. Someone had handed her a glass of champagne, and she was holding it, smiling at Jordan Townsende, who seemed to be joking with her. Even from this distance Ian could see her smile lacked its entrancing sparkle, and his heart twisted. “We’ll have to do that,” he heard himself say to someone who was inviting him to call at their house, and then he’d had all he was willing to endure. He turned in Elizabeth’s direction, and his grandfather obligingly stopped conversation with a crony. The minute Ian started toward Elizabeth the whispers hit unprecedented volume.

Alexandra cast a worried look at her, then at Jordan. “Ask Elizabeth to dance, please!” she implored him urgently.

“For heaven’s sake, get her out of here. That monster is coming straight in our direction.”

Jordan hesitated and glanced at Ian, and whatever he saw in the other man’s expression made him hesitate and shake his head. “It’s going to be all right, love,” he promised with only a twinge of doubt as he stepped forward to shake Ian’s hand, exactly as if they hadn’t been playing cards a short while ago. “Permit me to present you to my wife,” Jordan said.

Jordan turned to the beautiful brunette who looked at Ian with blazing blue eyes. “A pleasure,” Ian murmured, lifting her hand to his lips and feeling her exert pressure to yank it away.

The dowager duchess acknowledged Ian’s introduction with something that might, by a great stretch of the imagination, be considered an inclination of her regal white head and snapped, “I am
not
pleased to meet you.”

Ian endured both ladies’ rebuffs and then waited while Jordan introduced him to all the others. A girl named Georgina curtsied to Ian, her eyes inviting. Another named Valerie curtsied, then stepped back in nervous fright from the blast from Ian’s eyes as he nodded curtly to her. Mondevale was next, and Ian’s first spurt of jealousy vanished when he saw Valerie clinging possessively to the young viscount’s arm.
“I think Valerie did it because she wanted Mondevale,”
he recalled Elizabeth saying.

Elizabeth watched it all with interest and no emotion until Ian was finally standing in front of her, but the instant his golden eyes met hers she felt the shaking begin in her limbs. “Lady Elizabeth Cameron,” Jordan intoned.

A slow, lazy smile swept across Ian’s face, and Elizabeth braced her quaking self for him to say something mocking, but his deep voice was filled with admiration and teasing. “Lady Cameron,” he said, raising his voice enough to be heard by the other girls. “I see you are still casting every other female into the shade. May I present my grandfather to you –”

Elizabeth
knew
she was dreaming. He had introduced his grandfather to no one but her, and the honor was both deliberate and noted by everyone within sight.

When he moved away Elizabeth felt herself sag with relief. “Well!” said the dowager with a reluctant nod of approval, watching him. “I daresay he pulled that off well enough. Look there,” she said several minutes later, “he’s escorting Evelyn Makepeace onto the dance floor. If Makepeace didn’t give him the cut direct, he’s just been given the stamp of approval.”

A hysterical giggle welled up inside Elizabeth. As if Ian Thornton would care whether he was cut! As if he’d care a snap for a stamp of approval! Her disjointed thoughts were interrupted by the second man to ask her for a dance all evening. With an elegant bow and a warm, searching smile the Duke of Stanhope offered his arm to her. “Would you honor me with this dance, Lady Cameron?” he asked, blithely ignoring his duty to dance with the older women first.

Elizabeth considered refusing. She wasn’t certain at the moment she’d remember
how,
but there was something imploring and almost urgent in the duke’s look when she hesitated, and she reluctantly laid her gloved fingers on his arm.

As they walked through the crowd Elizabeth concentrated on keeping her mind perfectly blank. So successful was she in that endeavor that they had nearly reached the dance floor before she realized the older man’s stride was slightly slower than it needed to be. Rousing herself from her lethargic misery, she cast a worried glance at his handsome face, and he smiled. “An old riding injury,” he explained, obviously guessing the cause of her concern. “I’m quite adept at dealing with it, however, and I shan’t disgrace us on the dance floor.” As he spoke he put his hand on her waist and moved her into the midst of the dancers with easy grace. When they were safely blocked from view of the guests by the other dancers, however, his face sobered. “Ian has charged me to give you a message,” he told her gently.

It occurred to Elizabeth, not for the first time, that during every one of the five short days she’d spent in Ian Thornton’s company, he had turned her emotions upside down and inside out, and she was not in a mood to let him do it again tonight. Lifting her eyes to the duke’s, she regarded him politely but without any sign of interest in hearing Ian’s message.

“I am to tell you not to worry,” the duke explained. “All you need do is remain here for another hour or so and trust him.”

Elizabeth lost control of her expression completely; her eyes widened with shock, and her slender shoulders shook with laughter that was part hysteria and part exhaustion.
“Trust
him?” she repeated. Every time she was near Ian Thornton she felt as if she were a ball being slammed and bounced off his racket in whatever direction his whim chose to send her, and she was heartily and thoroughly weary of it. She smiled at the duke again and shook her head at the sheer absurdity of what his message suggested.

Among those dancers who were close enough to see what was happening, it was noted and immediately remarked upon that Lady Cameron seemed, amazingly, to be on the most amiable terms with the Duke of Stanhope. It was also being duly and uncomfortably noted by the entire assembly that not just one, but now
two
of the most influential families in England seemed to be championing her.

Ian, who had guessed before ever setting foot in the ballroom exactly how their collective minds would work, was standing amid the crowd, doing his skillful utmost to ensure their thoughts continued to move in the direction in which he pointed them. Since he couldn’t stop the gossip about his relationship with Elizabeth, he set out to turn it in a new direction. With an indulgent cordiality he’d never before displayed to the
ton,
he allowed himself to be verbally feted while deliberately letting his admiring gaze rest periodically on her. His unhidden interest in the lady, combined with his lazy, sociable smile, positively invited questions from those who’d gathered around to speak to the new heir to the Stanhope prestige. They in turn were so emboldened by his attitude and so eager for a firsthand on-dit about his relationship with her that several of them ventured a hesitant but joking remark. Lord Newsom, a wealthy fop who’d attached himself to Ian’s elbow, followed Ian’s gaze on one of the occasions when it shifted to Elizabeth and went so far as to remark, in the amused tone of one exchanging manly confidences, “She’s something, isn’t she? It was the talk of the town when you got her off for an afternoon alone in that cottage two years ago.”

Ian grinned and lifted his glass to his mouth, deliberately looking at Elizabeth over its rim. “Was it?” he asked in an amused tone that was loud enough to reach the ears of the avidly interested gentlemen around him.

“Indeed it was.”

“Did I enjoy it?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I asked if I enjoyed being with her in that cottage.”

“Why ask? You were there together.”

Rather than deny it, which would never convince them, Ian let the comment hang in the air until the other man demanded, “Well,
weren’t
you with her there?”

“No,” he admitted with rueful, conspiratorial grin, “but it was not for want of trying on my part.”

“Give over, Kensington,” one of them chided with derision. “There’s no point in trying to protect the lady now. You were seen with her in the greenhouse.”