Belle of the ball (15 page)

"You . .. the heat overcame you for a moment," Arabella said, awkwardly.

Eveleen's eyes widened. "The heat? Oh. Yes. The heat. Molly, do stop that moaning, I am perfectly all right, as you can see."

Harris, oblivious to the commotion, snorted and turned over, settled himself once again, and slept on.

"Are you sure that you are all right now. Miss O'Clannahan?" Marcus asked, squeezing out the rag and handing it back to the manservant who stood nearby, ready to offer assistance.

"I am fine," she said. "I just—it was just a passing faintness. How odd! I have never felt that way in my life."

"Eve, I think we should be going home, don't you?" Arabella watched her friend with worry nagging at her. She wished a certain suspicion had not entered her brain; once there, it would not be calmed. But how could she ask? What could she say?

The drive back to London was long and quiet.

The next morning Arabella was handed a note by a footman as she sat down to breakfast It was brief and to the point; Eveleen was going away for a while. She and Sheltie were traveling to a distant relative's home on the Isle of Wight.

Stunned and disbelieving, Arabella read the last few lines. 'Do not worry about me, my dearest friend. I will tell you all about my decision to leave London, but only when the time is right Just trust me that I am fine. For yourself forget some of my disastrous advice and heed only this; Marcus Westhaven loves you and you love him. I can see it in both your eyes when you look at each other. Marry him, even if you have to break with convention and ask him yourself. Good-bye, my dear, and I hope to see you in the not-too-distant future. "

"What is that, my dear?" Lady Swinley asked as she entered the breakfast room.

"A note.'* Arabella frowned down at it and chewed her lip. So much of Eveleen's life was a mystery to her, and so much of her character, too. She was like a placid lake with a mirror surface that teemed with life and tumultuous activity underneath. Who was the real woman? And what did the note mean?

Lady Swinley's dark eyes sharpened and she snatched the paper from her daughter's hand. "From Pelimore? Is it from Pelimore? Is he finally securing your hand? I cannot believe he has been content to be away from London for a whole week on business! Business! His business this Season is getting a wife, and he should be more attentive to it. It would serve him right if you found another wealthier beau while he is frittering his time away on his estates."

Arabella snatched back the letter, desperate to keep her mother from reading it. Lady Swinley had enough to say about Marcus Westhaven, all of it bad; she did not need to see Eveleen's mysterious advice. "No, Mother, it is just a note from Eveleen saying she has gone out of town for the rest of the Season. And as far as Lord Pelimore goes, you know as well as I do that he is with Lady Jacobs, his mistress, this week. That is what detains him."

Her mother hissed with shock, the sound whistling through her gapped teeth. She gripped the curved mahogany back of a dining room chair so hard her knuckles turned white. "Arabella Swinley, I never thought to hear you say such an indelicate thing! That is what comes of consorting with the likes of Eveleen O'Clannahan. No daughter of mine—"

"Do not disparage Eveleen to me; she is my friend!" Arabella clutched the note to her bosom.

"And I have never been sure that she was a healthy, moral influence. But regardless, no daughter of mine will ever say or think such coarse, vulgar ..."

Arabella failed to listen to what no daughter of Lady Swinley's would ever do, say, or think. She read the note again, and worried over Eveleen's sudden disappearance. The Isle of Wight? Though she had never been there, she had heard tales of that island off the south shore of England, and they were stories of pirates and smuggling and sundry illegal and dangerous activities.

She had not known Eveleen had relatives there. But as her friend was already gone and had not left an address for Arabella to write to her, she supposed there was nothing for it but to pray for her, wait for another letter, and hope that her suspicions were not true. She hoped that Eveleen was not with child and alone.

At the Vaile ball that evening, Arabella stood alone and missed Eveleen. She kept thinking what Eve would say about that dress, or what witticism Eve would come up with on the occasion of a certain couple's engagement. Was that all their friendship had amounted to? A social liaison, a pairing of two sarcastic spinsters? She hoped not. She truly loved Eve and felt that they had woven a friendship over the last few London Seasons. The note had been so brief; Arabella truly hoped that her friend was not in trouble.

Standing there at the edge of the ballroom floor, watching the groups of young girls stroll by, their heads together as they giggled and gossiped, Arabella realized that she had not really made a lot of friends in London. Hundreds of acquaintances, many valuable social contacts, but few friends. Why was that, she wondered?

Perhaps she knew, and just did not want to admit it to herself. She had noticed in herself in recent months a few mannerisms that were startlingly like her mother's. She almost sounded like her mother sometimes— judgemental, snobbish, fault-finding, harsh. Had she driven people away with her shrewish manner? Look at how cruel a barb she had leveled at Eve, her best friend! That was the action of a harpy. She was lucky Eve seemed to have forgiven her, or perhaps had forgotten her words.

Is that what she did to others, though? Drove them away with her sharp tongue? Had there been opportunities for friendship that she had caused to wither and die with her caustic remarks, or her cool demeanor?

And yet Eveleen had become a steadfast Mend. She did not think she had been any different with her than with anyone. And she had tried to drive away Marcus Westhaven and it had not worked for some reason.

As the music started with a screech of bow across violin strings, and couples took to the dance floor, her thoughts drifted inconsequentially to the past, and her occasional opportunities to observe her parents' marriage. Lady Swinley let no opportunity for fault-finding pass. She belittled her husband in private and in public, complaining constantly about his weaknesses even in personal areas that should not be canvassed in company. Her behavior had undermined what could never have been a strong marital bond, until Lord Swinley frankly loathed his wife, from what Arabella had observed on her rare visits home.

And yet Lady Swinley accused her daughter of being vulgar, for merely stating the truth, that Lord Pelimore was visiting his mistress? It was ludicrous in the extreme. Was it not more vulgar to air in public personal grievances with one's husband?

Did she want to be like that? When she married would she treat her husband like that, hold him up for public ridicule in that manner? Her two choices were to marry a man above reproach or learn to hold her tongue. Since the first was highly unlikely, she would have to start practicing the second.

"Tuppence for your thoughts."

The voice in her ear made her jump, and her heart leap. "Marcus!" She whirled to find him grinning down at her. She had a strange urge to throw her arms around him and thank him for not abandoning her despite her occasional sharp tongue. If nothing else came of this Season, she was learning the value of friends. Instead of greeting him in such a wildly inappropriate manner, she smiled up at him and said, "I'm glad you're here."

His gray eyes widened and he cocked her a comical grin. "You do me honor, madam!" He swept her a deep bow, and she giggled.

"But what is the most beautiful girl in the room doing standing alone and not dancing?"

"I . . . I—" Arabella frowned. Now that she thought of it, why was she alone? Surely at least one of her beaux should have approached her by now? Her court had been thinning of late—most had defected to throng around Lady Cynthia—but surely some of her more devoted admirers—

Then, through a clearing in the crowd she spotted Daniel, Lord Sweetan, his fiancée, and the Snowdales. The Snowdales! In a second all the humiliation of her snubbing at their hands returned to her, and she wanted to slink out of the ballroom. They had been silent until now, and she had believed the danger from that quarter was past, but what if they had decided to tell what they knew? What if even now they were telling Daniel? After her rejection of him the previous Season he had been extremely angry; he would feed upon that black mark on her character and would doubtless show no compunction in retailing it abroad. Marcus followed her gaze.

"That is that wretched couple who cut you in the store the first time I met you. And they are with—"

Arabella's mouth trembled and she finished his phrase. "They are with the man I rejected. And they have likely told him all of the details of that dreadful day at Lord Conroy's family home—" She felt Marcus's curious gaze settle on her as her words trailed off.

"What exactly happened that they felt they should snub you?" he asked, stooping slightly to catch her eyes.

"It doesn't matter," Arabella said, hastily. She glanced around the ballroom, looking for an escape route, wondering if she should send for Annie. "I must leave, before—"

"Before what, another snubbing? You survived the first one very well, I think. Surely you can brazen this one out, too."

Worse than snubbed, she would be ostracized and she would be laughed at! And all of her hopes, all of her schemes would die in the face of society's ridicule. She would never be able to hold her head up in London again, and would have to retire . . . somewhere! Where, she did not know, for Swinley Manor would be given up to the moneylenders if she did not manage to marry Lord Pelimore.

"You do not understand," she said, turning on him. "You have no idea! This is not the backwoods and these are not painted savages! Their opinions matter; they could destroy me—my position in society, my future plans—with one well-placed
bon mot
!

"No they are not 'painted savages,' they are a good deal less civilized!" Westhaven retorted, his voice low and fierce. "Cruelty has no gender, nor any particular culture attached, Arabella. I don't know what you have done to earn their ire." He frowned and gazed down at her, then reached out one hand and touched her arm. It was a small gesture, but it comforted her a tiny bit.

"I cannot imagine it was such a very big solecism," he continued. "I know you, Arabella; you are thoughtless on occasion, sometimes you speak before you think, but you would never deliberately hurt someone, so I can only believe you have offended some arbitrary social rule—wore pink on a Sunday or something ridiculous like that"

She turned tragic eyes on him. How little he really knew of her! And how kind of him to say such a sweet thing when she had been rude to him just moments before. "If only it were something so simple! If only. But I am afraid—I fear—"

He gazed steadily at her. "I don't believe you. I think you have much more courage than you give yourself credit for—pluck to the backbone is the phrase, I believe. Buck up, my dear one; if all the world should crumble around you, I will still be your friend."

They were magical words, magical and inspirational. How had she managed to inspire such friendship in a man like Marcus Westhaven? He was as steadfast as a rock, and she felt she could trust him. She gazed into his dark gray eyes and saw in them courage that had faced a thousand challenges. Was she such a wet goose as to turn tail and run from a bunch of cork-brained, thin-blooded aristos? No, she was better than that, and better than them!

If she was ruined, if no one in London would look at her and talk to her anymore, well, then, she would go to join Eveleen on the Isle of Wight, or she would run away to Canada with Marcus. A thrill of wild hope ran through her. She would be free. No one would blame her for leaving—they would expect her to! And she would no longer be responsible for helping her mother out of her predicament; she would not be able to, after all. No rich, well-positioned man would marry a girl who had done what she had been accused of doing at the Farmington home. If she was ostracized, she could forget marriage to Pelimore or anyone else, for that matter.

Marcus was watching her. He nodded with satisfaction, reading the resolution on her face. "That's better. Now, take my arm. We are going to stroll over there, and you are going to say hello to the frightening Lord Sweetan and the terrifying Lord and Lady Snowdale and you are going to introduce me."

Arabella giggled. That would be a challenge after the Snowdales' last run-in with Mr. Marcus Westhaven! She felt a strange lightheartedness at a moment when she should be feeling a dark dread. If they all snubbed her, if the story of the debacle at the Farmington home had gotten out, then she was ruined in London society for a very long time. She would be damned as a schemer and an unprincipled trollop. She would not even have a chance to explain the unexplainable; perhaps even Marcus would turn away from her when he learned what she was accused of—but no. She did not believe Marcus would turn from her then. She looked up at him as they crossed the broad ballroom floor; he seemed so big and sturdy at her side. She almost thought she caught a glimpse of his burnished steel armor!

She turned her eyes to the gathered lords and ladies, searching for signs of hostility, looking for the coldness that would inevitably descend like a curtain if they saw her as an encroaching schemer. It did not matter. If every other person in the world turned away from her, she was safe in the friendship of Marcus Westhaven.

Marcus glanced down at Arabella. He felt her tremble, and wondered again what she had done that was so very horrible? It was some social faux pas, of that he was certain. He looked back up and examined the group they were approaching. Lord Sweetan. That was the fellow who had asked her to marry him. She rejected him because he was not rich enough. He shook his head in puzzlement, still not able to reconcile the two halves of Arabella. There was no doubt that she was mercenary and on the husband hunt for a rich man.

But on the other hand, she was warm and lively and smart and beautiful—the list was far too long. They had talked over the weeks, often and at length, and she had spoken mostly about her family, about her cousins True-love and Faithful, and their father, the vicar. The tone of her voice was loving and warm and tender. There was so much in her that contradicted the notion that she was money-hungry and grasping, and yet, and yet—