Duel of Hearts (8 page)

Earlier that afternoon, Sarah had seriously considered changing her plans and remaining at home. Facing Edward Middleton's disregard once that day was quite enough to bear. But the opera that evening was to be Handel's
Radamisto
, an opera she had not heard, and she'd looked forward to it eagerly. Why should she permit herself to go into a taking over an incident which no one else had even noticed—and miss the music because of something she'd merely built up in her own mind?

No, she would not change her plans. She would attend the opera, hold her head up and enjoy herself. She must not let Edward Middleton (blast him!) upset her equilibrium. Since he was to escort them this evening, Sarah determined to make as impressive an appearance as possible. She knew that she was not in her first bloom, nor would she win his notice beside the radiant appearance of the bewitching Corianne, but neither would she cringe in the shadow as she had earlier this afternoon. She was Sarah Stanborough, a person of considerable worth, and she intended to behave as if she believed it.

Madame Marie, having decided with Cook that Miss Sarah had taken an interest in a likely gentleman at last, gave the others short shrift that evening so that she could devote herself to turning Miss Sarah out in proper style. She entered Sarah's bedroom shortly after six, bearing a tray of soup, cold meat and tea. She'd informed Lady Stanborough that it was unlikely that Miss Sarah would have time to come down to dinner if she was expected to be ready to leave at eight-thirty.

If Lady Stanborough had been surprised at her daughter's sudden desire to beautify herself, she had given no sign. “Do what you can with her, Madame,” she'd said placidly, and she'd dismissed the dresser apparently without another thought.

Madame Marie found Sarah still undressed, staring indecisively at a number of gowns which she'd laid out on her bed. “Oh, wear the burgundy, Miss,” the dresser urged eagerly. “It's
tres belle
! It'll bring color to y'r cheeks, which, if ye don't mind me
parleyin'
to ye, you sorely need.”

“Do you think the
burgundy?
” Sarah asked dubiously. “It's a bit too rakish, isn't it? I was thinking of this one.” She held up a gown of lustrous Persian silk the color of deep topaz.

The maid put her head to one side and considered the gown carefully. “It's darker than
I'd
choose, but let's see it on ye.” And she bustled Sarah into it and hooked it up in a twinkling. Then, stepping back and squinting at Sarah for a long moment, she nodded admiringly. “Ye've a good instinct, Miss Sarah. It's a proper eye-catcher.
Charmant
! Makes y'r pale color look … well,
ravissant
.”

The dress had puffed half-sleeves which cunningly enhanced the provocativeness of the low-cut bodice. Madame Marie decided at once that the most effective hairstyle would be one in which Sarah's thick hair was drawn up and away from the neck, so that, by being left completely bare, its slender grace would be emphasized. “Now, Miss, just leave everythin' else to
moi
,” she ordered, urging Sarah to take a seat beside the dressing table but facing away from the mirror. She touched the thick hair here and there with her special pomade and brushed it in. She bound the now-shiny tresses tightly at the back of Sarah's head, twisting them into one thick curl which she permitted to fall over Sarah's left shoulder. Then she freed a number of little tendrils of hair around the face and let them curl as they would.

“May I use a
soupçon
of blackin' on y'r lashes, Miss?” she asked, tilting Sarah's face up to scrutinize it with professional dispassion.

“I am entirely in your hands,” Sarah said, throwing caution to the winds.

A few other touches, from various pots and jars which Madame produced from the pockets of her voluminous apron, and she nodded with satisfaction. Then she added only a pair of topaz earrings to Sarah's costume, tossed a gauzy shawl over her shoulders and pronounced her ready.

Sarah turned and stared into her mirror in considerable astonishment. She found it difficult to believe that the face looking back at her was the same one she'd seen that morning. This person had pale skin and shadowed eyes, too, but they seemed strangely luminous. Her hair and dress, in dark contrast to her skin, gave her an air of drama and mystery. There was a bit of the Lorelei in those eyes, a touch of the tantalizer in the shadowed curves of her breasts. “Madame Marie, you are a
genius
!” she breathed.

Madame Marie, looking at her handiwork with satisfaction, almost said absently, “That I am.” But she caught herself in time, smiled broadly and bobbed a quick curtsey. However, before she left the room, she couldn't resist remarking, “If anyone was to ask me, Miss Sarah, I'd say you look a proper
Parisienne
, and that's a fact.”

Edward had already arrived when Sarah came down the stairs. He'd been carefully checked by Lady Stanborough, who found—to her immense relief—that his evening clothes, while obviously not cut by a tailor the caliber of Weston or Stultz, fit him well; that his shirt points, while not high enough to be the epitome of fashion, were properly stiff; that his neckcloth, while not tied in a fold of particular originality, was presentable; and that his evening shoes were completely beyond reproach. If only his coach turned out to be satisfactory, her evening would be made.

So eager was her ladyship to get a glimpse of the carriage that she took hardly any notice of her daughter's altered appearance. “Ah, Sarah,” she said, crossing to the foot of the stairway impatiently, “there you are at last. Hurry with your cloak, my dear, for it will not do to keep the Squire's horses standing.”

“Good
Lord,
” Edward exclaimed, sotto voce, to Corianne, who was standing just behind him looking into the mirror near the door, “that can't be Miss Stanborough, can it?”

Corianne, whose blonde curls had been gathered up in charming profusion at the nape of her neck and bound with a chaplet of tea roses, was studying in the mirror the effect on the flowers of a toss of her curls. Preoccupied with the problem of the stability of the wreath, she merely cast a look over her shoulder at the stairway. “Of course it's Sarah,” she responded uninterestedly. “Who else should it be?”

Edward, however, couldn't help but gape. The young woman descending the stairway looked remarkably lovely and self-possessed. It was hard to believe that the unobtrusive, retiring, awkward Miss Stanborough he'd met earlier could have so transformed herself.

As the butler helped Sarah with her cloak, Lady Stanborough found time to look at her. “Well, I must say, Sarah, Madame Marie has done well by you. Your hair is charming.”

This caught Corianne's attention. “Why, so it
is
!” she exclaimed. “It's very becoming, Sarah, really. I must ask Madame to fix
mine
so one of these days.”

As Edward ushered the ladies down the stone steps to his waiting carriage (which turned out to be most acceptable to Lady Stanborough—she was almost ecstatic to see the spotless sheen of the side panels, the gleaming brass fittings of the lamps, and the plush grey velvet luxury of the upholstery inside), he found himself wondering about the conversation he'd overheard. The ladies had merely complimented Miss Stanborough on her hair. Could that be all? Was her transformation merely the result of a new way of dressing her
hair?
He couldn't credit it. This afternoon, Miss Stanborough had seemed to him almost ungainly. Could a hairstyle transform a gawkish insipidity into
that
? He must have been blind, earlier.

He took his place in the carriage and glanced at her again. She was smiling faintly at Corianne's incessant and excited chatter, her head erect, her body leaning back against the squabs in poised relaxation, her eyes dark and intriguingly secret. He shook his head in amazement. Women were always and ever a mystery to him.

Lord North had many acquaintances, but few intimates. Of late, however, the gossips noted that he appeared everywhere in the company of young Anthony Ingalls, second son of the impecunious Lord Bentwood. Ingalls, a fellow of loose morals and a hedonistic disposition, had made himself notorious for his debts and his excesses by the remarkably young age of twenty-four. Those gossips who were not well acquainted with Lord North may have wondered why he'd taken up with an unsavory character who was almost ten years his junior, but those who understood North's character were less puzzled. Lord North had always been susceptible to sycophancy, and Anthony Ingalls knew well how to play the courtier. He had the not-inconsiderable ability to show constant admiration to the older man without the slightest touch of self-abasement; and he could make himself agreeable without the least air of the lackey in his manner. In return for this pleasant companionship, John Philip North, the wealthy Marquis of Revesne, could be counted on to foot the bills for their various activities and amusements.

Their amusements tonight were to begin quite late, and to pass the time they put in an appearance at Covent Garden. Before the curtain rose on the spectacular Handel opera, the two gentlemen looked up from the pit at the occupants of the boxes to determine their targets for the first intermission. “I
say
, Jack,” Ingalls remarked eagerly after a moment, “who's the little beauty in the box next to the Howards?”

John North lifted his pearl-handled opera glasses and turned them in the direction his friend had indicated. Suddenly he seemed to stiffen. “Good God!” he muttered.

Anthony Ingalls grinned. “Yes, I quite agree. She
does
take one's breath away in that yellow confection she's wearing.”

“What yellow confection?” North asked, still staring up through the glasses. “I should call it bronze … or rather, topaz.”

Ingalls looked at his friend in some bafflement. “Where
are
you looking, old fellow?” he demanded.

There was a moment of silence, for North hadn't paid any heed to his friend's remark. Abstractedly, he lowered the glasses and stared straight ahead of him, his brow wrinkled. Ingalls observed this strange behavior for a moment and then reached over and removed the opera glasses from North's hand. Putting them to his eyes, he looked up at the box with renewed interest. “I'd certainly like to pass in the way of that yellow rose,” he murmured. “I wonder who she is.”

“It's her cousin from Lincolnshire, I believe,” North said absently. “Linley, or Lindsay, if recollection serves.”

“
Whose
cousin?” Ingalls asked curiously, lowering the opera glasses. “The dark one there?”

“Yes. Sarah Stanborough.”

“Aha!” Ingalls said in sudden understanding. He lifted the glasses and turned his gaze to the box again. “So
that's
the unobtainable Sarah.”

“I haven't laid eyes on her in months,” North muttered, half to himself. “I'd heard she'd become almost a recluse.” He took back the glasses and looked through them again. “Yet there she sits, even more fascinating than ever. I wonder what's drawn her out.”

“Look here, Jack,” Ingalls asked in an interested amazement, “you don't mean to suggest that you're in
love
with the lady!”

North smiled coldly. “Love? Love is a sickness which afflicts only dolts and weaklings. I am merely … tantalized.”

“Are you? After all these years?”

North favored his companion with a look of scorn. “Tony, my boy, I sometimes fear that you're too young for real intimacy with a man of my years. How can I explain this to a callow youth? She
refused
me, don't you see?” His eyes glittered icily. “I am not often refused, you know.”

“I should think not,” Ingalls quickly agreed. “The lady must be a fool.”

“If she were a fool, I should not have asked her. No, she has all her wits about her, and yet she refused me. Hence the fascination.”

“I see,” murmured Tony, quite at a loss. They fell silent, each using the pause to glance up at the box again. “In any case, Jack, I must admit that I find the yellow rosebud more to my taste.”

North shrugged. “I'm not surprised. It's another indication of your callow nature. Would you like to meet the rosebud?”

“Rather! Is it possible for you to arrange it?”

North smiled enigmatically across the theater at the all-unknowing occupants of the box. “As soon as the first act concludes, you shall meet your little tea rose. And I … my fascinating … er … topaz.”

Chapter Six

T
HE MUSIC WAS GLORIOUS
, the costumes splendid, and the scenery spectacular, but for Corianne the first act ran on much too long. As soon as the curtain fell, she leaped from her seat and requested her aunt's permission to leave the box. “Don't be silly, child,” Lady Stanborough restrained her, “you can't run about alone. Besides, you haven't yet exchanged three words with Lady Howard or the members of her party.”

So Corianne was forced to curb her impatience and trade pleasantries with the group in the adjoining box. Among them was a moon-faced, plump young man named Wilfred Shirley, whose first glance at Corianne reduced him to stuttering incoherency. In no time at all, she elicited from him an offer to escort her in a promenade about the corridors. With her aunt's permission, she flew to the door of the box where her new swain was to meet her. However, when she flung open the door, she found herself confronted, not by the fubsy Mr. Shirley, but by the very man she'd dreamed of meeting. “Lord
N-North
!” she gasped, stepping back in awe.

At the sound of the name, Sarah (who had just turned to Edward, seated at her left, and asked him if he'd enjoyed the music) felt a cold shudder run through her. Edward had leaned toward her to hear what she'd said, and he could almost
feel
the shiver and the sudden tension of her body. He looked up at the door with curiosity.