Slightly Dangerous (41 page)

The fourth set was to be a waltz.

Christine Derrick had danced with Attingsborough, Kit, and Aidan. She was looking flushed and bright-eyed, and not at all the way a lady ought to look at a ball—aloof and slightly bored. She looked really quite adorable. She was standing at the opposite side of the ballroom from where Wulfric stood, with Lady Elrick and the Duchess of Portfrey.

Her eyes met his across the empty floor.

He could not resist. His fingers grasped the jeweled handle of his quizzing glass and raised it all the way to his eye before lowering it slightly. Even across the distance he could see the laughter well up into her eyes.

And then she reached down into a little cloth reticule that hung from her wrist and brought something out of it. For a moment all he could see of it was black ribbon. She brought the object slowly up to her eye and regarded him—through the lens of his own quizzing glass.

Wulfric Bedwyn, the oh-so-toplofty, oh-so-frosty Duke of Bewcastle, was shocked into uttering a short bark of laughter. Then he smiled at her slowly until his whole face beamed his amusement and affection.

She was no longer smiling, he saw as he set off across the empty floor toward her—it did not occur to him that it would have been far more correct to walk unobtrusively about the perimeter of the room. But her eyes were huge and translucent, and her teeth were biting into her lower lip.

“I believe, Mrs. Derrick,” he said, making her a bow when he came up to her, “this is my dance?”

“Yes, your grace,” she said. “Thank you.”

It was only then, when he extended a hand toward her, that he became aware of the near-hush that had descended on the ballroom. He turned his head and looked about in some surprise, his eyebrows raised, to see what had happened. But as he did so, everyone rushed back into conversation.

“Did I miss something?” he asked.

Christine Derrick set her hand in his—the quizzing glass had disappeared inside her little reticule again.

“Yes,” she said. “A looking glass. You missed seeing yourself smile.”

What the devil?
He frowned at her.

“I understand,” she said, and she was
laughing
at him again, the minx, “that it is as rare as a rose in winter.”

How foolish, he thought. How very foolish! But he made no comment.

For half an hour he waltzed with her and the world receded. There was no Hector this time to come lumbering into them from the opposite direction—he had been firmly established in the card room since well before the first set began. There was nothing at all to harm her or take his attention from her. She sparkled. He felt as if he held joy itself in his arms. He kept his eyes on her, marveling at her beauty, breathing in the fragrance of her, doing nothing to hide his admiration somewhere deep behind his eyes.

“Thank you,” he said when the set was finally over and he was forced to return to reality. And then, more softly, “Thank you, Christine.”

Duty called. He was the host of the ball. His home was filled with guests. His half-hour of self-indulgence was over.

C
HRISTINE COULD NOT
remember feeling more depressed in her life. Of course, one always thought that when one was depressed. But even so, this was a depression to beat them all.

He had wanted to prove a point to her. He had brought her here in order to do so—and he had
succeeded
. But that was all he had ever intended.

She had been given her chance last year and had rejected it—with firmness and scorn. He would not ask again.
Of course
he would not. He was the Duke of Bewcastle.

And of all things, it was
raining
today. Oh, not enough to stop them all traveling and keep them at Lindsey Hall for an extra day. Thank
heaven
it was not raining that heavily. But it was enough to make the world gray and gloomy and to steam up the carriage windows when they were on their way.

Christine took one last look around the lovely Chinese bedchamber that had been hers during her stay. Her bag had already been taken down and stowed in the carriage.

Just two evenings ago she had been happier than she had ever been before. He had smiled at her across the ballroom floor after she had looked at him through his quizzing glass—which was now weighting down the pocket of her pelisse, nestled for safety within the folds of his handkerchief. He had smiled, and she would swear that her heart had performed a complete somersault in her chest. And then he had waltzed with her, and his eyes had devoured her the whole time. She was certain there had been a smile in their depths. Silver had suddenly seemed warm and light-filled to her. She had felt as if her slippers had scarcely touched the ballroom floor all the time they danced.

All doubts had fled, all barriers had simply ceased to exist.

And then the waltz had ended—and he had hardly spoken to her since.

Yesterday she and all the others had been busy enjoying themselves from morning to night. But the Duke of Bewcastle had kept to his library, only Bertie and Basil and Hector and Lord Weston admitted to the hallowed precincts.

And now she was leaving. Bertie’s two carriages were already drawn up on the terrace. The children were scrambling with their nurse into the second one. Melanie and Bertie were probably in the hall below wondering where she was.

She took a deep breath and left the room without a backward glance. She pasted a smile on her face.

There was a crowd down in the hall.

“Oh,
there
you are, Christine,” Melanie said.

She was caught up in handshakes and hugs then. They were the first to leave, though everyone else was also going today. Hermione was actually crying, and that threatened to start Christine off too. She stretched her smile wider.

Melanie and Bertie hurried out to the carriage.

“Mrs. Derrick.” It was the duke’s cool, haughty voice. “Allow me to hold an umbrella over your head so that you will not get wet.”

She added a sparkle to her eyes.

“Thank you,” she said.

She put her head down as they stepped out through the front doors and he hoisted a large black umbrella over her. She tried to hurry. But he took her arm in a firm grasp.

She turned and smiled at him.

“How unmannerly the rain has made me,” she said. “I did not say thank you for your hospitality, your grace. It really has been a splendid stay.”

“But your mother is not here, Mrs. Derrick,” he said, “and neither are your sisters or your brother-in-law. There is a question I wish to ask you, but courtesy dictates that I speak at least to your mother first. It is something I did not do last summer.
May
I speak to her? And
may
I ask my question afterward? I will not trouble either her or you if you would rather I did not.”

The umbrella gave the illusion of seclusion and privacy. Christine could hear the rain drumming lightly on its fabric. She looked into his eyes, and suddenly depression fled and a blazing happiness took its place.

“Yes,” she said, her voice breathless. “You may call on my mother. She will be honored. And you may call upon me. I will be . . .”

“Christine?” he prompted softly.

“Pleased,” she said, and whisked herself out from under the umbrella and up the steps into the carriage without waiting for him to hand her in.

And now the stupid tears came, filling her eyes and blurring her vision, and threatening to spill down over her cheeks.

Melanie patted her hand as the door shut with a firm click and the carriage bounced and lurched into almost instant motion.

“I am so sorry, Christine,” she said. “I expected some announcement during the ball.
Everyone
did. But no matter. He is a haughty, disagreeable man anyway, is he not, and we will find someone else for you. It will not be difficult, you know. You are amazingly attractive to men.”

There had been no announcement at the ball, Christine thought,
because her mother had not been there,
or Eleanor or Hazel and Charles. And he had felt—so different from last year!—that it would be discourteous to proceed without the formality of consulting them first.

She was not in love, she thought. Not at all.

She
loved
!

I
T WAS
W
ULFRIC
’
S
guess that Christine Derrick had not told her family that he was to be expected. He was seated in the sitting room at Hyacinth Cottage making labored conversation with them, and it was perfectly clear to him that they were terrified. At least, Mrs. Thompson and Mrs. Lofter were—the latter had come to call just after Wulfric and looked, after she had entered the sitting room, as if she would have withdrawn again if only she decently could. Miss Thompson looked at him over the tops of her spectacles, which she had not removed even though she had closed the book she had been reading when he arrived. There was a faint look of amusement on her face, somewhat reminiscent of her youngest sister.

It was eight days since Christine had left Lindsey Hall with the Renables. And of course he had had to arrive on an afternoon when she was not at home, though she was expected home at any moment for tea. Mrs. Thompson kept glancing nervously at the window as if she could thus precipitate the arrival of her youngest daughter.

Actually it was a good thing she was not at home, Wulfric decided. And he had made enough small talk.

“There is a matter I wish to discuss with you, ma’am,” he said, addressing Mrs. Thompson, “before I speak with Mrs. Derrick. And it is, perhaps, as well that your other daughters are present too. I wonder if you would have any objection to my making Mrs. Derrick the Duchess of Bewcastle?”

Mrs. Thompson gaped at him. Mrs. Lofter slapped both hands to her cheeks. It was Miss Thompson who answered him after a short silence.

“Is Christine expecting you, your grace?” she asked.

“I believe,” he said, “she is.”

“Then if it is the prospect of that that has put an extra spring in her step and an even warmer smile than usual on her lips since she returned from Hampshire last week,” she said, “I believe we would be delighted, your grace.
Not
because she will be the Duchess of Bewcastle, but because she will be happy again.”

“But Eleanor,” Mrs. Lofter said, “Christine is always happy.”

“Is she?” Miss Thompson asked, though she did not pursue the question.

“Oh, bless my soul,” Mrs. Thompson said, “Christine a duchess. It is remarkably civil of you to ask us, your grace. You do not need to do so, I am sure, you being a duke and all and Christine being quite old enough to decide for herself. If her father could only have lived to see this day.”

But there was the sound of voices from the hallway beyond the sitting room.

“I am late for tea, Mrs. Skinner,” Christine Derrick was saying. “I was reading to Mr. Potts and he fell asleep as he usually does by the time I reach the third paragraph, the poor lamb. But as I got up to tiptoe out and home, he woke up and entertained me for half an hour without stopping with all his old stories. I wish someone would give me a shilling for every time I have listened to them. But it gives him so much pleasure to hear me exclaim and laugh in all the right places.”

She was laughing at the memory as she opened the sitting room door and came tripping inside, the old, floppy-brimmed straw bonnet on her head, and wearing the green-and-white-striped poplin dress Wulfric remembered from last year, and looking quite as pretty as she had looked in all her new finery in London and at Lindsey Hall.

“Oh,” she said, the smile arrested on her face.

Wulfric had risen to his feet and was making his bow to her.

“Mrs. Derrick,” he said.

“Your grace.” She curtsied.

Mrs. Thompson got to her feet too.

“His grace wishes to speak with you in private, Christine,” she said. “Come along, Eleanor. Come along, Hazel. We will go elsewhere.”

“I would far prefer to take Mrs. Derrick into the side garden, ma’am,” Wulfric said. That was where he had gone most terribly wrong last year. It seemed important to him that it be there he try to made amends.

And so no more than a minute or two later they had stepped out through the front door and climbed the shallow steps to the trellis arch, and walked beneath it into the quiet, square garden that he had seen in his nightmares for some weeks after the last time he was here.

“Mrs. Skinner ought to have said something before I went into the sitting room,” she said. “I could have made myself more presentable.”

“For one thing,” he told her, “I do not believe you allowed your housekeeper to get a word in edgewise. And, for another, you look adorable as you are.”

“Oh.” She had scurried around behind the wooden seat again, as she had done last time. She gripped the back with both hands.

“First,” he said, setting his hands behind his back, “I must tell you that I can never be the man you dream of—”

“Yes, you can,” she said quickly, interrupting him. “You can and you are. I am not sure what was on that list I gave you last year, but it does not signify. You are
everything
I could ever dream of and more.”

There went the speech he had so carefully prepared.

“You will have me, then?” he asked her.

“No.” She shook her head, and he closed his eyes.

“I cannot possibly be the sort of woman you need as your duchess,” she said.

He opened his eyes.

“You are not planning to spout nonsense at me, are you?” he asked her. “I have it on the highest authority—Freyja’s—that none of my brothers and sisters
or
their spouses
or
their children will ever speak to me again if I do not offer you just that position
and
persuade you to accept. And no members of the
ton
are higher sticklers than the Bedwyns.”

“The Marchioness of Rochester is,” she said.

“My aunt,” he told her, “is like the rest of us—she likes to have her own way. She had the silly notion that my uncle’s niece and I would suit. But she will get over her disappointment. She adores me. I am her favorite. None of my siblings, by the way, have ever been jealous of that fact.”