Slightly Tempted (10 page)

Gervase had not expected to see her. A number of British families, especially those with children and young female members, had left for the greater safety of Antwerp or for home itself during the past couple of days. He would have expected Caddick to have more sense than to remain when there were two young ladies in his household as well as his wife, though of course therewas young Gordon to make them all reluctant to leave. Lady Morgan had probably felt that reluctance too. It was a wonder, though, that her brother who was attached to the embassy had not insisted that she leave.

There was something brittle, almost desperate, about her smile.

He had not spoken with her since that day when they had met on the Allée Verte and ridden together for a while. But he had thought about her a great deal. She had all the almost-unconscious arrogance of the Bedwyns, but she was also intelligent, forthright, and honest-all qualities that he admired. She was also attractive as well as classically beautiful. Despite the untutored way she had kissed him in the Forest of Soignés, she had stirred his blood.

Truth to tell, he was beginning to feelguilty . His hatred of Bewcastle and his desire somehow to make him suffer had not been one whit assuaged by the way he had singled out Lady Morgan Bedwyn for dalliance and gossip. But he did feel that perhaps his actions had been small-minded and he had begun to regret them. The best he could do tonight, he decided, was stay away from her.

MORGAN HAD NOT REALIZED UNTIL THIS EVENINGthat she would be able to smile and make merry and dance and converse and laugh in the face of such a looming catastrophe. She would have thought such behavior inappropriate, disrespectful, unfeeling, impossible. Yet she was quite incapable of behaving any other way. And if it was any consolation to her, everyone else was doing the same-Rosamond, the officers of their acquaintance,everyone .

It was the merriest ball she had attended all Season.

It was also the saddest. Somewhere deep down she was aware of the terrible fragility, the tragically ephemeral nature, of human life.

She danced the opening set with Captain Lord Gordon. She stood at his side later while the bagpipes droned and the Scottish dancers dazzled and awed the gathering with the energy and intricate footwork of their reels and with the imposing visual spectacle they presented with their swaying kilts and tartans. She waltzed with Lord Gordon at midnight, just as the Duke of Wellington was arriving, looking as cheerful and as festive as all the other guests. But by that time rumor had already made the rounds of the ballroom that the Prince of Orange, also a guest, had received a dispatch during supper informing him that Charleroi had fallen.

Charleroi was twenty miles inside the Belgian border.

Morgan's smile had not faltered. Neither had anyone else's.

She felt a strange, almost desperate tenderness for the captain-perhaps because everyone expected that they would make a match of it and he was always so eagerly attentive while she had felt nothing for him since their arrival in Brussels but a mild irritation-and sometimes not even so very mild. Tomorrow he would be going into deadly danger. Tomorrow he might be going to his death.

"I daresay, Lady Morgan," he said cheerfully as they waltzed, "we will have an early start of it tomorrow. But I am glad of that. I am glad Old Boney has dared to come and that we will have our chance to crush him once and for all on the battlefield. We will be heroes tomorrow or the next day or whenever the battle finally comes. I will make you proud of me."

Behind his boastful words, she thought, there must be a terrible fear.

"Your mama and papa and all who know you are already enormously proud of you," she said. "I am sure they do not need you to prove your courage in battle. Perhaps a battle may yet be averted." She did not believe it for a moment.

"Pardon me for having even mentioned such a topic," he said, twirling her with small steps and cautious precision. "I should not worry your pretty little head with such talk."

She tried to ignore the flaring of irritation she always felt when she heard those words. She smiled at him and focused her attention on him. If he needed her company and her admiration tonight, then she would not deny him. There was solittle women could do.

They had reached the doorway of the ballroom, and he stopped dancing suddenly, caught her impulsively by the hand, and hurried her through it. Crowds milled about outside, but he glanced hastily in both directions and hurried her along a corridor to their right, past open doors leading into busy salons and card rooms, and along to the end, where he drew her into the shadowed privacy afforded by an open door.

"Lady Morgan," he said earnestly, "tomorrow I will be gone to join my regiment. I beg that you will grant me the favor of one kiss before I leave."

She might perhaps have drawn the line at that since she had no wish to be kissed by Captain Lord Gordon, but he did not wait for an answer. He drew her almost roughly into his arms, lowered his head, and kissed her hard. His lips pressed urgently, closed and hot and dry, against her own, bruising the flesh inside against her teeth.

Such behavior would normally have drawn a blistering set-down and a ringing slap across the cheek from Morgan. But not tonight. Tonight, at this moment, she was on the verge of tears, all her gaiety dissipated. She grasped the stiff fabric of his coat at the point where the sleeves met the shoulders and kissed him back with all the tenderness she felt for all the men who might die tomorrow or the next day in the stupid, deadly male game of war.

She was terribly aware of his warmth, his aliveness, his eager youth.

"Lady Morgan," he said with hot intensity when he released her mouth, "permit me, I beg you, to have the honor of fighting foryou when the battle comes, to know that you wait for me, that you care for me."

He was asking for some promise, for something that of course she could not give. But how could she say a firm no, silly as his words would have sounded to her under ordinary circumstances? These circumstances were by no means ordinary.

"Of course I care," she told him, gazing earnestly at him. "Oh, of course I do."

"Permit me to know," he begged her, grasping her right hand with both his own and pressing it to his heart, "that you will grieve for me if I die, that you will mourn me and wear black for me for the rest of your life, that there will never be another man for you. Permit me to know this."

"Of course I would grieve," she said, beginning to feel uncomfortable. "But please do not talk of dying."

He drew her to him again, his arms even more fierce this time. But before he could lower his head to hers, someone grasped the handle of the door from the other side and pulled it closed. Their private little nook was private no longer. He released his hold on her.

"We must return to the ballroom," she said. "Your mama will be wondering where I am."

He drew her arm through his, set his free hand over hers, and squeezed it hard.

"Thank you," he told her as he led her back to the ballroom. "You have made me the happiest of men, Lady Morgan."

He believed, she thought, shocked and dismayed, that they now had an understanding, that they were just one step away from a betrothal. But she would not-couldnot-disabuse him. There would be time enough to do that when he came back from battle.

Ifhe came back.

The noise in the ballroom, though as loud as before, had a different quality to it even though they had been gone for only a few minutes. There were already noticeably fewer uniforms present. Most of the officers who remained were not dancing, though the orchestra was still playing the set of waltzes. They were either in serious-looking groups or were taking their leave of family and friends.

"We have been ordered to leave now, without delay," Major Franks explained, catching Lord Gordon by the sleeve. He smiled and inclined his head to Morgan. "Nothing to worry your pretty head about, my lady. We will be back to waltz with the ladies again within the week."

Morgan heard a ringing sound that could not be coming from the orchestra or anywhere outside her own head. The air she inhaled felt suddenly cold in her nostrils. But she pulled herself together with a determined effort. This was not the time to indulge in her first ever fit of the vapors. She had wanted to come to Brussels, to be a part of history, to be in the thick of the action. She had wanted to know all about it firsthand.

Now that knowledge was almost overwhelming. She wondered if future generations would learn about the Richmond ball and wonder how military men and their women and families could have danced and made merry on the eve of such disaster.

"You must go to your mama immediately," she said briskly to Lord Gordon, noting the chalklike paleness of his face.

AMAZINGLY, THE BALL CONTINUED DESPITE THE FACTthat the Duke of Wellington did not stay long and had apparently admitted that they were off to war the next day, and despite the fact that the officers began to slip away to rejoin their regiments until very few remained.

Gervase saw Lady Morgan Bedwyn off on her own at one side of the ballroom, not dancing and not with her chaperon either. She was fanning her face and looking almost as pale as her gown. Her earlier smile and sparkle had deserted her. After a moment's hesitation he made his way toward her and offered her his arm without a word.

"Oh, Lord Rosthorn," she said after looking up at him with blank eyes for a moment. She tucked one slim hand through his arm. "I thought Lady Caddick and Rosamond would need to be alone together for a little while. They are in a great deal of distress."

"Permit me to escort you to the refreshment room and procure you a glass of something to drink," he suggested.

"Lemonade would be good," she said. "No, water. Water would be better."

He could smell violets again. Her hair was dotted with pearls. Small pearls had been sewn into the fabric of her gown, about the low neckline and at the hems of her short sleeves and skirt. She looked exquisitely lovely-and uncharacteristically fragile.

"Will they all be killed, do you suppose?" she asked.

"No," he said gently.

"It was a foolish question," she said. "Some of them will be killed.Many of them."

"Yes."

"I suppose my brother Aidan was called to battle like this a dozen times or more," she said. "I am glad now that I was never there, though being at home in ignorance and imagining the worst can be almost as bad. I thought I wanted to be here for this, evenneeded to be here. It promises to be a truly historic event, does it not? If Napoléon Bonaparte wins the battle, his comeback will be spoken of with awe for generations to come. If he loses, the Duke of Wellington's fame may well live through the ages."

He wove a careful path around other guests and led her to the refreshment room, where he fetched her a large glass of water. There were a number of other guests there, all men, gathered together in urgent conversational groups. He took her through into a small anteroom, where a few tables had been set up with chairs ranged around them. There was no one else in there, and of course it was improper to have her alone thus, without her chaperon's knowledge and consent. But propriety-or its absence-was the furthest thing from his mind tonight. She needed sympathetic company, he thought. She looked badly shaken. He seated her at a table, set the glass before her, and took the chair opposite hers.

"And does Captain Lord Gordon mean as much to you as Lord Aidan Bedwyn, your brother?" he asked.

She looked directly at him but did not admonish him for impertinence as she had on a previous occasion.

"He is a young man with vitality and dreams and hopes," she said, her dark eyes luminous. "He is dear to his family-and to himself. And yet he is caught up in this madness that humanity seems prey to. He kissed me before he left and begged me to wait for him and to grieve for him if he dies."

"Ah," he said. He wondered if she would awake tomorrow to the embarrassing memory of having confided something so intimate to a gentleman who was little more than a stranger to her. But then it was unlikely she would sleep tonight.

"How could I possibly have said no?" she asked him. "It would have been selfish, mean, cruel."

"Did youwish to say no?" he asked her. He had often wondered if she felt an affection for the boy. He was unworthy of her-a conceited young stripling who showed no sign of growing up into a mature man.

"Such questions ought not to be either asked or answered on a night like this," she said. "Emotion rules tonight. But the choice of a spouse is a serious business, is it not?"

"Is it?" he asked softly. It was something he had not thought about, for years, at least.

"Marriage is for life," she said. "I have always been determined not to choose hastily and not to allow my hand to be forced. It is very easy to fall in love, I believe. It is a highly emotional state. I am not so sure it is as easy tolove ."

"Love does not involve the emotions, then?" he asked her with a smile.

"It is notruled by them," she told him. "Love is liking and companionship and respect and trust. Love does not dominate or try to possess. Love thrives only in a commitment to pure, mutual freedom. That is why marriage is so tricky. There are the marriage ceremony and the marriage vows and the necessity for fidelity-all of them suggestive of restraints, even imprisonment. Men talk of life sentences and leg shackles in connection with marriage, do they not? But marriage ought to be just the opposite-two people agreeing to set each other free."