The Double Wager (5 page)

“But some people feel it is delightful to dress up and look pretty, dearest girl,” Miss Manford soothed. “And the gentlemen spend no less time in looking their best. Why, I have heard that Mr. Brummell used to spend three and a half hours sometimes merely in tying his neckcloth.”

Henry burst into loud laughter. “He must have been a peacock!” was her opinion.

“Perhaps so, dearest girl, but never say so to anyone else. He set the fashion for a long time, I have heard.”

“What a lot of fustian!” Henry declared before going out to the stable to join the twins in a mournful visit to Brutus and Oscar.

Lady Tallant finally revealed her social plans to Henry. For the next couple of weeks, there were to be minor social activities, including a few small dinner parties, a musical evening, and a picnic party to Kew Gardens. But Henry's official come-out was to be made with the daughter of Marian's friend, the Countess of Lambert. The Tallants had a ballroom only large enough for a moderately sized affair, but Marian wanted to make a larger splash for her sister-in-law's first official appearance. The countess had been quite insistent that they share the occasion—and the cost. Althea was a shy girl, she declared. It would help her to have another debutante with whom to share the nerves that every girl must endure on such an occasion.

Henry dutifully attended all the pre-come-out activities, listening avidly to the names of all guests that were announced. It seemed that the Duke of Eversleigh attended nothing. How was she supposed to get him to propose to her when she had never even set eyes on the man? She began to appreciate the genius of her brother and his cohorts in naming him as the object of her conquest. They must have known that it was unlikely that she would ever even meet him. But really, she thought, they were playing the game very unfairly. She conveniently forgot that she had insisted on aiming for the duke.

She was beginning to doubt the very existence of the man, when suddenly she heard him mentioned for the first time since she had come to London. Her sister-in-law had introduced her to Althea Summers during a particularly insipid party. There was nothing to do. There was no dancing. Loo tables had been set up, but the older set had occupied the tables and the younger people had drifted into unenthusiastic groups. Althea and Henry sat together, a little removed from the others, not by Henry’s choice. She labeled Althea as a twit after one glance at her pasty, anxious face.

“Henrietta, are you not horribly frightened about the ball?” Althea asked, leaning confidentially toward her new friend. “I declare, I do not know how I shall live through it.”

“Why?” Henry asked. “What is there to be frightened of?”

“Why, everyone will be looking at us,” Althea said, wide-eyed. “And there will be so many gentlemen. What if we do not make a good impression, Henrietta? We will be wallflowers for the rest of the Season. And how dreadful it would be to have to begin another Season next year without any beaux.”

“As for me,” Henry said unconcernedly, swinging her legs freely, “if the gentlemen do not care to take notice of me, I shan’t take any notice of them. There is to be a supper table, is there not?”

Althea darted a frightened, rather doubtful look at her companion. “You are funning, Henrietta,” she said. “You really are droll.” And she tittered in uncertain amusement. “I am sure I shall forget every dance step I ever learned,” she continued. .

“Pooh!” said Henry. “Who cares for dancing?”

“Mama says I have to dance with Cousin Marius if she can lure him,” Althea continued. “I shall just die, Henrietta. He has such a way of looking down his nose and through his quizzing glass at one. I shall forget even which foot is which. But Mama says it would be a great coup to get Eversleigh to dance with me. It will ensure my success.”

Henry’s flagging interest perked. “Eversleigh?” she asked. “You mean the duke?”

“He never goes to balls,” said Althea. “Mama says he is coming to ours only because I am his cousin. I really wish he would not feel obliged, Henrietta.”

“Pooh,” said that interested lady. “I should not be afraid to dance with him.” And her mind was feverishly trying to calculate dates. Would she have time enough to pull it off?

CHAPTER 3

T
he Duke of Eversleigh spent the afternoon before his cousin s ball with Suzanne Broughton. There was the usual large gathering of visitors in her drawing room during the afternoon—predominantly male, hangers-on who were attracted by her mature self-assurance, her wealth, and her air of independence. She was a woman who was closer to thirty than she cared to admit.

Eversleigh stayed aloof, not participating to any great extent in the general conversation. His usual air of boredom and cynicism discouraged anyone from trying too hard to engage his attention. His heir and cousin, Oliver Cranshawe, was a particular victim of the duke's chilling manner.

“Why, Marius,” he greeted his cousin heartily on first entering the room, “still dangling after the lovely widow? I certainly cannot fault your taste. The competition seems rather stiff, though, eh?” He favored Eversleigh with the full blaze of his very white, very dazzling smile, the same smile with which he had bewitched many women.

Unfortunately, Eversleigh seemed impervious to his charm. He raised his quizzing glass with one languid hand and proceeded to subject his heir to a thorough and unhurried. The glass passed over the artful disarray of blond, wavy hair the handsome, smiling face, the skintight coat of blue superfine, and the froth of white lace at neck and wrists. It took careful note of the fobs and chains and the numerous rings that adorned Cranshawe’s person and of the jeweled snuffbox clasped in his hand.

“Ah, Oliver,” he said chillingly at last, lowering the glass. “Trying to cast all of the other gallants into the shade, dear boy?”

The smile tightened on Cranshawe’s face, but before he had a chance to say more or to move away, Eversleigh rose unhurriedly to his feet and sauntered over to stand by the chair of Mrs. Broughton, who was in animated conversation with two very young worshipers.

“Suzanne,” Eversleigh said, interrupting as soon as there was a pause in the talk, “shall we begin that drive in the park? If we do not leave soon, the exercise will be quite pointless. There will be no one else there to criticize, and no one to admire us.”

The two young men smiled uncertainly, not at all sure whether this speech, delivered with an expression of utter boredom, was meant jokingly or not. Suzanne saved them from further embarrassment by leaping to her feet and clapping her hands to focus all attention her way.

“I do thank you all for calling,” she said, smiling with the warm charm that made many men her slaves, “but I have promised to ride out with Marius.”

The room cleared like magic. Suzanne went upstairs to change into a carriage dress and outdoor garments. Eversleigh prowled the empty drawing room and stopped to stare frowningly into the unlit fireplace. After a few moments he turned abruptly and left the room. He climbed the second staircase and strode along the Corridor to Suzanne’s dressing room.

He opened the door without knocking and held it until Suzanne, glancing inquiringly at him, had dismissed her maid, who was in the process of buttoning up the back of her dress.

“Marius,” she said with mild reproach after the door had closed, “I have just changed my dress on your instructions and have not had an outing yet today. Are you now to tell me that we are not to drive out, after all? How tiresome you are sometimes.”

“Don’t be coy, Suzanne,” he said, advancing into the room and moving to her back to reverse the process with the buttons that the maid had begun. “Today I need you.”

“Do you indeed, your Grace?” she cried, whisking herself around to face him. “And why is need such a one-way process? What about the times when I want you? It seems to me that you come to me only when you feel the need. That is not as often as it could be, Marius.”

Eversleigh’s gaze was inscrutable. He looked at her for a long time through his half-closed lids. “Do you mean to put leading strings on me, Suzanne?” he asked softly. “I assure you no one has ever succeeded.”

Suzanne perceived her error immediately. She laughed seductively and wrapped her arms about her lover’s neck, “Marius,” she said, “I am merely cross because I am wearing a new dress and was looking forward to bringing every gentleman in the park to his knees, and to turning every other woman green-eyed. And then, in you came, and without even a word of appreciation, you started to remove it.” She gazed meltingly into his eyes.

Eversleigh held her at arm’s length and let his eyes move slowly and suggestively down the length of her body.

“It is an uncommonly handsome dress,” he conceded at last. “But, you see, my dear, I happen to know that what is beneath it is infinitely more handsome.”

“Oh, Marius,” she breathed softly and with some relief, “you are a shameless flatterer.”

Half an hour later, they lay quietly in each other’s arms in a large four-poster bed in that warm, drowsy mood that succeeds a session of lovemaking that has been thoroughly satisfactory to both partners.

“Marius,” Suzanne murmured, kissing his chin and burrowing closer to his warm, naked body, “I am so glad we forgot about the carriage ride. This has proved much more satisfactory. And the dress can wait for another day.”

“My sentiments entirely,” he replied, looking down his nose at her. “We certainly have had more exercise than we would have had riding in a carriage.” 

She chuckled throatily. “I do hope that I have not deprived you of all outdoor air for the day, though.”

“My aunt, you know,” he said evasively. “Cousin’s come-out. I have to put in an appearance as head of the family.”

She laughed merrily. “Marius! When have you ever worried about family duty? I don’t believe it. You are more than likely going just to tease all the mamas and raise their hopes to fever pitch. You are very cruel.”

He did not reply or move at all.

“Never fear, my love,” she continued, laughter in her voice. “If you need rescuing, I shall be there. And I think you could get away with dancing with me more than the accepted two dances. I am beyond the age of drawing gossip too easily.”

“You are too kind, my dear,” he said dryly. “I do fully expect to survive the ordeal. I shall certainly dance with at you once, however. Shall we say the first waltz?”

“I shall write it on my card,” she said, hiding her mortification under a flippant air.

“Now, much as I should like to renew our, er, exercising, I really think it is time we both began to beautify ourselves for the evening’s merriment,” Eversleigh said, disentangling himself from his mistress’s soft body and hauling s himself to a sitting position on the edge of the bed.

“I shall see you there, then, Marius,” Suzanne said, curling into the warmth left by his body beneath the bedclothes. His silent attention to the task of clothing himself completed her disappointment. He was not, then, going to offer to escort her to the ball.

Henry was ready. She stared glumly at her reflection in a full-length mirror in the dressing room she had been allotted in the home of the Earl of Lambert. She looked like any other empty-headed girl of the
ton,
she decided, with nothing to fill the empty space between her ears except dreams of catching a rich and titled husband. She wore a high-waisted gown of white lace over a pale-peach satin underdress. Peach ribbons were tied in an intricate bow beneath her breasts and fell to the hemline, where they drew attention to the orange satin slippers peeping from beneath the gown. The dress had short, puffed sleeves and dipped into a modestly low, scalloped neckline. She wore a single strand of pearls that Peter had presented her with that afternoon. White elbow-length gloves and an ivory fan completed the outfit. Henry was quite disgusted as the maid, who had been sent to her by the countess, stood behind her and smiled into the mirror.

“Ooh, you do look a picture, miss,” she said in admiration.

Henry smiled grimly back and headed for the door. “Time to go down to the drawing room. The receiving line will be forming soon, I suppose,” she said.

As she reached the door, it opened from the other side and Lady Tallant came in. “Henrietta, my dear,” she gushed, the plumes in her hair nodding in approval, “you look remarkably pretty. Do let us hasten downstairs. We must not keep the earl and countess waiting.”

Henry hardly admitted to herself as she followed her sister-in-law meekly down the stairs that she felt a little nervous. Not that she cared a fig for dancing, of course, or for the opinions of all the people who would be coming to look her over. But she did wonder if the Duke of Eversleigh really would put in an appearance and what type of man this was that she was supposed to lure into a proposal. She did not feel any doubts about her own success if only the man would not neglect to come.

She was feeling quite anxious an hour and a half later. She had been standing in the receiving line with the Earl and Countess of Lambert, Lady Althea, Sir Peter and Lady Tallant, shaking hands with and curtsying to so many people that she was convinced that her right hand must be swollen to twice its normal size and that the smile on her face must be frozen there forever. She was thoroughly sick of answering impertinent questions from all the old tabbies and of being ogled by the young bucks and sized up critically by the young ladies. But when she and Althea were told that they could leave the line and begin the dancing, the Duke of Eversleigh had still not arrived.

An hour later, it seemed that Henry was destined to be a moderate success. Although she had not attracted the attention of any important member of the
ton,
she had been partnered for all dances except one, and that one was a waltz. Knowing that this was her first ball, the gentlemen tactfully left her on the sidelines, realizing that she would not yet have been granted permission to waltz by any of the patronesses of Almack’s. It would have been death to any girl’s social reputation to waltz until such approval had been given. The older ladies and chaperones who lined the walls of the ballroom (those, that is, who had not retired to the card room) looked on her, if not with open friendliness, at least with tolerance. Two of them, it is true, had commented on the deplorable color of her skin.