‘There you are, Miss Ravenhurst. I am to take you in to dinner.’ Captain Melville looked from one face to the other. ‘Have I interrupted something?’
‘Merely Miss Ravenhurst chiding me for taking lessons from past history,’ Nathan said. He seemed rather white, but perhaps it was simply her own perceptions that were awry. She was certainly feeling somewhat light-headed.
‘Learning from history? Why, that is an excellent precept, I would have thought, Miss Ravenhurst.’
‘It is,’ Clemence agreed, laying her hand on his proffered forearm. ‘Provided one is certain that the circumstances are exactly the same in both cases.’
How she was going to eat anything with her heart apparently lodged in her throat, she had no idea, she thought, smiling at the gentleman on her left-hand side as Captain Melville seated her. What had come over her? She had as good as told Nathan that she loved him. It must have been the selfish relief of discovering that he did not love his wife, and never had.
Her neighbour was addressing her. Clemence struggled to recall his name. Mr…Wallingford, that was it. The lawyer that Cousin Sebastian had summoned from London to help deal with the Naismiths. They were to have a meeting tomorrow, Sebastian had informed her.
‘Yes, I am finding it rather cool in England,’ she agreed. It was the standard first question from everyone she met. She could easily manage such a predictable exchange with her mind on something else, and now it was working furiously on the conundrum of Nathan.
He felt something for her, she was certain, although he was most certainly hiding it well. And that was doubtless because of her relatives and her money. There was nothing she could do about disowning the connection with the Ravenhursts, Clemence thought, nor would she want to. She looked up and down the long table and felt the glow of knowing that these people were her blood kin and had accepted her with warmth and uncritical affection.
But she could do something about her money. She slid a sidelong glance at the lawyer—he looked like a man of intel
ligence and cunning. Just what she needed if she was going to take a huge risk with her future.
What the hell was that about? Nathan tried to watch Clemence while maintaining a flow of polite chit-chat with the lady on his right whose name he had already completely forgotten.
Was he going mad, or had Clemence just as good as told him she was in love with him? What else could she have meant? He spooned soup, laughed at some feeble on-dit and took too deep a swallow of wine while he wrestled with the mystery of Clemence’s feelings.
He had been so sure that all she had felt for him was a mild tendre, the natural result of having been forced to rely on him for her life and of having been propelled into quite shocking intimacy with him. That they were physically attracted, there could be no doubt, but physical attraction, as he knew only too well, was not the same as love.
She was too young to know her own mind, to understand her emotions; he had believed that—and she had just thrown the notion back in his face. Could it simply be pique because he had refused to marry her and had told her aunt he was not in love with her? No. Not Clemence. She didn’t sulk, she wasn’t petty and she would not play games like that with him.
The footmen came forward to clear the soup bowls. Nathan sat back in his chair, looked down the table again and caught her gaze, clear and green and open. He swallowed, hard, against the lump in his throat and realised, shocked, that his eyes were moist. She loved him. She loved him.
And then he saw Lord Sebastian Ravenhurst, his hooded eyes resting on his cousin’s face, and the lump turned to lead. She could love him until the stars fell, but that did not make him any more suitable a husband for the wealthy Miss Ravenhurst, with the whole of society spread out at the toes of her pretty new slippers for her to explore. They might love, and she might deem the world well lost for it, but it was his duty to do the right thing.
‘Mr Theo Ravenhurst thinks we might dance after dinner,’ the plain brunette on his left remarked. ‘Do you dance, Captain Stanier?’
‘With reluctance, Miss Polkington.’ She pouted. ‘Not from lack of admiration of my partners,’ he added hastily. ‘More to spare them from having their toes crushed.’ She giggled and began to chatter about past balls and parties. Nathan ate his duck and contemplated an evening torturing himself by watching Clemence dance.
He could imagine her feet in those bronze kid slippers twinkling beneath the modish quilted hem of her skirt. Perhaps there would be a flash of silk-stockinged ankle. Her shoulders would gleam even more in the candlelight as her skin warmed with the exertion and her small breasts would rise and fall with her breathing.
And he would be in severe need of a cold plunge in the lake in a minute if he didn’t control his imagination. Nathan spread his napkin strategically across his lap and attempted to recall the unerotic image of Clem’s grubby bare feet protruding from the bottom of flapping canvas trousers. It did not help.
But at least inconvenient arousal, however uncomfortable, did not threaten the pain of unrequited love. He had known he had to accept it for himself, but to believe that might Clemence feel the same way was agony.
By the end of the meal Nathan was convinced he would rather be boarding a heavily defended pirate ship than facing an evening of dancing.
‘Do you think Hoste is going to want to work on?’ he asked Melville.
‘You sound as if you wish he will!’ His friend nodded towards the group of guests clustered around Lady Standon. There was his senior officer, joining in with the persuasion to have the long drawing-room carpet rolled up. ‘I’m looking forward to an impromptu hop.’
‘I’m going to have a strategic sprain,’ Nathan said dourly, making his way to the side of the room and favouring his right foot.
‘You have hurt your ankle, Captain?’ It was the curate, bright-eyed with sympathy, his hands full of sheet music.
‘An old weakness.’
‘Could you turn the music for me if you are not to dance?’ Taking silence for consent, the other man led the way to the piano. ‘I do not dance myself, you understand, but rational exercise in a respectable setting such as this is most acceptable, I feel.’
He prosed on, leaving Nathan stranded by the side of the piano, attempting to ignore Melville’s unsympathetic grin. Lady Standon came over.
‘Mr Danvers, so good of you to play. I am going to teach the company a new round dance and what we need is a nice strong rhythm—ah, yes, this will do nicely. Strongly marked, mind! But I will walk them through it without music first.’