Over Araminta’s shoulder she saw a familiar face beam its eagerness. Mr. Woking. Her heart plunged to the soles of her feet as his flabby lips stretched into an even more enormous smile as he hurried toward her.
Araminta and Sir Aubrey danced past her, their conversation making it clear how absorbed they were in one another. Picking up her skirts, Hetty hurried to the supper table to pretend an interest in the plover’s eggs, glad to note Mr. Woking had been waylaid by an apparently garrulous dowager.
As she pierced a piece of ham upon her fork she gave a little sob, causing the young lady on her right to send her an odd look
, which gained warmth as she said, “Why, we have met before, I believe.” At Hetty’s doubtful look, she added, “In the ladies’ mending room.”
Hetty restrained her surprise. The conversationalist barely resembled the tearstained young lady she remembered; although on second glance, her skin was still very bad and her figure not pretty. Only the glowing countenance declared her a different person.
“Miss Hoskings, if I recall your name correctly,” she said.
“That’s right…who was about to make a disastrous match through self-doubt and ignorance.” Miss Hoskings beamed.
“So he has declared himself in the required gentlemanly manner?”
“Oh yes. Quite ardently in fact, and what pleasure it gave me to reject his kind offer.” She giggled at Hetty’s puzzlement. “Fortuitously I’ve come into an unexpected inheritance. The gentleman for whom I’d developed such a tendre approached me directly after my good news to tell me I had quite the wrong end of the stick, if you don’t mind my saying, and that he hadn’t been intending to make an offer to anyone but me.”
“So you’d prefer to keep your money and your single status?” Hetty wasn’t sure she’d be able to if she were madly in love with someone. Well, she was madly in love with Sir Aubrey and she didn’t think if he asked her—outright—to marry him she’d be able to refuse under any circumstances. Even if she knew he wasn’t in love with her. She’d just keep hoping like the foolish girl she was that she could change him. Make him love her.
“Well, I didn’t reject him outright. I said if he could prove his love by waiting for me for a year while I study painting in Florence and take my favorite aunt on a grand tour across the Continent, I would probably reconsider my position.”
Hetty attended to this with a frown while she rearranged the food on her plate. “Won’t you…won’t you miss him? That is, if you love him enough to want him for your husband.”
The girlishness dropped away and Miss Hoskings gave Hetty a considered look. “I value my self-respect more,” she said quietly.
Tossing back a ringlet, she became brisk. “Now you aren’t looking at all the thing, Miss Partington. In fact, you look very much like I was feeling when we last met. If you need a comfortable bed to lie down on, there’s a door behind that tapestry over there. It’s hidden and no one knows about it but if you can’t bring yourself to watch the one you love make eyes at another, I’d suggest you forget about food and take yourself off. The ladies’ mending room is also along that corridor. Tell the chaperone that’s where you’re going but as there’s no chaise longue there, I suggest you slip through the door hidden behind the tapestry and look for the second room along the passage to the right.”
* * * * *
Sir Aubrey smiled into the exquisite face of the young woman in his arms and felt the tug of desire as she responded with a gentle squeeze of his hand. So subtle. So effective. Her endorsement of his interest evoked an unexpected plethora of emotions. Miss Araminta Partington would make the perfect wife. She was a beauty. Her father had a proud place among the top ten thousand and she came with a dowry that was not insubstantial. He foresaw important connections being made on account of his desirable wife when perhaps doors might have remained closed due to his tarnished reputation.
But oh God, if only the letter could be found. The meddling minx in his arms had no idea of the damage she’d caused. Just before Sir Aubrey had left his townhouse, and following extensive investigations this afternoon, he’d received a message that Jem had been found in a bad way and been taken back to his room in Lord Debenham’s townhouse.
And as for desire over expediency, he desired innocent Miss Henrietta, who wasn’t so innocent, and in so straying had damaged her own chances of a good marriage. Images of her soft, luscious curves and her sweet enthusiasm peppered his mind with the promise of future delights much more than the cool, self-possessed beauty before him.
Guilt niggled him. Honor dictated he acknowledge Miss Henrietta’s loss of virtue with an offer of marriage, yet if there were no consequences of their coupling, surely he had every right to accept her dignified granting of his freedom? She understood that forcing him into marriage under duress would make him the antithesis of the husband she desired.
Miss Partington slanted a knowing look at him, the candlelight reflecting the sheen of her glossy dark hair and making her eyes sparkle. “I trust you will be at the Grand Masquerade at Vauxhall tomorrow night, Sir Aubrey?”
“What person of consequence would miss the event of the season?”
She smiled coquettishly. “Who shall you fashion yourself after, sir?”
“Perhaps I would like to surprise you.”
“I would like to be surprised by you.”
The flirtatious banter was similar to many exchanges he’d enjoyed over the years with far less desirable women. The words dropped from his lips with ease and were received with veiled eagerness. He saw the flare of excitement in her eyes quickly shrouded by assumed world-weariness.
Was this what being a person of fashion required? The subsuming of real emotion?
Again, dear Henrietta’s unfettered enthusiasm sprang to mind. Her sheer delight at all the wondrous sensations to which he’d introduced her had been so unlike anything he’d experienced. She was perfectly delightful.
“Shall you appear grand and senatorial or wild and gladiatorial?”
He tilted his head and forced himself to smile back at her. This was a pleasant way to while away a few hours of an evening. She was by far and above the most beautiful woman in the room and he was conscious of the envious glances sent in his direction. They were a refreshing contrast to the covert suspicion he was used to, though he knew it was his exquisite dancing partner who accounted for that. Not that Miss Partington looked so exquisite when she sized up her cousin’s escort, a pretty young redhead in a modish coquelicot gown. Miss Partington clearly didn’t like having competition, judging by her scowl.
But she would make a suitable wife.