* * * * *
Jarrod stood before Sarah in the ballroom. "Would you care to dance?" he asked.
"I would love to," she said, "but Aunt Etta warned me that it would be unwise for us to dance two dances in a row alter disappearing into the garden together." She looked up at him. "Unless I wish to see you become my unwilling bridegroom…"
Jarrod knew she was teasing, but there was a hopeful note in her voice that he couldn't ignore. "Sarah, it's not that I don't want to marry you…"
"I know," she said sadly. "It's just that you don't want to marry. It's not me you find abhorrent, just the idea of being lied to me for life."
When she put it that way, his reasons for not wanting to marry seemed inconsequential, but Jarrod knew better. Nothing was ever inconsequential once vows were spoken. There were always consequences. And he was involved in a dangerous enterprise. So dangerous that he dare not risk Sarah's life. And yet… Jarrod thought of Griffin and Alyssa and Colin and Gillian. His colleagues were involved in the same enterprise yet they had wives they cherished and who cherished them in return. Wives who shared their burdens and kept their secrets. Wives who were completely dependable and trustworthy. Wives who gave them a home to return to instead of an empty house. Wives who gave them a reason to return home.
But Griff and Colin had been born to parents who loved each other. His friends understood the language and the rules of love. His friends believed in the ideal and had been fortunate enough to find wives who shared their beliefs and spoke the same language.
Sarah's words had been truer than she knew when she accused him of hardly being husband material. Jarrod didn't know where to begin. He was ignorant of the rules and the language and more than a little leery of the ideal. He'd grown up with parents who shared a name, a title, and a son and very little else — outside the bedchamber. His parents hadn't liked or respected each other, but they were both passionate about pleasure. He was too old to blame his parents for his bachelor state — that was his own doing. But his profound distrust of the institution of marriage, and of the world in which he lived, had been deeply rooted in his childhood. "Sarah…"
She glanced toward the chairs on the sideline beside the dance floor, where the older ladies and gentlemen, the ladies who were increasing, and the ladies who were in mourning sat, and managed a smile. "Just escort me to the chairs on the sidelines beside Aunt Etta and Lord Mayhew. Don't worry about me, I'll be fine."
"I'll sit with you," he offered.
"And do what?" she asked. "Twiddle your thumbs? You'd be bored to tears inside five minutes." She sighed. "I know I will. Besides, you've better things to do." She nodded at someone across the room. "The Duke of Avon is trying to get your attention."
Jarrod turned and saw Griffin beckoning to him, then turned back to Sarah. "We've business together."
"I've known you since we were children, Jays," she said. "I know about your business together. I'm aware that Griffin Abernathy and Colin McElreath are your closest friends."
Free Fellows League business. Important business. But Jarrod was torn between staying with Sarah and fulfilling his obligations to his colleagues. "Sarah…"
"Go on," she urged, shooing him away with her hands. "You mustn't keep the duke waiting."
"I'll be back to claim my waltz," he promised. "With or without Aunt Etta's approval."
* * * * *
"You certainly know how to stir up the ton and set tongues a-wagging in speculation," Griffin said when Jarrod joined him and Alyssa after dutifully escorting Sarah
Eckersley to a chair near her aunt and fetching her a glass of punch.
Jarrod nodded. "It's a gift I was born to. We Shepherdstons seem to possess it in abundance. And this house seems to bring out the worst of it. Fortunately my appearance inside the house has caused more speculation and whispers than my disappearance outside it."
"Oh, there have been whispers about that as well," Griff told him. "And we've done what we could to minimize the damage."
"I wondered if you saw us," Jarrod said.
"Going out and coming in," Alyssa said. "And I must say your entrance was very nicely orchestrated. Who is going to suspect you went to the garden for any reason except to view it? Or question the length of time it took you and Miss Eckersley to negotiate the maze when you and Miss Eckersley and Lady Dunbridge and Lord Mayhew made such a congenial entrance when you returned?"
"You," Jarrod replied.
Alyssa's eyes sparkled. "Well, except me, of course," she told him. "Because I suspect everyone of behaving as Griff and I would have behaved if we had had the chance to slip out of a ballroom and find a private place away from the noise and the crowd before we were married. Especially if there was a terrace and a beautiful moonlit garden just outside the door." She smiled up at her husband, recalling the night they had slipped away from the noise and the crowd and nearly made love on the fainting couch in the ladies' retiring room at Almack's.
"As if that ended when we were married," Griff replied, remembering all the other times he and Alyssa had managed to slip away since he'd returned home from the war to a duchy and a hero's welcome and invitations to every fete and party in England.
Jarrod looked serious, but he didn't confirm or deny. "You're my dear friends. If you suspect, you can bet there will be others here who aren't my friends who will think the same. Especially since we're here. It will bring back some of the old gossip. Like father, like son."
"I believe you mean the gods visit the sins of the fathers upon the children," Griffin said.
"Or I am a man more sinned against than sinning," Alyssa offered.
Jarrod managed a smile for Alyssa's benefit. "You've heard the gossip going around tonight. Will she suffer for agreeing to accompany me on a tour of the garden?"