My Heart's True Delight Page 2

  “William’s parents might be much of the reason why he is the way he is.” And conversely.

  “You call him William. Do I understand that you would yet marry him, given the chance?”

  While George swirled his brandy, Della reflected on plans gone awry, Haddonfields run amok, and William Chastain’s innocent fiancée.

  “If I say yes, then Nicholas will try to bribe William into crying off his betrothal outright, and I don’t want that.” Not now, not when the poor woman’s family had stood by the agreement to marry despite William’s attempt to flee.

  George finished his drink and headed for the door. “If you say no, that you won’t marry Chastain, then one has to wonder why the hell you ran off with him in the first place. Prepare yourself to face the tabbies at the Merryfield ball, Della. Not for your own sake, but for the sake of the family so bewildered by your actions.”

  The ball would be a disaster, another way to fan the bonfire of gossip. “I am bewildered too, George,” Della said. “Bewildered and so very, very sorry.” She’d apologized to Nicholas before setting foot back in his house and to Leah ten minutes thereafter. “George?”

  But George had already left and silently closed the door. Della had every intention of slipping up to her room before another sibling could pounce on her, except that raised voices resounded as she passed by the closed library door.

  George, who never shouted, was shouting, and Nicholas, the soul of patient consideration, was shouting back. The words duel and family honor reached Della’s ears, along with profanities aimed at William Chastain’s cognitive abilities.

  Della reversed course, opened the library door, and strode in. Nicholas and George were glowering at each other from within fisticuff-range on the far side of the reading table.

  “No duels, Nicholas,” Della said. “This is all my fault, and I will pay the price for my folly. Please plan to escort me to the Merryfield ball on Wednesday. When the talk dies down, I will repair to Kent, and you may wall me up in the chapel. First, I will show my face before all of Mayfair and weather the scorn I am due. Then, I will gladly accept banishment. Are we agreed?”

  Nick took a step toward her. “But, Della, dearest, you cannot—”

  “Agreed,” George said.

  “Good.” She managed to maintain her composure until she was in her room behind a locked door. Only then did she allow the tears to fall.

  Chapter Two

  “If Chastain walks into this club,” Sycamore said, “you will politely walk him right back out again.”

  Ash smiled for the benefit of the Coventry’s patrons, as if Sycamore had made one of his typical witty remarks. “Should Chastain walk through the door, we will both walk him right back out again, politely or not.”

  The early evening gossip at the Coventry was running in many directions.

  Lady Della had been a fool to get into a carriage with Chastain.

  Lady Della had been desperate to get into a carriage with Chastain.

  Chastain had been quite daring to attempt to make off with an earl’s sister.

  Chastain could be forgiven for trying to trade an émigré’s daughter for an English aristocrat.

  In any case, Lady Della, at her age, really should have known better.

  “The betting book at White’s already has several wagers,” Sycamore said, keeping his voice down in a rare display of tact. “Her ladyship will have a baby by April. Chastain’s fiancée will have a baby by April. They will both have babies by April.”

  Ash was so accustomed to living at a distance from his emotions that he needed a moment to identify the upwelling of violent impulses that Sycamore’s recitation produced.

  I am angry. In a proper, seething rage. A condition as novel as it was inconvenient. Ash was angry at Chastain, at the malicious talk aimed at an otherwise exemplary young lady, at Della’s family for allowing this entire farce to occur, and of course—always—at himself.

  “Who?” Ash asked. “Who wrote those wagers in a location that assured all of polite society hears of them?”

  “Easier to ask who hasn’t put down a few pounds one way or the other. And no, I did not. Babies arrive according to probabilities known only to the Almighty. Besides, you would kill me.”

  “As scrawny as you are, when the Haddonfield brothers finished with you, there would be nothing left worth killing.”

  Sycamore—who had left scrawny behind a good five years, eight inches, and four stone ago—offered a bland smile. “I abhor violence, Ash.”

  No, he did not. Sycamore was a fiend in the boxing ring, very likely a result of having six older brothers and a smart mouth. If he were more scientific about his strategy and a bit faster, he would have a prayer of besting Ash in a fair fight. What Sycamore could do with knives was uncanny.

  “I abhor gossip,” Ash said. “What the hell could Della have been thinking?”

  “You are attempting to divine the mental processes of a female,” Sycamore replied, snagging a flute of champagne from a passing waiter’s tray. “Doomed undertaking for a mere mortal male, much less one with your limited gifts. Whatever Lady Della was thinking, she’s supposed to attend the Merryfield ball tomorrow night, and that means one of us must be there as well.”

  Ash had spent two Seasons studiously avoiding any social gathering where Della was likely to appear. If their paths did cross, they greeted each other cordially and just as cordially ignored each other for the rest of the evening.

  Ash timed visits to the family seat in Dorset for when Della was in Town. Della’s removes to Kent often coincided with Ash’s stays in London.

  “You go,” Ash said. “I’ll handle things here.”

  “No.” Sycamore took a casual sip of his champagne. “I’ll stay here. You go. She likes you, and she will need friendly faces around her.”

  “Your face might be ugly, but it’s friendly to most any pretty female.” And Della was exquisite.

  “Ash, dimwitted and homely though you are, she needs you. You’ve seen what happens when Mayfair decides to turn its back on a woman. In the receiving line, Lady Della will be served cold civility and that only because her titled brother will glue himself to her elbow. Nobody will stand up with her, nobody will even sit near her at supper save her family, which will only make matters worse. Before the dancing resumes, punch will be spilled on her dress, and that will be a mercy because it will permit her an early exit. She needs you.”

  I am the last man she needs. “I’m returning to Dorning Hall next week, Cam.”

  “Fine,” Sycamore said flatly. “Though winter comes to Dorset and London alike. Scamper away next week, but attend the Merryfields’ ball before you pull your annual disappearing act.”

  As if Ash’s disappearing act were limited to once a year. “All she needs are a few eligibles to stand up with her. The talk will die down, somebody else’s scandal will come along, and all will be well.”

  Sycamore aimed a glittering smile at a widowed marchioness who hadn’t graced the Coventry since the previous June. Lady Tavistock was a skilled gambler and used her charm and beauty to distract her opponents.

  And the dealers. Ash suspected she’d distracted Sycamore a time or two, though not at the card tables.

  “Perhaps in addition to your other mental aberrations, you are prone to fantastical thinking,” Sycamore said. “Lady Della is all but ruined, unless Chastain reveals the name of some other woman who happened to be bouncing on the sheets with him at the Alconbury Arms when Papa Chastain stormed onto the scene.”

  Sycamore occasionally landed a solid gut punch in the boxing ring—and sometimes when not in the boxing ring.

  “Bouncing on the sheets?”

  “’Fraid so. Have a sip of my wine. You have gone all peaky and pale.”

  Ash took the glass and drained half of it, which was an insult to the vintage. He’d tucked his anger away in its usual mental cupboard. Like a feline determined to get into the pantry, it would scratch and mew and paw at
the door, but the lock would hold.

  With the rest of his mind, he focused on a solution to Della’s situation. “She needs eligibles, a dance card full of them.”

  “Not full,” Sycamore replied. “Full would look contrived. Full would require all the brothers and in-laws and so forth.”

  The marchioness took up a place beside Mr. Travis Dunwald. She beamed at him, and young Dunwald bowed over her hand. He was quite eligible, a fine dresser, and not much of a gambler. Could not have calculated a probability if every card in the deck save one was face up on the table.

  “How much does Dunwald owe us?” Ash asked.

  Sycamore named a sum that was probably equal to Dunwald’s entire quarterly allowance. He was nephew to a viscount and the old boy’s heir. Eligible and solvent were not always near neighbors.

  “What about Gower?”

  Sycamore named an even larger sum. “What are you up to, Ash?”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll cover the difference from my share of the monthly proceeds. What I am up to is filling Lady Della’s dance card.”

  Sycamore retrieved the half-empty wineglass from Ash’s grasp. “Not a bad idea, especially coming from one of your modest intelligence, but she still needs you, Ash.”

  “No, she does not.” Ash reaffixed a friendly smile to his face and began a circuitous approach to the table where Dunwald was trying to pretend he knew his way around a hand of cards.

  He didn’t, but he could manage a quadrille without falling on his handsome arse, and that was all Della required of him.

  Della assured herself that the receiving line hadn’t been too ghastly. Lady Merryfield had been pitying rather than cold, Lord Merryfield had stared at Della’s bosom only until Nicholas had cleared his throat. For a hostess to have a nearly fallen woman among her guests would lend cachet to the evening, apparently.

  “That wasn’t so bad,” Nicholas murmured as they waited for the herald to announce them. “You’ll see I was right. A few dances, a glass of punch, and some supper, and we can put the whole business behind us.”

  That had been George’s argument as he’d headed off to the ball in his own conveyance, an advance guard scouting hostile terrain. Nicholas was studying the crowd in the ballroom below as a ship’s captain watched an approaching gale.

  “You needn’t worry that Chastain is here,” Della said as they advanced toward the steps down to the ballroom. “His father has hauled him off to Sussex, where he’s to bide until the nuptials take place.”

  Nick glanced down at her, his smile faltering. “How do you know that?”

  “I just do.” Della’s lady’s maid was friends, cousins, or formerly employed with half the lady’s maids in Mayfair. They formed an intelligence network that would have shamed Napoleon’s best spies.

  The herald announced the Earl of Bellefonte and Lady Delilah Haddonfield, and the tide of conversation in the ballroom below ebbed to a trickle, then fell silent.

  “A new experience,” Della said, taking a firmer hold of Nick’s arm. “I have rendered all of Society speechless.”

  She tipped her chin up when she wanted to crawl away on her hands and knees. What stopped her was the certain knowledge that she deserved exactly the reception she was getting, and that only after she’d endured this penance would her family allow her to slink off to Kent.

  “Tresham is here,” Nick murmured, offering her a smile that did not conceal the worry in his eyes. “George is beneath the minstrel’s gallery. Worth Kettering and his lady are right outside the cardroom, and I do believe that’s my own dear Valentine Windham beaming at us from near the punchbowl.”

  Windham was a duke’s son and a composer and pianist of some renown. His show of tolerance would be remarked—also seen for what it was, a kindly display toward an old friend’s disgraced sister.

  “He’ll dance with you,” Nick said. “If I have to beggar myself commissioning damned string quartets from him, he’ll dance with you.”

  By design, Della had arrived too late for the opening promenade. Lord Valentine led her out for the world’s longest minuet. Nick stood up with her for a gavotte. All the while, gossip, talk, and tittering whispers followed her around on the dance floor.

  Della was about to excuse herself to run the gauntlet of the ladies’ retiring room—the sooner that was dealt with, the better—when Mr. Travis Dunwald approached.

  “Lady Della, might I have the honor of leading you out for the quadrille?”

  Dunwald’s tone was cool. He looked down a patrician nose at Della, as if she were something malodorous stuck to his riding boot. This overture had all the earmarks of a drunken dare made late at night in one of the less reputable gentlemen’s clubs.

  “She would be honored,” Nick said far too heartily. “Wouldn’t you, my lady?”

  Della saw nothing but disdain in Dunwald’s eyes. If she declined, the gossip traveling around the ballroom with the speed of a brushfire would turn into an inferno, and there was all six and a half feet of Nick, trying hard to look cheerful—and harmless.

  “I would be honored,” Della said, placing her hand on Dunwald’s arm.

  The quadrille was a long, complicated dance, and in its course, Della came face-to-face with every smirking, leering, cold expression a man’s features might wear. She had expected the antipathy of the women. A lady who fell from grace was like a house of contagion, to be avoided by all decent women lest the taint of dishonor spread by association.

  But Della had not anticipated the particularly virulent contempt aimed at her by the gentlemen. Their hands grazed the sides of her breasts, their eyes frankly stripped her naked. Her partner for the allemande pretended to stumble such that he happened to get in a bruising squeeze to her derriere.

  She did not dance every dance—far from it—but when James Neely-Goodman approached her before the supper waltz, Della had had enough.

  She liked James. He was of only average height, and they often danced together because he partnered her well. His father was a baronet, and the family’s wealth was vast and respectably ancient.

  Even James, though, regarded her as if she’d betrayed him personally.

  I can’t do this. The thought landed in her mind with the solid substance of irrefutable truth. I cannot be handled and disrespected and all but spit upon by men who lined up to partner me at cards last week.

  “Lady Della.” James bowed shallowly and he did not take her hand. “I beg leave to pay you the honor of asking for your supper waltz.”

  Pay you the honor. The words were wrong, the tone was wrong. Utterly indifferent, not even contemptuous.

  “Alas,” said a smooth male voice to Della’s right, “you are too late, Neely-Goodman. Her ladyship’s supper waltz is spoken for.”

  Della would know that voice in Stygian darkness. “Mr. Dorning, good evening.”

  Ash Dorning, tall, dark-haired, and lean, made an impressive figure in evening attire. The jewel in his cravat pin exactly matched the striking periwinkle hue of his eyes, and his smile was neither forced nor improper. He and James held some sort of silent male conversation. Ash smiled steadily, James looked askance, raised an eyebrow, then shrugged.

  “Enjoy your dance, my lady.” He drifted away without bowing.

  Della gathered up the tattered remains of her dignity and gazed out across the ballroom. Many people had seen this exchange, and every one of them would wonder what on earth had just transpired.

  Della herself had no idea. “You need not spare me a pity waltz, Mr. Dorning. You’ve avoided me for months, and I am actually a bit fatigued.”

  On close inspection, Ash looked tired too. His eyes were shadowed, his mouth bore a slight tension. When he’d first distanced himself from her, Della had suspected him of suffering some physical ailment. The Dornings were notoriously robust, though, and months of listening for any scrap of gossip associated with Ash or his club had yielded no support for Della’s theory.

  He simply did not like her as much as she liked
him—as she had liked him.

  “I saw what happened with Fletcher,” Ash said, referring to Della’s partner for the allemande. “I saw your quadrille. You will please dance the supper waltz and share the buffet with me. We have a family connection, and you are entitled to my loyalty. Nobody will remark my partnering you.”

  Couples were moving onto the floor, and the waltz was Della’s favorite dance. “I do not want your loyalty, Mr. Dorning. I would rather have your friendship.”

  His smile remained in place, and yet, his expression grew subtly pained. “You have both, do you but know it. Shall we dance?”

  Della had longed desperately for just that invitation from him. A year ago, even a month ago, she would have been delighted to turn down the room in his arms.

  “I do not want your pity, Mr. Dorning.”

  “I do not pity you.” He held out his gloved hand.

  Nicholas approached, holding two glasses of punch, his expression wary and hopeful. “Dorning, a pleasure.”

  “Bellefonte, good evening. I aspire to dance the supper waltz with her ladyship.”

  Nicholas would not plead with Della in public, but he was the head of the family and concerned not only for her but for all the cousins, in-laws, sisters, daughters, and aunties.

  “Very well.” Della put her hand in Mr. Dorning’s. “The honor is mine, Mr. Dorning.”

  “Try not to look as if you’re being led to the gallows,” Ash murmured. “We are putting on a spectacle. I apologize for Fletcher’s unseemly clumsiness.”

  The introduction began as they reached the dance floor. Della sank into a curtsey, then assumed waltz position. Ash kept a scrupulously correct distance between them, and yet, she was in his arms, gazing up at him with curiosity rather than ire.

  That was progress. Toward what, he did not know.

  “I suspect Mr. Fletcher was put up to partnering me as part of some drunken wager,” Della said.