I have some letters still to write,” Jasper announced as they rose from the table after a lovely meal followed by cheesecake topped with the few raspberries Aubrey had managed to bring back. “I’ll see you come morning, Aubrey. Have pleasant dreams if you won’t allow yourself more than that.”
Aubrey gave a sour laugh and went to follow Jasper from the room, but Daphne caught his arm.
“You forget. When Jasper fell for me, he thought me only a public dancer. My proper self he’d decided to throw over despite the repercussions because it wouldn’t have been fair to either of us if he spent his married life pining after another. Only chance made the dancer and my noble form one and the same.”
Aubrey shrugged, the story still a bit miraculous and much harder to accept when he’d set a simpler task of finding a mate through proper circumstances and failed. “Maybe I should have haunted the dance halls instead, though seeing as I was the one to bring the masked dancer to Jasper’s attention, it seems even that path is barred to me.”
She poked his arm much as she would have done to Jasper, her brows lowering in annoyance. “You miss the point, though whether on purpose or because you’re blind, I do not know. I will spell it out for you. Love comes where it may. You have no need to haunt the dance halls. You found it here out in the fields. You’d be a fool to throw it over just because she’s not of your station. The path to finding your match is rarely an easy one. You have to be willing to make the effort, and your country girl is less of one than my husband tread. You envy what we’ve found, but you’re ignoring the chance for your own.”
He took a quick step to stay free of her sharp digit. “It’s not her rank that worries me, it’s her experience. Jasper may have been willing to tie himself to a dancer, but he could retire here to let the scandal die down. I have no such plan. She would be dragged from the country into the heart of society. She’d be crushed beneath the scorn of those more experienced, and isolated from all she’s ever known.”
Daphne planted both hands on her hips. “Would you risk losing your chance at love to this? How are you to know she won’t take to society as a natural and become their darling?”
For just a heartbeat, he considered her point. Had he been too hasty? Then a laugh burst from him long enough to provoke a glare. “I’ve only seen her the once. I’ve barely exchanged a handful of sentences with the girl. More likely desperation than love.”
She paused as though to ponder his words, but he should have known better than to think her concession won so easily.
“Then there’s no reason to worry about how well she’ll blend with society, is there? Not every courting ends before the altar, and you respect Jasper too well to damage this girl’s reputation or compromise her being. Why not find out just what drew you to her? Maybe your response is more because you’ve been looking than because of this girl. You’ll never know for sure if you don’t take the risk. If not to prevent regrets for something that never was then for the chance to discover how shallow your feelings for the girl truly are. You could walk away from her now, but thoughts of her would linger as they have this day and you’d never have a better opportunity for putting them to rest. Wouldn’t you prefer to know it is lust rather than something more lasting?”
Aubrey stared at the woman who had captured his friend’s stone heart and didn’t know whether to laugh or frown. She’d spent her moment of thought well and had presented an argument where he could not say no without being either a cad or an idiot. He shook his head at her skill even as he gave the only answer left to him. “You are wiser than I. I’m wrong to put so much weight on a passing moment without question. Had I stayed longer, I might just have found my true feelings, but now I cannot seek her out without raising expectations I have no intention of meeting. However…” He held up a hand to still her protest. “Should our paths cross again, I won’t shy away. I’ll let fate take me where it will and only then decide what needs doing.”
Daphne once again showed both her wisdom and strength of character as she responded with a sharp nod rather than pressing her point or crowing over her success. “Until the morning, then.”
He watched her leave, thinking not for the first time how lucky his friend had been to find someone with the confidence to defy society and the intelligence not to be caught doing so. She showed the same qualities now as she assessed his situation, and for that, he held her in awe.
His thoughts turned inward as he made his way to the guest room assigned to him. What if Daphne had been right about more than just his haste and this girl could best not just him but society as a whole? He knew her beauty would claim them, and she had shown reserve as well.
His book worked hard to capture his attention while his mind preferred to wander through the possibilities should his feelings prove deep and his country girl even deeper.
“SO WHY DIDN’T YOU tell him?” Sarah asked as they prepared for bed, the farmhouse boasting a single room for guests and Sarah so much more than a simple maid to bed down in one of the servant rooms.
Barbara pulled back the covers, worn out by the day in the sun and helping with the household chores. “It didn’t seem the right moment.” She’d have to ask her uncle about riding when he was in a better mood.
“You finally have a chance to speak with the man you spent weeks pining after, and it didn’t seem the right moment? Sure you became enamored of others soon enough, but I wouldn’t have thought you so fickle.”
Barbara stared at her friend for a moment before connecting the question with earlier events rather than asking about riding of which Sarah knew nothing. Not for the first time, she wished she’d confessed her humiliation that very night. Instead, she’d held it close where it festered and made her vulnerable to both her cousins’ teasing and now even Sarah.
“You don’t know the whole of it,” she blurted, unable to hold it in any longer. “Aubrey St. Vincent is a fraud of the worst sort. He pretends to be wonderful only to mock those who fall for his illusion.”
Sarah rounded the bed and pulled Barbara into her arms, her friend kind enough not to criticize Barbara for holding the secret.
“Just what did he do to you? Is this why you behaved so poorly in the park before we were sent out of London? All this time you let me think it was from a foul mood after your morning visit and let me condemn you for it.”
In as few, succinct sentences as she could manage, Barbara explained overhearing exactly what he thought of her. She spared herself not at all, each cutting phrase as clear to her now as it had been the moment she’d overheard.
Sarah pulled away to look Barbara in the face. “What they say of eavesdroppers is true, though from the sound of it you’d had little intention of listening in on what must have been a private conversation.”
Barbara jerked to her feet. “And does that make it more worthy? That he would mock me so in private when I spoke nothing but his praises? He never even took the time to introduce himself before he formed a judgment so rigid he felt it worth sharing.”
Sarah reached out, but let her hand drop when Barbara moved away. “So this is why you withheld your name.”
“I did not. I gave him a name that is my own, just not the whole of it. I saw no reason to let him add a cut direct to the pain of hearing exactly how he saw me.”
“So you thought to punish him?”
Sarah’s gaze became intent enough to cause Barbara a measure of discomfort. She shook her head and tossed herself down on the coverlet. “I didn’t plan on staying unknown. I didn’t think it through at all. I just wanted him gone. His presence only makes his words burn the sharper. I’d thought myself free of that pain here. He has no business following me.”
A chuckle escaped Sarah’s lips, and even Barbara had to fight a smile at how petulant her words had sounded.
She had no control over Aubrey’s movements, and with him unable even to recognize the one he’d scorned, he’d clearly not come here to plague her further.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said at last. “We’re unlikely to cross paths again while I’m here. It’s not like Uncle Ferrier travels in the same circles as the manor.”
“Except you encouraged your cousins to take lessons there.”
A frown pinched Barbara’s forehead at the reminder. “I couldn’t have known. And it matters even less. I have no need of lessons. Perhaps I can convince Uncle Ferrier to lend us some horses to entertain ourselves while the others are training for something they’re unlikely to experience. I’ll be sure to stay on the far side of the manor fields either way rather than hear one more word out of his mouth.”
Sarah considered Barbara for a long moment before saying, “The words might be different if he knew you.”
She laughed. “He wouldn’t be likely to try any more now than then. He thinks I’m some country girl up for a dalliance in the fields. That’s how little he tried to discover anything real.”
The look in her friend’s eye held a mix of consideration and mischief. “Why not give it to him then?”
Whatever she’d expected, that had never crossed Barbara’s mind as something Sarah might have spoken. “Spend my virtue on someone who has so little respect for me that he didn’t seek to discover my full name? What has come over you? If my parents ever heard of such a thing, I’d be bound for life to the horrid man.”
Sarah had raised her hands between them before Barbara came anywhere near to the end of her statements, and they waved furiously until Barbara ran out of words.
“I didn’t mean to compromise yourself. Never that. I meant only to give him the chance to know you without…well…knowing you.” She grinned. “It seems an appropriate retribution for him to have lost your regard out of arrogance and to learn the truth of what he cast away without even trying because of ignorance.”
Her friend’s words made all too much sense as Barbara pondered them. “And here I thought you frowned on punishing him for his wrongdoing.”
“This isn’t punishment exactly.” The words came out in a drawl as Sarah considered her answer. “It’s more to offer an education. You said yourself how you wished to reveal his true nature to the ton. How he deserves for the innocent girls he deceives to know the truth. Well, you cannot manage that without revealing his statements about your own person, which would only raise gossip with you at the center as a spurned woman. This way, he’s taught the lesson and suffers for his arrogance while you’re left the innocent party who stood fast against his advances.”
Barbara shook her head, though not in disagreement, as she rolled off the bed so they could both tuck under the covers. “My mother would be shocked to find such a devious plot came from your making. She’s sure I have been at the root of every bit of trouble we’ve ever been in.”
Sarah turned to her side so she could look at Barbara. “She’d be right. My parents would shudder to learn how you’ve rubbed off on me. I’m sure they dreamed our friendship would elevate my station, never knowing what a troublemaker you were. Your mother would have me cast out on the streets.”
“Never. I wouldn’t let her. You’ll be at my side when we’re both grey-headed and beyond all this.”
“You may be happy to settle into a spinster life to the disappointment of all your suitors, but I hope someday to find my own match.”
Barbara laughed as her friend’s gaze turned inward. “I have a suspicion you just might have already. But you’ll always have a place at my side, and in my household. Your imagined husband as well. I cannot afford to lose you. Who else would be daring enough not only to call me out for my errors but to concoct plans such as this one to revenge me on my detractors?”
Sinking to her back, Sarah drew the coverlet up to her chin. “No one else, I’m sure. Not that you listen except when my suggestions match so perfectly to your own thoughts they might as well have come from you. But we have a full day ahead of us tomorrow, I’m sure, and we’ll regret having spent all night in chatter soon enough.”
Though she went to return with a teasing phrase, Barbara’s face split into a yawn that she changed to a laugh. “Whatever my mind may say, my body is matched to your words.”
“Dream of Aubrey St. Vincent,” Sarah murmured. “And of teaching him a lesson he’ll never forget.”