By the beginning of their fourth day in Bath, Amanda Trent was feeling very pleased indeed with the success of her plans. Diana had been introduced to a great many eligible gentlemen, nearly all soldiers like her own dear husband, and she had made a favorable impression. George himself was far happier, and he was eating better than he had in months. His fellow officers thought nothing of the patch over his eye, for they had seen much worse, and this put him at ease. The opportunity to talk of the war with those whose experience and knowledge matched his own was also important. Indeed, George’s spirits were vastly improved; he rarely indulged in fits of melancholy or flashes of temper now. As she tied the strings of her bonnet in preparation for another visit to Milsom Street with Diana, Amanda smiled at her reflection in the mirror.
Diana, in her own bedchamber, was feeling far less content. She had had an unrealistically rosy vision of life in society, she saw. It was not uniformly delightful. The elation she had felt on occasion as she was talking and laughing with a group was offset by moments like the present one, when she was definitely downcast. Living alone, she had experienced neither extreme; each day had been much like the last after her first remorseful months. Now she felt overstimulated and unsure of her reactions, as she had not in years.
Amanda tapped at the door and looked in. “Are you ready?”
“Yes.” Diana picked up her gloves and came forward, smiling in a determined effort to convince Amanda that all was well. The Trents had been so kind to her, and it was obvious that Amanda was happy. She would not spoil that.
Passing the drawing room on their way out, they saw Major Trent on the sofa reading a newspaper. “We are going shopping,” Amanda told him. “We will be back in time for luncheon if you are staying.”
“More new dresses?” answered the major in a joking tone, actually putting aside his paper.
Amanda colored slightly and laughed. “For Diana. She has so few.”
George smiled back, reminding Diana for an instant of the young man she had met at their wedding. “Not so much as a ribbon for yourself?”
“Perhaps a ribbon,” agreed his wife in the same teasing tone.
“You should get yourself something pretty; you have bought nothing since we came home, I think. Perhaps I will come with you to see that you do.”
Amanda drew in her breath and clasped her hands before her. “Really, George?” She turned to Diana. “He has often shopped with me, and found some of my loveliest things. You should see how the shopgirls fawn on him.”
This seemed an unfortunate reminiscence, for George’s face clouded, making Amanda look as if she wished to bite her tongue. “I should be very glad of your advice,” said Diana quickly. “I never had a brother to tell me when I looked truly hideous, and I believe Amanda is rather easy with me.”
“I am not!”
“You allowed me to purchase that primrose muslin,” retorted Diana, “and, when it arrived and I put it on, we both saw that it would not do.”
Amanda frowned. “The cloth seemed so different before it was made up. I was sure it would become you.”
“You see?” said Diana to George. “Your discriminating opinion is sorely needed.” Silently she was wondering how it would be to have a man she scarcely knew help choose her clothes, but she could endure a little embarrassment for Amanda’s sake.
“Very well,” replied George, rising. He sounded half-eager, half-reluctant.
“Do you remember when we bought that pink silk dress in Lisbon?” asked Amanda. “The dressmaker was scandalized that you came. I’m sure she will always believe Englishmen are mad.” She turned to Diana, gratitude for her aid shining in her dark eyes. “She wouldn’t even look at George. She spoke only to me, as if he weren’t there, and, if he spoke, she answered me. It was too ridiculous.”
Major Trent laughed. “I don’t see why a man shouldn’t take an interest in his wife’s clothes. I am the one who has to look at them, after all.”
“You make it sound such a penance,” said Amanda, wrinkling her nose at him.
“Well, when it’s a case of black silk with jet beads…”
“That wasn’t my fault! We lost our way one night in Spain,” she informed Diana. “There was a dreadful storm, and we somehow got separated from our escort and luggage. We had to take shelter in a village, the mayor’s house. His wife lent me a dress.”
“A tent, you mean,” said George.
“She was rather large.”
“Rather? Might as well call Bath ‘rather’ hilly.” The Trents’ eyes met, and they laughed together. Diana suddenly understood why Amanda was so fond of him, and she felt thrust outside a charmed circle whose warmth and delight had room for only two. “Which brings up the question of transport,” added George, breaking the spell. “Do you mean to walk down to town?”
“Oh, yes,” said Amanda. “It is not so far, and all downhill.” She caught herself. “Would you prefer to ride? Perhaps we should, after all, Diana. I—”
“I am quite up to the walk,” interrupted George, and the slip threatened to spoil their new rapprochement.
“The two of you will utterly wear me down, I can see,” put in Diana. “And I thought I was a redoubtable walker. But let us start out, while I still have the strength.”
This elicited another laugh, though less spontaneous than before, and they set out together for the shops. At first, Diana kept up a determined flow of comment on the views from the Crescent the beauty of the Bath streets, and the nature of the crowds they began to encounter lower down. Finally Major Trent put aside his pique, and by the time they reached Milsom Street, they were talking easily together again.
“Here is Madame Riboud’s,” said Amanda, stopping before an immaculate doorway. “We must go up and see how the rest of Diana’s dresses are getting on.”
“Why don’t you leave me here,” suggested Diana. “We could meet in an hour and go on together.” She was to have a fitting, and the thought of Major Trent waiting impatiently through it was daunting.
“We might go look at hats,” agreed Amanda.
Her husband’s face showed that this was a fortunate thought.
“We will come back in an hour to fetch you,” she added, “and then we can all go on and buy those artificial flowers you wanted, Diana.”
“Ah, I’m just the man to judge those,” said George. “If you really wish to know what looks hideous…”
“Perhaps I don’t,” laughed Diana, and waved them on their way.
Her new gowns were nearly finished, and she was happy with all of them. Along with her pleasure at George and Amanda’s budding reconciliation, this put Diana in a very buoyant mood, and, when she descended the stairs from Madame Riboud’s a little more than an hour later to find no one awaiting her, she did not care a whit. Bath was a very safe town, she knew, and the Trents would no doubt appear soon.
She gazed at the goods offered in nearby shop windows, strolling a little way along the pavement and then back in the opposite direction. She wondered whether she should go in search of her friends, but concluded that they would only miss each other.
Peering up and down the street again, hoping to see the Trents, she abruptly encountered the hugely magnified eye of a man across the way, who was examining her through a kind of lens on a gilded stick. His appearance was so astonishing that she did not immediately turn away. Diana had never seen anyone in pale lavender pantaloons, a primrose coat so tight she could not imagine how its wearer got it on, a blinding brocade waistcoat, and a neckcloth so high and starched and intricate she wondered if it were linen or carved of wood and painted. Simultaneously raising one pale eyebrow and one corner of his mouth, the man sauntered toward her, his quizzing glass now dangling negligently from his white hand.
“How d’ye do?” he said when he had picked his way delicately across the cobbles. “Lost your way?”
“Why, no.” Diana was too fascinated by his grotesque appearance to snub him. And she had never learned to administer a setdown in any case.
“Couldn’t help noticin’ you wanderin’ about the street.” The man smirked. He had a drawling, lisping way of speaking that Diana found as bizarre as his apparel.
“I’m waiting for my friends,” she replied, her voice cool.
“Ah. Beg pardon for intrudin’.” He looked her over with a connoisseur’s eye. “Ronald Boynton,” he added hopefully.
This was too much. Diana did not give her name to total strangers in the street. Robert Wilton had been a definite exception. And she found Boynton ridiculous. She merely inclined her head and pointedly searched again for the Trents.
He took her lead without protest. “Must be goin’. Perhaps we’ll meet in the Pump Room? Visitin’ my aunt here, you know. Deuced flat, but…” He shrugged elaborately and, when she did not reply, bowed, sweeping the pavement with the brim of his hat, and turned away. Diana watched him go. He minced, she thought with an incredulous smile; one couldn’t call it anything else.
“Whoever was that?” said Amanda Trent behind her, and Diana swung around. They had come up when she was looking the other way.
“A Mr. Ronald Boynton,” she answered, still smiling. “He thought I was lost.”
“He accosted you in the street! Oh, Diana, I am so sorry we are late. We lost track of the time, and…”
“It doesn’t matter, Amanda. He wasn’t the least offensive. Just…odd. Have you ever seen such an outfit!”
“Often,” said her friend, her worried expression easing. “That, Diana, is a dandy.”
George muttered.
“Indeed?” Diana looked again, but Mr. Boynton was gone. “Is that what they look like? Amazing.”
“You were taken with him, I see.” Amanda grinned mischievously.
“Oh, of course.” She essayed an imitation of Boynton’s speech. “He was so very charmin’, you know.”
Amanda burst out laughing, and George, who had begun to glower, saw the joke and smiled slightly. “Well, he must have been taken with you,” Amanda crowed. “I daresay he will dog your footsteps.”
“He had better not,” exclaimed her husband.
“I don’t suppose we shall ever see him again,” replied Diana. “Did you buy a hat?”
Diverted, the Trents launched into an antiphonal description of their shopping expedition, which had clearly been both successful and enjoyable. Diana watched their happy faces, Boynton forgotten, recovering her pleasant mood in their pleasure.
They visited one or two more shops before returning home in great charity with one another to a cold luncheon. Diana could not recall a jollier occasion with the Trents, or perhaps with anyone. Her despondency of the morning had been silly, she told herself. It would simply take her a little time to become accustomed to a new way of living.
“Diana,” said Amanda, in a tone that implied it was not the first time she had spoken.
“What?”
“You were far away. I merely asked if you are looking forward to your first assembly ball this evening.”
“Oh. Yes.”
“I admit I am, too. How long is it since we danced, George?”
“Before I was wounded,” he answered curtly, but his tone was not as bitter as it had once been.
“So it was. You will stand up with me tonight, will you not? We met at just such an occasion, remember?”
He nodded slowly, turning to watch her face. After a moment, he put a hand over hers on the table, and Amanda smiled up at him.
“I must see about my dress,” said Diana, rising. The Trents would not always want her about, she thought. She must be careful not to intrude on their first real respite after years abroad. Neither answered, and as she left the room Diana felt wistful. It must be wonderful to have a close companion who shared one’s interests and confidences, she thought. This was a side to love she had not observed before, and for that reason it seemed more attractive than the violent ups and downs of her youth. Was such a closeness possible for her, even yet? The idea was so thrilling, and at the same time so improbable that she thrust it from her mind and turned resolutely to the question of a ball gown.
In this, at least, her choice was easy. Her first ball dress had been waiting for her at the dressmaker’s that morning. Diana had instructed her to finish it before the others, for she had no suitable garment for the Bath assemblies, and she was more than pleased with the results. Made of a bronze satin just the shade of her hair and trimmed with knots of silver ribbon, Diana’s dress was stunning. When Amanda had suggested the combination, Diana had at first been doubtful, but she was now very glad that she had allowed herself to be persuaded. The gown was striking and distinctive, the two burnished colors a happy change from the usual white or pink, and not at all garish. As Amanda had promised, the dress accentuated Diana’s unique look, and Diana anticipated wearing it with a thrill of pleasure.
George and Amanda concurred when they all met in the hall before leaving. Amanda could not stop exclaiming at how well the gown had turned out, and, with a smile, George complimented Diana on her appearance. His mellow mood had lasted through the day.
“Oh, isn’t this splendid?” said Amanda as they ate. “A true assembly. And Diana is going to make such a hit.”
“I shall be satisfied if I am not left standing too often during the dancing,” laughed Diana. “Do not set your hopes too high.”
“Nonsense. You will be mobbed; wait and see.”
Diana merely shook her head.
The assembly rooms were very near their lodgings, and they decided to walk, as the night was fine. They had left their wraps and were moving through the octagon room toward the main ballroom when Major Trent was stopped by a group of friends. As they paused to allow him to exchange greetings, Diana looked around the anteroom. Men and women in evening dress stood about, flirting and laughing. The dresses surpassed any Diana had seen before this visit. Strains of music could be heard above the buzz of talk, and the air was heady with the scents of perfumes and pomades. Her heart began to beat a little faster, and she drew in her breath. One of the Trents’ friends whom she had met caught her eye and came forward to request a dance. Diana looked to Amanda, received a smiling dismissal, and went off on his arm.
The first part of the evening was even better than Diana had expected. Due to the Trents’ wide acquaintance and her own attractions, she was never without a partner, and her hasty practice the night before had brought suitable proficiency in the various steps. She went in to supper with a very charming young lieutenant and a party of his friends, and then she danced the first set after the interval with a dashing cavalry officer. The gentlemen seemed to judge her conversation engrossing, another hurdle that had worried her after years alone, and all in all, Diana felt her first assembly ball a great success until she spied Robert Wilton lounging against the far wall near the end of the cotillion.
His arms were crossed on his chest, and he watched the dancers with a curled lip. He thinks us all contemptible, Diana thought. Though the thought made her angry—for what right had he to sneer?—she was also conscious of a sharp disappointment. She had been hoping to see him, she realized, and perhaps even to dance with him, wiping out the memory of their last awkward encounter. But now this seemed unlikely. Wilton turned his head, and their eyes met, then dropped immediately. Diana, cursing her clumsiness, raised hers again at once, but he was no longer looking in her direction. Her poise left her where Captain Wilton was concerned. Her years of solitude had left their mark to this degree. Diana bit her lower lip in vexation and returned her attention to her partner.
Captain Wilton clenched his jaw and stared at the floor rather than the whirling couples. Why had he come here? It was just the sort of occasion he most hated and was most likely to bring off poorly. His mother could not drag him to a ball in London, and yet he had rigged himself out and appeared here with no urging, only to be as miserable as he would have been there. He had not come because of a girl with bronze hair and gold-flecked eyes. Yet his gaze strayed toward Diana again.
“Hello, Captain Wilton,” said Amanda Trent. She was floating by on her husband’s arm, nearly bursting with happiness because the evening was going so well. The gentlemen acknowledged each other cordially as the music ended. “Are you enjoying the assembly?” added Amanda, in a tone which suggested that everyone must be as pleased as she.
He shrugged, not wishing to appear surly, but unable to give the expected reply.
Amanda noticed his unease fleetingly—she was too engrossed in her own far different feelings to linger over his—and with some surprise. But, as Diana’s partner just then delivered her back to her party, Amanda had an inspiration. “Diana, here is your old acquaintance Captain Wilton. You must not refuse him a dance.”
Diana, startled, replied that she had no such intention, and raised surprised, but not displeased, eyes to his face.
Wilton, taken unawares, allowed his chagrin to show.
“Oh, it is a waltz, too,” continued Amanda blithely. “George, we must dance. And, Diana, you needn’t hesitate. There are no fusty Almack’s patronesses in Bath.” The Trents joined the dancers.
The captain hung back.
Diana flushed. “You needn’t dance with me if you don’t wish to,” she said bluntly. “I shall be quite all right alone here.” Diana’s chin was high. “I daresay someone else may even ask me. You needn’t feel obliged.” His response to Amanda’s ploy had hurt her, and she didn’t care if she made him feel boorish.
“I beg your pardon,” he answered stiffly. “I cannot yet dance.” With a gesture, he indicated the ebony cane leaning beside him.
Overcome with mortification, Diana blushed a deeper crimson. She had forgotten all about his wound. She had been thinking only of herself, and had behaved heedlessly and callously. “I…I’m sorry,” she stammered. “I—”
“It doesn’t signify,” he interrupted, but his tone belied his words. Clearly, he felt his inability irksome. He stood very straight and gazed out over her head at the ballroom.
She must do something to make amends, Diana thought. “Would you…that is, we could sit down and talk, if you like,” she stammered, feeling awkward.
Wilton looked down, surprised. He had expected her to go in search of a partner who could dance. “I’m no good at pretty speeches and fulsome compliments,” he said and waited for the inevitable withdrawal.
But Diana’s reaction was immediate sympathy and understanding. She knew only too well what it was to feel out of place. Could this assured-looking man really experience some of the same embarrassments? “No, only at covering people with mud,” she replied, with a smile to show that she was rallying him.
He stared, then laughed. “Indeed. And, like most of my skills, scarcely sought after in society.”
“But you can sit? When you wish to?” Diana’s dark eyes sparkled up at him.
He was amazed and delighted. He had never met such a girl in London. “I can.”
“And…?”
Wilton frowned in puzzlement.
“Do you wish to?” If he said no, Diana thought, she would never attempt such a joking exchange again.
But his smile reappeared. “I do indeed.” They moved together to two gilt chairs against the wall and sat side by side.
“I must say I wonder why you came to a ball,” said Diana.
Once again Captain Wilton found himself at a loss, but the feeling was far different from that he customarily experienced in London. Diana Gresham did not appear bored with him or contemptuous of his dress and manners, nor did her eyes wander to more fashionable gentlemen nearby. Her attention was squarely on him, though its focus was wholly unexpected. Drawing on a nimble wit and flexibility that had gotten him out of some of the nastiest spots in the Peninsula, Wilton set himself to match her. “I suppose I can’t give up the habit of reconnoitering when in hostile territory.”
Pleased in her turn, Diana thought about this. “Would you call us hostile?”
“Not so much as in London, perhaps.”
The corners of her mouth turned up. “Where you received your training in…social maneuvers?”
He nodded feelingly.
“Some would envy you such a school. It is, after all, the center for these arts.”
“And it may keep them!”
Seeing that he really felt strongly on this subject, Diana modulated her tone. “You really do not enjoy—?” she began.
“No, I cannot. Put me on a battlefield, or carrying a message fifty miles across Spain, and I am content. I should far rather face the French batteries than a line of simpering chits at Almack’s. There are a thousand more important questions in life than the Duchess of Rutland’s rout party or Prinny’s new mistress.” He flushed. “I beg your pardon. I should not have mentioned—”
“Of course there are,” she agreed, ignoring his slip. “But must one worry over them all the time? Do you grudge a moment’s frivolity?”
“In times such as these, this”—he indicated the room with a glance—“is a waste of time and irritation to any true Englishman.”
“Thank you, sir,” Diana could not help replying, though she was not really angry. His vehemence was irresistible.
For a moment he did not understand her. Then he grimaced. “I did not mean you.”
“I know what you meant. You are right, I’m sure. It is just that I know so little about the war. And I admit I am enjoying my first taste of gaiety, despite it.”
“First?” he asked, intrigued, for she was not a child fresh from the schoolroom.
Immediately Diana wished she had held her tongue. “I…I have lived at home until now.”
“Far from Bath?”
“Yes, in Yorkshire.” And now he would inquire why she had not been to the York assemblies, or to London, Diana thought wearily, and she would have no satisfactory answer, and he would believe that she was administering a setdown when she turned his questions aside.
But Robert Wilton had heard the reluctance in her voice, and no one knew better than he the agonies of awkward inquiries. Without seeking reasons, he shifted the subject. “You are fortunate. The Bath assemblies are much jollier than those in London.”
Diana gazed at him with relief and amazement and met blue eyes that communicated an acknowledgment of her constraint, and of her right to avoid its source if she chose. She had to swallow a sudden lump in her throat. “But less brilliant,” she managed to respond.
Wilton shrugged as if to say this was a matter of definition.
Surprising both of them, the music ended. The set had seemed very short. They drew apart—for they had been leaning rather markedly toward one another, they discovered—and looked around for the Trents.
Amanda and George were on the far side of the room. Wilton reached for his ebony cane. “Don’t get up,” said Diana.
“I am perfectly able to walk,” he replied, with some impatience but none of the bitterness she had heard in George Trent. “My knee is only a bit stiff. The doctors say I shall be completely restored in a month or so.”
“Does it pain you?” asked Diana hesitantly as they started across the room.
“Very little. And it requires exercise.” He smiled down at her. “So, you see, you are doing me a good turn.”
Once again Diana was struck by the force of his smile. “Perhaps I should insist upon a turn about the room.”
“Perhaps you should.”
Their eyes held for a long moment, and each felt that there was some special quality in this new acquaintance that demanded further exploration.
“Wilton!” exclaimed a drawling voice behind them. “No idea you were in Bath, old man. How d’ye do?”
They turned to confront a vision in fawn pantaloons and a dark-blue coat hung with a profusion of fobs and so starched and cinched and padded that he could scarcely move. Diana, astounded, looked from Captain Wilton to Ronald Boynton and back again. Was it possible that these two were acquainted?
“Left Faring in fine form,” continued Boynton. “Took a hand with him at White’s just before I left town. His usual damnable luck.” He stopped, turned to Diana, and shook his head. “Beg pardon. No wish to offend. Feelings got the better of me.” He then gave Wilton such a speaking look that the latter was forced to make introductions, though he was obviously reluctant to do so.
Diana, as she acknowledged him, wondered if Boynton would refer to their earlier encounter. But he merely raised one pale eyebrow meaningfully and went on talking of himself.
“Toddled up to visit my Aunt Miranda, you know. Ill. No good neglectin’ the family fortune.”
“Is your aunt very wealthy?” inquired Diana, unable to resist. She glanced at the captain, to share her amusement with him, but he was scowling at the floor.
“Rich as Croesus,” replied Boynton promptly. “Refuses to make a final will, too. Have to keep in her good books.” He smiled ingratiatingly. “Care to dance?”
Diana hesitated only a moment. Wilton had been about to leave her in any case, and her sense of the ridiculous was aroused. Also, she realized suddenly, Boynton reminded her of her long-ago, supposed love Gerald Carshin. It was not that the two men were really alike, she thought, it was merely the style of dress and something in Boynton’s manner which piqued her curiosity. How would she respond to such a man now, when she felt so much changed? Her initial reaction suggested that she had matured in ways that pleased her, but she was not averse to a further test. She agreed.
Wilton, watching her go off on the dandy’s arm, felt a surge of fury. That the woman he had found it possible to talk with so easily, and had begun to admire, should so blithely accept Boynton reignited all his former doubts. Wilton thoroughly despised his brother Faring’s set. They were lazy, affected, and disgracefully unmoved by the important issues of the day. They cared for nothing but gaming, gossip, and… Here he paused in horror, recalling some of his brother’s more unsavory romantic entanglements.
Miss Gresham could have no idea of the sort of man she had consented to partner. An innocent such as she, never having gone into society, would not know how to take his extravagant compliments and false praise. She must be warned, he thought. Yet what right had he to be concerned about such things? She had friends in Bath. Looking over his shoulder at the Trents did not reassure him, however. They knew almost as little as Diana of the “smart set.” He would have to do something. With this determination, he returned to his chair, wholly unaware that his charitable impulse had its roots in a fierce jealousy. Had anyone inquired, he would have staunchly maintained that he felt only concern for Miss Gresham’s welfare, and, perhaps, a mild disappointment that she should be taken in by such a contemptible specimen. The reality was far deeper.
The captain would have been astonished and relieved had he seen Diana’s amused disbelief listening to her elegant companion. He was very like Gerald, she was concluding. Gerald had said just the same sort of things to her, and gazed at her in the same soulful way. How incredibly silly she had been at seventeen, to have been taken in by this nonsense. Yet this consciousness of past mistakes also reassured her. Certainly she had learned her lesson. She was not the naïve, impressionable child who had gotten into such a scrape. This also meant, she concluded happily, that her judgment was now trustworthy. She need not be worried if she found recent acquaintances very attractive. Smiling, she looked around the ballroom. Captain Wilton had taken up his station against the wall once more, arms crossed. How mulish he looked.
Diana laughed for sheer joy, causing her partner to smirk complacently, sure that he had made a conquest, and making a certain young soldier not far away grit his teeth so violently his jaw ached.