Nicholas looked at himself dourly in the tall mahogany-framed mirror. He was dressed in the long-tailed coat, knee breeches, and silk stockings that were requisite attire in the ballroom. Another evening of being stared at, he thought sourly. Of being laughed at.
His gaze rose to the scar on his cheek. Lucky, he told himself, touching light fingertips to the ridges of melted skin. I am lucky. But he didn’t feel lucky at this moment.
A footman entered, bearing a note. “Sir?”
His mood lifted as he turned to take it. It must be from Lady Isabella, crying off—
No, his name was inscribed in his brother’s hand.
His mood became sourer. He broke the seal and unfolded the paper, skimming the few lines of writing quickly. Unfortunate circumstance . . . distressing for the family . . . The final sentence arrested his gaze: Therefore I judge it best for you to leave town.
Nicholas felt a quick flare of anger. “You judge, do you?” he said beneath his breath.
“Sir?” the footman said.
Nicholas glanced at him.
“The servant who brought the note wishes to know if there will be a reply.”
“Indeed!” He strode down the stairs, his shoes making sharp, slapping sounds, and into his study. At his desk he penned a curt note to his brother. The quill rasped across the paper: I have no intention of leaving town like a dog with its tail between its legs. He sealed the note briskly and handed it to the footman.
Nicholas turned to the long mirror that hung over the mantelpiece, adjusting the crisp muslin folds of his neckcloth. His mood was no longer unenthusiastic. Indeed, he felt almost martial, as if the Harringtons’ ball was a battle to be fought.
A battle that included two dances with Lady Isabella.
He turned away from the mirror. For all her golden-haired beauty, Lady Isabella was a better judge of how to handle this mess than his brother was. Meet them head on.
At the Harringtons’ ball Nicholas was aware of sniggers and amused sideways glances. He was also aware of his brother’s angry glare and early departure. At Almack’s, the following night, there were fewer sniggers, and the glances were more speculative than amused. Neither Gerald nor his wife was present.
“It’s working,” Lady Isabella said, as they danced their second waltz together. Gossip and music swirled around them, and beneath those sounds were the rustle of silk gowns and the soft scuff of dancing slippers on the chalked floor.
“Yes.” But he had come no closer to finding Harriet’s secret benefactress—nor to finding a bride of his own. Mothers who had previously regarded him with interest now viewed him with disfavor. As if they truly believe I’m an ogre.
Although a few were still throwing their daughters at him, most notably Mrs. Pennington.
“Tomorrow there’s a balloon ascension at Turnham Green,” Lady Isabella said, her gloved hand warm in his. “I’m going with Lucas and Gussie and the children. Would you like to accompany us?”
It was phrased as a question, but he knew what answer she expected. The balloon ascension was another opportunity to show themselves together.
“It would be my pleasure,” he said politely.
The true question was: How was he to find Harriet’s benefactress if he spent all his time in Lady Isabella’s pocket? And, equally as important, how was he to find himself a bride?
“How are you at matchmaking?” he asked abruptly.
Lady Isabella’s eyebrows went up. She studied him for a moment, with some curiosity. She wore a gown of Turkish red tonight, a warm, vivid color. Above the crossed bodice her skin glowed, milk-white. Rubies and diamonds nestled in her golden hair. “If you’ll forgive my impertinence, Major Reynolds . . . what is it you’re looking for in a bride?”
Not a Pennington. A quiet, soft-voiced girl.
“I want peace and quiet,” Nicholas said. “I want a marriage with no arguments.”
“Quiet,” Lady Isabella said. She glanced around the ballroom, a thoughtful crease on her brow. “Have you considered Miss Thornton? She’s—”
“Too old.”
“Too old?” Her eyes flew to his, startled. “But she’s barely twenty-two!”
“I want a young bride.” Too late, Nicholas realized that Lady Isabella was well past the age of twenty-two.
But Lady Isabella appeared not to have noticed the unintended insult. “Why?” she asked, frankly.
Nicholas concentrated on his steps for a moment. He chose his words judiciously, careful not to give offense. “While I was in the army, I observed that the more youthful a recruit was, the more easily he could be molded into a soldier one wanted to serve with.”
Lady Isabella surveyed him, the thoughtful crease still on her brow. “You wish to mold your bride into a wife who suits you.”
Stated so baldly, it sounded . . . arrogant. “Yes,” Nicholas said firmly. I have nothing to be ashamed of, he told himself, and yet his cheeks felt faintly hot, as if he flushed.
“And would you expect your wife to mold you into the husband she would like to have?”
“Mold me?” he said, affronted. “Of course not!”
Lady Isabella’s lips tucked in at the corners, as if she suppressed a smile.
“My wife would have no need to mold me,” Nicholas said stiffly.
Her lips tucked more deeply in at the corners. “You have no flaws, Major?”
Nicholas eyed her with suspicion. Was she laughing at him? “None that a wife should care about,” he said, even more stiffly. I sound like Gerald. Pompous. “Apart from the scar.”
Lady Isabella’s mouth lost its tucked-in look. Her gaze touched his left cheek. “The scar is unimportant,” she said. “A woman who didn’t see that would be a poor wife.”
Nicholas found himself without any words to utter.
“Quiet and malleable,” she said, glancing around the ballroom again. “And young. Are those your only criteria?”
He nodded.
Her eyes lighted on someone to his left. “How about Miss Bourne? Have you considered her?”
He didn’t turn his head to follow her gaze. He knew precisely what Miss Bourne looked like: hazel eyes, light brown hair, shy smile. She had been on his list of suitable brides. “Unfortunately Miss Bourne’s mother seems to believe I am an ogre.”
Lady Isabella’s gaze jerked back to his face.
“No smoke without a fire, as they say.” His tone was light and wry, but it didn’t elicit a smile. Instead, Lady Isabella frowned and said tartly, “Mrs. Bourne is a very foolish woman!”
“She merely conforms to public opinion. And she’s not the only mother in this room to do so.”
Lady Isabella’s frown deepened. “But surely—”
“Would you wish your daughter to marry a man rumored to be an ogre?”
Lady Isabella bit her lip.
“No,” Nicholas agreed. “Neither would I.” He smiled, but beneath the smile was anger. When he found Harriet’s secret benefactress . . .
He almost misstepped. With effort he brought his attention back to Almack’s, the waltz, his dance partner. She stood out from the débutantes in their pale silks and satins. It wasn’t merely the richly colored gown or her beauty, it was her manner, her easy confidence. In contrast to the young ladies who crowded the dance floor, Lady Isabella seemed entirely without vanity. She didn’t preen or pose, she did nothing to draw attention to herself—and yet no man could be unaware of her presence in the ballroom.
She didn’t fit the current fashion for slenderness. Her figure was ripe and curvaceous and . . .
Nicholas cleared his throat. She is not the woman for me. He knew what he wanted in a wife, and it wasn’t Lady Isabella.
He glanced around the ballroom, noting the flicker of gazes hastily averted. Ladies watched from behind the cover of painted fans. He saw curiosity, amusement, incredulity. London watches and wonders.
The dance came to a close. “Now you may escort me to supper,” Lady Isabella said cheerfully.
Dry cake and tepid lemonade? Nicholas repressed a shudder of revulsion. “It would be my pleasure.”
Nicholas drove to Turnham Green in his curricle, with Lady Isabella seated beside him and the groom perched behind. The day was perfect for a balloon ascension; the sky was the color of duck eggs and the only clouds were high and to the east, a faint white swathe rippled like sand on a beach. The warm breeze was fragrant with the scents of summer, of grass and sunshine and wildflowers.
Nicholas found himself enjoying the excursion more than he’d anticipated. It was amusing to watch Viscount Washburne play the father, lifting his son up onto his shoulders for a better view of the balloon as the envelope filled with gas, swinging his four-year-old daughter in the air until she shrieked with laughter. Except, he realized, Lucas wasn’t playing at being a father, he was being a father, his attention wholly on his children and his wife. That is what I want. Life instead of death, laughter instead of war.
Envy came, sudden and unexpected—and so strong that he had to turn away. Behind him were the sounds of the ascension: excited voices, the creak of rope, a loud shout—Stand back, ladies and gentlemen! Stand back!—while inside him was a dark, bitter knot of jealousy.
For an instant he didn’t recognize himself, didn’t like himself—and then the knot of jealousy unraveled and the familiar sense of who he was returned. The sound of the crowd swelled behind him—indrawn breaths, cries rising to shouts: Look, look!
Nicholas turned around. The envy was gone. In its place was calm determination. He rested his gaze on Lucas Washburne and his family. I will have that. It was a promise to himself, a vow.
Lady Isabella turned to him. Wheat-gold ringlets framed her face beneath a pretty straw bonnet. “How thrilling it must be to rise up into the air like that!”
“Very,” he said.
She looked absurdly youthful—her eyes as bright as a child’s, her lips parted in delight—and quite extraordinarily beautiful. His attention was caught by the curve of her cheek and the perfect line of her throat, the rosy lips, the smooth skin.
Desire clenched in his belly, where only moments before had been jealousy. Nicholas pushed it hastily aside. “Would you ride in a balloon if the opportunity arose, Lady Isabella?”
Her eyes brightened still further, as if he’d issued a challenge. “Yes!”
But the question he wanted to ask, the question that burned on his tongue, the question he didn’t dare ask, was: Why aren’t you married?
He asked Gussie later, while Lucas was swinging Grace in the air again and Lady Isabella was listening to young Timothy explain the intricacies of aerodynamics.
“Her fiancé died,” Gussie said quietly.
“Oh.” He glanced at Lady Isabella. “Was it recent?”
“Ten years ago, I think. Or maybe eleven.”
“Ten years!” His attention jerked back to Gussie. “She must have loved him very much.”
Gussie lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “I suppose so.”
“But . . .” He glanced back at Lady Isabella. She was listening quite solemnly to Timothy’s tangled explanation, her expression serious, a hint of laughter in her eyes. “But doesn’t she want children?”
“She has a great many nephews and nieces.” Gussie followed the direction of his gaze. “Isabella is everyone’s favorite aunt.”
But doesn’t she want to be someone’s mother?
“She should marry,” Nicholas said.
“Perhaps she doesn’t want to.”
“But . . .”
But it was such a waste.
He dared not say the words aloud, either to Gussie, or to Lady Isabella as she sat beside him in the curricle on the way back to London. The barouche, with children, parents, and nurse inside, was some distance behind them. Rufus, confined to the curricle while the ascension had taken place, was happily sprawled across his mistress’s feet.
“Were you terribly bored?” Lady Isabella asked.
“No,” Nicholas said, truthfully. “Although I was less entranced than young Timothy.”
Her face lit with amusement. “Wasn’t he adorable? Such enthusiasm.”
Don’t you want children of your own? Nicholas wanted to ask. He bit back the words and concentrated instead on his driving, trimming the reins slightly as the curricle passed over a narrow stone bridge.
Lady Isabella clutched his sleeve. “Oh, stop! Stop!”
He reined in the horses, alarmed. “What?”
But Lady Isabella was already scrambling from the curricle and didn’t answer him.
“Get down,” Nicholas said to his groom. “Hold them!” And he jumped down onto the road.
Isabella was hurrying back towards the bridge, but she didn’t cross it, instead she cut across the grass towards the river. Rufus loped alongside her, ears up and tail wagging, as if it were a game.
Nicholas followed at a run. “What’s wrong?”
Lady Isabella knelt on the bank and reached down for something in the water. “A sack,” she said. “It’s moving. There’s an animal in it.”
Nicholas halted alongside her. “Are you certain?” He saw, now, what she was reaching for: a coarse sack, its neck bound with twine, lying partly in the river. The fabric moved slightly, stirring with weak movement.
Lady Isabella didn’t answer. She reached for the sack again. It was just beyond her fingertips.
She scrambled to her feet and lifted her skirts, as if to step down into the river.
Nicholas uttered a silent sigh. “Allow me,” he said.
Lady Isabella turned to him. “Oh, would you? Quickly! Whatever’s in there must be drowning!”
Nicholas clambered down into the river. He bent and grabbed the sack. Water streamed from the coarse fabric.
He turned towards the bank, aware of tiny, high-pitched sounds of distress coming from the sack. Lady Isabella stood there, still holding her skirts up and allowing him a fine view of shapely, silk-clad ankles. Rufus stood alongside her, his head cocked and his ears pricked, as if he, too, heard the tiny sounds.
Lady Isabella dropped her skirts and reached out her hands for the sack.
“It’s wet,” he said. “Your gown—”
“As if I care!”
Nicholas handed her the sack and climbed out of the river. His boots were filled ankle-deep with water.
Lady Isabella knelt on the grass and undid the twine with hasty fingers. She opened the sack carefully. The cries of distress became louder: squeaking, peeping noises.
“Kittens,” Lady Isabella said.
Nicholas stepped closer and peered inside. Kittens, wet and squirming. Rufus peered inside, too, pushing his nose into the sack. His tail was wagging.
“I hope they’re old enough . . .” Lady Isabella said, her tone worried. She lifted a tiny creature from the sack and examined it. The kitten shivered in the palm of her hand. It was gray, striped with black.
The Washburnes’ barouche clattered over the bridge and halted alongside his curricle. “Is everything all right?” Viscount Washburne called.
“Yes,” Nicholas said, taking a step towards the road. “Just a sack of kittens.”
He realized his mistake as soon as he heard young Timothy’s upraised voice. “Kittens!”
Nicholas turned quickly back to Lady Isabella. “I hope they’re all alive,” he said in a low voice, “because the children are coming.”
Lady Isabella glanced up. She looked past him and nodded.
“Kittens, Mama! Kittens!”
Lady Isabella pulled the shawl from her shoulders—a shawl that even he could see was of very expensive Norwich silk—and briskly dried the kitten she held. “Here.” She handed it to him and reached into the sack for another.
Nicholas held the shivering kitten and watched Lucas and Gussie shepherd their children across the grass. Gussie’s expression was concerned, Lucas’s was merely resigned.
Six-year-old Timothy crouched to look in the sack. “Where’s the mother?”
“Not here, darling,” Isabella said as she dried another kitten, this one ginger with stripes.
“I want that one,” Grace said, holding onto her mother’s skirt. “It’s pretty.”
Isabella smiled at her. “But you already have a kitten, sweetheart.”
“But I want that one.” Grace reached out a cautious fingertip towards the mewing creature.
Nicholas watched Gussie and Lucas exchange a glance above their daughter’s head. He saw resignation and amusement and acceptance, and swallowed a laugh.
“Don’t you think your kitten might be jealous if you brought another one home?” Isabella said. “Here, you may hold her for me while I dry her brothers and sisters.”
“I think they’d be friends,” Grace announced, clasping the ginger kitten to her chest.
The sack held five kittens. “But what about the mother?” Timothy said worriedly.
“I shall be their mother,” Lady Isabella said, smiling at him. “Until they’re old enough to have homes of their own.”
“They’re very small,” Timothy said dubiously, looking down at the kitten he held cupped in his hands.
Nicholas was privately dubious, too, but he didn’t express it aloud. Instead he fetched a blanket from the curricle. His boots squelched with every step he took.
“Thank you,” Lady Isabella said, when they were in the curricle again, the kittens bundled in the blanket on her lap and the barouche once more behind them. “I’m sorry. Your boots . . .” She bit her lip. “You must be quite uncomfortable.”
“I was a soldier, ma’am. Wet boots are nothing.”
Her gaze flicked to his cheek, and then down to the bundle on her lap. “Well . . . thank you. I’m very grateful.”
He took in her appearance—the wet, grass-stained gown, the muddy shoes, the ruined shawl lying on the floor of the curricle. “Your maid won’t be pleased with you.”
She met his eyes again. To his surprise, she grinned. Her bottom teeth were slightly crooked. “Partridge is used to it.”
“Oh?”
Her grin faded. “These aren’t the first animals I’ve found.”
He glanced down at Rufus. “Was he in a sack?”
Lady Isabella’s expression became sober. No, not sober; grim. “I found Rufus on the street. He was only a few weeks old. Half-starved and beaten and—” She bit her lip. Her face softened as she looked at the dog. She reached down to rub his ears. “By rights he should hate people. But he doesn’t. He has a very generous heart.”
As do you. “He was lucky you found him.”
“Yes.” She continued stroking the dog’s head. There was adoration in Rufus’s mismatched eyes as he gazed up at her. “He was so tiny, so frightened, so desperate . . .” She glanced up at him. “Sometimes I don’t like people at all. They do such terrible things!”
Her words triggered memory: the fall of Badajoz, the British Army gone mad, soldiers looting, raping, murdering—
Nicholas pushed the memory aside. “Human beings are capable of great cruelty,” he said, hoping that she would never experience more than she had: kittens drowning in a sack, a puppy starved and beaten. “But they’re also capable of great kindness.”
Lady Isabella looked down at the bundled blanket in her lap. She didn’t look convinced.
“Do you think they’ll live?” he asked.
“I don’t know. They’re very young.” She lifted her gaze to him again. “Do you mind, Major, if I don’t attend the Fancotts’ musicale tonight?”
“Not at all.”
Some of his relief must have made it into his voice. Lady Isabella grinned again, giving him a glimpse of crooked white teeth. The imperfection seemed somehow to accentuate her beauty: the flawless skin, the golden hair, the soft, rosy lips. “You can still go, Major, if you wish . . .”
“Heaven forbid!”
Lady Isabella laughed. As if in echo, one of the kittens uttered a tiny, muffled squeak. She looked down instantly, her hands curving protectively around the bundle in her lap.
Her animals are like children to her, Nicholas realized suddenly. She gives them her heart.
Having made that observation, he very much hoped that the kittens would live.