17
On their return to Northriding Castle, Georgiana and Miss Spry enquired as to the whereabouts of their hostess, and were directed to a room in some distant part of the building, previously unknown to them, where they found Louisa and Lady Blanche, surrounded by open trunks and piles of rich fabric.
‘The ball,’ explained Lady Blanche. ‘It is to be a masked one, as always, and it is generally understood that guests wear black and silver if they are able to do so, with perhaps a touch of white if they cannot, as that is always easy to find for young ladies. Our Northriding colours, you know, since ancient times, taken from our hair and our eyes, as you may see from many of the portraits going back for centuries. Some of the older people do not trouble themselves to follow the theme, or perhaps think it unlucky to wear black when not in mourning, but the younger people always seem to enjoy participating. It does make a great show in the hall, when everyone is masked and dancing, and the silver lace glitters in the candlelight. I have already helped some of our other guests choose costumes from our store, if they did not bring anything suitable, but now I think we must find somethingfor you. Louisa has a silver ballgown with her that will be perfect, but she tells me you both need our aid?’
Georgie had not been able to repress a shiver at the thought of being masked, and seeing the Duke masked again – she was bound to recall all that had happened between them on their first meeting, and how he had told her just a few hours ago that he bitterly regretted it now. But that was a disturbing train of thought, and she pushed it aside with deliberate effort, and tried to lose herself in looking over the gowns that Lady Blanche pulled out for her inspection.
Miss Spry pronounced herself satisfied with a costume some thirty years old that had once belonged to the late Duchess – Jane declared that she had always thought the slightly raised waists and full skirts of the time following the Terror in France to be most becoming. The silk was striped in black and silver, and the low bosom would be filled with a white fichu, and her blonde locks piled up on her head to be dressed with grey powder and feather plumes. ‘It will be like seeing my mother in the mirror, I am sure, at the age of my earliest recollections,’ she said with a smile. ‘I wish there were some means of preserving the impression, so I could show it to her when next I see her, for I am sure she would be most amused.’
Georgiana considered several gowns, oddly indecisive when surely it did not matter in the least what she wore, and at last with her hostess’s encouragement settled on one of black velvet embroidered with silver thread and brilliants, which Lady Blanche thought might have belonged to her grandmother, a French lady, when she was newly married. The skirt was not set on an exaggerated frame, in a fashion which looked ridiculous to modern eyes and must have made it nigh on impossible to pass through doorways, but was nevertheless wide and full, supported by numerous stiffened petticoats. The black velvet skirt opened in a wide vee over these petticoats, which hadbeen designed to be visible and were heavy with rows of silver lace. The same costly material also showed in a cascade from the elbow. The bodice was low, and Georgie would have to be trussed into it with some force. ‘It should really be matched with a wig,’ said Louisa, raising her glass to inspect it, ‘for your hair is too short to look quite right in powder, but I hardly think you will care to wear one even if one can be found. Horrid, insanitary things. People in the past were so peculiar, I declare it makes me shudder to think of it now. One’s own parents, even! But perhaps we can find a false curl, a ringlet of some sort, to attach to your own, to make it appear longer?’
‘I have the very thing!’ said Lady Blanche. ‘I will be sure to have it sent to your chamber, and some pins along with it. I am sure your maid will contrive something. And do you have a mask…?’
Georgie had a mask. She scarcely knew why she had brought it to Yorkshire, though it took up little space in her luggage, but she had it none the less, and would wear it. A servant was summoned to carry the chosen gowns to the ladies’ rooms, and they set about packing away the items they had rejected. The ball loomed large in her mind, but she told herself that this was folly; she would be prudent, treat it as any other social engagement, and as soon as it was over they could leave, and if she was lucky she would never set eyes on the Duke again, for he would be married to another woman, and presently, she was sure, she would succeed in banishing him from her thoughts and from her treacherous dreams.
18
Gabriel was beginning to fear that he would never succeed in banishing her from his waking thoughts and from the dreams and fantasies that tormented him. He sat in his study, having had enough of the majority of his guests for now, and he must have been betraying some unusual agitation, for the dogs sat there regarding him with what he could have sworn were anxious expressions. He stroked them both, and talked to them in the foolish way people, even dukes, spoke to their dogs when they were alone with them, but it scarcely helped his inner turmoil.
To his consternation she had refused him, in no uncertain terms too, and in his hurt – he didn’t know why it should hurt, but there was no doubt it did – he had warned her that he would be obliged to woo another. This was, of course, nothing less than the truth. He had set about that wooing today, under her very nose, her beautiful little nose, and if a part of him had rejoiced to think that she would see what he was about and be hurt in return, a greater part had always known this for the ignoble and unworthy folly that it was.
But it was worse than that. He had seen her watching him as he walked among the ruins at Whitby with her friend, and saw her look away with a poorly concealed expression of frozen misery when his gaze caught hers and challenged it. Her distress shook him, and he realised with a jolt of unwelcome certainty that if she was suffering, he was too. She was unhappy, that was plain, but no more than he was. He could call it a Pyrrhic victory, but that would be mistaken, for it was no sort of victory at all.
He didn’t want to marry any other woman. Not the little mouse Alice who squeaked and trembled whenever he addressed her, not any other of the debutantes Blanche had assembled. He would previously have said – would have said a bare two days ago – that he didn’t want to marry anyone at all, so it made no odds which woman he chose, but most curiously this no longer appeared to be true.
Fate was a damnably cruel jade. It was almost amusing, but he was not just now in the humour to be amused. He had proposed marriage to a woman for the first time in his life and she had refused him. There were any number of young ladies at the Castle who would have accepted him without a moment’s thought and with every appearance of delight, but his cursed erratic fancy must light on the one who would say no. Who could find the strength to say no even when she lay in his arms, her pupils dilated with desire, her perfect breasts still tingling from his touch, her delectable little pink nipples still swollen with arousal, still slick from having his lips, his mouth on them. His hand had been on the hem of her nightgown; a moment later he would have… She admitted she wanted him, she even admitted – Christ! – that she would give herself to him willingly, completely, if he persisted. But she would not marry him whatever he did. It was refined torture.
To refuse him was of course her privilege; he hoped he was not such a coxcomb that he had expected her to weep withdelight when he proposed the solution to both their problems. God knows it wasn’t his masculine pride that was offended. He feared it was much more than that. He was trying very hard, as he smiled and conversed with others with perfect civility though he had hardly the least idea what he was actually saying, not to dwell too much upon her reasons, for they created a storm of confusion in his head – and not just in his head – that he found himself singularly ill-equipped to deal with. The picture that she had painted of him, passing his wife’s lover on the stairs, that stung. The picture of him leaving her crying bitter tears when he left her bed bound for another’s, that stung too. Her talk of mere lust, that was a barb in his flesh, though he had no idea why it should be when he’d never had the slightest problem with lust in the past; quite the contrary, in fact, he’d been an enthusiastic advocate of it. He didn’t want to think about any of these things, to consider whether there was any justice in what she said, and what he could do about it if there was. He refused to.
He knew he had been damnably clumsy in his approach to her, babbling of bloody Leaky Sue like an imbecile. It must have been the most unflattering proposal of marriage that a young lady had ever received – Leaky Sue herself would have laughed, no doubt – and yet he was famed for the suavity of his address, his powers of persuasion, known across Europe as a man who could seduce a nun out of her convent, though it wasn’t something he’d made a habit of, or at least not lately. (Venice had been the place for that, as for so much else, once upon a time.) He had lain awake last night rehashing every word, every gesture, every damn thing that had occurred in her chamber, and it had gained him nothing except a painfully intense erection and the conviction that he was very possibly losing his mind.
And there was no point to any of it, and it didn’t matter whether he was touched in the upper storey or not, because shehad refused him, and he was obliged to woo another. And he would. He would not go to her chamber any more, he would not attempt to shake her resolve or dwell on the thought of her lying there warm from his embrace; no, he would woo another, be accepted – for why else were any of them here? – and allow himself to dance his one dance with Georgiana at the ball, the only dance he would ever dance with her in both their lives, and then put her out of his mind for ever.
He also refused to dwell on his fear that this would be very, very hard to do. He wanted to lie on the floor with his faithful companions and whine like one of them, but of course he did not. Dukes did not do such things, even in private. Instead, he composed himself and left the room, to resume his distasteful wooing, all the while conscious that he was making a huge mistake and there was nothing he could think of that would mend matters.
19
Gowns chosen, Georgiana and her companions rejoined the rest of the party, and for the remainder of the day she was treated to the spectacle of the Duke staying close by Alice’s side. He was not so uncivil as ever to meet Georgie’s eyes again while he was doing so; his behaviour was impeccable, and he never overstepped the bounds of propriety, but the mere fact of his attention lighting on her seemed to make Alice extremely uneasy. Her mother, by contrast, was delighted, while Mary Debenham and her parents were trying and to a large extent failing to conceal their great chagrin at this new turn of events. Mary’s sharp tongue, which had on previous days been largely employed in acid comments directed at Georgie, was now engaged in criticising every detail of Alice’s dress and deportment. She spent much of the day giggling behind her hand with her crony Miss French, in a blatant way that made Georgie, rising above her own turmoil, itch to give her a set-down. Alice could hardly be oblivious to such behaviour either, and, after a particularly poisonous after-dinner sally set her friend blushing, Georgie drew her aside for a turn about the room.
The weather was a little better than it had been of late, the warmth of a fire was no longer necessary, and this evening the ladies were gathered to wait for the gentlemen in the long picture gallery that led off the great hall. It had French windows at one end that opened onto a sheltered little garden set into an angle of a turret, and Georgie, not stopping to examine any of the portraits of Mauleverer ancestors that held the other ladies’ attention, took Miss Templeton’s arm and ushered her outside. They found themselves alone, in a small, secluded space of low box hedges, stone statues and climbing greenery; an antique fountain in the shape of a wolf’s head tinkled in one corner. She closed the door behind them and said, ‘Now we can speak in private!’
She saw that tears stood in Alice’s eyes. ‘Oh, Georgie!’ she almost wailed. ‘I am in the most terrible coil! Miss Debenham’s odious behaviour is the least of my concerns, horrid though it is. No! Mama is convinced that the Duke means to offer for me – perhaps at the ball! And she is delighted. She is writing to Papa this evening to tell him the wonderful news!’
‘I do not think you can yet be sure that the Duke has any fixed intention of making you an offer,’ said Georgiana. ‘It has only been today that he has paid you any particular attention, and he seems to me to be… capricious. Perhaps his fancy will alight somewhere else tomorrow, and somewhere else again the day after.’
‘I hope you’re right! But that will be almost as bad, because then Mama will blame me, and say that I should have done something to secure his regard when I had the chance!’
‘Like what?’
‘I don’t know! She has counselled me strictly never to be alone with him, and of course I would not in any case – it’s not as though Iwantto, for heaven’s sake! – but she has already reproved me for not appearing to be delighted whenever hedeigns to notice me. She says I look like a frightened rabbit when he addresses me. And I expect I do! I am not stupid, Georgie, as a general rule, but when he speaks to me I can think of nothing rational to say. He is so very intimidating, is he not? Even when he doesn’t have those terrifying beasts with him!’
It could not be denied that there was a certain awkwardness to this conversation, which Georgiana had not considered when she led Alice aside in a well-meant attempt to save her from Mary’s spite. She found herself reluctant to discuss the Duke with her friend; it would be improper, wrong, and above all unwise to do so. But she was obliged to give her some answer. ‘I confess I do not find him so, nor his dogs, for that matter,’ she said with an effort at lightness.
‘You do not freeze when he addresses you? No, you do not, for you are not scared of anyone, are you? Not even of men, or large dogs with huge, sharp teeth! I have noticed that, and I cannot tell you how I envy you for it. I expect it comes of having such a great quantity of brothers,’ Alice said thoughtfully. She seemed to be fast regaining her composure now that Mary Debenham and the Duke were absent.
‘I expect it does,’ said Georgie with a weak smile. Alice looked at her fixedly, and as Georgie observed her with unease, an idea plainly occurred to her.
‘I don’t suppose thatyouwould consider marrying him?’ cried Alice in sudden inspiration. ‘You’re not scared of him at all, and I am sure you would make a perfectly splendid duchess! You are quite accustomed to all this…’ She waved her hand expansively at the stone walls and many casement windows of the Castle, the sea and sky and dukes and dogs of Yorkshire. ‘You have lived your whole life in the very first circles, you are on excellent terms with all those terrifying Howard and Cavendish ladies, when I cannot always distinguish them one from another. I can imagine it so clearly!’ she said fervently. ‘You will be verygrand, and witty, and host splendid dinners which the Regent will attend. Quite apart from the Duke, though he is bad enough, the thought of all that horrifies me. If the Prince Regent or his brother of York, say, were to speak to me, I would… I would die of mortification!’
