Was he? Was that what Gerard hadalwaysbeen like? Christina had grown so accustomed to thinking just the opposite of him—she hadneededto believe the opposite. Had she misjudged him all those years? She looked down the length of the table to see him conversing politely with his neighbors.
When the last cover had been removed Christina stood to signal the ladies that it was time to adjourn to the drawing room and leave the gentlemen to their port.
The evening was going rather well, she thought by the time the gentlemen joined the ladies half an hour later. She had hated the prospect of the house party at first, partly because she had no experience at organizing such events, but mainly because she had feared that the earl’s guests would be as wild and rakish as he. It had not taken her long, of course, to realize that he was no longer either wild or rakish himself. He had changed. He had matured. And he had prospered. They were all somewhat bitter realizations.
Or perhaps he never had been irresponsibly wild. Perhaps she had only needed to believe that he was. Perhaps she had rationalized her own decision. She felt almost ashamed of the fact that just over a week before, when she had been awaiting his arrival, she had hoped to see evidence that she had been right to do what she had done.
The guests were a pleasant group of people, she thought now. And the young people were eager for some gaiety. Margaret, who at Christina’s suggestion had taken the shy Miss Milchip under her wing, was turning the pages of the sheet music while that young lady played the pianoforte, and the elder Miss Gaynor and Miss Radway had joined them at the instrument. Lady Gaynor and Lady Milchip had settled on either side of the fire at Aunt Hannah’s bidding.
“We will set up the card tables,” the earl announced as soon as everyone was gathered in the drawing room.
“Splendid, dear,” Lady Hannah said.
“Ah.” Baron Langan rubbed his hands together and smiled genially at his host. “You fleeced me of a fortune just two weeks ago, Wanstead. I shall have it back with interest tonight, I’ll wager.”
“No!” Christina spoke sharply before she had time to think. “No cards at Thornwood. There will be no gambling beneath my roof.” She listened, appalled, to her own words and the arrested silence that succeeded them, but it was too late to recall them. All eyes had turned her way, including the icy blue ones of the earl. She smiled before the moment could turn from awkwardness to disaster. “Not tonight, I beg you, my lord. We ladies have been waiting with as much patience as we could muster for the gentlemen to come and dance with us. Shall we have the carpet rolled back? Aunt Hannah, can you be prevailed upon to play for us?”
Fortunately she appeared to have hit upon just the right form of entertainment for this first evening. There was a general murmuring of enthusiasm and Miss Lizzie Gaynor clapped her hands.
“Oh, yes, please, my lord,” she said, addressing herself to the earl. “Do say we may dance. And do say there are enough willing gentlemen to partner us.”
“I claim Lady Margaret’s hand,” Mr. Frederick Cannadine said, “provided it is a country dance and the steps not too difficult.”
There was general laughter, and Margaret flushed with pleasure.
His lordship inclined his head to Miss Gaynor. “Then dancing it will be,” he said, “and we will reserve cards for another evening. You will honor me, Miss Gaynor?”
In no time at all, it seemed, the carpet had been rolled back to clear a space large enough to accommodate a set of dancers. Lady Hannah had taken her place at the pianoforte and the gentlemen had chosen their partners. The chairs had been arranged so that those who chose not to dance could watch.
“Oh, thank you, no,” Christina said when Viscount Luttrell solicited her hand. “I do not dance, sir.”
Inevitably he raised his quizzing glass to his eye. “Ah, pardon me, ma’am,” he said, surveying her through it. “Now that I can see you better, your reason for refusing is instantly apparent. Your advanced years have given you a stiffness in the joints, I gather? Do say yes. One would hate to have to conclude that there is something objectionable about one’s person.”
Christina laughed. “How absurd you are, my lord,” she said. “I am quite sure any one of the young ladies would be quite delighted to be partnered by you. And indeed Iama woman of advanced years.”
“Dear me,” he said, his glass sweeping over her before he lowered it. “If it were not ungentlemanly to say so, ma’am, I would be forced to declare that you lie. Come and sit by me, then, if you will not dance with me. I shall lend a sympathetic ear to a recitation of all your aches and other elderly woes.”
She sat beside him while the music began and the dancers performed the intricate steps of a country dance. They kept up a flow of easy chatter, all of it nonsense, all of it blatant flirtation on his part and laughing banter on hers.
She should be feeling annoyed, she thought, to have been made the object of a rake’s gallantry. But she could feel only genuine amusement and even pleasure. The days of her youth seemed so very long ago. She really did feel quite elderly in comparison with all the ladies who were dancing. Ten years—almost eleven—had passed since that one come-out Season she had had. How she had enjoyed it, she remembered now. How exhilarating it had felt to be young and passably pretty, to participate in all the busy whirl of a Season, to be admired and flirted with and—loved.
Her eyes watched the Earl of Wanstead as he made an arch with Lizzie Gaynor’s hands clasped in his and the other dancers passed beneath it.
Hehadloved her as she had loved him. A foolish youthful emotion that was as insubstantial as a dream—and that left enough pain in its wake to cripple one for a lifetime. Gerard. Could she ever have imagined in those few golden months that one day they would be in a room together, separated as if by a thousand miles?
“It would be a challenge worth undertaking, I do declare,” Viscount Luttrell said, “to rid your face of that look of longing, ma’am, and to replace it with a look of—something else.”
She turned her head sharply toward him. Light flirtation was in danger of giving way to something less comfortable. But before she could think of a suitable rejoinder to set him in his place, he spoke again.
“Of course,” he said, “any of my friends would tell you, ma’am, that I am far too indolent to undertake anything as challenging as a challenge.” His eyes laughed lazily at her.
Christina pitied any raw young girl on whom he chose to turn that practiced charm. She would stand no chance at all. But then, she realized with a flash of insight, he would not behave thus with any raw girl. He thought she was his equal in experience with flirtation and dalliance. She was eight-and-twenty, after all, and a widow after a nine-year marriage. He could not know that she had lived in a cocoon for ten years and was just beginning, very tentatively, to break free of it.
But for all that she would not be easy prey. To light flirtation, perhaps. To anything else—well, surely he could not seriously mean anything else.
“Then perhaps, my lord,” she said, “I should give thanks in my prayers tonight for your indolence.”
He laughed appreciatively. “I must at least exert myself to dance,” he said as the music ended and there was a smattering of applause from dancers and spectators alike. “Perhaps your young sister-in-law will not claim creaking bones as an excuse for refusing me.”
