Lady Dunmore was awaiting him in the doorway. She linked an arm through his. “I am sure you have done your duty by your sister’s family for one evening, Lord Hodges,” she said, nodding graciously to Elizabeth. “Come. There is a young lady to whom I must present you before the next set begins.”
Colin was about to protest, Elizabeth could see. She slipped her hand from his arm.
“Do go,” she said. “My mother is just a few steps away.” As though at her age she needed the constant presence of a chaperon.
She watched as he was led away to meet the rather plain girl who stood with Miss Dunmore.
I still think I ought to marry you. And that you ought to marry me. It would solve both our problems. And we can trust each other, can we not?
Oh, Colin.
Eight
It did not take long, Colin soon discovered, for word to get out that Lord Hodges was in search of a bride. During the two weeks following the Dunmore ball he felt almost as though he were constantly interviewing candidates, most of them pressed upon him by their mothers. It was really quite dizzying and not a little disconcerting, for the more he thought about marrying, the more he came to believe what he had told Elizabeth at the ball. His baroness would have to be a young woman of extraordinary strength of character, for his mother would be no ordinary mother-in-law. She would not take kindly to having either her name or her position as mistress of Roxingley and the house on Curzon Street usurped.
And he, of course, would have to be an extraordinary husband in order to prevent her from overpowering his wife. He would have to be a stronger man than his father had been—or than he himself had been at the age of eighteen.
At a garden party in Richmond he took one young lady strolling through the hothouses on the suggestion of her mother, who could not stand the heat herself. He sat in an open summer house for a while with another young lady, whose mother needed urgently to have a word with their hostess. Later, on the terrace outside the house, he found himself left alone for all of ten minutes with a young lady whose mother had spotted an old and dear friend she had not seen in ages.
Soon after the mother returned, he was introduced to Miss Madson and took her out on the river in one of the boats. She was a pretty, auburn-haired girl, who seemed both intelligent and sensible. She did not seem to believe, as many other young ladies did, that it was unfeminine to talk about current affairs or the books she had read. Colin, pulling on the oars, relaxed and enjoyed her company and even kept her out a bit longer than he ought, given that there was a small queue of people awaiting their turn in the boats. He liked Miss Madson and wondered if she liked him. Her elder sister, who was sponsoring her come-out, was waiting for her on the bank and gave Colin a long and speculative look.
The following evening at a soiree he twice found himself spending several minutes tête-à-tête with young ladies before he ended up turning pages of music for Miss Dunmore as she played on the pianoforte. Miss Dunmore was a real beauty, and he found her quietly charming now that she had recovered from her shyness at her come-out ball. Her mother watched from a distance, clearly gratified that he was appreciating her daughter’s accomplished playing.
Ross Parmiter’s sister—the newly betrothed one Colin had befriended last year—was in London with her mother and Miss Eglington, her future sister-in-law, to shop for bride clothes. Colin accompanied them all to a portrait gallery one afternoon and then to Gunter’s for ices. Miss Eglington was an amiable, modest young lady. The ladies were expecting to be in town for a few weeks, she told him when he asked. He looked forward to seeing her again.
He attended a couple of more balls during those two weeks and waltzed with Elizabeth at each. He enjoyed those sets more than any others. She was lovely to dance with, and she was lovely tobewith. He could converse with her—or not—without any self-consciousness or mind searching for a suitable topic. Since neither waltz was the supper dance, though, he did find himself missing the chance to converse with her at greater length.
On the afternoon following the second of the two balls, he walked around to the house on South Audley Street, hoping to find the ladies at home, though he knew Wren and Alexander had not arrived in town yet. They were there, though Mrs. Westcott was busy entertaining Mrs. Radley, her sister-in-law, and two other older ladies. When Colin asked Elizabeth if she would like a walk in Hyde Park, she seemed happy to oblige.
“I could see a beautiful afternoon waste away beyond the window,” she said after they had stepped outside and she had taken his arm.
They strolled along the bank of the Serpentine—they and what seemed like a hundred other people. The sunshine sparkled off the water, and children were at play on the bank, some of them sailing toy boats, a few being called away by anxious nurses, others trailing their hands in the water.
“Hoping to catch fish,” Colin said.
“Or fascinated by the way their hands change size and shape underwater,” she said. “How much fun children have exploring their world.” She smiled as she watched, and it seemed to Colin that she looked wistful.
“What happened to your own?” he asked her, and wished he could recall the question even before she turned her head and looked at him with raised eyebrows. “You told me you miscarried twice.”
Drat his unguarded tongue—something that seemed to happen only with her. It was a horribly intimate question to have asked. He could feel himself flush. They had stepped off the main path to be closer to the water. Fortunately there was no one really close by. Even so…
“The first time was quite soon after I discovered I was with child,” she said. “The second time was different. He came early. Too early. He could almost live on his own but not quite. He died. Or he never lived. Not outside the womb, anyway. He had lived inside me. I felt him all the time.”
“He?” he said softly.
“Yes,” she said. “He.”
He tried to frame an apology, but it was eras too late by now. She was not visibly agitated. Indeed, she was almost uncannily controlled. But there seemed to be a world of pain in her chosen pronoun—he, notit.
“They were both accidents,” she said.
But there was something in the way she said it that chilled him. Something defensive. There was something worse in her choice of word—accidents.
“Were they?” he said.
“The second one certainly was,” she said. “I fell downstairs. I broke my arm and lost my child.”
She…broke her arm. How many times had she broken it, for the love of God?
