His heart sank even as he girded his loins for battle.
“Ma’am,” he said, making her a bow.
She looked him up and down from her chair beside the fireplace, her expression stern, even hostile.
“Lord Dirkson,” she said. “Your daughter has a lovely evening for her party.”
“She is fortunate,” he said, “considering the fact that we have had nothing but drizzle and blustery winds for the last several days.”
“Tell me,” she said. “Did I make a mistake all those years ago?”
Her words took him completely by surprise. He did not know for a moment how to answer. “I understood,” he said, “that the Earl of Riverdale, your husband, rejected my suit because my wild ways made me an ineligible suitor for his daughter. I was twenty years old. I behaved as a large number of young men behave at that age. Wildly, that is. I was prepared to reform my ways after I had made the acquaintance of Lady Matilda. Whether I would have done so or not cannot be known for sure. I daresay you believed at the time that you were acting in the best interests of your daughter. Subsequent events would seem to have justified you in that opinion.”
“You loved her?” she asked.
“I did, ma’am,” he said. “Very dearly. I do not expect you to believe me.”
“Age does not necessarily strengthen a person or insulate her from pain,” she said. “My daughter is as fragile now as she was then, Viscount Dirkson, even though she may appear to be set in her ways and incapable of deep feeling.”
Matilda did not appear that way to him in either regard.
“Are you asking me my intentions, ma’am?” he asked.
She did not reply for a moment as she looked steadily at him. “I am,” she said then.
He felt like a young man again, being hauled up before suspicious parents as he pursued their daughters. It was a little bizarre. But one thing was clear. The old dragon cared after all. He did not like her, but she cared. At least he assumed she did. Perhaps she was only anxious at the possible loss of her longtime slave.
“They are honorable, ma’am,” he assured her. “I have no wish to hurt Lady Matilda. I will do all in my power not to do so. I never did hurt her, if you will remember. I am not the one who ended our connection.”
What the devil was he saying? Was he committing himself to something? Events of the past couple of weeks or so had left him with the uneasy feeling that he was being drawn into some sort of trap. But … a trap of whose making? Not Matilda’s, certainly. Not her mother’s either, or any of her family’s. Of his own, then? He was the one, after all, who had suggested first himself and then Matilda as chaperons for that youthful excursion to Kew. He was the one who had suggested her name to Barbara.
“Do you still love her?” the dowager asked him.
He raised his eyebrows. “Icarefor her, ma’am,” he said.
She narrowed her eyes and then nodded curtly. “Matilda is an adult,” she said. “She has been an adult for many years. It is time I learned not to interfere in her life. I am sure you would agree with that, Lord Dirkson.”
“I am sure, ma’am,” he said, “that your concern for her arises from love.”
He was sure of no such thing. But before she could reply, the door behind him opened and he turned in some relief to watch Matilda hurry into the room, her evening gown an icy, shimmery silver gray, a blue cashmere shawl over one arm, her hair styled with simple elegance, her posture more erect even than usual, her cheeks slightly flushed, her lips in a prim line.
And dash it all. He fell in love. Again.
Six
They crossed the river by boat instead of by the bridge, a convenience Matilda had always considered unromantic ever since it opened a few years previous. Charles took her shawl from over her arm just when she was starting to feel a bit chilly and wrapped it around her shoulders. For a moment he kept his arm about her, holding the shawl in place, but he soon removed it and sat more decorously beside her, making light conversation. It must be twenty-five or, more likely, thirty years since she had been anywhere escorted by a gentleman alone. She had been relieved that her mother had not suggested her maid accompany her. How humiliating it would have been if that had happened in his hearing.
He had arrived a bit early. She had not been quite ready. But she had hurried, alarmed that he was going to have to face her mother alone in the drawing room. And sure enough, Mama had been looking severe when she arrived there, and he had been looking stern. He had not told her—and she had not asked—what had transpired between them. Merely a stilted, banal conversation about the weather, she hoped.
“Oh,” she said now. “Just look.” They were foolish words, since they were facing the opposite bank of the Thames and he would have to be blind not to see the dozens of colored lanterns strung through the branches of the trees of Vauxhall Gardens, swaying in the breeze, their reflections shivering across the flowing water. “Is it not sheer magic, Charles?”
“It is indeed,” he agreed, but when she turned her head to look at him it was to find thathewas looking ather, his eyes shadowed by the near darkness and the brim of his tall hat.
She smiled and turned her face away. He had used to do that all the time. She had questioned him about it once.Why are you always looking at me?she had asked. He had had a ready answer.Because there is nothing and no one in this world I would rather look at. Foolish, flattering words that had warmed her to her toes. She did not ask the same question now. Who knew how he would answer?
“It was very kind of your daughter to invite me to join her birthday celebrations,” she said. “Her card mentioned the fact that it is to be afamilyparty.”
“Immediate family, yes,” he told her. “Barbara and Jane will be there with their husbands. Adrian has invited Lady Estelle Lamarr. And I have invited you. Social events are always better when there is an even number of men and women.”
