Jocelyn instructed his housekeeper to select or to hire a maid accomplished at dressing a lady’s hair. He did toy with the idea of also taking Jane Ingleby to a fashionable modiste and commanding that an evening gown be made up with all haste—he had considerable influence with two or three of London’s most exclusive dressmakers—but he did not do so. She would without doubt make a fuss and end up refusing to sing. Besides, he must not make her look too much the lady, he decided, or his guests would be wondering about the propriety of her having spent almost three weeks beneath his roof as his nurse.
He spent some time during the afternoon in the music room with her, rehearsing two contrasting songs to show off her voice as well as an encore, the possibility of which she protested was nonsense, but which he insisted was not.
He found, as he dressed for the evening, that he was feeling nervous. A fact that thoroughly alarmed him and made him despise himself heartily.
WHEN SHE HAD BEENyounger, when her parents had both been alive and healthy, there had been frequent picnics, dinners, and dances at Candleford Abbey. They had loved entertaining. But Jane did not believe they had ever invited anywhere near fifty guests at one time. And even those parties she remembered had been a long time ago. She had been just a girl.
She sat in her room for several hours before getting ready to go downstairs, listening to the distant sounds of voices and laughter, imagining what was happening, what was yet to happen before she was summoned to sing. But it was impossible to predict the exact time of the summons.Tonparties, Jane was aware, were quite unlike their counterparts in the country, which almost never continued past eleven o’clock or midnight at the very latest. Here in town no one seemed to consider it strange to be up all night—and then, of course, to sleep all the following day.
She might not be called down before midnight. She would collapse in a heap of the jitters if she had to wait that long.
But finally she could see from the clock on the mantel that Adele, the French maid who had been hired for the evening just to dress her hair, would be knocking on her door in ten minutes’ time. It was time to get dressed.
It was far too late to regret agreeing to this madness. There was no one among the guests—she had perused the guest list with great care—who might know her identity. But the Earl of Durbury was in town. What if everyone at tonight’s gathering had been furnished with her description? Her stomach lurched. But it was too late.
She determinedly pulled off her maid’s frock and drew over her head the carefully ironed sprigged muslin dress she had set out on her bed earlier. It was a dress perfectly suited to afternoon tea in the country. It was not at all appropriate for an evening party even there, of course, but that did not matter. She was not a guest at tonight’s entertainment, after all.
She shivered with mingled cold, excitement, and fear.
She had never meant to hide when she fled to London. What she should have done after making the ghastly discovery that Lady Webb was not at home, Jane thought belatedly, was to stay at the hotel where she had taken a room and apply to the earl’s man of business in town for funds. She should have boldly proclaimed to all the world that she had been abused and assaulted by a drunken rogue during the earl and countess’s absence from Candleford and had quite justifiably defended herself by hitting him with a book and removing herself far from proximity to him.
But she had not done it, and it was too late now.
She was in hiding. And about to show herself to fifty members of the crème de la crème of British society.
Whatuttermadness.
A female voice laughed shrilly in the distance.
Someone tapped on Jane’s door, making her jump foolishly. Adele had arrived to dress her hair.
AT ELEVEN O’CLOCKLADYHeyward, Jocelyn’s hostess for the evening, announced the end of the card games that were in progress, while Jocelyn himself directed a few footmen in the moving of the drawing room pianoforte to the center of the room and the arrangement of chairs about the room’s perimeter. The musical part of the evening was about to begin.
Several of the younger ladies volunteered or were persuaded to play the pianoforte or to sing. One gentleman—Lord Riding—was brave enough to sing a duet with his betrothed. All the recitals were competent. The guests listened more or less attentively and applauded politely. This was, after all, a familiar form of evening entertainment to them all. Only a few of the acknowledged patrons of the arts ever hired professional artists, but on those occasions the evening was heralded as a private concert.
Finally Jocelyn got to his feet with the aid of his cane.
“Do feel free to stand up and move about for a few minutes,” he said when he had everyone’s attention. “I have engaged a special guest for your entertainment before supper. I shall go and bring her down.”
His sister looked at him in surprise. “Whoever can she be, Tresham?” she asked. “Is she waiting in the kitchen? Where on earth did you find her when you have been almost shut up here for the past three weeks?”
But he merely inclined his head and left the room. Fool that he was, he had scarce been able to think of anything else all evening but this moment. He just hoped she had not changed her mind. Five hundred pounds was a considerable inducement, of course, but he was of the opinion that if Jane Ingleby had decided she did not want to sing, even five thousand pounds would not convince her.
He had been pacing the hall, leaning heavily on his cane, for two minutes after sending Hawkins up for her before she appeared on the staircase. She stopped on the third stair up and turned into a decent imitation of a statue—a pale, grim statue with its lips set in a thin, hard line, who nevertheless looked like an angel. The light, simply styled muslin dress did wonders for her form, accentuating her tall, slender grace. Her hair—well, he simply could not remove his eyes from it for a long moment. It was not elaborately styled. It was not a mass of curls and ringlets, as he had half expected. It was dressed up, but all the usual severity was gone. It looked soft and healthy and shiny and elegant. And pure gold.
“Well, well,” he said, “the butterfly has fluttered free of its cocoon.”
“It would be much better if we did not do this,” she said.
But he moved to the bottom of the staircase and reached up a hand for hers, holding her eyes with his own.
“You will not turn craven on me now, Jane,” he said. “My guests await my special guest.”
“They will be disappointed,” she warned him.
It was entirely unlike her to cower. Not that she was doing that exactly. She was standing straight with her chin lifted proudly. She also looked as if she might have sent roots down into the third stair.
“Come,” he said, using his eyes shamelessly to compel her.
