He had said he would return, and it seemed hemustreturn, since he had a borrowed conveyance with him. But there was only one day of the visit left.
Agnes turned and half ran up the stairs to her room after she and Dora had waved the ladies on their way. She did not want to talk about it. She did not want to talk at all. Ever. She wanted to climb beneath the bedcovers, pull them up over her head, curl into a ball, and stay there for the rest of her life.
Andthis, she thought, catching a glimpse of her image in the dressing table mirror and pausing to nod at herself in some disgust, was a fine way to be behaving when one was twenty-six years old, a staid, refined widow, and wise enough to have turned down an advantageous marriage offer because it could lead only to lasting unhappiness.
Thiswas not unhappiness?
Besides, she had not turned it down, had she? She had promised not to until he left.
Hehadleft. But he had also said this time that he would return. It all seemedso typicalof Viscount Ponsonby. She would be a fool....
But at least she could prepare for this evening without a palpitating heart. He was not at the house. She could occupy her mind with nothing more disturbing than the enormously important question of which of her three evening gowns she would wear. Certainly not the green. The blue or the lavender, then. But which?
She grimaced at her image and turned away.
11
There was a degree of tiredness at which one was bone weary yet beyond feeling sleepy.
It was a point Flavian had reached by the time he drove himself through the village of Inglebrook in the middle of the evening. There was no light in the cottage. They must be in bed already. He could not remember when he had last slept, though he had taken a room at the same inn both going and coming and had certainly lain down on the bed on both occasions. He remembered hauling off his boots and wishing for his valet.
He should drive straight to the stables, abandon his rig—or rather Ralph’s—to the care of Vince’s grooms, go up to his room, and collapse on the bed without summoning his valet, who was probably still sulking anyway over the unexpected five-day holiday he had been given.
There were lights blazing in the drawing room windows, he saw as he was approaching the house. That was not surprising, of course. It was notthatlate, even though it was dark outside already.
There were two unfamiliar gigs outside the stable block. Ah, visitors. Another reason why he should go straight to bed. He would have to change and wash and shave even to appear before his friends and their ladies, of course, but he would have to make a more special effort for visitors. And he would have to smile and be sociable. He was not sure hecouldsmile. It sounded like too much of an effort.
He would not sleep either, though, he suspected. He felt wound up like a child’s spinning top. And the closer he had come to Middlebury, the madder his whole errand seemed. What the devil had possessed him? It was too late to ponder that question now, however. He had gone and he had returned, and if he had wasted his time, then there was nothing he could do about it now.
He nodded to the footman on duty in the hall and directed the man to send his valet up to him. Perhaps a wash and a shave and a bit of sociability would make him properly tired and enable him to sleep tonight.
Whowerethe visitors? he wondered.
He found out half an hour later when he sauntered into the drawing room, quizzing glass in hand. Vincent was sitting by the fire with Imogen and Harrison, his neighbor and particular friend. George was standing beside the fireplace, one elbow propped on the mantel. Harrison’s wife was seated at one card table, as was the vicar. The vicar’s wife and Miss Debbins were at another. Ben, his wife, Ralph, and Lady Trentham made up the two tables. Lady Darleigh was carrying two drinks to the vicar’s table. Hugo was standing behind his wife’s chair but was conversing with Mrs. Keeping, who stood beside him.
She was wearing a very modest, almost prim blue gown, which had surely never, ever been even remotely fashionable. He suspected its color was slightly faded too. Her hair was ruthlessly tamed, with not a single strand fallen loose by accident or design to tease the imagination.
She looked utterly delicious.
Short as he had been of time in London, he had nevertheless looked about him quite deliberately at the ladies. There had been some real beauties among them, and others who had made themselvesseembeautiful or at least alluring by what they wore and how they wore it. He had been quite unenchanted by every single one of them.
It had been most alarming.
He met her eyes for a heartbeat before Lady Darleigh spotted him at the same moment George and Imogen did.
“Flavian!”
“Lord Ponsonby!”
“You are back, Flavian,” Imogen said, coming toward him, both her hands extended. She turned her cheek for his kiss as he dropped his quizzing glass on its ribbon and clasped her hands.
“I h-had to return Ralph’s curricle and horses,” he said, “or he would have borne a g-grudge for the next ten years or so. He is t-touchy that way.”
“I would have taken your carriage instead, Flave,” Ralph said, looking up from his cards. “No carriage seats have any right to be so plush and cozy.”
“Do let me fetch you a drink and something to eat,” Lady Darleigh said after everyone else had greeted him—with one or two exceptions. “Are you cold? Do move closer to the fire.”
He went to squeeze Vincent’s shoulder and tell him how good it felt to be back among all his friends again. He exchanged a few words with George and Harrison, he spoke with Hugo for a minute or two, and then he went to stand beside Mrs. Keeping, who had moved to look intently over her sister’s shoulder as though it wasshewho was playing the hand.
