“I trust you are enjoying yourself?” he said. “I see the food is being brought in and the guests are beginning to take their places. It seems I timed my arrival perfectly. Jenny, may I—?”
But before he could offer either to carry her to a chair at one ofthe tables or fetch her wheeled chair, which would be more comfortable for her, his aunt appeared beside him.
“Luc!” she cried, drawing him into a warm hug. “What an absolutely splendid surprise. We were not expecting you for a while yet.”
“I am sorry to have arrived unexpectedly at your party, Aunt Kitty,” he said, hugging her back. “I hope I have not thrown your numbers out of balance. I shall leave immediately if I have and sulk in my room for the rest of the day. Unless I can smuggle a few pastries out with me, that is.”
“Absurd boy,” she said, laughing. “I am delighted you did not feel obliged to hide somewhere until everyone had left. I wish you had appeared a little sooner, however, before it was time to sit down to tea. I would have taken you about to show you off to all my guests. I do not suppose you know many of them at all, do you? Let me at least introduce you to the dearest friend of my heedless youth.” She turned to the woman in blue with whom she had been arm in arm when he saw her earlier. “My nephew, Lucas, Marquess of Roath, Clarissa. The Countess of Stratton, Luc.”
He was already in the act of making her a bow, smiling as he did so. He somehow completed the action, though something inside him froze.That name!He felt a slight buzzing in his head.
“Ma’am,” he said.
“Make that thedowagercountess, if you please,” she said, smiling at him in return. “My daughter-in-law has been the countess since she married my son before Christmas. I am pleased to make your acquaintance, Lord Roath.”
He smiled and nodded, but his mind was still frozen in shock.
“I see you have already met Clarissa’s daughter, Luc,” his aunt said. “I do hope you are enjoying yourself, Pippa.”
Good God! Ware.Ware.Had he known that was the family name of the man who must now be thelateEarl of Stratton if this woman was thedowagercountess? He had not heard of the man’s death. Because he had notwantedto hear anything about him at all. For years he had kept his distance from thetonand from London during the spring months very largely because he did not want to meet or know anything that might pertain to theEarl of Stratton.
“Will you mind if I remain here to have my tea, Aunt Kitty?” Jenny asked. “And if Luc draws up a chair and sits with me? I have a thousand and one questions to ask him about Grandmama and Grandpapa and his visit to Greystone. Perhaps Pippa will agree to stay with us also if it is not too much of an imposition when she has already been kind enough to sit with me for all of the past ten or fifteen minutes.”
Cousin Gerald had approached while Jenny was speaking. “How do you do, Luc?” he said, grinning at him and shaking his hand. “You were able to find London, then, were you, without going astray? Have you even been here before?”
“My coachman found it,” Lucas told him. “Fortunately he did not blink at the wrong moment and drive the horses right on by. Happy to see you, Gerald.”
This was absurd, he was thinking as he digested the fact that during his first appearance in London in years he found himself in company with Stratton’s widow and Stratton’s daughter. He had not even had to set foot outside the house. He told himself determinedly that he had no quarrel withthem.And Stratton himself was dead. When had it happened? And how? It did not matter, though. Or itshouldnot matter. He was going to have to think about it afterward and decide to let the whole thing go at last and set himself free.
But what colossal ill fortune that Lady Philippa Ware had beensent his way on his very first day in London. He was even going to have to sit with her for tea. In his grandfather’s drawing room.
“But of course, Jenny,” their aunt was saying. “That is a good idea. Gerald, would you like to join your cousins and Pippa and have your tea here?”
Pippa.It sounded like the name of a very young girl.
She was not very young. He would guess her to be in her twenties. She was still smiling.
The smile still looked a bit forced.
Chapter Five
No oneknew,except Devlin, but he was still in Wales with Gwyneth. Even her mother did not know. Philippa had never told her, or anyone else until her brother had coaxed it out of her last year. It had been her deepest, darkest secret for years before that. It had eaten away at her youth and happiness and her confidence in herself. It had killed her dreams.
I do not dance with soiled goods.
James Rutledge and Sidney Johnson and a few other men who had been there that night had heard his words, of course. But none of them had realized she had heard too. She could remember smiling and dancing her way through the rest of that ghastly evening after the marquess had gone away with James and the practice had started. Those men, with the possible exception of James, had surely forgotten the whole thing by now, four years later.
He had forgotten too.
The Marquess of Roath had just looked at her with appreciative eyes and taken her hand and told her it was a great pleasure to makeher acquaintance. There had not been a glimmering of recognition on his face, even when Jenny had told him her name.
Philippa stayed where she was, quelling every instinct to jump to her feet and run. Runanywhere.Just away fromhim.It would have been unkind to Jenny, though, even to insist upon going to join a different group for tea when she had been specifically invited to stay here as part of this intimate group of four. But how was she going to be able to relax whenhedrew up a chair facing hers while Sir Gerald Emmett sat across from Jenny and a footman set a low table in the middle? How was she going to eat anything? Or drink the tea that Jenny was even now pouring for her? She was not at all sure her hand would be steady enough to lift the cup to her lips without spilling its contents. She set a cucumber sandwich and a slice of fruit cake on her plate. And smiled.
The Marquess of Roath assured his sister and his cousin when they asked that the Duke and Duchess of Wilby were as well as could be expected and did indeed intend to come to town within the next week or so. Then the conversation turned to memories the three of them had of their grandparents, mostly humorous anecdotes. They were all polite enough, however, to include Philippa in the conversation by enlarging upon some of the details for her benefit. There was the time, for example, when their grandfather had taken the two boys fishing and had spent a whole afternoon instructing them on safe and correct techniques while they yawned in the boat. Then he had caught a fish and reeled it in, ostentatious about doing so in the correct manner. He had disengaged the hook from its mouth with careful precision, pronounced to the boys thatthatwas the way to be a successful fisherman, and promptly fallen backward into the water.
Philippa laughed with them.
“I remember,” Jenny said. “Poor Grandpapa was dripping wetwhen you arrived home, and he was bristling with fury becausesomeonehad rocked the boat and the fish had swum away while he was swallowing half the river.”
