“That is vastly reassuring, Colonel Ware,” she said, setting her hand on his offered arm.
He led her in the direction of the supper room and was fortunate enough to find a small side table still unoccupied. He settled her on one side of it and seated himself on the other.
All around them there was a swell of sound as other guests found spaces and friends and settled into animated conversation, each person trying to raise his or her voice above the multitude. Fortunately, Nicholas had never found it difficult to make himself heard, even without resorting to the use of his parade ground voice.
“Now, why would you expect an interrogation?” he asked, regarding his companion with amusement.
Chapter Three
Winifred was somewhat dismayed that Colonel Ware had found a small table not yet occupied by anyone else and promptly seated her at it. She would far prefer to be sitting at the long dining table, preferably close to Papa or Bertrand or Owen. Conversation was already lively there, as well as laughter.
She was not at all sure she liked Colonel Ware. Indeed, she was almost sure she did not. He made her uncomfortable. She felt at every moment that he was looking at her from his superior age and life experience, not to mention personal attractions, and finding her wanting. It did not help that he had a commanding presence and a magnetic personality. She had seen both in the occasional glances she had cast his way during the ball so far. All attention somehow focused upon him whenever he joined a group. He had danced with the most beautiful women, all of whom had looked slightly dazzled, as though he were paying them an extraordinary compliment simply by choosing them. Though that harsh judgment on her part was perhaps a bit unfair to him. He did not seem conceited.
She felt stifled anyway. He was nothercommanding officer, yet she had followed him meekly when she might have expressed a preference for sitting with a group at the main table. Why had he even asked her to dance anyway? Because she was the guest of honor and he felt it was expected of him? Because he really had set himself the task of interrogating her over her relationship with his younger brother? Was he afraid it was more than a friendship? What Owen did with his life was surely none of his business. He was not even the eldest of the Ware brothers. He was not the Earl of Stratton. She wished it were Owen sitting across from her. She felt thoroughly comfortable with him. She never had to think about what she would say next. Conversation flowed naturally between them. She cast her eyes yearningly to where he sat with a group of young people on the far side of the long table.
“Because I am a friend of your brother’s perhaps?” she said in answer to Colonel Ware’s question when his silence told her that it had not been rhetorical.
“Ah,” he said after allowing a servant to fill his wineglass and she had set a hand over the top of hers and shaken her head. “And I am playing the part of heavy-handed elder brother, am I, checking your credentials?”
“Areyou?” she asked.
He smiled at her, and she saw that there was more to him than the hard-jawed, taciturn military officer whom she had described to herself—and to him—as cruel. Now she could see firsthand the charm that made him quite irresistibly attractive to women. He was a practiced slayer of hearts, she guessed. Though not of hers.
“Tell me about yourself, Miss Cunningham,” he said. “Are you really the Duchess of Netherby’s niece?”
“I am,” she said. “My mother is her half sister. I grew to the ageof nine at the orphanage in Bath where Aunt Anna grew up—and my papa. He was a volunteer art teacher in the school there when I was a child and Aunt Anna taught there. So did my mother after Aunt Anna was discovered to be Lady Anastasia Westcott, only legitimate daughter of the late Earl of Riverdale, who was an unbelievably wicked man. He hid her away at the orphanage so he could marry my grandmother before his lawful wife died and thus solve his financial woes with her fortune. My grandmother and Mama lost their titles and everything else, as did my uncle and aunt. It is complicated,” she added weakly before she could launch into a full explanation. “Mama and Papa ended up marrying, and they asked me to go with them as their adopted daughter.”
He looked steadily across the table at her while they both leaned back to give room to a couple of servants who bore platters of sweet and savory foods to set between them, and another who came to pour their tea.
“A very tangled web,” he said then. “Do you know who your real parents were or are?”
“No,” she said. “And I never will. I was left in a basket on the doorstep of the orphanage.”
His eyebrows rose. “Does that fact bother you?” he asked.
“No,” she said firmly. “Mama and Papa are my parents. My family is the children they had together and the others they adopted. I love them all very dearly.”
It was true. She did not need or even want to know where she came from or what, if anything, she had been named before she became Winifred Hamlin after being dropped off at the orphanage. She had endured nine years of anxiety after she had been found and taken in, though she had not realized it at the time. She had tried ceaselessly to establish an identity, to be liked and even loved. Shehad made a constant effort to be good in the hope of winning the approval of the adults who could decide her future. She had tried to be pious for the same reason. Her efforts had often had the opposite effect of what she had hoped to achieve, however. She had never felt truly liked by the staff or her fellow orphans.
Until, that was, Mama adopted her and made it clear she did so purely out of love. Papa had added his assurances to hers. Winifred had never doubted them in all the years since.
Oh yes, they were her true parents.
“And what do you do in Bath?” Colonel Ware asked as she selected a few items of food and set them on her plate and he followed suit. “I thought that these days it was overrun by septuagenarians taking the waters in the hope of finding a cure for all their ills.”
“We live in a large house in the hills above Bath,” she said. “It is used for workshops and retreats and conferences for writers and artists and musicians. The children of the orphanage use it for concerts and dramas and sometimes simply for picnics or indoor parties. It is always busy. I am always busy—when I am not dancing attonballs in London, that is.”
“Your tone of voice tells me you would rather be there,” he said.
“I feel useful there,” she said. “But I was designated to come here as support for Papa, who has been engaged to paint Lady Jewell’s portrait. And to enjoy myself.”
She grimaced and he laughed.
“Mother’s orders?” he said. “Andareyou enjoying yourself?”
She thought about it. “Yes,” she said. “I will never forget that I have seen the king—is he notenormous?—and watched all the splendor of Trooping the Colour.”
“You were dazzled by a display of Britain’s military might, then, were you?” he asked her.
