She turned her head to look at him twice more in the course of the play, and each time, he was looking back at her, once with the spyglass, once without.
And then, in the crush of leaving the theater and making her way to one of the two waiting Middlewich carriages, he was suddenly there, behind her. She felt something being pushed into her hand. It was a folded piece of paper and she turned to look for him and he was walking away, a head above everyone else in the crowd. She put the paper inside her glove, where it sat, nestled between her glove and palm during the interminable carriage ride back to Mayfair.
When she got to her room at the Middlewich town house, she slid the paper into the book of poetry she had at bedside. Only after her lady’s maid Green had taken her hair down and undressed her and helped her into a nightdress and left her alone, did she allow herself to take the piece of paper out and read it.
You are quite simply the most beautiful girl I have ever seen. I must meet you. Tomorrow. Two o’clock in the afternoon. The Cake-House in Hyde Park.
Trembling in adoration,
Giles Fortescue.
She did not know how she would sleep, her excitement was so extreme. But, eventually, she did.
Arabella felt herself fortunate in the timing of her rendezvous. First, her thirteen-month-old baby brother Sebastian was teething, and his fuss definitely distracted her mother Catherine. Second, all seven of her stepfather’s sisters, the Cavendish females, were due to leave that same morning to go back to the duchy of Middlewich. Arabella’s mother was taken up with making sure the packing was complete and that the sisters were in agreement on who was sitting with whom and in which carriage.
At breakfast, Arabella told her mother that her older sister Mary was coming to take her to look at a bonnet on Bond Street. Catherine smiled in a distracted manner and turned and asked Lady Grace Cavendish if she had remembered that one of Grace’s bonnets was still out at the milliner’s, being re-trimmed. Yes, she, Catherine, would make sure it was collected when it was ready and brought to Middlewich in November.
By luncheon, the Cavendish ladies were en route, Sebastian was in his nursemaid’s arms happily chewing on an ivory teething ring, and the duchess had declared herself exhausted and in need of a nap.
Arabella knew all about these naps. Her stepfather seemed to join her mother quite frequently in needing an afternoon rest and although both seemed refreshed afterward, neither seemed exactly rested and, if anything, they would retire even earlier in the evening. However, she didn’t want to think too closely on the subject.
Not about her mother.
At half past one o’clock, even though her mother was safely closeted in her own bedchamber with Middlewich, Arabella completed the fiction by pushing open the heavy door of the house herself and standing on the threshold and saying loudly, “Mary, how lovely you look! Yes, I’m ready!” Arabella then stepped out and closed the door and went down the steps to the empty street and walked as quickly as she could to Hyde Park.
She could not approach the Cake-House too closely; some person of her or her family’s acquaintance might see her waiting there and think it odd that she was out by herself. So she set herself behind a cluster of trees that shielded her from direct view of those who might come near the Cake-House as well those who might look across the banks of the Serpentine River, which cut through Hyde Park. And she waited.
Finally, she saw him. Tall, big shoulders. A powerful swagger. But he was light on his feet for being such a brawny gentleman. He was probably a divine dancer. Oh, to dance the waltz with him and be encased in those big arms.
She did not like to call out and attract too much attention, so she stepped from behind the trees, hoping he would see her. His head swung over to her almost immediately, and he left the gravel path and began to cross the grass. She stepped back behind the trees, her heart beating rapidly.
And then he was there. He bowed. She curtsied.
She looked up at him. What beautiful dark eyes.
“Mr. Fortescue,” she said.
He smiled. “You have the advantage of me.”
Oh, yes. “I am Miss Arabella Lovelock.”
Was that a look of disappointment? Had he thought she was a lady, one of the Cavendish daughters, since she was sitting in the box with them?
She felt she must explain. “My stepfather is the Duke of Middlewich.”
And now his eyes were warm again. And passionate. “Miss Lovelock.” He took a step toward her and seized her gloved hand.
She began to feel hot all over and knew she was blushing. The way he took her hand was so demanding. As if he owned it, had a right to touch it, with or without her say. None of the young men of her acquaintance had ever touched her outside of a brief clasp of her hand when greeting her and bowing over it. Or during the set movements of a dance. And certainly none had ever laid hold of her in that way. Even those who had asked to marry her and whom she had refused.
And now it was clear why she had refused them.
Giles was meant for her.
Giles was turning her little hand over and over in his large ones. And now ... She inhaled sharply. Now he was worrying at the two little pearl buttons at the wrist of the glove. He had unbuttoned her glove!
He turned his dark eyes to hers. “Arabella,” he murmured as he slowly, finger by finger, drew off her glove. He crumpled the glove in one of his own hands as he used the other to guide her hand to his mouth.
The softest of kisses on the back of her hand. She had not known her hand was so sensitive.
