Page 32

“They were precious moments,” he said. “There have been too many of them to be without meaning. They need to be remembered and cherished.”

Oh, she did not need this. Every encounter they had ever had had caused her nothing but turmoil and heartache and outright pain. She was done with him. She had decided that after Christmas. The less she saw of him for the rest of her life, the happier she would be.

“Those moments are already forgotten,” she said. “Now, if you will—”

“No,” he said again. He was looking considerably agitated. “However you choose to remember this odd encounter in the days and years ahead, Stephanie, you will remember it, and there is some part of you that will recall how we laughed over it for no real reason except that we recognized the absurdity of it together. Will you then regret that you did not grasp hold of the moment and somehow prolong it?”

She became aware of other couples and groups of people parting to move around them, some staring curiously as they passed, others looking annoyed because they were blocking the path. One man jostled the viscount with what seemed to be deliberate intent.

“What nonsense,” she said. “There is nothing between us, Lord Watley. Those moments, as you call them, were just that and quite meaningless.”

“Oh, they mean something,” he said. “I want to know exactly what it is. And I want to know what it is about me you still so stubbornly dislike. I want you to tell me. Now, tonight.”

Oh, where would she begin? With the perfection of his looks and the polished charm of his manner when she was seventeen and still saw herself as fat and unattractive? With Christmas night, when he had called her a buxom wench, or at least acquiesced in that description, while she had still been dreaming of their waltz? She began nowhere. She did not answer him.

“I have known you since I was twenty,” he said, taking her briefly by the upper arm to turn her back in the direction of Nicholas and Winifred’s box. “More than eight years. At first, I thought you were simply shy. You were just seventeen, after all. But I saw you with other people, and you did not seem shy with any of them. I thought perhaps you were shy with me because I was a stranger and because of my wretched looks, which other people always seem to think so remarkable. Owen told me once that you saw yourself as fat and ugly. But neither descriptor was ever true, and you must surely know it by now. You are no longer seventeen. Besides, I have seen you mingle with good-looking men—the Wayne brothers at Christmas, for example. You are invariably at ease with them all. You must know that you are generally liked and admired. So what is it about me?”

She was growing angry. She did not want any of this. She did not want her feelings rubbed raw yet again. She had not acquiesced to this meeting and this conversation. “Why should you care?” she said. “Has it dented your vanity that a fat, ugly woman can be perfectly indifferent to your charms? Ignore me if you will and if it will make you feel better. It is all I have ever wanted from you anyway.”

Someone in a passing group of revelers jostled him again, and he made a sound of impatience, grasped her by the arm, and turned them right off the main thoroughfare onto one of the narrow paths that wound their way through the groves of trees that covered most of Vauxhall Gardens and offered greater seclusion to anyone who sought it for whatever purpose. Vauxhall and all its trees were famed as a venue for lovers who wished to steal a few minutes for themselves.

They were not lovers.

Even as she thought it, he released his hold on her and drew her hand through his arm so they could walk side by side along a path that was scarcely wide enough to accommodate them. She did not withdraw her hand though he had not clamped it to his side. Nor did she demand to be taken back. She was feeling a bit sick. She was still nursing the self-inflicted bruises of having more or less refused Mr. Courtney’s offer when she had been quite sure marriage with him would be the solution to all the uncertainties and emotional ups and downs of her life.

She had already been fighting the despair of feeling that she would never understand herself, never know quite what she wanted. But she had been enjoying her stay with Winifred and her brother. She had been hoping somehow to sort herself out before she went home. Perhaps the next time she saw Mr. Courtney she would be over her fright and be able to make a rational decision—and so live happily ever after. Well, contentedly, anyway. How wonderful it would be to live out life in perfect contentment.

But now…this.

“Seeing you for the first time was a memorable moment for me,” Viscount Watley was saying. “You were seventeen and wearing a light cotton dress, blue, I believe, and had your hair styled as you have it now. I thought it looked like a halo. Your round, pretty face somehow embodied innocence and sweet hope for the future. And I recalled the stories Owen had told me about how he had always liked to torment you as a child because you were the only one of his siblings younger than he. He used to chuckle fondly when he told me that you always gave as good as you got and never once screamed, even over spiders or snakes or frogs appearing in unexpected places, like your bed. I was so happy finally to meet you. Unfortunately, however, for some reason that was not mere shyness, that meeting of ours was not a happy one for you. And you never forgot that first reaction to me, did you? You have never been able to meet me in subsequent years without remembering.”

“Because you keep reappearing uninvited in my life,” she said crossly. It was hard to see clearly. The lanterns were more sparsely distributed among the trees here. “I did not want you there. I do not want you there—here. I want to forget you.”

“But why?” he said. “All I am asking for, Stephanie, is an explanation. After all this time, I believe I am owed one.”

“Why?” she asked. “I never asked you to pester me.”

“Pester,” he said with a sigh.

The path opened up ahead of them into a small clearing, just large enough for a rustic wooden seat beside the path with a half roof over it and a single lantern hanging from it and dispensing pale lavender light in a swaying circle about them.

“Shall we sit for a while?” he said.

She sighed inwardly. She should insist upon going back. Instead, she sat to one side of the seat, and he seated himself beside her before propping one arm on the back so he could half turn toward her.

“And there was one of the most precious moments of all,” he said, “when we waltzed together on Christmas evening before going our separate ways the day after. When there seemed to be some amity between us. Even some softer feelings. Ah, remember that waltz, Stephanie, even if you deliberately forget all else.”

He watched as she frowned and bit her lower lip as she looked down at her hands clasped in her lap. Was it he who was a mass of contradictions? Or was it she? He liked her, she had persuaded herself when Christmas was over. Liked. Nothing else. Yet now…

“Tell me,” he said. “Why, except for those rare moments, can you not bear even to be in the same room as me? Is it something I have done? Or is it just…me?”

She clenched her hands tightly in her lap.

“You are arrogant beyond permission,” she said, her voice shaking with returned anger. “It is not enough, it would seem, for the great Viscount Watley to be the darling of society. He must also harass the one quite insignificant female who wishes to have nothing whatsoever to do with him.”

“That is unfair, Stephanie,” he said.

“Is it?” She did not wait for him to answer. “I wished to return to my brother when my escort went off with Miss Easton. You would not allow it. You dragged me here to this place against my will to demand that I pay you homage. I will not do it.”