Almost Heaven Page 6

  He nodded in silence, and Elizabeth started to walk forward and step past him. Then she changed her mind and hesitated, remembering her friends’ wagers and how much they were counting on her. “I have a rather odd request—a favor to ask of you,” she said slowly, praying that he felt, as she did, that they’d enjoyed a very brief and very pleasant sort of friendship out there. Smiling uncertainly into his inscrutable eyes, she said, “Could you possibly—for reasons I can’t explain . . .” she trailed off, suddenly and acutely embarrassed.

  “What is the favor?”

  Elizabeth expelled her breath in a rush. “Could you possibly ask me to dance this evening?” He looked neither shocked nor flattered by her bold request, and she watched his firmly molded lips form his answer:

  “No.”

  Elizabeth was mortified and shocked by his refusal, but she was even more stunned by the unmistakable regret she’d heard in his voice and glimpsed on his face. For a long moment she searched his shuttered features, and then the sound of laughing voices from somewhere nearby broke the spell. Trying to retreat from a predicament into which she should never have put herself in the first place, Elizabeth picked up her skirts, intending to leave. Making a conscious effort to keep all emotion from her voice, she said with calm dignity, “Good evening, Mr. Thornton.”

  He flipped the cheroot away and nodded. “Good evening, Miss Cameron.” And then he left.

  * * *

  The rest of her friends had gone upstairs to change their gowns for the evening’s dancing, but the moment Elizabeth entered the rooms set aside for them the conversation and laughter stopped abruptly—leaving Elizabeth with a fleeting, uneasy feeling that they had been laughing and talking about her.

  “Well?” Penelope asked with an expectant laugh. “Don’t keep us in suspense. Did you make an impression?”

  The uneasy sensation of being the brunt of some secret joke left Elizabeth as she looked about at their smiling, open faces. Only Valerie looked a little cool and aloof.

  “I made an impression, to be sure,” Elizabeth said with an embarrassed smile, “but ’twas not a particularly favorable one.”

  “He remained by your side for ever so long,” another girl prodded her. “We were watching from the far end of the garden. What did you talk about?”

  Elizabeth felt a warmth creep through her veins and steal up her cheeks as she remembered his handsome, tanned face and the way his smile had glinted and softened his features as he looked at her. “I don’t actually remember what we spoke of.” That much was true. All she could remember was the odd way her knees had shaken and her heart had beaten when he looked at her.

  “Well, what was he like?”

  “Handsome,” Elizabeth said a little dreamily before she could catch herself. “Charming. He has a beautiful voice.”

  “And, no doubt,” Valerie said with a thread of sarcasm, “he’s even now trying to discover your brother’s whereabouts so that he can dash over there and apply for your hand.”

  That notion was so absurd that Elizabeth would have burst out laughing if she weren’t so embarrassed and oddly let down by the way he’d left her in the garden. “My brother’s evening is safe from any interruption in that quarter, I can promise you. In fact,” she added with a rueful smile, “I fear you’ve all lost your quarterly allowances as well, for there isn’t the slightest chance he’ll ask me to dance.” With an apologetic wave she left to change her gown for the ball that was already underway on the third floor.

  Once Elizabeth had gained the privacy of her bedchamber, however, the breezy smile she’d worn in front of the other girls faded to an expression of thoughtful bewilderment. Wandering over to the bed, she sat down, idly tracing the golden threads of the rose brocade coverlet with the tip of her finger, trying to understand the feelings she’d experienced in the presence of Ian Thornton.

  Standing with him in the garden, she’d felt frightened and exhilarated at the same time—drawn to him against her very will by a compelling magnetism that he seemed to radiate. Out there she’d felt almost driven to win his approval, alarmed when she’d failed, joyous when she’d succeeded. Even now, just the memory of the way he smiled, of the intimacy of his heavy-lidded gaze, made her feel hot and cold all over.

  Music drifted from the ballroom on another floor, and Elizabeth finally shook herself from her reverie and rang for Berta to help her dress.

  “What do you think?” she asked Berta a half hour later as she pirouetted before the mirror for the inspection of her nursemaid-turned-lady’s maid.

  Berta twisted her plump hands as she stood back, nervously surveying her glowing young mistress’s more sophisticated appearance, unable to supress her affectionate smile. Elizabeth’s hair had been caught up into an elegant chignon at the crown with soft tendrils framing her face, and her mother’s sapphire and diamond eardrops sparkled at her ears.

  Unlike Elizabeth’s other gowns, which were nearly all pastel and high-waisted, this one was a sapphire blue, by far the most unusual and alluring of them all. Panels of blue silk drifted from a flattened bow upon her left shoulder and fell straight to the floor, leaving her other shoulder bare. Despite the fact that the gown was little more than a straight tube of silk, it flattered her figure, emphasizing her breasts and hinting at the narrow waist beneath. “I think,” Berta said finally, “it’s a wonder Mrs. Porter ordered such a gown for you. It’s not a bit like your others.”

  Elizabeth tossed her a jaunty, conspiratorial smile as she pulled on the sapphire gloves that encased her arms to above the elbows. “It’s the only one Mrs. Porter didn’t choose,” she admitted. “And Lucinda hasn’t seen it either.”

  “I don’t doubt it.”

  Elizabeth turned back to the mirror, frowning as she surveyed her appearance. “The other girls are barely seventeen, but I’ll be eighteen in a few months. Besides,” she explained, picking up her mother’s sapphire and diamond bracelet and fastening it over the glove on her left wrist, “as I tried to tell Mrs. Porter, it’s a great waste to spend so much for gowns that won’t be at all suitable for me next year or the year after. I’ll be able to wear this one even when I’m twenty.”

  Berta rolled her eyes and shook her head, setting the streamers on her cap bobbing. “I doubt your Viscount Mondevale will want you wearin’ the same gown more’n twice, let alone until you wear it out,” she said as she bent over to straighten the hem on the blue gown.

  5

  Berta’s reminder that she was virtually betrothed had a distinctly sobering effect on Elizabeth, and the mood stayed with her as she walked toward the Sight of steps leading down to the ballroom. The prospect of confronting Mr. Ian Thornton no longer made her pulse race, and she refused to regret his refusal to dance with her, or even to think of him. With natural grace she started down to the ballroom, where couples were dancing, but most seemed to be clustered about in groups, talking and laughing.

  A few steps from the bottom she paused momentarily to scan the guests, wondering where her friends had gathered. She saw them only a few yards away, and when Penelope lifted her hand in a beckoning wave Elizabeth nodded and smiled.

  The smile still on her lips, she started to look away, then froze as her gaze locked with a pair of startled amber eyes. Standing with a group of men near the foot of the staircase, Ian Thornton was staring at her, his wineglass arrested halfway to his lips. His bold gaze swept from the top of her shining blond hair, over her breasts and hips, right down to her blue satin slippers, then it lifted abruptly to her face, and there was a smile of frank admiration gleaming in his eyes. As if to confirm it, he cocked an eyebrow very slightly and lifted his glass in the merest subtle gesture of a toast before he drank his wine.

  Somehow Elizabeth managed to keep her expression serene as she continued gracefully down the stairs, but her treacherous pulse was racing double-time, and her mind was in complete confusion. Had any other man looked at her or behaved to her the way Ian Thornton just had, she would have been indi
gnant, amused, or both. Instead the smile in his eyes—the mocking little toast—had made her feel as if they were sharing some private, intimate conversation, and she had returned his smile.

  Lord Howard, who was Viscount Mondevale’s cousin, was waiting at the bottom of the stairs. An urbane man with pleasing manners, he had never been one of her beaux, but he had become something of a friend, and he’d always done his utmost to further Viscount Mondevale’s suit with her. Beside him was Lord Everly, one of Elizabeth’s most determined suitors, a rash, handsome young man who, like Elizabeth, had inherited his title and lands as a youth. Unlike Elizabeth, he’d inherited a fortune along with them. “I say!” Lord Everly burst out, offering Elizabeth his arm. “We heard you were here. You’re looking ravishing tonight.”

  “Ravishing,” echoed Lord Howard. With a meaningful grin at Thomas Everly’s outstretched arm he said, “Everly, one usually asks a lady for the honor of escorting her forward—he does not thrust his arm in her way.” Turning to Elizabeth, he bowed, said, “May I?” and offered his arm.

  Elizabeth chuckled, and now that she was betrothed she permitted herself to break a tiny rule of decorum: “Certainly, my lords,” she replied, and she placed a gloved hand on each of their arms. “I hope you appreciate the lengths to which I’m going to prevent the two of you from coming to fisticuffs,” she teased as they led her forward. “I look like an elderly lady, too weak to walk without someone on each side to hold her upright!”

  The two gentlemen laughed, and so did Elizabeth—and that was the scene Ian Thornton witnessed as the trio strolled by the group he was with. Elizabeth managed to stop herself from so much as glancing his way until they were nearly past him, but then someone called out to Lord Howard, and he stopped momentarily to reply. Yielding to temptation, Elizabeth stole a split-second glance at the tall, broad-shouldered man in the midst of the group. His dark head was bent, and he appeared to be absorbed in listening to a laughing commentary from the only woman among them. If he was aware Elizabeth was standing there, he gave not the slightest indication of it.

  “I must say,” Lord Howard told her a moment later as he escorted her forward again, “I was a bit surprised to hear you were here.”

  “Why is that?” Elizabeth asked, adamantly vowing not to think of Ian Thornton again. She was becoming quite obsessed with a man who was a complete stranger, and moreover, she was very nearly an engaged woman!

  “Because Charise Dumont runs with a bit of a fast set,” he explained.

  Startled, Elizabeth turned her full attention on the attractive blond man. “But Miss Throckmorton-Jones—my companion—has never raised the slightest objection in London to my visiting any member of the family. Besides, Charise’s mama was a friend of my own mama’s.”

  Lord Howard’s smile was both concerned and reassuring. “In London,” he emphasized, “Charise is a model hostess. In the country, however, her soirees tend to be, shall we say, somewhat less structured and restricted.” He paused to stop a servant who was carrying a silver tray with glasses of champagne, then he handed one of the glasses to Elizabeth before continuing: “I never meant to imply your reputation would be ruined for being here. After all,” he teased, “Everly and I are here, which indicates that at least a few of us are among the first stare of society.”

  “Unlike some of her other guests,” Lord Everly put in contemptuously, tipping his head toward Ian Thornton, “who wouldn’t be admitted to a respectable drawing room in all of London!”

  Consumed with a mixture of curiosity and alarm, Elizabeth couldn’t stop herself from asking, “Are you referring to Mr. Thornton?”

  “None other.”

  She took a sip of her champagne, using that as an excuse to study the tall, tanned man who’d occupied too many of her thoughts since the moment she’d first spoken to him. To Elizabeth he looked every inch the elegant, understated gentleman: His dark claret jacket and trousers set off his broad shoulders and emphasized his long, muscular legs with a perfection that bespoke the finest London tailoring; his snowy white neckcloth was tied to perfection, and his dark hair was perfectly groomed. Even in his relaxed pose his tall body gave off the muscular power of a discus thrower, while his tanned features were stamped with the cool arrogance of nobility. “Is—is he as bad as that?” she asked, tearing her gaze from his chiseled profile.

  She was caught up in her private impressions of his elegance, so it took a moment for Lord Everly’s scathing answer to register on Elizabeth’s brain: “He’s worse! The man’s a common gambler, a pirate, a blackguard, and worse!”

  “I—I can’t believe all that,” Elizabeth said, too stunned and disappointed to keep silent.

  Lord Howard shot a quelling glance at Everly, then smiled reassuringly at a stricken Elizabeth, misunderstanding the cause of her dismay. “Don’t pay any heed to Lord Everly, my lady. He’s merely put out because Thornton relieved him of £ 10,000 two weeks ago in a polite gaming hall. Cease, Thom!” he added when the irate earl started to protest. “You’ll have Lady Elizabeth afraid to sleep in her bed tonight.”

  Her mind still on Ian Thornton, Elizabeth only half heard what her girlfriends were talking about when her two escorts led her to them. “I don’t know what men see in her,” Georgina was saying. “She’s no prettier than any of us.”

  “Have you ever noticed,” Penelope put in philosophically, “what sheep men are? Where one goes they all follow.”

  “I just wish she’d choose one to wed and leave the rest to us,” said Georgina.

  “I think she’s attracted to him.”

  “She’s wasting her time in that quarter,” Valerie sneered, giving her rose gown an angry twitch. “As I told you earlier, Charise assured me he has no interest in ‘innocent young things.’ Still,” she said with an exasperated sigh, “it would be delightful if she did develop a tendre for him. A dance or two together, a few longing looks, and we’d be rid of her completely as soon as the gossip reached her adoring beaux—good heavens, Elizabeth!” she exclaimed, finally noticing Elizabeth, who was standing beside and slightly behind her. “We thought you were dancing with Lord Howard.”

  “An excellent idea,” Lord Howard seconded. “I’d claimed the next dance, Lady Cameron, but if you have no objection to this one instead?”

  “Before you usurp her completely,” Lord Everly cut in with a dark look at Lord Howard, whom he mistakenly deemed his rival for Elizabeth’s hand. Turning to Elizabeth, he continued, “There’s to be an all-day jaunt to the village tomorrow, leaving in the morning. Would you do me the honor of permitting me to be your escort?”

  Uneasy around the sort of vicious gossip in which the girls had been indulging, Elizabeth gratefully accepted Lord Everly’s offer and then agreed to Lord Howard’s invitation to dance. On the dance floor he smiled down at her and said, “I understand we’re to become cousins.” Seeing her surprised reaction to his premature remark, he explained, “Mondevale confided in me that you’re about to make him the happiest of men—assuming your brother doesn’t decide there’s a nonexistent skeleton in his closet.”

  Since Robert had specifically said he wished Viscount Mondevale to be kept waiting, Elizabeth said the only thing she could say: “The decision is in my brother’s hands.”

  “Which is where it should be,” he said approvingly.

  An hour later Elizabeth realized that Lord Howard’s almost continual presence at her side indicated that he’d evidently appointed himself her guardian at this gathering, which he deemed to be of questionable suitability for the young and innocent. She also realized, as he left to get her a glass of punch, that the male population of the ballroom, as well as some of the female, was dwindling by the moment as guests disappeared into the adjoining card room. Normally the card room was an exclusively male province at balls—a place provided by hostesses for those men (usually married or of advancing years) who were forced to attend a ball, but who adamantly refused to spend an entire evening engaged in frivolous social discourse. I
an Thornton, she knew, had gone in there early in the evening and remained, and now even her girlfriends were looking longingly in that direction. “Is something special happening in the card room?” she asked Lord Howard when he returned with her punch and began guiding her over to her friends.

  He nodded with a sardonic smile. “Thornton is losing heavily and has been most of the night—very unusual for him.”

  Penelope and the others heard his comment with avidly curious, even eager expressions. “Lord Tilbury told us that he thinks everything Mr. Thornton owns is lying on the table, either in chips or promissory notes,” she said.

  Elizabeth’s stomach gave a sickening lurch. “He—he’s wagering everything?” she asked her self-appointed protector. “On a turn of the cards? Why would he do such a thing?”

  “For the thrill, I imagine. Gamblers often do just that.”

  Elizabeth could not imagine why her father, her brother, or other men seemed to enjoy risking large sums of money on anything as meaningless as a game of chance, but she had no opportunity to comment because Penelope was gesturing to Georgina, Valerie, and even Elizabeth and saying with a pretty smile, “We would all very much like to go and watch, Lord Howard, and if you would accompany us, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t. It’s so very exciting, and half the people here are already in there.”

  Lord Howard wasn’t immune to the three pretty faces watching him with such hope, but he hesitated anyway, glancing uncertainly at Elizabeth as his guardianship came into conflict with his personal desire to see the proceedings firsthand.

  “It’s not the least inappropriate,” Valerie urged, “since there are other ladies in there.”

  “Very well,” he acceded with a helpless grin. With Elizabeth on his arm he escorted the bevy of girls forward through the open doorway and into the hallowed male confines of the card room.