April 1826
The ball to celebrate a woman’s forthcoming wedding should be one of the happiest events in her life.
Suppressing a sigh, Lady Lydia Rothermere surveyed the throng crowded into her brother Cam’s white and gilt ballroom and told herself that of course she was happy. This mightn’t be the night she’d dreamed about as a foolish adolescent, but she’d long ago relinquished her dreams. She was a mature, sensible woman of twenty-seven marrying a mature, sensible man of forty-one. She was content with her decision. For a woman well past her debut, contentment was something with which she should be, well, content.
The bracing lecture didn’t notably raise her spirits. She muffled another sigh and plastered a smile on her face. This party was in her honor and she intended to enjoy it, even if it killed her. She wore a new dress to mark the occasion, dark blue brocade with Brussels lace, and her maid had twined red and white rosebuds through her thick auburn hair.
“I’m neglecting you, my dear.” Sir Grenville Berwick turned from the political cronies who had occupied his attention for the last half hour and took possession of her white-gloved hand.
Her fiancé’s touch aroused no frisson of anticipation. But then only one man had ever made Lydia tremble with desire, and that had been so long ago, she now viewed the events of that summer day as an aberration in an otherwise blameless life. She didn’t pretend to love the man she’d promised to marry, but she respected him. And God willing, she’d have children, lots of children, to whom she would devote the vast well of frustrated love in her heart.
Please let it be so.
As she turned to Grenville, she kept the smile on her lips, even though it felt like a rictus grin. Tonight he looked the perfect parliamentarian in his sober, dark coat, with his graying brown hair combed back from his high forehead. “I’m not some giddy young thing. You don’t have to fuss over me.”
Sir Grenville’s square-jawed face didn’t lighten and his brown eyes remained grave. “You deserve to be fussed over, Lydia. I still find myself astounded that you consented to be my bride.”
“You’re too good for me.”
She meant it. If Grenville knew how once she’d verged on surrendering her virtue to a scoundrel, he wouldn’t place her on a pedestal. Since that calamitous day at Fentonwyck, her behavior had been exemplary, unless it was a sin to lie awake reliving the only passion she’d ever tasted. To lie awake regretting, wicked creature she was, that her father had erupted into the hay barn before Simon had ventured beyond kisses.
“Your modesty does you credit.” Grenville surveyed the gathering with a satisfied air. “The world wishes us well. It’s quite a turnout.”
Hundreds had gathered to celebrate. Sir Grenville was a rising political star and Lydia was much admired for her charity work. She’d even caught sight of the brooding and scarred Jonas Merrick in one of the card rooms. Her brother who hosted the ball was an acknowledged leader of society. This was despite questions shadowing Cam’s legitimacy. It was common knowledge that his mother had shared her favors with her husband and his younger brother. The identity of Lydia’s sire was never in doubt—the late duke’s dashing, rakehell brother had died well before her arrival—but both Rothermere children had grown up weathering scandal.
From habit, Lydia sought Cam in the crowd. Her brother was so tall, she easily spotted his glossy dark head over the heaving sea of people. Beside him stood the ever elegant Sir Richard Harmsworth, her brother’s closest friend and as golden fair as Cam was dark.
Distantly, she was grateful that so many people offered their congratulations. Since consenting to Grenville’s proposal a year ago, she’d felt as if a thick wall of glass separated her from the world. She supposed the sense of disconnection would pass. Eventually.
The passionate hoyden who still lurked in Lydia’s heart insisted that she was more than this staid, benevolent cipher. Except that after ten barren years of acting as the sedate woman the world considered her, the bleak suspicion lurked that she had in truth become this dull creature. At least the dull creature was safe and respected and armored against the anguish of strong emotion.
If she hadn’t entirely conquered her longing for something … other, she would do so by the time she walked up the aisle of St. George’s in Hanover Square in two weeks’ time. This marriage to Grenville was right for her, promising a calm haven and a useful future. She’d spent her life holding her head high against spiteful whispers, the cruel assumption that, like mother, like daughter, bad blood would eventually tell. It was only a matter of time before her true nature would surface. Only once had Lydia kicked over the traces. And hadn’t that been a complete disaster?
“Shall we dance?” Grenville asked. The musicians had just struck up a waltz, the scratch of the violins barely audible above the chatter.
Grenville danced well, if without particular flair. But then, Simon’s desertion had taught Lydia to mistrust flair. What she needed was steadiness and kindness and a devotion to shared ideals. Grenville offered her all of that. She ignored a jeer from her inner woman as she circled the ballroom, her heart beating as steadily as if she sat alone at her embroidery.
From long habit, she made sure that her troubled thoughts didn’t show on her face. For so many years, she’d presented an appearance of unruffled calm that it was second nature to her now. Perhaps after another ten years, the appearance would be truth, not pretence.
“I apologize for bringing House business to our party, my love.”
“No need,” she said calmly. She didn’t mind that Grenville had devoted the weeks before their wedding to political maneuvering, although something rebellious inside her carped that she should mind.
Not really listening to his travails with the current bill, she made encouraging noises. With unwelcome grimness, it struck her that this would form the pattern of conversation for the rest of her life. She would be a witch to cavil at what fate arranged. She went into this marriage with her eyes wide open. If Grenville’s company lacked something in excitement, excitement was overrated.
Or at the very least, it was dangerous. And she’d decided at seventeen that she’d never do anything dangerous again. Her blood still ran cold when she remembered her father’s contemptuous tone as he’d called her a brainless slut like her mother.
As if the memory alerted long buried instincts, Lydia glanced over Grenville’s shoulder to the staircase sweeping down into the ballroom. A tall man in immaculate black tailoring paused on the landing and surveyed the room. A cynical smile curved familiar lips. Light from the chandeliers slanted across gilded hair. He stood loose-limbed and relaxed, as if the entire world offered him welcome.
“Lydia, are you well? Lydia?”
Grenville’s worried voice pierced her blind distress. She realized that she’d stopped dead in the middle of the dance. She hadn’t blushed for years, but uncomfortable heat flooded into her cheeks now.
Dear God, let her misstep go unremarked. And what had caused it. She glanced around nervously, the old horror of scandal gripping her. Nobody seemed to have noticed her stumble.
She made herself move again, but her feet felt like bricks and she staggered against her partner. Grenville’s hand tightened around her waist. “My dear, are you feeling faint? The room is close and the night is warm. You’ve been working such long hours, getting that new soup kitchen running. Should I take you onto the terrace?”
“Yes … yes, please take me outside.” She hardly recognized the stammering reply as her own. To remain upright, she curled her hand over Grenville’s shoulder. Her heart raced so fast, she felt light-headed, as though the ground shifted beneath her.
She was addled to think that the man on the staircase was Simon. Not after all this time. Not now when she had finally come so close to severing the chains of her past.
For years she’d pined after him. Then when he didn’t contact her after her father’s death, she’d finally understood that Simon