Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
“What an elegantly arranged house, Rose! How lucky you are to be mistress here,” Edwin told her as he arrived with Magnus among the first guests, his eyes approving all that they lighted on in reception rooms and ballroom.
“Luck barely comes into it, I assure you,” Dorian replied as Rose smiled her thanks. “You should have seen some of these rooms before Rose refurbished them. You would have thought yourself back in our grandparents’ time. What you see tonight is Rose’s doing.”
“Well done, Rose!” said Magnus immediately, kissing his sister’s cheek. “Father will be very pleased to hear that you are so much at home. He talks of you often and hopes you are well and happy.”
Rose felt Dorian squeeze her hand as she fully felt the twinge of pain that these words aroused.
“Tell him that I will visit again soon and tell him all about the house myself,” she said to her brothers and then let them move on.
“Your father misses you but he wants you to be happy more than anything else,” Dorian told her kindly before the next guests approached. “He has told me that himself.”
Was Dorian Voss two men instead of one? How could the same man who had almost ignored her since Christmas now be treating her with such care? Rose felt a great wariness that she could not afford to act on until the ball was done.
They welcomed a party of neighbors, then Madeline and her troublesome cousin Francesca, and then the very elderly Marquess and Marchioness of Bretherton who made them both laugh by declaring their mutual enthusiasm for dancing a merry reel and expressing a hope that the musicians did not play too slowly.
Rose was almost enjoying herself by the time a black-haired and very curvaceous woman of Dorian’s age approached and presented her hand to him as though expecting it to be kissed. Dorian only took her fingers lightly and bowed over them, a faint frown on his face.
“Lady Orton,” the woman introduced herself, with a broad smile more to Dorian than to Rose. “You knew me as the Dowager Countess of Vetchworth.”
“Of course,” Dorian responded cordially enough, although his tone and manner leaving Rose unsure of whether it was his recognition or his prior non-recognition that was feigned.
“Lord Orton is still in the cloakroom but I couldn’t wait to see you again. What a surprise to see that announcement of your marriage in The Times… I had not thought you the marrying kind. This must be your new little wife. How sweet she is!”
Rose blushed red with humiliation, from her toes to the roots of her hair.
Lady Orton was clearly one of Dorian’s many past lovers.
Naturally, she was older than Rose, far more confident and outfitted in a silvery silk every bit as elegant as Rose’s blue dress.
Had she too been dressed by Madame Delacroix?
She had certainly not been dressed by her mother’s dressmaker.
The woman’s eyes seemed to linger on Rose’s present dress with some amusement, likely finding it too simple and girlish for a duchess, or perhaps only finding Rose too simple and girlish for Dorian.
“Lady Orton,” Dorian acknowledged with a cold bow and icy voice. “I dare say we have met, but I have a broad social life and must admit that I cannot presently recall our acquaintance. My wife is Rose, Duchess of Ravenhill. Can you remember that, or must I impress it on Lord Orton too?”
Rose felt a strong, protective arm coming around her back and the black-haired woman stepped back as though she had been slapped.
“Forgive me, Your Graces,” she muttered. “I spoke in error. We thank you for your invitation tonight.”
Dorian’s arm remained there as Lady Orton slunk away and Rose’s color returned to normal.
“Did you invite her here?” Rose could not help asking and when Dorian shook his head, she found that she believed him.
“No, we invited Lord Orton as one of the last few of invitations to make up numbers, if you remember. He’s in my club. I had no idea he even had a wife. Well, he has not married wisely, it seems.”
There was no time for further discussion of this matter before the next guests in the line came forward.
Once all the guests were arrived, the ball seemed to move quickly. With Dorian’s support and social competence, Rose found making a round of the ballroom surprisingly painless. He knew everyone, and everyone knew him and liked him. Their addresses to Rose were sometimes curious but respectful.
As Lady Orton had stated so clearly in her own case, the Duke of Ravenhill had not been thought the marrying kind. Yet here was Rose on his arm, Duchess of Ravenhill and not to be ignored.
“How radiant you look tonight, Rose,” Madeline complimented her when they met at the edges of the ballroom, although her attention was soon distracted by her younger cousin beside her. “Francesca!”
At Madeline’s pointed reminder, Francesca sighed and curtseyed to their host and hostess, before raising her pert little face to flutter her eyelashes at Dorian.
“Do you dance, Your Grace?” she asked him, causing Madeline to make an explosive choking sound in her throat.
“Not tonight, Lady Francesca,” the duke answered swiftly and decisively. “Tonight I only attend my wife.”
“Oh,” she said pulling face of disappointment but then glancing eagerly about the ballroom. “Didn’t we see a rather handsome officer over there, Madeline? Perhaps he will want to dance.”
“Francesca, behave yourself,” her older cousin told her sternly. “It is for gentlemen to invite ladies to dance, and not the reverse. I shall not take you to a single ball again if you do not conduct yourself with more decorum.”
“I don’t see why,” the young woman pouted. “It makes no sense.”
“Dear God,” Dorian murmured to Rose with some amusement as Madeline and Francesca sailed away. “Lady Madeline has her hands full with that young lady, although Lady Francesca’s sentiments are not without merit.”
“Do you like to be asked to dance?” Rose inquired with a smile. “Or do you prefer to do the asking?”
“I like both,” Dorian answered with an instinctive grin as they continued their course through the guests. “You should know that by now…”
When invited to dance during their rounds of the ballroom, Rose accepted a handful of invitations with the best grace she could, hoping that her partners would not sense her nervousness.
Dorian knew it, though, and remained hovering close to the dance floor each time, retrieving her from her partners almost as soon as the music ended.
“People will take you for a jealous husband,” Rose felt free enough to jest after she had danced a country dance with Admiral Turnbull.
“Maybe I am,” replied Dorian with something like chagrin in his expression. “Admirable Turnbull has an eye for beautiful women. I am not sure I should trust him with you alone, however. You do not know how men can be.”
“I know you,” Rose said.
“Exactly.”
Dorian’s hand caressed her back very lightly and Rose shivered, wanting him to do it again. He did not, however, only resting his arm at her waist.
“I hope you don’t think me too silly for being so shy.”
Her husband shook his dark head.
“I think you very brave to do so many of the things that frighten you,” he told her, “and to do them in your own style.”
Rose smiled at this compliment, glad to be holding Dorian’s arm and wishing she felt secure enough to kiss him.
“Thank you for defending me from Lady Orton earlier too,” she told him now, in case there was no chance later.
Dorian frowned at the mention of that lady’s name.
“She should not have spoken to you so disrespectfully, nor to me with such familiarity in front of you,” he said sternly. “No one insults my wife like that.”
Heartened by this staunch defense, and his previous remarks on her supposed bravery, Rose ventured a further question.
“When I came to your study ten days ago, you were writing a letter. What was it?”
Dorian’s brow creased in thought, as though the answer was not immediately at the front of his mind. It was a good act, if it was indeed an act. It seemed not to be, but Dorian Voss was a very good actor.
“Likely I was writing back to Levi Collins, the new Duke of Hawcrest, and a friend of Cassius Emerton,” he said slowly.
“We’ve been arranging to meet. I also wrote that day to Mrs. Chatham, a woman of my close acquaintance with whom there can be absolutely no question of impropriety, and to whom I hope one day to introduce you. Can I ask what prompts your question?”
So, letters to another man, and to a woman who sounded like an elderly family retainer, perhaps once a loyal nursemaid or housekeeper.
Rose could hardly object to either, if he spoke the truth.
She looked him in the eye, unable to guarantee her husband’s sincerity but determined to maintain her own.
“I could not get the thought from my head that you were writing to some old lover and inviting her to the ball tonight,” she confessed. “I thought that was why you had been so distant.”
Dorian gave a yelp of incredulous laughter but then composed his face as he saw how seriously Rose spoke.
“You are right that there has been a certain woman very much on my mind in recent months. As she is my lawful wedded wife, I don’t think that anyone has the right to object, perhaps not even you.”
What did this even mean? Was Dorian saying that he could not stop thinking of her? Or that he wished he could? Or both together? Rose was even more lost.
At that moment, the introductory bars of the next measure sounded and a young man in military uniform came over and asked for Rose’s hand. When she looked to Dorian, he shook his head with a grin.
“The duchess must refuse you, Captain Renford. I always exercise a husband’s privilege for the waltz.”
As Dorian took firm but gentle hold of Rose’s hand and back, the familiar rush of warmth and longing coursed through her. From his change of expression, she guessed that Dorian felt it too, the guess becoming certainty as they began to move with the music.