Chapter Thirteen
Although Tabitha secretly longed to spend every waking moment with Jack, she forced herself to avoid him. In this, she was abetted by Louisa’s clear need of a lieutenant to run errands and generally help with last minute preparations for the evening’s ball.
She took time away from this hectic activity only to be sure Lily was safe under the temporary chaperonage of Amelia’s mama, who was seated in the garden beneath a chestnut tree while a group of young people sat around her, alternately reading, chattering excitedly about the evening’s ball, and playing pall-mall.
Tabitha had glimpses of the duke, when she cast him a distracted smile, but never paused to speak to him.
Even at luncheon and tea, she sat close to Lily and tried not to look at him.
He seemed to spend much of the time listening patiently to his uncle, and to the chaplain she gathered had never been a favourite with him.
No doubt they were still trying to persuade him into marriage with Lily.
Oddly enough, his relief from this dull work was with Lord Durward, who made him laugh.
An unlikely friendship appeared to be forming there.
Aching, Tabitha thought it would be good for both of them.
“Has Ralph been pestering you?” Tabitha asked Lily quietly as they walked back toward the house.
“Oddly enough, no—or not beyond remarking once how well his grace had turned out and how lucky his duchess would be. Which is true, you know.”
There was a soft gleam in the girl’s eyes that Tabitha had never seen before. It caused a stab of fierce pain.
Is that how it is to be, after all?
It must be for the best.
If, if, it leads to her happiness and his...
Dinner was early, as tea had been, a formal but light affair to which several of the Hawthorns’ favoured neighbours had also been invited, some from quite some distance away. More yet would come to the ball.
But the biggest surprise at dinner, was the guest accompanying the local vicar.
Tabitha and Lily had just arrive at the pre-prandial gathering in the gallery, when they were joined by the duke.
“I suspect either my uncle or your cousin has been importuning Lady Hawthorn,” he murmured to Lily. “For I am to escort you to dinner.”
“Oh, bad luck, your grace,” Lily laughed.
Tabitha smiled a little blindly as he transferred his gaze to her. “I believe you are with Lord Durward.”
“Then at least I shall be entertained,” she said.
As Lily turned to greet Amelia, he leaned closer. “Is something wrong?”
“Of course not,” she said brightly. “Apart from the presence of Ralph and...”
“Indeed,” he interrupted softly. His gaze had flitted beyond hers and she turned her head to see the approaching group of people, one of whom seemed to be vaguely familiar though she could not quite place him at first, out of context as he was.
Then Chivers made his announcement, and she realized he was the vicar’s guest. “Mr. and Mrs. Teague, and Lord Sark.”
Hunter Lisle stood between the vicar and his wife and bowed in the sudden silence. The Hawthorns hastily welcomed their guests. Louisa’s colour was considerably heightened, and Tabitha gathered their hosts were as shocked as the other guests.
Someone let out a rather delighted giggle. Through the hum of excited conversation starting up, Tabitha distinctly heard Ralph’s voice blustering, “Outrageous! Utterly unacceptable!”
“It is certainly blatant,” Jack murmured. “Now they are both using the title neither is quite entitled to as yet...”
“Oh dear,” Lily said torn between nervousness and laughter. “Cousin Ralph will be incandescent...”
He was. White faced and tight-lipped with fury, he could only watch from the corner as everyone surged toward the new claimant. It was rampant curiosity, of course, the scent of scandal and gossip in their nostrils, but to Ralph it must have looked like support for his enemy.
“I am almost sorry for him,” Tabitha murmured.
“So would I be if I wasn’t so sure he had tried to kill Hunter already...”
Hunter was graciously accepting introductions and shaking hands, but through a sudden space in the crowd around him, he suddenly saw Jack.
His whole expression changed from calm civility to sparkling pleasure.
He advanced through the crowd that parted for him, his hand outstretched.
“Your grace, my dear fellow! What a delightful surprise!”
Tabitha took Lily by the elbow and drew her back a step—she did not want Lily associated with either side of the quarrel.
Hunter, however, had concentrated all his attention on Jack, shaking his hand with genuine warmth.
“This man saved my life—literally!” he declaimed to his hosts and the vicar and anyone else within earshot. “If it had not been for his hurrying me away, actually placing himself between me and a bullet, I should have been shot through the heart.”
“That’s not quite how it happened,” Jack protested.
Hunter waved that away. “If I had not recognized you, I wouldn’t have moved to shake your hand.”
“Then it was your own action, sir, not mine, that saved you.”
Of course, Jack’s disclaimer only led people to think all the more of him for his modesty, and he actually flushed under all the admiring gazes, looking more uncomfortable than Tabitha had ever seen him.
Hunter grinned and clapped him on the back in a friendly way, while he repeated the story of his attempted “assassination” to all and sundry.
“I suppose they have not found the shooter?” Jack asked.
“Not yet. I took the advice of the authorities in London and decided to come down to the country to look up my old friend Teague, whom I knew in Canada when he was engaged upon missionary work there...”
“Well,” Lord Durward murmured in Tabitha’s ear, “this should prove a more interesting evening than anyone imagined! A man of parts, our modest little duke.”
“I don’t find him little,” Tabitha said defensively. It should have pleased her, not hurt her.
“Neither do I,” Durward said. “Rejoice, Tabbie, I’m to partner you to dinner.”
As Jack turned to find them again, Tabitha took Durward’s arm, leaving Lily to the duke. Oddly, she caught Lord Hazlett’s disapproving eye, and she was sure his lip curled.
***
DINNER FELT LIKE SOMETHING of an ordeal.
Although Durward was much his usual, entertaining self and, on Tabitha’s other side, Mr. Saunders, the father of Lily’s friend, was an amiable gentleman with twinkling eyes, she felt ridiculously tense, almost brittle.
She knew she talked too much and laughed just a little too loudly, as though she was trying to rush through the whole event.
And the ball was still to come.
Tabitha loved to dance, so she had been looking forward to the occasion since leaving Brighton, all the more since Jack had joined the party. Now she had a headache behind her eyes and wanted only to be somewhere else.
Had Lily not been present, she would probably have made her excuses and taken to bed. But she could not spoil her stepdaughter’s first formal ball. Nor admit that she was not a suitable and dutiful chaperone.
And so, after dinner, she helped dress Lily for the ball and was so pleased with the result of her appearance—an angelic beauty in white muslin and net trimmed with rosebuds—that she almost stopped worrying.
Quite what her anxiety was—apart from foolish jealousy and indecision over Jack—she did not know.
The evening just felt suddenly... ominous.
She hoped Ralph was not about to take another pot shot at Hunter.
The duke, as the highest-ranking guest, opened the ball by dancing with Louisa. And since Lily had promised the first dance to Lieutenant Meade, Tabitha, as the lady of highest rank, was happy to dance with Sir Peter.
They were comfortable enough in each other’s presence for him to mutter, “Such a nightmare! What the devil are we supposed to do about the two Lord Sarks?”
“Avoid introducing either of them to anyone,” Tabitha advised.
Ralph, talking to Lord Hazlett, found the time to glare at her in disapproval.
Hunter seemed to be making more friends, the centre of a laughing group.
“Fortunately for Louisa, neither are at an age where she should feel obliged to find them dancing partners! But I am sorry, sir. I wouldn’t have had this happen for the world. ”
“Then you didn’t know he was coming here?”
“Lord, no, and neither did his grace. When we ran into him—at an inn when I was on my way here—he did not call himself Lisle let alone Sark. He had just entered the country, I believe.” They parted in the dance, met again, and turned together.
“Don’t look so worried. Louisa’s party will be talked about for years, whoever turns out to be the true Sark! ”
With perfect propriety, Nat Meade returned Lily to her side after the first dance, although she was almost immediately snatched up again by another young man.
Tabitha took her place among the dowagers and chaperones, although a court did develop around her.
She still managed to keep her eye on Lily, however, and this time the girl didn’t come immediately back to her side.
Instead, she let her partner give her a glass of lemonade and strolled with him until the next dance started up, and Barty claimed her.
Tabitha relaxed and rejoined her court, which did not, she was glad to notice, include Carily, who hadn’t bothered her at all since the night he had almost dragged her into his bedchamber.
A few asked her to dance, but she insisted she was merely chaperoning.
The duke, who had wandered over during the third dance, overheard her and did not ask.
Keeping determinedly to her own rules, she offered him no encouragement, no opportunity for a private word.
Barty brought Lily back to her side, where the girl happily consumed the rest of her lemonade, her eyes sparkling, her manner animated and happy. Tabitha ached for her innocence and wished it could last forever.