Chapter Three #2
“I am not ashamed of it,” he said. “But strangely, I have found very few people to kill at the Horse Guards. Precisely none, in fact. I have been out of practice as a killer for a number of years. When I took up my commission at the age of eighteen, however, as a lowly lieutenant in a cavalry regiment, Napoleon Bonaparte was already making a nuisance of himself. If he had not been stopped, he or his acolytes would still be ruling every country in Europe, and no doubt Britain too. I found that idea objectionable. I fought to stop him, and stop him we did. I do not regret those actions, Miss Cunningham, though it was regrettable that there had to be so much killing. Pacifism would not have accomplished anything. We must agree to differ on that. Unless, that is, you would rather put up your fists and fight it out with me.”
She glanced at his hands. He could crush every bone in one of hers without even trying very hard.
“But I believe in peace at all costs,” she said. “Besides, it would be an unfair match.”
He laughed and looked about the crowded dining room. “All this is in your honor,” he said in an obvious attempt to change the subject. “Does it make you happy?”
“I believe your assumption is wrong,” she said. “It is a rare invitation from the Duke and Duchess of Netherby to attend a ball at Archer House that has brought out the ton in such large numbers. Not me.”
“Do you always find it difficult to accept a compliment?” he asked.
Did she? Yes, she supposed she did. Far from feeling like the guest of honor here, she felt like an impostor. She had nothing to recommend her apart from her relationship with the duchess. She picked out her father from the crowd, and Bertrand and Owen. Owen caught her eye and smiled cheerfully.
“No answer,” Colonel Ware said.
She looked back at him. “Compliments are unnecessary,” she said.
“I know my own worth.” Too late she realized how pompous her words sounded.
“But yes, I am happy to be here. Mama and my brothers and sisters will want a full written report. I will be able to inform them that until after supper at least I danced every set.”
“And you did not expect to, I suppose,” he said.
“Well, I might have known Aunt Anna would not allow me to be a wallflower,” she said. “It would reflect upon her as a hostess.”
“And so she has coerced a number of gentlemen into dancing with you,” he said.
“I would hope no real coercion was necessary,” she said. “Encouraged might be a better word.”
“Yet I needed neither coercion nor encouragement,” he said. “Nor, I would wager, did Owen.”
“Ah,” she said. “But you had a motive, Colonel Ware. You wished to interrogate me. And you were treated to the story of my origins in a basket in return and my total lack of personal identity. I might have been born to a chimney sweep’s daughter or to a scullery maid.”
“Or to a duchess,” he said.
“It does not matter,” she said.
“Oh, I believe it does,” he said.
But if he had intended to elaborate upon that theme, he was foiled by the appearance beside their table of a large, fierce-looking gentleman, whom she remembered from the receiving line as General Somebody.
He held out a hand toward her. Behind him Winifred could see that other guests were beginning to rise from the table. The dancing must be about to resume.
“General Haviland,” he said, giving her hand a hearty, bone-crushing shake. “You probably don’t remember me from earlier. The receiving line went on forever, did it not? Gratifying for you, I would think.”
“It was,” Winifred said.
“You must come and dance with me,” he said. “If you do not have another partner waiting for you, that is. Colonel, Grace seems to believe she has promised this next set to you. I will relieve you of the necessity of escorting this young lady back to the ballroom, if I may make so bold.”
“Thank you,” Winifred said as both she and her supper companion got to their feet.
The general was sending a clear message.
Colonel Ware had spent quite enough time with her.
She remembered that General Haviland had passed along the receiving line with his wife and a young lady she assumed was their daughter—the extraordinarily beautiful dark-haired lady who had danced the opening set with Colonel Ware.
It amused her that she was being seen as some sort of rival.
The general placed her hand on his arm and led her off in the direction of the ballroom.
—
So she had made her first known appearance in the world in a basket on the doorstep of an orphanage in Bath. Not many people could make such an extraordinary claim, and certainly not any people who ended up being guest of honor at a duchess’s ball in a mansion on Hanover Square.
Had she told the story to shock him? Had she succeeded?
She had no idea who her real parents were.
Rather, she had embraced her adoptive parents and the family they had produced over the years, both products of their marriage and adopted.
She claimed to love them all dearly, not even to want to know anything of what had preceded her appearance in the basket.
Nicholas did not believe her for a moment on that last point.
There had been a certain lift to her chin as she made her claim.
He suspected that it mattered a great deal to her that she would never know exactly who she was and where she had come from.
Unlike her aunt, who had discovered after growing up at the same orphanage and even teaching there for a while that she was in fact a very wealthy titled lady of firmly legitimate lineage.
He wondered why, when he had asked her to tell him about herself, she had chosen to begin her story at the beginning as she knew it instead of starting with her adoption at the age of nine.
To challenge him, perhaps, with her total ineligibility to marry the Honorable Owen Ware, son of an earl?
To discover how he would react? Did she expect him now to try putting obstacles in the way of his brother’s making a match with her?
Owen would, if anything, be charmed by her story.
But he was really not interested in whom his brother would end up marrying, if anyone.
He was more concerned about whom he would marry.
His choices had fast been narrowed to one.
He knew General Haviland well enough to understand that his superior officer was severely annoyed with him for sitting with Miss Cunningham at supper instead of with his own daughter.
It was time Colonel Ware resumed his real duty, the general’s manner had implied when he came to lead Miss Cunningham back to the ballroom.
Nicholas went to claim his second dance with Grace. There was something a little arctic about Mrs. Haviland’s smile, he thought. Grace smiled as graciously and sweetly as ever at him. The partner with whom she had sat for supper had disappeared. Nicholas bowed and smiled.
“My dance, I believe, Miss Haviland,” he said. “The only waltz of the evening, I have been told.”
She set her hand lightly upon his sleeve.
A fanatical peace lover, he thought with a private smile of amusement.
She had no idea what she was talking about.
Peace at all costs sounded like a worthy ideal.
Any sensible person who had experienced anything of life would have to agree with her that violence never solved any problem but was in fact self-perpetuating.
However, trying to solve an altercation with words or with love rarely worked except in the realm of dreams as one floated upon white clouds, which were not, incidentally, puffy pillows but rather clusters of chilly dampness ready to rain upon the world of reality below.
But enough of Miss Winifred Cunningham. He owed Grace his full attention.