Chapter 3
Three
Ayear and some months had passed since their one and only meeting. Since her mother’s remarriage. And a year since her brother Sebastian’s birth.
Alasdair had not come for her. He had not written her. He had not wanted her.
The ten minutes in the bishop’s study in the cathedral were enshrined forever in her memory, but, at times, it was as if those minutes had happened to someone else and she had merely read about it.
But then she would spot a head of auburn hair on a baby and suffer a wrenching pain deep in her womb.
She first saw Giles at the theater. At the Theatre-Royal, Drury Lane, to be precise, as she sat in her stepfather’s box.
Historically, the Cavendish family had always had a very good box, but after James Cavendish, the Duke of Middlewich, married her mother, they had been given an even better box—one right next to the Prince Regent’s.
The improvement in the family’s seats was owing entirely to her mother, a leading actress at this very theater, years ago.
The management was nothing if not sentimental.
One of their own was a duchess! They would acknowledge and celebrate that with the third-best box in the theater.
Yes, the Prince Regent was no longer the Prince Regent; he was King George IV and sat in the King’s Box.
Still, the Middlewich box was excellent.
And Arabella loved the theater, especially when the story was about separated lovers who were reunited in the last act through some bit of fate or wonderful deus ex machina.
She was in the box with four of her young aunts, all chaperoned by her sister Mary and her husband, David Vaughan, the Viscount Tregaron.
Mary was finally pregnant but was not to have her baby until next year and had told Arabella she was “determined to enjoy the best of London until I become tied to a nursery in Wales.”
Halfway through the first act, Arabella noticed a glimmer of light out of the corner of her eye.
She turned her head to the left and saw a man in one of the boxes that faced the stage.
He had a spyglass to his eye, and the lens at the end was the source of the reflected light that had caught Arabella’s attention because the spyglass was not directed towards the stage but at an angle towards the Duke of Middlewich’s box.
As she gazed at him, he took the spyglass down and inclined his head, acknowledging her. He was a big man. Tall. Broad shoulders. A powerful chest. His hair was dark and wavy and long enough to come down over his cravat. His eyes were dark. His jaw was square.
As he straightened back up from his small bow and gazed at her, she felt a shiver run up and down her spine.
She turned her head to look at him twice more in the course of the play, and, each time, he was looking back at her, once with the spyglass, once without.
In the crush of leaving the theater and making her way to one of the two waiting Middlewich carriages, he was suddenly there, behind her.
She felt something being pushed into her hand.
It was a folded piece of paper, and she turned to look for him, but he was walking away, a head above everyone else in the crowd.
She put the paper inside her glove, where it sat, nestled between her glove and palm during the interminable carriage ride back to Mayfair.
When she got to her bedchamber at the Middlewich town house, she slid the paper into the book of poetry she had at bedside. Only after her lady’s maid Green had taken her hair down and helped her into a nightdress and left her alone, did she allow herself to take the piece of paper out and read it.
You are quite simply the most beautiful girl I have ever seen. I must meet you. Tomorrow. Two o’clock in the afternoon. The Cake-House in Hyde Park.
Trembling in adoration,
Giles Fortescue.
She did not know how she would sleep, her excitement was so extreme. But, eventually, she did.
Arabella felt herself fortunate in the timing of her rendezvous.
First, her thirteen-month-old baby brother Sebastian was teething, and his fuss definitely distracted her mother.
Second, all seven of her stepfather’s sisters were due to leave that same morning to go back to the duchy of Middlewich.
Arabella’s mother was completely taken up with making sure the packing was complete and the sisters were in agreement on who was sitting with whom and in which carriage.
At breakfast, Arabella told her mother that her sister Mary was coming to take her to look at a bonnet on Bond Street.
Catherine smiled in a distracted manner and turned and asked Lady Grace Cavendish if she remembered that one of her bonnets was still at the milliner’s for a new trimming.
Yes, she, Catherine, would make sure it was collected when it was ready and would bring it to Middlewich in November.
By luncheon, the Cavendish ladies were en route, Sebastian was in his nursemaid’s arms, happily chewing on an ivory teething ring, and the duchess had declared herself exhausted and in need of a nap.
Arabella knew all about these naps. Her stepfather seemed to join her mother quite frequently in needing an afternoon rest, and, although both seemed refreshed afterwards, neither seemed exactly rested, and, if anything, they would retire even earlier in the evening.
However, she didn’t want to think too closely on the subject.
Not about her mother.
At half past one, even though her mother was safely closeted in her own bedchamber with Middlewich, Arabella completed the fiction by pushing open the heavy door of the house and standing on the threshold and saying loudly, “Mary, how lovely you look! Yes, I’m ready.
” Arabella then stepped out and closed the door and went into the empty street and walked as quickly as she could to Hyde Park.
She could not approach the Cake-House too closely; some person of her or her family’s acquaintance might see her waiting there and think it odd she was out by herself.
So she set herself behind a cluster of trees that shielded her from direct view of those who might come near the Cake-House as well as those who might look across the banks of the Serpentine River, which cut through Hyde Park. And she waited.
Finally, she saw him. That height, those big shoulders. A powerful swagger. But he was surprisingly light on his feet for being such a brawny gentleman. He was probably a divine dancer. Oh, to dance the waltz with him and be encased in those big arms.
She did not like to call out and attract too much attention, so she stepped from behind the trees, hoping he would see her. His head swung over to her almost immediately. As he left the gravel path and crossed the grass.he stepped back behind the trees, her heart beating rapidly.
Then he was there. He bowed. She curtsied.
She looked up at him. What beautiful dark eyes.
“Mr. Fortescue,” she said.
He smiled. “You have the advantage of me.”
Oh, yes. “I am Miss Arabella Lovelock.”
Was that a look of disappointment? Had he thought she was a Lady Someone, one of the Cavendish sisters, since she was sitting in the box with them?
She felt she should explain. “My stepfather is the Duke of Middlewich.”
Now his eyes were warm again. And passionate. “Miss Lovelock.” He took a step towards her and seized her gloved hand.
She began to feel hot all over and knew she was blushing.
The way he took her hand was so demanding.
As if he owned it and had a right to touch it, with or without her say.
None of the young men of her acquaintance had ever touched her outside of a brief clasp of her hand when greeting her and bowing over it.
Or during the set movements of a dance. And certainly none had ever laid hold of her in that way.
Even those who had asked to marry her and whom she had refused.
Now it was clear why she had refused them.
Giles was meant for her.
He was turning her little hand over and over in his large ones. And now . . . she inhaled sharply. He was worrying at the two little pearl buttons at the wrist of the glove. He had unbuttoned her glove!
He turned his dark eyes to hers. “Arabella,” he murmured as he slowly, finger by finger, drew off her glove. He crumpled it in one of his own hands as he used the other to guide her hand to his mouth.
The softest of kisses on the back of her hand. She had not known her skin was so sensitive there.
She felt she must say something. “Mr. Fortescue.”
He raised his head from her knuckles for a moment.
“Giles,” he corrected her.
Giles. She thrilled even more at his first name than at the kissing of her hand. Such intimacy. And now he was nibbling on her fingers. Kissing and biting lightly at the pads of each of her fingertips.
“Giles,” she said and tried to withdraw her hand. He held her wrist for a moment as she tugged. Then he let go.
He looked at her. His eyes now revealed some hurt, some pain. He was wounded in some way.
“I . . .” She did not know what to say. “I am delighted to make your acquaintance.”
The hurt look in his eyes melted away, and he suddenly laughed.
“I see,” he said. “Yes, and I yours, Miss Lovelock. I am overwhelmed with pleasure that you accepted my invitation. Shall we stroll around the park?” He offered her his arm.
Arabella bit her lip.
“Oh,” he said, nodding. “Yes, I understand. Others will see you have no chaperone. Well,” he leaned against a tree next to her, “shall we stay then in this grove of trees, where no one can see us?”
“Yes,” Arabella breathed.
He crossed his arms. She felt his gaze rake over her, from the top of her head down to where her slippers peeped out from under her dress. Perhaps that was why some young men were called rakes? She grew warmer still and felt a peculiar tightness in her breasts, near the tips.
“Yes,” he said, and he paused, his mouth open slightly. “Yes, I’m right.”
“What are you right about, Mr. Fortes—Giles?”