Chapter 28
There is always a ball. Or a garden party. Or a card evening. Or a breakfast… that stretches without end… It is exhausting!
June arrived in London with more invitations than hours, and more noise than content.
Anna would have much preferred a hot cup of chamomile tea, an overstuffed settee, and a good book, yet Anna attended it all.
She danced when she was asked and smiled at what was said to her.
She was surprised to find her card was full, if not her heart.
This is exactly what I have come to London to do, she reminded herself repeatedly as she prepared for that evening’s musicale. A certain grumpy duke’s haunting fixture at nearly every outing does wonders to strengthen my resolve.
His presence was a looming reminder of what happened, and more cruelly, of what would never happen again. She would see him at Rachel’s side, then most conveniently deep in conversation with someone else whenever Anna approached.
Not once did he look at her, at least not that she could see, and certainly not the way he had in the dark of that carriage three weeks ago. Anna wondered if she had imagined the whole thing, but the feeling of his tongue was still too fresh, too real.
She shuddered at the memory as she grabbed a pin to tame a loose curl.
Yes, I suppose he excised the whole thing with a surgeon’s precision, which is, she supposed as she held the pin in front of her, entirely his prerogative.
His history with women was a secret to the ton, but she had heard bits from Rachel.
He had always been discreet. He had favored widows, women whose social footing was too sure to be damaged by a quiet dalliance.
Anna thought in theory to have suited that pattern admirably, and that he had withdrawn anyway was the part she could not quite resolve.
It was the question I asked him surely… but I cannot betray my wish for a child for anyone…
To spite the memory, she would remain perfectly pleasant in every situation that night. Perfectly composed, doing her absolute best to look right through the looming shadow of the Duke of Rathbourne and all but stick out her tongue.
She had her future to consider, her dream of having a beautiful family of her own.
And so, she let her light shine as bright as the chandelier crystals in Lady Featherington’s Mayfair townhouse as she walked to her velvet seat.
The elegant drawing room, draped in rich, verdant fabrics and adorned with far too many flowers and candles to count, vibrated with the soprano’s highest notes.
It was a beautiful song, a hypnotic and sad Peconic that should have swept her every distracting thought away.
Yet Anna only heard the rhythmic, maddening snap of her own lace fan, which thwapped in time with her heart.
She looked across the crowded, suffocating salon, framed by a gilded archway. And there, as if on cue, stood Frederick in the middle of it. Anna grabbed a flute of champagne from a passing tray.
Do your work, bubbly elixir…
Anna looked back at where Frederick was after a sip. Rachel’s gloved hand rested lightly on his sleeve as they watched the soprano and took two empty seats.
Shortly after, she turned to smile at Lord Larthby, who joined them. Anna turned her head back to focus on the performance, inhaling the heavy scent of beeswax and lilies and drowning her champagne glass, so she might think of anything else.
But Frederick occupied the edge of her vision, a shadow that refused to stop trailing her.
When the applause finally broke, the crowd shifted, and the tides of silk drew them inevitably into the same small circle.
“A remarkable range,” Frederick said, turning his gaze toward Anna for the first time in weeks as she became absorbed in the small group. His face was a mask of flawless, unblemished courtesy. “Do you not agree, Lady Birchall?”
“Quite remarkable,” Anna replied curtly. Her voice was steady, though her fingers tightened around the ivory sticks of her fan until they groaned.
She looked around for Rachel, who was on the other side of the room with Lord Larthby.
His amber eyes met hers when she turned her head back, as fiery as she recalled from her dreams yet impossibly clear.
Entirely vacant of shared history. There was no trace of the frantic heat from three weeks ago.
No memory of the rain drumming against the leather roof of a dark carriage, or the bruising, desperate grip of his hands, or the way his breath had tasted in the dark.
Looking at him now, under the glare of a hundred wax candles, she felt bewildered, betrayed, and bare.
“The heat in these Mayfair drawing rooms can be quite oppressive during the season,” he added, offering a polite, generic smile that he might have given to a perfect stranger. “I trust you are surviving the crush, Lady Birchall?”
“Admirably, thank you, Your Grace,” she said, matching his pleasant, even cadence.
Inside, her chest burned hot as bile rose up her throat. She told herself it was just the champagne on an empty stomach, but she always had trouble lying to herself.
She despised how he spoke to her as if she were a passing stranger. She loathed how he ignored her.
Then, a wild, irrational impulse flared within her. She suddenly had the desperate urge to seize a full champagne flute from a passing servant’s tray and hurl it directly at his immaculate, unbothered face.
Just to see if he blinks. Just to see if he is capable of breaking, of being human!
Instead, she took a deep breath and forced her lips into a perfect, practiced curve that resembled a smile and fanned herself. A part of her knew that would do more damage than any other gesture.
The conversation continued amongst the small group, and she nodded at the appropriate times, barely hearing a word. And when a young baronet she had met the previous week approached, she turned toward him. She set her shoulders back and smiled brightly at him, her back completely toward the duke.
This is my next move. If he wants to play games, we will play chess.
“A pleasure to see you Sir Morris,” she said with a small curtsy. “I hope you have fared well since Lady Saunders’ garden party.”
“Most well, and better now, Lady Birchall. What a pleasure to see you today! I dare say, the pleasure is entirely mine. You are so radiant in this gown. What color is it?”
“Lavender I should say. It is too light to be just purple.”
“I am no artist, but I should say you are right. Lavender most suits you.”
“Thank you, Sir Morris,” she said as she batted her eyelashes, casting a small, flirtatious glance over her shoulder at Frederick.
“Would you… like to take a turnabout the room, Lady Birchall?” He asked, extending his hand politely, which elicited an almost imperceptible cough from Frederick.
Check…
“I would be honored, kind sir,” she accepted with a giggle that sounded bright, effortless, and entirely hollow, at least to her.
She allowed herself to be guided away, swaying her hips, dissolving into the swirling blur of the room, refusing to look back. She didn’t need to turn around to know. A sharp, prickling warmth at the nape of her neck told her the duke’s gaze was burning right through the silk of her gown.
Let him watch.
Lord Wexford danced with her twice at the Ellsworths’ ball that weekend.
It was the talk of the ton and her first public declaration of interest from a suitor, wrapped in the respectable guise of a quadrille and a waltz.
He was thirty-four, eminently respectable, and entirely without vice.
No children, no prior marriages. It was a fact that frustrated the ton’s gossips, who had spent twenty years trying to unearth a single scandalous debt or mistress to no avail.
He was, by all accounts, a perfect match.
“Are you fond of the Ellsworths’ gatherings, Lady Birchall?” He inquired during the quadrille.
“I am fond enough of them,” she said.
“Forgive me,” he said as he wiped sweat from his brow, “I find the heat is insufferable in these ballrooms.”
“I confess I find the heat trying as well,” she replied as they twirled.
“One might almost wish for winter balls, though I suppose the roads would object.” He said it pleasantly, and she smiled because it seemed the thing to do, though she could not believe they were talking about the climate.
Later, during the waltz, he complimented her gown.
“A very fine shade of blue, Lady Birchall,” he said as they moved through the steps, gesturing to her dress.
“Thank you, Lord Wexford,” she returned simply.
A gentle nod here, a quiet “thank you” there. Smile politely, maintain soft eye contact. The ideal wife.
“Do you read novels?”
“Quite avidly,” she said, intrigued by the question. “And you?”
“I confess, I do not have the patience for them. I am far too busy for such things.”
“I see.”
He held her at the correct distance, his hand light at her waist, his steps unfailingly precise.
She waited for something in him to surprise her.
Nothing came. Even his face possessed a peculiar neutrality.
It was the kind of face that Anna could look at for ten minutes and struggle to reconstruct it in her mind when she closed her eyes.
He left no impression. It was like a footprint in the sand that would soon be washed away by the tide.
When they had finished the last dance of the evening, he gave a small bow. She looked passingly over his shoulder and around the room. Frederick was nowhere to be seen that night. She took a deep breath.
“May I call on you this coming Tuesday, Lady Birchall?”
“That would be most acceptable,” she said with a small curtsy, and no reason to object.
As she waited for him in her sitting room Tuesday morning, she again had trouble remembering his appearance. He wasn’t short, nor tall. His hair was brown, or so she thought.
Is his nose straight or slightly askew? Are his eyes grey or merely a faded blue?