Chapter 7
A Wild Idea
Lady Ashbury had waited for Tentwall to vanish among the guests before looking again at Eveline and putting the question to her. Seeing that the young woman was on the verge of fainting, she took her by the elbow.
‘Breathe, my dear,’ the dowager countess advised her. ‘If you keep up that stiffness, Lady Alderwick will think her parties are dreadful—which is true, but we do not want to offend her; the woman tries, though she always errs by including one guest or another. Tentwall is the latest evidence.’
Eveline obeyed by halves. She drew breath, though she could not make the knot closing off her chest disappear.
‘I am breathing.’
‘That is debatable.’
‘Then I shall do it with more enthusiasm to satisfy you.’
Lady Ashbury let out a low laugh and guided her towards a somewhat less crowded spot, beside a table where no one dared serve themselves more punch because the hostess had stationed there a deaf and watchful aunt with a talent for interrupting compromising conversations.
She would not interfere with two women about to exchange confidences.
‘Lord Tentwall is still interested in you, am I wrong?’ Lady Ashbury remarked, without troubling to adorn the observation.
Eveline looked at her in alarm.
‘Do not say that aloud.’
‘My dear, there are ladies three steps from us capable of reading a scandal in the movement of a fan. Believe me, if they have not guessed it yet, it is because they are busy trying to discover whether your brother struck Arden or whether Arden struck him first. What was Statony thinking, appearing with a bruise on his face after you and Arden kissed in a dark library? Everyone can guess what happened there.’
‘Marvelous. What a discreet evening. And we were not in any dark library,’ she clarified.
‘London was not made for discretion. It was made to pretend that discretion exists. It is true, I had forgotten again—it was not in a library, as happened to Statony with Alice.’
‘What? My brother and Alice in a dark library?’ Surely she had not heard right.
‘Come now, Eveline, you must pay attention to the important things. Tentwall is what is happening. Do you remember what we were talking about?’
‘Yes, but it is that my brother—’
‘Tentwall,’ she interrupted.
Eveline accepted that truth with a grimace.
She did not want to look towards the place where the viscount had gone, but the temptation was there, irritating and alive, like a splinter beneath the skin.
The scar had changed his face. Not enough to make it ugly, and that struck her as an injustice.
Cedric Lancaster ought to have lost his charm along with his decency.
‘He is not interested in me. He is interested in what he can obtain.’
Lady Ashbury inclined her head a little, pleased.
‘A very good observation.’
‘What do you know?’
‘More than he would wish.’
‘That does not surprise me. You usually know more than people wish you to know.’
‘It is one of the few advantages of growing old as a countess with a fortune. One can hear a great deal and pretend to hear nothing. As a future countess, you would do well to follow my example.’
‘But Arden does not want—’
‘It is Tentwall we are speaking of, Eveline,’ she interrupted her again.
The young woman sighed and surveyed the room.
A couple was finishing a country dance under the satisfied gaze of several mothers.
Near the door, a gentleman in a green waistcoat was speaking with too much fervor to a girl who seemed to prefer being in Scotland.
Everything went on as before, except that, for Eveline, the air had changed.
‘Very well. Why have you said that Tentwall is still interested?’
Lady Ashbury opened her fan with a slow movement.
‘Because he expected to receive a considerable inheritance from a distant aunt. Very rich, very unsentimental, and, as I understand it, an old lady endowed with a sense of decorum so severe she could have made a bishop weep.’
‘Expected?’
‘The aunt in question has disinherited him.’
Eveline took a few seconds to absorb it.
‘Because of his reputation?’
‘Among other things. Rumors do not always ruin men, but they can indeed make rich old women uncomfortable when they wish their fortune to fall into the hands of someone capable of not appearing mentioned in every disagreeable conversation in London.’
Eveline looked at last towards the other side of the room. Tentwall was talking with two gentlemen, though his attention did not seem to remain entirely there.
‘Then he needs to marry well, just as I suspected.’
‘And urgently, I would add.’
‘And I am a marriageable lady with a high dowry, sister of a duke, and stained enough by the past for him to believe he could persuade me to accept a belated reparation.’
‘I see that life in the country has not made you slow-witted.’
‘I could not accept a man who wanted me only for my money.’
Lady Ashbury contemplated her with an almost affectionate interest.
‘Eveline, my dear, marriages among the nobility have been built on interests ever since our ancestors understood that love did not pay for broken roofs or increase their lands. To marry for convenience is not reprehensible. On the contrary. All of society would applaud it if the arrangement proved solid.’
‘What a depressing consolation.’
‘Look at it coldly. You would bring beauty, youth, a splendid dowry, and the backing of the Duke of Statony. He would bring a title, a still-considerable presence, and the appearance of a repentant corsair which, let us admit it, can prove effective on certain women with imagination.’
‘How much of our conversation did you overhear, Lady Ashbury?’ It was more than clear that the lady had overheard a great deal of what Eveline and Cedric had exchanged.
‘Give thanks that I was keeping watch so that no one else did,’ she recommended.
Eveline pressed her lips together.
‘Do you think I ought to marry Tentwall?’
‘Did you not hear me tell you that you will be a splendid countess if you follow my example well?’
‘Then ought I to marry Arden?’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Eveline. I would never dare tell anyone what they should or should not do. ’
‘Indeed,’ the young woman challenged.
‘I will grant you that the scar gives him a rather dangerous and attractive air. But it is true that it is better only to admire Tentwall from a distance. ’
‘His scar ought to be hideous, and it is not… Oh, heavens! God will punish me for my want of charity. ’
‘Do not torment yourself, my dear. Some misfortunes are most unjust. I refused to marry my Ashbury three times and he, instead of having the courtesy to grow balder or stouter, looked radiant. I thought he would give up in the end.’
‘Why did you refuse his hand three times, if it is evident you loved him from the start?’ She did not lie. Eveline knew it because whenever the lady brought up the memory of her late husband she spoke with great love.
‘Because I needed to know that he truly wanted me. ’
‘Interesting. ’
‘Intelligent,’ she corrected. ‘There is nothing better than knowing a man is mad for you, Eveline. You will live a full life knowing he will never betray you. ’
‘Statony is mad for Alice. Am I a fool for wanting the same?’
‘Again you are mistaken. Intelligent, my dear. ’
‘Am I intelligent for wanting the same?’
‘That is so. Do you not wonder how Tentwall acquired that scar?’
Eveline turned to her with interest.
‘Yes—what happened to him?’
Lady Ashbury closed her fan.
That gesture was enough for Eveline to understand that the answer would not be a simple one. The dowager countess looked towards Tentwall for an instant, and across her expression there appeared something she could not interpret.
‘He took part in a duel.’
Eveline felt her stomach tighten.
‘A duel?’
‘One of those affairs not to be mentioned aloud, above all when all the gentlemen involved keep the good sense to pretend it never happened.’
‘With whom?’ She could not resist asking it.
Lady Ashbury opened her fan again, though she did not move it.
‘With a man who had reasons to consider that Lord Tentwall deserved a hard lesson. ’
‘That does not answer my question.’
‘I did not intend it to.’
Eveline studied her more closely.
‘You know with whom he settled his accounts.’
‘Yes.’
‘And you are not going to tell me?’
‘No.’
‘Irritating.’
‘I know. It is one of my most celebrated charms.’
Eveline let out a sigh, but did not look away.
‘At least tell me whether it was over a woman.’
The dowager countess took just long enough to answer for the reply to prove more dramatic.
‘Such affairs are always over a woman. It was an earl who called him to order. Everyone believes dukes are big game; you and I know that is not so. An earl? Yes. Infallible, every one of them. Viscounts? Oh, for heaven’s sake, no.
Alice will tell you; viscounts bring only trouble, even when they are not yet one. ’
Eveline went motionless.
‘There was a time when I dreamed that a man would love me enough to face any danger for me, Statony included. ’
‘We all think of that at some point. You are not the only one. ’
‘But I am the only one who fell in love with a scoundrel and paid dearly for her mistake. ’
‘Your brother’s wedding came out of that. I am sure the duke will consider it a blessing. ’
‘Statony has changed a great deal, it is true, but he will never say that one of my follies is a blessing. ’
‘And your kiss with Arden—what was that, my dear?’
Eveline sighed.
‘An immense folly. ’
‘Do you love Arden?’
‘Love him?’ she asked, her eyes like saucers.
‘Why does the question scandalize you? I was not the one who kissed him.’
‘No, of course it was not you. ’
‘It is supposed that when a woman grants a gentleman something as intimate as a kiss, it is because there is something deeper. Do you not think?’
‘What I think is that kisses are very dangerous, Lady Ashbury. One moment I was arguing with him and the next… I do not quite know what happened, only that I…’
‘You enjoyed it.’ It was not a question.
Eveline’s heart began to beat hard.