Chapter 16
“Here’s the apple cider you wanted, Miss Cary.”
Susanna smiled brightly as Matthew Grymes handed her the brimming cup, although inside she was a bundle of raw nerves.
Scarcely listening as he joined with the other young men seated around her in animated conversation about the races that would begin shortly, she glanced out over the crowded side lawn of the Tates’ Georgian mansion.
Where was Dominick? she wondered with growing agitation.
It had taken the Grymes’s carriage only an hour and a half to reach this plantation, situated on the James River a few miles south of Williamsburg.
She knew Dominick had a greater distance to travel from his home, but he had said he was also planning to leave at nine o’clock, which should have ensured his arrival by now. It was almost noon.
Could it be that some unexpected business at Raven’s Point had prevented him from leaving on time? Maybe he wasn’t going to make it at all. That would mean their betrothal announcement must wait until another day. Oh, bloody hell, she hoped not!
She couldn’t bear lying again to Adam. Not when things had taken such a drastic and impossible turn between them. His words of love haunted her memory. No, she couldn’t bear another night listening to him say such things to her. She just couldn’t!
Glimpsing Adam standing beside Celeste not far from the oval racetrack that lay just beyond the lawn, Susanna felt an incredible rush of warmth when she noticed that he was watching her, and she quickly looked away.
Her hand trembled as she lifted the cup to her mouth, and she hardly tasted the cider, knowing his eyes were still upon her.
It seemed he was always looking at her, no matter where he was or with whom.
Yet today there was a difference in the way he regarded her, although she couldn’t define it.
He had been strangely silent during the journey this morning, no matter how Celeste had tried to coax him into joining their conversation.
He had scarcely spared a glance for the clinging young woman, keeping his gaze fixed upon either Susanna’s face, studying her as if he might somehow divine what she was thinking, or out the carriage window.
At times she even had the oddest sensation that he was angry with her. She imagined he must simply be frustrated with their continuing charade and Celeste’s constant attention. Well, thank God, much of her deception would soon be over. That is, if Dominick ever arrived—
“You’re so quiet today, Miss Cary,” the ever-present Thomas Dandridge said to her. “Is it too warm for you? We could move further into the shade—”
“No, no, it’s lovely here,” she said, flashing the lanky young man a brilliant smile.
Deciding that it would help to keep her mind off Dominick’s absence if she focused on her suitors’ conversation, she asked him flirtatiously, “Are you going to make any wagers on the first race, Thomas? Perhaps one in my honor?”
“I will, Miss Cary!” Matthew interjected eagerly before Thomas could respond. “I’m going to place a bet for you on each and every race. I’m certain you’ll bring me good luck!”
“Well, how do you gentlemen know which horse is likely to win?” she queried, knowing such a question would prompt a lively and hopefully diverting discussion.
As her suitors joined in debating the merits of the Tidewater’s finest horseflesh, each seeking to impress her with their knowledge, Susanna was not surprised to find that she was once more hardly listening to them.
Her frustration mounting, she searched the crowd for any sign of Dominick, yet time and again, her gaze strayed back to Adam.
“Isn’t it amazing how our shy Camille has blossomed into such a popular belle?
” Celeste commented, fluttering her silk fan in front of her generously exposed bosom.
“I suppose I always knew it was possible with plenty of outings and masculine attention, and plenty of Virginia sunshine. I just didn’t expect it to happen so quickly. ”
“Yes, amazing,” Adam replied dryly, his gut tightening as several more young gentlemen joined the laughing group seated beneath the ancient willow that graced the center of the lawn.
Camille sat at its heart, looking like a beautiful rose of summer in her shell-pink satin gown…
that is, if she was indeed his Camille. The seeds of doubt had been sown and he couldn’t shake them, no matter how many times he had told himself since last night that there must be a reasonable explanation for the difference in signatures on the note and the portrait.
Camille could have written her letter to him in such a hurry that she had signed her name sloppily.
Or months ago, before she had learned that her father had been killed, she had been extra careful writing the inscription on the back of the painting for fear of damaging it.
That explanation could account for the signature’s almost exaggerated neatness.
Yet neither rationale rang true to him, and combined with Ertha’s intuitive misgivings and the decided facial differences in the portrait, he was beginning to believe—though, God help him, he didn’t want to!
—that the woman he loved so passionately, the woman he planned to marry, might be a very clever impostor.
“Matthew is certainly in his element today,” Celeste added, hugging Adam’s arm possessively. “Why, just look at him. He’s grinning from ear to ear. He knows he has a much fairer chance around Camille when Dominick Spencer isn’t hovering close by.”
Adam shot a glance around the bustling lawn and then beyond it to the racetrack, glad to see that the bastard hadn’t yet shown his face.
The anger he felt at this unsettling turn of events was already boiling like a tempest inside him; he didn’t need Dominick adding fuel to the flames.
Yet he knew the planter would show up at some point, and he would do well to prepare himself for it.
Dominick never missed a horse race. He was drawn to them like a tick to a hound.
“Oh, look, there’s Annie Custis! I haven’t seen her for the longest time.
” Celeste smiled up at him, batting her thick russet lashes.
“Would you mind getting me a glass of punch while I go and talk to her? I’ve heard she’s absolutely pea-green with envy that Thomas Dandridge hasn’t paid her one visit since Camille’s ball.
I want to reassure her that she has nothing to worry about, not with my brother paying such steady court. I won’t be long, Adam dear.”
Her endearment grating on his already taut nerves, Adam was grateful when she released his arm and hurried away. Giving her no more thought, he decided this would be the longest trip to the refreshment table he had ever taken. In fact, he probably wouldn’t come back.
Camille’s lighthearted laughter carried to him as he deliberately skirted the willow tree, and hot, unreasoning jealousy melded with his barely restrained anger.
It wasn’t the first time he had wondered during the past weeks, when she was surrounded by her many suitors, if she might be innocently toying with him, teasing him a little as part of their ruse.
Yet because he knew they would soon be announcing their betrothal, it had never bothered him except when Dominick Spencer was around.
Now fearing what he did, her actions were suddenly cast in a much darker and wholly unsettling light.
He had never felt so wretchedly jealous before.
As her voice, raised in a spirited remark, drifted to him, it was all he could do not to yank her from that admiring crowd and demand an explanation for the portrait and the signatures.
Adam willed himself to keep moving toward the refreshment tables, reminding himself of his decision not to confront her until tonight, when they would have time alone to fully discuss the matter.
Right now, he could use a drink. Several.
Maybe a whole bottle. Two bottles! Anything to kill the pain deep inside him.
“Brandy,” he muttered to the bewigged waiter behind the table. Giving the pale amber liquid a brief swirl, he threw back his head and drained the snifter, grimacing as the liquor burned a searing path down his throat. He set the empty glass on the table with a thunk. “Another.”
As he lifted the refilled snifter to his mouth, he noticed standing not far from him an ebony-haired young woman dressed in a waiting-maid’s gown and apron who looked vaguely familiar.
She had obviously been sent to the table for refreshments, for she held two full cups of apple cider.
As he tried to place her, she must have felt him staring for she glanced over at him.
A wide smile fit her pretty face, her dark eyes dancing with instant recognition.
“Why, yer the fine gentl’man who saved me from takin’ a tumble when I come off the Charmin’ Nancy!” she blurted, setting down the cups so abruptly that cider sloshed onto the white tablecloth. Paying no heed, she rushed over to him. “Don’t ye remember me? I’m Polly! Polly Blake.”
Recalling the brief incident between himself and the maid—quite a contrived one, he thought wryly—Adam bowed his head in a gallant manner usually reserved for ladies of the gentry. “Of course. Miss Blake. What brings you here to the Tates’?”
“I’ve come to see the races same as ye, I s’pect,” she said, appearing flattered by his courtesy.
“Well, that is, with me mistress.” She gestured to a fat yet elegantly dressed woman seated at a distant table with a few other dowagers of the Tidewater.
“We live in Williamsburg, if y’ recall, but me mistress is a second cousin of Mrs. Tate’s.
They invited us out for the day.” She paused, her gaze roaming brazenly over him.
“My, y’ sure are a handsome one, Mr.…uh…
come to think of it, I don’t know yer name. ”
“Adam Thornton.”