Anne O'Brien – Regency High Society Vol 5: The Disgraced Marchioness / The Reluctant Escort / The Outrageous Debutante / A Damnable Rogue (страница 30)

With a lighter heart, unaware of Nick’s concern, Eleanor turned her thoughts back to the pleasures of the evening. Behind her a familiar voice took her attention and she soon found herself deep in conversation about the prevailing fashion for silkedged bonnets with Cousin Judith and Miss Hestlerton, a pretty girl related to the Seftons and in her first Season. Perhaps the polite world was not so quick to judge after all.

But her renewed confidence was to be short lived. Lady Sefton requested in her gentle voice that her guests take a seat to listen to a poem, an ‘Ode to Love and Romance', which was to be read by its author, a young man very much in the Byronic mode with ruffled dark locks and pale features.

There was some manoeuvring and much comment in the salon as guests took their places or attempted to withdraw to a little side salon, which had been set aside for those whose taste ran to a hand of whist.

‘Eleanor.’ Judith drew her notice with a hand on her arm. ‘Can I introduce you to Lady Firth? I am not sure that you are acquainted. She has been out of town for some months with her husband who is a keen traveller.’

Before them stood a thin, fair lady of her mother’s generation. Eleanor noticed that she had the coldest grey eyes. And for the first time there was no polite or welcoming smile, no exchange of light talk, nothing but contempt, barely concealed.

The thought flitted across Eleanor’s mind. Lady Firth. No, she did not know the lady, but she knew of her. An associate of the Princess Lieven, which would explain much. The lady looked at Eleanor with a frown. She raised a pearl-handled lorgnette, with thin-lipped superiority. There was a world of distaste imprinted on her haughty features and in her gesture as she raked Eleanor from head to foot with condemnation in her eyes.

‘No, my dear.’ Lady Firth addressed herself to Judith. ‘I do not think that I wish to be introduced to this person.’ Her smile could have cut through glass, all edges sharp. ‘I believe that she is here under false pretences and has no right to the title that she claims as hers through marriage. Lady Sefton really should have chosen with more discrimination for her guest list—but I suppose it is difficult to believe the depths to which some people will descend to be noticed.’ The lady’s voice had an unfortunate carrying quality that drifted across the elegant room, slicing through the conversations. Heads turned in their direction. Silence fell. All attention was drawn away from the budding poet.

Judith rose to the occasion without hesitation, eyes fierce, her red curls aflame with indignation. ‘I am certain, Lady Firth, that it is no such thing. The Marchioness of Burford is my dear cousin and worthy of all respect.’

Eleanor drew herself together, all dignity and pride and glittering diamonds. She had expected to be overwhelmed with shame, but it was anger that surged through her veins in a veritable tidal wave. She would not bow her head before idle gossip and common innuendo. How dare this woman snub her in so public a manner! How dare she presume intimate knowledge on so delicate and private a matter! If Judith’s eyes sparkled with indignation, Eleanor’s flashed fury, entirely at odds with their beautiful, soft-violet hue. ‘It is no matter, Judith. Do not allow yourself to be disturbed.’ She bent her cold regard on the lady with a curl of derision to her soft mouth, spine held rigid. ‘If Lady Firth is sufficiently ill mannered as to discuss my private affairs in Lady Sefton’s salon, she does not deserve any word of explanation or apology from our lips. If she chooses not to recognise me, then—’

A cold voice, frigid and lethal as the wind from arctic snows, interrupted and finished the sentiment, ‘—then it is her loss.’ A strong arm was placed beneath Eleanor’s and a long-fingered hand closed around her wrist in a firm embrace. At the same time she was aware of Nicholas, unusually stern and forbidding, standing to her other side.

‘Forgive me, Lady Firth.’ Lord Henry bowed with impeccable grace and deliberate intent. ‘Considering your ill-bred comment, it is not suitable that my sister remain in your presence. Come, Eleanor. You should not remain with one who listens to scurrilous gossip from the gutters and would give credence to it.’ The silence in the room increased, positively crackling with tension as ears strained to grasp Henry Faringdon’s words. He bowed again. ‘Since the Countess of Sefton has made us welcome here tonight in her home, may I suggest that your own presence, Lady Firth, is suspect indeed if you would choose to be discourteous to one of her guests.’ He turned his back on the astonished lady with deliberate and graceful arrogance and led Eleanor away towards a chair beside Lady Beatrice.

‘An excellent response, my dear Eleanor,’ he murmured through gritted teeth. ‘There is no need for you to feel in any way discomfited by such ill manners. Just think of what is due to the fortune in stones around your pretty neck!’

‘Of course.’ And she smiled, a little startled at his barely repressed temper. ‘Thank you for rescuing me, Hal.’

‘I do not deserve your thanks! You should not have had to suffer such crude indignities. Permit me to say that you handled the whole affair magnificently. You have my total admiration, my lady.’

Eleanor made no reply, unless it might be the hot colour in her cheeks, unwilling to exacerbate the rigid tension in the muscles and tendons of Henry’s arm beneath her hand, masked by the softness of the satin. Conversation flowed on around them. Everyone keen to gloss over the slight to one of their number—for the moment at least. She took her seat beside Aunt Beatrice, who patted her hand whilst scowling at the distant figure and flushed face of Lady Firth. For the rest of the evening, Eleanor rose to the occasion superbly, with grace and assurance and humour, a residue of anger sending ripples of energy and exhilaration through her bloodstream. No one watching her would know the fear that lurked below the surface. But Lord Henry saw and understood.

‘I know that you do not want my gratitude, but indeed, Hal, I—’

‘I did nothing.’ Henry interrupted, more than a little curt. ‘You seemed to be perfectly capable of conducting your own affairs. Your demeanour and response to Lady Firth were both incomparable, sufficient to quell the most arrogant comment. A positive rout, I would wager, without any real need for intervention on my part.’

‘Why will you not accept my thanks?’ He saw hurt and confusion in her face, which strengthened his resolve further. He knew without doubt that this was the wrong time and certainly the wrong place for an intimate exchange of views between them. He had delivered Eleanor home to Park Lane and would now make himself scarce, for both their sakes. It would be too easy for emotions to run high.

‘Any man of honour would have acted as I did.’ His reply was thus even more brusque.

‘Yet you have in the past accused me of treachery and betrayal. If true, if you truly believed me capable of such things, then you have no duty or demands of honour towards me. Yet you came to my defence with devastating effect and in full public gaze. I cannot let such kindness go unacknowledged.’

They stood facing each other, rigidly polite, uncomfortably distant, hostility sparkling between them as bright as Eleanor’s hated diamonds, on the landing of the first floor of the Park Lane town house. Lord Henry had escorted Eleanor home from the Seftons’ soirée with the intention of going on to relax over a hand of cards and a glass of brandy at Brooks’s. The night, although it had been fraught with dangers both personal and public, was not too far advanced. The last thing Henry had wanted tonight was this confrontation with Eleanor where, against all his best intentions, all his determination to keep a circumspect distance between them, his self-control might be stretched to the limit—and beyond. But he must play out the present scene before he could leave her with formal courtesy and cool respect. Neither of which sentiments was responsible for the vicious and aching need that held him in an iron grasp. He wanted her, in his arms, in his bed.

‘So I should leave one who bears my family name to be ripped at before the avid gaze of the polite world by the likes of Dorothea Firth?’ Ice coated Eleanor’s veins as she listened to Lord Henry’s aloof assessment of the event. ‘It was merely a matter of family honour, nothing more and nothing less. As I said, it does not require your gratitude. Nicholas would have done the same if he had been nearer to you.’

‘Why are you so cold towards me?’ Eleanor shook her head in a little movement of denial, unable to comprehend the chill that emanated from his lordship to settle around her. ‘I find your attitude incomprehensible. You would condemn me, reject me in one breath and yet come to my rescue with the next. One moment you are caring and protective, the next your tone would freeze me to the marrow. You escorted me to Whitchurch and held me when it all became too much to bear and I wept in your arms. You have stood between me and society’s condemnation here in London. But now… I do not understand. What have I done to earn your displeasure?’