Louise Allen – Regency Scoundrels And Scandals (страница 48)
‘And I you. Oh, Eva, don’t give up on him.’ Bel took Eva’s hand and squeezed it.
‘I think for my own sanity, I must do so.’ Eva stood up and shook out her skirts. ‘Could you tell our hostess that I have a migraine and had to slip away?’ She hesitated, Bel’s hands in hers. ‘Goodbye, Bel. Look after him for me.’
As she hurried away through the crowd, she caught Bel’s wrathful parting words. ‘Box his ears, more like.’
Jack stayed where he was after Eva had gone, waiting for his reddened cheek to subside enough to show himself again. The marks of her fingers would probably be there in bruises tomorrow; she had hit with intent to hurt him, and succeeded.
How he had had the strength to do the right thing and turn her down he had no idea. At least she had said nothing about loving him—he did not think he could have coped with that. She was lonely in that great castle, who could blame her? What they had shared had been a revelation for her, but they could not recreate those feelings, not in the humdrum world of court life.
It would be a disaster if they married and he loved her too much to risk it. Jack began to pace, the part of him that was trying to be fair, trying to understand, giving ground again to his pride and his temper. What had possessed her? He should have been the one doing the asking, not her. He should be the one with title and wealth and position to offer, not her. He could not be bought like a toy, and a husband was not something that was easy to throw away when you tired of him, either.
Leave England? Leave the estate that he had inherited from his maternal grandfather? Leave the rolling countryside, the broad river valleys, the green hills for a foreign country where he had no role except to please the first lady? He wanted sons who would be Englishmen, he realised, not exiles in another country where their half-brother had a status wildly different from their own.
Damn it! She should have guessed all that, she should never have asked him. He was an English gentleman, not some foreign gigolo—
‘So you are skulking in here.’ Hell and damnation, it was his interfering sister. Jack glared at Bel and she whipped off her mask and glared back. ‘My goodness, that is going to mark,’ she observed, apparently with some satisfaction, walking up to touch her fingertips to his cheek.
‘Thank you, I do not need a second opinion on that,’ he said tightly. ‘I collect I have you to blame for this idiotic situation.’
‘I suggested the ball and this room,’ Bel said, sitting with some grace on the rumpled chaise. ‘You are entirely to blame for the situation being idiotic.’
‘You consider that I should have accepted her Serene Highness’s flattering offer, do you?’ He had never felt so out of charity with his sister.
‘As you love her, I would have thought that was a logical thing to do.’
‘Who told you I love her?’ He saw the trap the moment he put his foot into it. Bel looked smug. ‘I just did, didn’t I?’
‘I had guessed, that was why I wanted to help you both. Has it not occurred to you, numbskull, that she loves you, too? Or are both of you so determined this is all just about sex—’ Bel went scarlet, but pushed on ‘—that you cannot see what is in front of your faces? Do you really think a woman like that is going to do something as difficult as asking a man to marry her if she did not love him?’
‘She does?’ Jack discovered his legs were feeling decidedly odd. The only place to sit was beside his sister, so he sat on the end of the chaise next to her and rubbed his hands over his face. ‘Damn this thing.’ He yanked off the mask and threw it on the floor. Bel just looked at him.
Eva loved him? He loved her, so it was not impossible, just something he had never dared to contemplate. She had wanted his lovemaking, his company, his friendship—was that not all she had wanted? Now his mind brought back the image of her face as she turned to him, her hand on the key of that door. What had she said, her lips moving, but no sound reaching him above the swell of the music?
He had learned to lip read as a useful espionage skill, but it needed a lot of concentration. This was Eva: she deserved that concentration. He closed his eyes, searched for the picture of her moving lips, his own moving as he tried out the words. How can I forget? I love you.
‘Why did she not say so?’ His sister, a woman, might be able to explain this mystery.
‘Because she is shy, because she was afraid you would reject her, because she rather thought her idiot lover might have some inkling without having to be hit over the head with it,’ his loving sister snapped.
‘Oh.’
‘So, what are you going to do about it?’ Bel demanded after they had sat in silence for minutes.
Jack sat staring at the crumpled scrap of black fabric at his feet. ‘Nothing.’
‘What! Jack, you love her—now you know she loves you and you still say you will do nothing?”
‘Bel, she is a Grand Duchess, for goodness’ sake. I am a younger son.’
‘Of a duke,’ she retorted. ‘Your breeding as a scion of one of England’s oldest houses is as good as anyone’s in this country. You know what you are, Sebastian John Ryder Ravenhurst? You are a snob.’
‘A what?’ Jack twisted round on the chaise to stare at her.
‘A snob,’ Bel repeated. ‘An inverted snob. You refuse to justify your own position, to stand up for who and what you are because she has that title. One she married, not one she inherited, mind you. One of these days you could be a duke—your son certainly will be.’
‘Bel!’ She had truly shocked him now.
‘You think I do not understand about our brother and his situation? If he is happy, I am certainly not going to judge him. And you are an English gentleman; the Mauborgians should be grateful to have you as their Grand Duke’s stepfather.’
‘Mauborgeois,’ Jack corrected absently.
‘So, what are you going to do now?’ Bel demanded again, ignoring his interjection.
‘Nothing,’ he repeated.
‘Nothing.’ His sister sprang up and regarded him, hands on hips. ‘Nothing. Because your pride will not accept you having to stand one step behind your wife on state occasions. Because you will not compromise on how you live your life. Because people might talk. I could box your ears, Sebastian Ravenhurst, but a better woman got in first.’
The door slammed behind Bel. Jack stayed where he was, staring at the painted panels, trying to make some sense of his feelings. His head ached, his face ached, his heart…ached was an altogether inadequate word for how that felt. With a groan he flung himself back full length on the chaise cushions and found his nostrils full of the scent of Eva.
Pride, compromise, status, love. It was a word game, a riddle he had no idea how to read.
‘How long may I stay in Maubourg?’ Freddie demanded as the carriage rolled over London Bridge.
‘Until the new term. This is not the end of school, young man, you know your papa wished you to be educated as an English gentleman.’ Eva carried on settling all her things for the journey. Books into door pockets, her travelling chess set on the seat, some petit point in her sewing bag. Freddie’s seat was cluttered with packs of cards, books, something he was whittling out of wood and a box of exercises Herr Hoffmeister insisted he took with him. They were doomed to stay there, Eva suspected—the tutor was taking a holiday, much to Freddie’s well-suppressed glee.
‘Why did Papa not let me come home for holidays?’ Freddie persisted.
‘I think because he wanted you to be thoroughly English,’ Eva explained. ‘Then when you were older you would have all the contacts you needed for diplomacy, and your English would be perfect.’ Which it was. Now, they had slipped back into a mixture of French and the Maubourg dialect; she did not want her son arriving home sounding like a foreigner.
‘I missed you.’
‘I missed you, too.’ She suppressed the nagging suspicion that Louis had wanted their son to grow up with less feminine influence, or even that, as Napoleon’s influence grew, he had doubts about having married a half-French bride. Whatever it was, he had never chosen to explain himself to his wife, merely citing her tears as evidence that Fréderic was better off at school. ‘Still, now you are so much older, I am sure Papa would have wanted you to spend your holidays in Maubourg.’
Freddie nodded thoughtfully. ‘And I can study with Uncle Philippe so I will learn how to be a proper Grand Duke.’
‘Yes, my love.’ She smiled at him, tears of pride shimmering across her vision so that he became a blur. Last night, amidst the chaos of the preparations for their sudden departure, she had found no opportunity to shed the tears that filled her heart for Jack until she had reached her bed, and then, alone at last, she had wept for what might have been, but now never could be.
‘Uncle Philippe is a very good Regent, isn’t he?’
‘Yes, dear.’
‘But he doesn’t know about things like sport and adventures and things like that, does he?’
‘No, I don’t think those interest him.’ Her brother-in-law was the scholarly one of the family.