Page 9 of A Gentleman’s Offer

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Dominic was touched, he found, by the emotions Meg was trying and failing to conceal. No doubt she was concerned for her sister, focused on their mission, but despite herself she was also excited, as was only natural. Her eyes were bright and her cheeks slightly flushed, and she was looking about her with great interest. He should remind her that enthusiasm was not at all à la mode, and that her sister had surely learned not to display it, and so she should not either, for the sake of her impersonation, but he found himself oddly reluctant to crush her obvious pleasure. It seemed to him that her life held little enough novelty.

Of course it must be her first ball; he wondered, not for the first time, if Lady Nightingale was not, in some respects, as selfish a parent as her peculiar husband, keeping her younger daughter close at her side and away from all society. What did she mean Meg’s life to be – was she to have no chance to travel, to see more of the world, perhaps to marry? Or was she already destined for a match with the local curate, or some ink-stained literary scrub her mother knew? It was an oddly uncomfortable thought.

She said now, ‘Can I dance? Why, yes, of course I can – in theory, at least.’

He could not help but smile. ‘In theory? You mean you’ve read about it in a book? If that’s so, this is going to be a very strange evening, stranger even than I had anticipated.’

‘Not entirely from a book,’ she said with dignity. ‘My mama is very fond of music, and made sure I learned it, and to dance too. She considers it healthful exercise.’

‘I dare say she does. “Healthful exercise”! Have you, Meg Nightingale, ever danced with another human being – a male human being, at that – in a public place? Be honest with me, now!’

‘Yes!’ she replied, flushing. ‘Though we do not attend fashionable assemblies, our village is quite sociable, and I have often danced with our squire, Sir Nicholas, or his son Robin, or our curate, Mr Relish. We are very gay, especially at Christmastime.’

‘I knew the curate would come into it somewhere,’ he said resignedly. ‘I should have thought to ask you this crucial question long before this. Well, we shall manage with a few of the more usual dances, I expect – and after all, we are here to converse with your sister’s friends, are we not, rather than to wear out the soles of our evening shoes in idle pleasure? But I shan’t ask you to partner me in the waltz, and if anybody else should ask you, I strongly recommend you refuse. I’m sure your sister has waltzed a score of times at Almack’s and elsewhere, but I don’t suppose Mr Relish is a great waltzer, is he?’

‘I couldn’t say. It’s not danced in our village. I’m sure everyone would consider it most improper. You must think us a parcel of sad rustics.’ She looked quite crestfallen, and he cursed his own clumsiness. Why should she know how to waltz, and what did such nonsense matter? He had tarnished her enjoyment, and it was the last thing he wished to do. But to apologise would only make it worse. Whatever had happened to his famous address and careless ease of manner?

He grimaced. ‘There’s no sensible way to answer that remark – to say yes would be unpardonably rude, but if I said no you probably wouldn’t believe me. And I’m sure for your part you believe me a frippery, shallow fellow – we already know you think I’m old – who cares for nothing but the arrangement of his cravats and the shine on his boots. You don’t have to reply to that, either. Perhaps we’re both right, or perhaps neither of us is. I can teach you to waltz, Miss Nightingale, if you wish it. It would be my great pleasure to do so. But tonight we have more pressing concerns.’ His last comment was a reminder of why they were here, and was as much for his own benefit as hers; he thought he might quite enjoy taking her in his arms – in an impersonal and friendly sort of a way, of course – and teaching her the steps to the shockingly intimate dance that had taken the ton by storm in the last couple of years. But really, was this the time to be thinking of such things?

They’d made their way through the crush of people to the ballroom now, and his mother, who had surely been behind them when last he’d thought of her, was now mysteriously ahead of them, wreathed in smiles and urging them to take their places in the set that was forming. He couldn’t say, ‘Miss Nightingale doesn’t care to dance’ – his mama had presumably seen her, in the shape of her sister, do so many times before. To refuse such a commonplace request would be to draw attention to themselves, which was the last thing they needed.

It seemed it was, thank God, not a waltz or a quadrille, but one of the simpler country dances. ‘I imagine even you will believe that I can manage this ,’ she muttered rather ungraciously as they took their place at the foot of the set and the music struck up.

‘It could have been a cotillion,’ he said when the steps brought them together.

‘Well, it isn’t,’ she responded. ‘And I am obliged to tell you that, despite your obvious fears, I can do that, as well.’ He laughed, and might have sworn that she was on the verge of sticking her tongue out at him, but luckily she did nothing so unladylike, but twirled away from him with a poorly suppressed grin of triumph.

She was a graceful, lively dancer, he was obliged to admit, though to a close observer – he was, it seemed, a close observer – it was plain that she wasn’t quite as accustomed to the activity as a young lady who’d supposedly made her come-out some months back and danced for hours almost every evening since really should be. She was obliged at times to concentrate on her steps, he could tell, rather than performing them by instinct, which dimmed her usual bright animation somewhat. The more sober set of her features as she danced, and, he thought, counted silently to herself, made her resemble her sister more completely than she generally did. But that was an odd notion, was it not? Because they were identical, or very nearly so. Or it was to be devoutly hoped they were, if this evening was not to turn to disaster and exposure.

The set ended, as even the most protracted ones eventually must, and she curtseyed, smiling up at him, her colour a little heightened. ‘That round must be conceded to the rustics,’ he teased, bowing in his turn. ‘But does Mr Relish – poor man, what a name to be saddled with – make you obeisance in so distinguished a fashion? I may be conceited, but I find it hard to be believe he does. And the squire’s son? What of him?’

‘You are fishing for compliments,’ she said, her fine blue eyes twinkling, ‘and it is very sad to see something so pathetic in a man of your age and station in life. Mr Relish is a very worthy gentleman, I must inform you, though shy and undeniably not… not excessively graceful, and as for his name, his parents were so unaware of or so unabashed by anything unusual about it that they christened him Richard.’

‘A name from a restoration comedy!’ Dominic laughed. ‘I expect the rude schoolboys shout things at him in the street. I might have been tempted to do so myself, when young. But you do not mention the squire’s son, despite my question, and I am instantly on the alert for signs of rural romance.’

‘The squire’s son is a great clumsy boy of fifteen,’ she responded, smiling, ‘and I am quite often obliged to partner him because he’s the only gentleman in the village who is taller than me. My feet have been purple with bruises before this, from him treading on me, and the more self-conscious he becomes, the worse he dances. It’s mortifying for both of us. But shouldn’t we be looking about us for Maria’s friends?’

He admitted that they should, and they stepped aside from the dance floor and looked about them. ‘How are we going to do this?’ he said very low. ‘I know you have their descriptions and their names, but I can hardly think that enough, now that we are here and I consider the matter more particularly. Should you not be approaching them, and presenting me to them if I don’t already know them, so that we may have speech with them? But how are you to do that when you don’t know them either? It’s vital they don’t have the least reason to suspect you, or we shall be in the suds.’

‘Luckily – well, not luckily, poor girl, but providentially for our purposes – Maria is very shortsighted, like our father, and wears spectacles when she is at home, but not, of course, on such an occasion as this. Anyone who knows her well wouldn’t expect her to pick them out from a crowd, or at any distance at all. So we may expect them to come to us. I am quite confident none of them will notice anything amiss. You worry too much, especially for someone who affects to care for nothing and nobody.’

‘Hmm,’ he said sceptically. ‘Well, minx, I hope you’re right, and even more than that I hope Mrs Treadwell and Mrs Greystone between them have prepared you well. If matters become too awkward and you are at a loss for words, I suggest you faint. Don’t worry, I will be primed to catch you before you hit the floor. Probably.’

‘Faint? I’ve never done such a ridiculously missish thing in my life!’

He could well believe it. ‘There’s a first time for everything,’ he said, ‘and it may be missish, but it’s better – surely – than being publicly exposed as an impostor. And what would that make me? Why did I ever allow myself to be persuaded into participating in such a hare-brained scheme?’

Even as he spoke, they both became aware of a tall, handsome young lady making her way through the crowd, clearly most determined to converse with them. She had a square chin and great quantity of bright red locks, and these convenient facts enabled him to play some useful part in the farce that was about to unfold. ‘This,’ Dominic whispered urgently, ‘is one of the Duke of Fernsby’s many daughters. I could not possibly mistake the hair. As to her Christian name, I hope you know it, for I am quite sure that I do not. I seem to recall they’re all rather sickeningly named for flowers.’

Miss Nightingale, getting into the spirit of her sisterly masquerade, peered myopically at the approaching figure and said with enthusiasm, ‘Lady Primrose! How good it is to see you! Such a sad crush, I am astonished that you found us in it.’

‘I know you only recognise me because of my hair,’ said the young lady cheerfully. ‘I expect I appear to you like a lighthouse beacon in a thick fog. How are you, dear Maria? You are in high bloom this evening.’

‘I am very well, thank you,’ Meg replied with equal cordiality. ‘And you look well, too.’ That rather disposed of that. ‘May I present Sir Dominic De Lacy to you? I’m not sure you know each other. Sir Dominic, my dear schoolfriend Lady Primrose Beacham, daughter of the Duke of Fernsby.’

‘We have danced together several times,’ Lady Primrose informed him with great composure, ‘on various different occasions, but I never gained the impression that you had the least idea who I was, beyond knowing me for a Fernsby by the hair. You’re a friend of my brother Hugh’s, aren’t you, sir?’

Sir Dominic, somewhat taken aback by the lady’s frankness, admitted that he did count Lord Thorp among his intimates. ‘I’m sorry if I was ever discourteous, Lady Primrose,’ he felt obliged to say. Could he expect yet more unvarnished comments on his character and behaviour this evening? he wondered.

‘No, no,’ she replied unconvincingly, her bright green eyes twinkling wickedly. ‘I am sure you have danced with hundreds of debutantes over the last few years, and there’s no reason why you should pay any particular attention to one of them above another – in fact, it would have been perilous for you to do so. And it’s not as though you’re one of those odious flirts our chaperons warn us against. You’ve always made it perfectly plain that you weren’t in the least bit interested in any one of the young ladies that society throws in your way.’ Dominic became aware that he was perspiring slightly into his fresh linen shirt. What would she say next?

‘And now, of course,’ she went on enthusiastically, ‘all that is behind you, and you are to be married! And to dear Maria! I am sure I wish you both very happy. Just think, you need never dance with another debutante again. I am sure you will be much more comfortable in future, once you are no longer being pursued in such a preposterous fashion!’

What could he say to that ? Yes? No? To Dominic’s relief, the next set was forming up, and Lady Primrose’s hand was claimed by a pugnacious young man with very tall shirt points who had apparently been looking for her everywhere and appeared quite cross that he had had to seek her out. She didn’t seem in the least discomposed – it was hard to imagine what might discompose her, short of the roof falling in on them – and departed on his arm.

‘Well,’ said Meg rather dejectedly, ‘that’s that, and I don’t think she knows anything that might help us, do you, sir? And she did not have the least suspicion that I was not my sister, as I am sure you will be the first to acknowledge. So your fears were quite groundless.’

He shook his head. ‘She’s one of your sister’s closest friends, is she?’

‘So I’m told.’

‘I wonder if the rest of them are the same?’

‘In what respect? I quite liked her, and I can see why Maria does.’

‘So bruisingly frank and satirical.’

‘I shouldn’t wonder at it. Are you so hugely sought after? Or is that another of those questions that one can’t answer without being rude or disingenuous?’

‘It’s definitely one of those. But if I’d been inclined to congratulate myself upon the matter – supposing it were true, which we’re not discussing – I’m sure the current situation has cut me right back down to size. One hundred per cent of the debutantes I have so far offered for have fled from me in horror, after all. It hardly encourages a man to think well of himself. Now, do you want to peer shortsightedly about again, to see if anyone else is approaching? Please do so, before I forget our situation and start imagining I’m here to relax and enjoy myself in your company.’

It was a long evening. They encountered several more of Maria’s most intimate friends, and Miss Nightingale navigated the situation with surprising skill, not being obliged to swoon or otherwise cause a distraction. They danced together once again – Dominic insisted upon it, as a pleasant break from awkward conversations – but by three in the morning all they had to show for several hours’ worry was the headache. They’d learned precisely nothing, and encountered no one whose behaviour was in the least suspicious.

Lady De Lacy had passed most of her evening in the card room with her cronies, but she had spent long enough in the ballroom among the beady-eyed chaperons to be aware that her son and his betrothed had danced twice with each other – and with no one else. In other circumstances, such markedly exclusive behaviour might have drawn a reproof from her, but it might be excused in a newly engaged couple, as showing a great and understandable partiality for each other’s company, and she was clearly in the mood so to excuse it. She bade Miss Nightingale an affectionate farewell when they stopped in Grosvenor Square to set her down, and waited patiently while Dominic escorted her to her front door and saw her safely inside. The knowledge that his mother was watching them with entirely misplaced misty-eyed sentimentality cast a constraint over him, and he said only, ‘I’ll see you tomorrow, Miss Nightingale; I’ll send a message. Perhaps my servants have been more fortunate in their efforts, and may have some news for me.’

When he rejoined her in the carriage, Lady De Lacy surprised him by making no comment – any comment she thought to make would surely have stung – but merely pressing his hand with what he was sure was a significant look, could he but see it in the gloom. He was grateful for her forbearance, but the mutual awareness of words unspoken hung so heavy in the space between them that she might as well not have restrained herself. See how right I was! he could feel her thinking. See how perfectly I – or, if we are being sentimental, your dear papa – have chosen for you. Do you not like your bride excessively? Do you not look forward eagerly to your wedding now, despite all your earlier foolish objections?

Yes, Mama, dear. And no.

No.

You were so nearly right, and so utterly, fatally wrong. And he had not the least idea what was to be done about it.