When Patrick shrugged, signifying that Breksby could petition for the title, the foreign secretary felt a surge of warm complacency.
“It will take around six months to have your title confirmed. If you would like to travel in late summer or autumn of next year,” he said chattily, “you should arrive in Constantinople in plenty of time to attend the coronation. Our artisans will have finished the king’s gift, a ruby scepter, by April. I do not foresee any difficulties there.”
“I don’t want this made public,” Patrick said shortly. But they both knew that once Patrick Foakes became the Duke of Gisle, London society would talk of little else for months.
Breksby prudently ignored the request. He rose and circled the desk. Alex and Patrick rose as well. At the door, Breksby paused, a plump smile on his lips.
“May I be the first? Your Grace …” He swept a bow, his absurd hair flying wildly off to the right.
Patrick didn’t explode until they were out of the building. “That pompous little ass! He was enjoying that masquerade. Let him send one of the royal dukes to Turkey.”
Alex grinned. “Don’t try to gammon me, Patrick. You’re longing to go to that coronation. You’d never -turn down the opportunity to travel to the Ottoman Empire.”
“You’re right, of course.” Now Patrick grinned, the smile lighting up the stern lines of his cheekbones. “I heard quite a lot about Selim when I was in Lhasa.” Patrick had spent four years traveling in Tibet, India, and Persia.
“Oh? What’s he like?”
Patrick grinned again. “A proper little poseur, Selim is. At that time he was making a tour of European capitals. He drove his father mad by importing all kinds of European customs, clothing, and women back to Constantinople.”
“Do you think that he really might throw his army behind Napoleon?”
“I think it’s likely,” Patrick replied, his mouth tightening.
They had reached their waiting carriages.
“You know, little brother,” Alex said mockingly, “you now outrank me.”
Patrick looked startled for a moment. Then his eyes lit up. “Damned if you’re not right! You’re a mere earl and I’m a duke!”
Alex laughed. Between the brothers there had always been mutual agreement that Alex’s title was a useless encumbrance.
Patrick’s eyes narrowed. “If I’d been a duke last month, she would have accepted me,” he said, voice dagger sharp.
Alex knew exactly whom he was talking about. He shook his head. “Lady Sophie is not that kind of woman, Patrick.” Sophie York was his wife’s closest friend; Alex didn’t know why she had refused to marry his brother, but he doubted that her refusal stemmed from Patrick’s lack of a title.
“Then why did she accept Braddon? Braddon!” Patrick’s tone was savage.
“I didn’t think you were quite so interested in Lady Sophie’s future.” Alex watched his brother’s face intently.
Patrick didn’t pay any attention. “Braddon is fat, foolish, and has approximately one-third the money I have. But he’s an earl, Alex. He’s one of our honored nobility.”
“You’re not being fair,” Alex pointed out. “She may love him.”
Patrick snorted derisively. “Love! There isn’t a woman in the ton who believes in such a foolish notion!” Then he added, rather hastily, “except Charlotte, of course.”
Alex smiled at the mention of his wife but he said again, “I didn’t think you were so interested in Lady Sophie, Patrick.”
“I’m not.” Patrick shrugged. “She can do as she likes.” He met his brother’s eyes ruefully. “But I’m a sore loser, Alex. No one knows that better than you. It galls me to have lost out because Braddon has a title and I do not.”
Alex was silent for a second. He didn’t see any point in insisting that Sophie York had chosen Braddon for some other reason. Who knows? Maybe she did want to be a countess.
“Are you going to the Dewland ball tonight?”
“I hadn’t thought of it,” Patrick replied. “But I’m having supper with Braddon tonight and he’ll want to go on to the ball afterwards.” He met Alex’s eyes again. “I expect he’s going to ask me to be his best man,” Patrick said, an ironic twist to his lips.
“I’ll try to attend,” Alex said, throwing an arm around his brother’s shoulders. “Wait till the matchmaking mamas get hold of this news,” he said mischievously. “You are going to be a sensation.”
Patrick shuddered. “All the more reason to leave for Wales immediately.”
Chapter 3
When Sophie York was announced in the Dewland ballroom, there was a rustle of fluting voices. Sophie was a wild, reckless girl—the very worst of the new generation, muttered spinsters in the corners of the room.
The most beautiful woman in England, noted the male arbiters of London fashion. She was diminutive, but gorgeous; she was a coquette, but she was also the daughter of the most starched aristocrat in London, the Marchioness of Brandenburg. Eloise’s cold French admonishments had dented the reputation of many a young miss whose behavior walked a fine line between immodesty and rank wantonness. Quite naturally, the biting aspect of Eloise’s judgments on the propriety of young women made the impudence of her daughter’s behavior all the more delicious, all the more noteworthy.
Sophie paused at the top of the ballroom steps as her papa plunged down into the milling crowd, searching (no doubt) for the delectable Dalinda. Her mama proceeded sternly after him, her poker-straight back expressing an outrage that had hardly blunted with the years. Sophie scanned the assembly, looking, she told herself, for the Earl of Slaslow.
But Sophie knew inside that such a pretense merely stressed her weakness and lack of moral fiber, as her mother might put it. Her eyes were actually looking for a tall man with shoulders so broad that he looked only marginally comfortable in fine broadcloth. She was looking for tousled black hair shot with silver. She hadn’t seen Patrick since she’d turned down his proposal of marriage, and she didn’t see him now.
Her mother turned about in irritation at the bottom of the stairs.
“Sophie!” she hissed.
When Sophie obediently traipsed down the remaining steps, Eloise grasped her wrist in a steely hand.
“Stop making an exhibition of yourself!”
The gentlemen were on them now, flocking around Sophie, begging her for dances, handing her dance-cards, looking at her imploringly. Eloise contented herself with giving Sophie an admonishing look before heading off to the chaperones’ corner, where only those women whose titles equaled their ferocity were allowed to sit.
Laughingly, Sophie divided her time among the beseeching gentlemen, but the exercise was hollow. Tomorrow, or at most in two days, The Times would carry a discreet announcement:
The Earl of Slaslow announces that he will marry Lady Sophie York, the daughter of the Marquis of Brandenburg. The ceremony will be held at St. George’s Church and the formal presentation will occur at a Chapter of the Garter held in St. James’s Palace.
Then the chattering flocks would fall to the side and all of London would know that the great heiress, Sophie York, had finally settled on a husband. By February she would be married to Braddon Chatwin, the “Amiable Earl,” she’d heard him called. Braddon was amiable. He would be a pleasant husband. He probably liked his horses more than any human being, but he didn’t gamble to excess at the races.
And he looked capable of mild affection, which was exactly the same emotion that Sophie felt she would bring to the match. They would have beautiful children (an important point), and Braddon would keep his mistresses unobtrusively in the background. It was too slighting to call him dependable, Sophie thought, as she swung into the first dance of the evening. Braddon was kind and without great sins, as far as she could tell. They would likely be happy together.
The evening wound on, and neither her betrothed nor anyone else important appeared at her side. Sophie danced with elegance and exquisite grace; only the most perceptive notic
ed that her contagious sense of humor was blunted, if not missing, tonight. A young beau found that his chattering pronouncement of love was greeted with a rather cool rebuff, rather than her usual kind response.
Sophie felt as if she were walking a tightrope, suspended over a dizzying audience of young men whose silly comments and sweaty palms made her task harder. She stopped looking for silver-shot hair. What was the point? She was to be a countess, not Patrick Foakes’s wife, she thought drearily.
She went to supper on the arm of the hostess’s son, Peter Dewland. Peter was a sweet-eyed, elegant gentleman whom Sophie had known for years. He was a restful companion, given that he showed no sign of expecting London’s reigning beauty to fall into his arms. In fact, Sophie thought approvingly, Peter had never courted her in any fashion.
“How is your brother?” Sophie asked. Peter’s elder brother had been cruelly injured in a riding accident and more or less confined to his bed for the past three years.
“He’s doing much better.” Peter beamed. “He’s been taking a course of treatment from the German doctor who has been at court in the last few months. Have you heard of him? The doctor’s name is Trankelstein. I thought it was all a bag of moonshine, myself, but Trankelstein’s massages actually seem to be working. Quill—that’s what we call Erskine within the family—is able to leave his bedchamber now, and the pain is diminished. In fact, he spends almost every day in the garden, says he doesn’t want to be inside ever again.”
Sophie truly smiled for the first time that evening, her face lighting up. “Oh, Peter,” she said, not even noticing that she was using his first name, “how perfectly marvelous!”
“If you would like,” Peter continued a bit shyly, “you could meet Quill, Lady Sophie. He’s sitting up in the library tonight and I know that he would like to thank you for the fireworks you helped to arrange.”
“I can’t accept any thanks,” Sophie protested. “The fireworks were entirely the work of the Earl and Countess of Sheffield. I simply happened to be in the party that attended Vauxhall.” The trip to Vauxhall, and the resulting fireworks display in the Dewland back garden, had happened well over a year ago. Sophie had stood, surrounded by beaux, in the deep heat of a London summer evening watching twisting, magnificent fireworks light up the sky. In actual fact, her beaux watched the fireworks. Sophie watched her dearest friend, Charlotte, standing beside the Earl of Sheffield and Downes—Patrick Foakes’s twin brother. She’d seen the secret blush warming Charlotte’s cheeks as she leaned back against Alex’s chest, protected from the eyes of gossips by the velvety night and the sparkling lights in the sky.
Sophie had teased Charlotte the next day, laughing at her for standing so close to Alex, for allowing his arm to circle her waist, for looking up at him so intently. Now, Sophie understood Charlotte’s surprising quiescence.
Her own body had become foreign to her. She was irritable because the other Foakes twin wasn’t in the ballroom. She missed a heady closeness that she hardly knew. Her mind had become a traitor, unable to fix on the prospect of her future husband, Braddon, and constantly straying off to think about wicked black eyes and a laughing mouth.
It was nauseating, paltry, humiliating—she broke off the strain of self-reproach and rose. “Shall we greet your brother now?”
Peter politely discarded his plate of savory pheasant without a backward glance. “It would be my pleasure,” he replied. “I shall ask my mother to accompany us.”
Sophie nodded, startled by her own forgetfulness. The last thing her reputation could bear was for her to disappear with yet another man.
Viscountess Dewland smiled on the young pair approvingly and left her cozy circle of gossips to stroll to the library. You would never catch her indulging in rusty complaints about Sophie York, she thought. The girl has a kind heart.
Kitty Dewland had noted with a mother’s watchful eye that her beloved Peter was not genuinely attracted to Lady Sophie, and that unless she missed her mark (and she rarely did, Kitty thought to herself), Lady Sophie showed every sign of being in love with the Earl of Slaslow. The rumors she had heard of an engagement to be announced confirmed her impression.
Kitty sighed romantically. What a wonderful evening she had had when her own engagement to dear Thurlow was announced. The quiver of ignoble but delightful triumph she had felt as she circled the room before a cluster of young misses, her future assured! Kitty mentally shook herself and bustled into the library to introduce Quill to Lady Sophie.
Quill—or Erskine—wasn’t at all what Sophie expected. She had vague memories of a thin white face at the window during the fireworks display in the Dewland gardens. But the face that turned about from an armchair was tanned chestnut, much darker than were the complexions of most London fops, used to indoor amusements and placid rides in covered carriages. Quill’s face was lean and stamped with lines of pain, but it was arrestingly intelligent and very good looking.
Now he was standing before her, cool lips brushing the back of her hand. He seemed to stand without problem, and it was only when he sank back into the chair that she realized the effort it took for him to stand upright. Quickly she sat down on the first thing she saw, a small padded stool placed before the fireplace. She didn’t want Quill to feel awkward, given his inability to remain standing in the presence of a lady.
Peter pulled over one of the heavy leather chairs, and his mother drifted over to speak to the Honorable Sylvester Bredbeck, who had retreated to the library to rest his gout-ridden left ankle.
Quill regarded Sophie through heavy-lidded eyes, his face impassively registering no embarrassment, if indeed he felt any.
“Are you enjoying the ball, Lady Sophie?” he drawled.
Sophie flushed slightly. She sensed mockery, and she wasn’t feeling nimble-witted that evening. In fact, the practiced repartee that characterized most interactions between men and women in the ton seemed to have leaked from her tired brain.
“Not particularly,” she answered truthfully.
“Hmm,” Quill murmured, his eyes noting the drooping edges of her mouth. “Perhaps you would like to take a break from ceaseless gaiety? We could play a game of backgammon, if you wish.”
Sophie thought quickly. Ladies did not retreat into libraries to play board games during balls. On the other hand, she was chaperoned by none other than her hostess, and it would be very pleasant to let her jangled nerves settle. Neither Braddon nor Patrick was likely to walk into the library, so she would have a period of calm before returning to the ballroom.
She raised her eyes to Quill’s green ones. “I would be very pleased to join you.”
At a nod from his brother, Peter jumped up and fetched a small table whose top was an inlaid backgammon board. Sophie and Quill silently placed the pieces on the board, firelight leaping off the walnut paneled walls and flicking lightly on the white and black pieces, on Sophie’s slender fingers, on the wine-colored glints in Quill’s hair.
The game proceeded quietly until Sophie threw her second pair of doubles.
Quill raised his eyes and cast a gleaming look at his brother. “Just whom did you bring in here to enliven my solitude, Peter? An ivory turner?” His eyes laughed at Sophie. “Isn’t it a good thing that I was too gentlemanly to suggest a wager?”
Sophie smiled back demurely. Throwing doubles encompassed her only skill at board games, and it used to drive her grandfather to distraction when she was a child. She sipped at the wine at her elbow, feeling much more cheerful. The library was like a shimmery refuge, a calm, firelight-flecked oasis from the rioting hunger that seemed to have taken over her body.
When she threw the next set of doubles, she smiled gleefully in response to Quill’s muttered complaints, and she looked up with a grin of utter delight when she managed to throw a final set—double sixes!—at the very end of the game.
Which was the very moment at which both men whom she had looked for that evening, Braddon Chatwin, the Earl of Slaslow, and his good friend Patrick
Foakes, walked into the library. Braddon forged straight ahead, heading toward the woman of whom he was so proud, about whom he had just been boasting to his old school friend.
But Patrick stopped just inside the library. Sophie’s hair was shining in the light of the fire behind her with a color like ripened peaches, or like apricot wine laid up in glass bottles. She had bound her hair up on top of her head but the curls meant to fall down her back had tumbled forward. The curls were spun in fifty colors, melting from red to gold to the purest sunlit yellow…. And ringlets had fallen into smaller ringlets, tiny sprays of curls, giving her head the slightly fuzzy softness of a peach, a swimming, sunny color that promised that her hair would be as soft to the touch as the ripest summer fruit was to one’s lip.
He almost turned on his heel to leave. Sophie was laughing, her eyes brilliant. Until she caught sight of him. Her smile entirely disappeared for an instant, and then just as quickly the corners of her mouth turned up again, although this smile didn’t touch her eyes. Probably afraid he would let on to Braddon just how proficient she was at the art of kissing, Patrick thought sourly.
Braddon had lurched over to the group like an overeager puppy, given his hellos, and now stood beaming down at his intended bride. Patrick strolled toward the fire. He’d be damned if he’d let his composure be shaken by an alluring wench who’d had the gall to turn him down for a bigger title. She had what she wanted. Now she was engaged to the only earl on the marriage mart this year, and given that there was only one unmarried duke, old Siskind with his eight children, she had snagged the best of the bunch—at least until he himself became a duke. Patrick’s eyes glowed with a blighting fury.