“I'm not certain I can manage this,” Elizabeth said nervously, standing before the mirror. “I'm a wreck. I'm going to make some terrible faux pas that everyone will talk about. Please, Lady Holly, let's forget about going anywhere tonight and try again some other time, after I've had more lessons.”
“The more balls and parties and soirees you attend, the easier it will become,” Holly replied firmly.
“No one will ask me to dance. They all know what I am—an illegitimate nobody. Oh, damn my brother for doing this to me! I'm going to be a wallflower tonight. I don't belong in a ball gown. I should be somewhere peeling potatoes or sweeping a street walkway—”
“You're lovely,” Holly said, hugging the girl while Elizabeth continued to stare at her own alarmed reflection. “You're lovely, Lizzie, and you have very good manners, and your family is quite wealthy. Believe me, you won't be a wallflower. And not a single man who views you tonight will think you should be peeling potatoes.”
It took a great deal of persuasion and stubborn insistence to force both of the Bronson women from the room. Somehow Holly managed to bring them down the grand staircase. As they descended, Holly took particular pride in Elizabeth's outward appearance of poise, despite the fact that the girl was quaking with nerves on the inside.
Bronson awaited them in the entrance hall, his black hair gleaming in the abundant light shed by the chandeliers and the silver-coffered ceiling. Although there was not a man alive whose appearance wasn't improved by the traditional formal scheme of black and white evening wear, it did Zachary Bronson particular justice. His severely simple black coat had been tailored according to the latest fashion, the collar low, the sleeves close-fitting, the lapels extending nearly to the waist. On Zachary's towering form, with his expansive shoulders and lean waist, the style was immensely flattering. His narrow white cravat and crisp white waistcoat looked snowy in contrast to his swarthy, freshly shaved face. From his neatly brushed dark hair to the tips of his polished black leather shoes, Zachary Bronson appeared to be a perfect gentleman. Yet there was something a bit dashing, even dangerous about him…perhaps it was the irreverent gleam in his black eyes, or the raffish quality of his smile.
His gaze went first to Elizabeth, and his smile was filled with affectionate pride. “What a sight you are, Lizzie,” he murmured, taking his sister's hand and brushing a kiss on her blushing cheek. “You're prettier than I've ever seen you. You'll come away from the ball leaving a trail of broken hearts in your wake.”
“More likely a trail of broken toes,” Elizabeth replied dryly. “That is, if anyone is foolish enough to ask me to dance.”
“They'll ask,” he murmured, and gave her waist a reassuring squeeze. He turned to his mother and complimented her before finally turning to Holly.
After all the rigorous instruction in courtesy she had given him, Holly expected a polite comment on her appearance. A gentleman should always offer some small tribute to a lady in these circumstances—and Holly knew that she looked her best. She had dressed in her favorite gown, a glimmering silk of light gray, with silver beadwork adorning the low scooped bodice and the short, full sleeves. A bit of light feather padding kept the sleeves puffed out, and the gown's skirt was supported beneath with a stiffly starched petticoat. Holly had even allowed the dressmaker to persuade her to wear a light corset that trimmed her waist almost two inches. Maude had helped to arrange her hair in the latest fashion, parting it in the center and pulling the heavy mass to the back of her head. They had pinned the gleaming brown locks into rolls and curls, allowing two or three stray tendrils to dangle against her neck.
Smiling slightly, Holly stared into Bronson's expressionless face as he surveyed her from head to toe. However, the expected gentlemanly compliment was not forthcoming.
“Is that what you're going to wear?” he asked abruptly.
“Zach!” his mother gasped in horrified disapproval, while Elizabeth jabbed him in the side in response to the rude inquiry.
A disconcerted frown drew Holly's brows together, and she felt a sharp stab of disappointment, coupled with annoyance. The rude, insolent boor! She had never received a derogatory comment on her appearance from a man before. She had always prided herself on her sense of style—how dare he imply that she was wearing something unsuitable!
“We are going to a ball,” Holly replied coolly, “and this is a ball gown. Yes, Mr. Bronson, this is what I intend to wear.”
Their gazes locked in a long, challenging stare, so clearly excluding the other two that Paula pulled Elizabeth to the other side of the hall on the pretext of discovering a stain on her glove. Holly was barely aware of the women drifting away. She spoke in a clipped tone that fully conveyed her displeasure.
“What, precisely, is your objection to my appearance, Mr. Bronson?”
“Nothing,” he muttered. “If you want to show the world you're still in mourning for George, that gown is perfect.”
Offended and strangely hurt, Holly sent him an outright glare. “My gown is quite suitable for the occasion. The only thing you don't like about it is that it is not one of the ones you purchased for me! Did you really expect me to wear one of those?”
“Considering it was your only alternative to wearing mourning—or Half Mourning, whatever the hell it's called—I thought it was a possibility.”
They had never argued like this, not in deadly earnest, in a way that ignited Holly's long-dormant temper like a flame set to gunpowder. Whenever they debated an issue, the words were spiced with humor, teasing, even provocative meaning, but this was the first time that Holly had ever been truly angry with him. George would never have spoken to her in the blunt, brutal manner Bronson did…George had never criticized her except in the gentlest of terms, and always with the kindest of intentions. In her flaring anger, Holly did not stop to wonder why she was comparing Bronson so closely with her husband, or how his opinion had come to hold such power over her emotions.
“This is not a mourning gown,” she said irritably. “One would think you had never seen a gray gown before. Perhaps you've spent too much time in brothels to notice what ordinary women wear.”
“Call it what you like,” Bronson returned, his voice soft but stinging, “I know mourning when I see it.”
“Well, if I choose to wear mourning for the next fifty years, that's my concern and none of yours!”
His broad shoulders lifted in a careless shrug, a common gesture that he knew was bound to incense her further. “No doubt many will admire you for walking around dressed like a crow—”
“A crow,” Holly repeated in outrage.
“—but I've never been one to admire displays of excessive grief, especially public ones. There's some merit in keeping your feelings private. However, if you're so in need of sympathy from others—”
“You insufferable swine!” she hissed, more angry than she could ever remember being in her life. How dare he accuse her of using mourning merely as a way of gaining public sympathy for herself? How dare he imply that her grief for George was not sincere? Rage sent the blood rushing to her face, until she was hot and crimson. She wanted to hit him, hurt him, but she saw that her anger pleased him for some unfathomable reason. The cool satisfaction in his black eyes was unmistakable. Just a few minutes ago she had taken such pride in his gentlemanly appearance, but now she almost hated him.
“How could you know anything about mourning?” she said, her voice unsteady. She could not bring herself to look at him as she spoke. “You could never love someone the way I did George—it's not in you to surrender any part of your heart. Perhaps you think that makes you superior. But I feel sorry for you.”
Unable to tolerate his presence a moment longer, she strode away rapidly, her stiffened petticoat batting at her legs. Ignoring Paula's and Elizabeth's worried, questioning voices, she churned up the stairs as quickly as her heavy skirts would allow, while her lungs worked like leaky bellows.
Zachary stood exactly where she left him, stunned
by the argument that seemed to have flared out of nowhere. He hadn't planned to start it, had even felt a surge of pleasure the first instant he had seen Holly…until he had realized that her dress was gray. Gray like a shadow, a pall cast by George Taylor's ever-present memory. He had known at once that every moment of Holly's evening would be given over to regret that her husband was not with her, and Zachary would be damned if he would spend the next several hours trying to win her away from George's ghost. The silvery-gray gown, pretty as it was, had taunted him like a banner before a bull. Why couldn't he have her for just one evening, without her grief being wedged so insistently between them?
And so he had spoken carelessly, perhaps even cruelly, too wrapped up in his own annoyance and disappointment to care about what he was saying.
“Zachary, what did you tell her?” Paula demanded.
“Congratulations,” came Elizabeth's sarcastic voice. “Only you could ruin the evening for everyone in a mere thirty seconds, Zach.”
The few servants who had witnessed the scene suddenly busied themselves with meaningless self-appointed tasks, clearly not wanting to fall victim to his evil temper. However, Zachary was no longer angry. The moment Holly left his side, he had been flooded with a strange, sick feeling. He analyzed the sensation, unlike anything he had experienced before. Somehow he felt worse at this moment than he had after the worst beating of his prizefighting days. There was a huge block of ice in his stomach, the coldness spreading until it reached his fingers and toes. He was suddenly afraid he had made Holly hate him, that she would never smile at him or let him touch her again.
“I'll go up to her,” Paula said, her tone motherly and calm. “But first I wish you would tell me what was said between you, Zachary—”
“Don't,” Zachary interrupted softly. He held up his hand in a swift restraining gesture. “I'll go to her. I'll tell her…” Pausing, he realized that for the first time in his life, he was ashamed to face a woman. “Hell,” he said savagely. He, who had never cared for anyone's opinion of him, had been utterly cowed by the words of a small woman. It would have been far better if Holly had cursed him, thrown something, slapped him. That he could have survived. But the quiet contempt in her voice had devastated him. “I just want to give her a minute or two to calm herself before I approach her.”
“The way Lady Holly appeared,” Elizabeth remarked sourly, “it will take at least two or three days before she's ready to set eyes on you.”
Before Zachary could respond with an appropriately sarcastic rejoinder, Paula took her disgruntled daughter's arm and tugged her away toward the family parlor. “Come, Lizzie…we'll both have a relaxing glass of wine. Heaven knows we both need it.”
Heaving a sigh, Elizabeth followed her, stomping away in her ball gown with all the grace of an infuriated eight-year-old. Were it not for his own turbulent emotions, Zachary would have smiled at the sight. He went to the library for a drink, stopped at the sideboard and poured something from a decanter. Downing the stuff without even tasting it, he poured another. However, the spirits failed to warm his frozen insides. His mind sorted busily through a deluge of words, grasping for an apology that would make everything right again. He could tell Holly anything but the truth—that he was jealous of George Taylor, that he wanted her to stop mourning for her husband, when it was clear that she had dedicated the rest of her life to his memory. Setting his glass down with a groan, Zachary forced himself to leave the library. His shoes felt as if they had been made with lead soles as he hoisted his feet up the grand staircase toward Holly's private rooms.
Holly nearly stumbled in her eagerness to step over the threshold of her private apartments and close herself inside. Mindful of Rose sleeping peacefully just two rooms away, she tried not to slam the door. She stood very still, with her arms tightly bunched around herself. Her mind rang with echoes of every word she had just exchanged with Zachary Bronson.
The worst part was, he hadn't been entirely wrong. The gray gown had seemed exactly right for this occasion, for just the reason he had suggested. It was elegant and stylish, but not so very different from the circumspect Half Mourning garments she had worn during the third year after George's death. No one could find fault with it, not even her own beleaguered conscience. She was more than a little afraid of fully rejoining the world without George, and this was her way of reminding everyone—including herself—of what she had once had. She didn't want to lose the last vestige of her past with George. There were already too many days that slipped by without her having thought of him. There were too many moments when she felt a heady attraction to another man, when she had once thought that only George could stir her senses. It was becoming terribly easy to make decisions for herself, on her own, without first considering what George would have wanted or approved of. And that independence frightened her fully as much as it pleased her.
Her actions of the past four months had proved that she was no longer the sheltered young matron, or the virtuous, circumspect widow that family and friends had approved of. She was becoming another woman entirely.
Stunned by the thought, Holly didn't notice her servant Maude's presence until she spoke. “Milady, is something amiss? A button loose, or a trimming—”
“No, nothing like that.” Holly took a deep breath, and then another, anchoring her roiling emotions. “It appears that my gray gown displeases Mr. Bronson,” she informed the servant. “He wants me to wear something that looks less like mourning.”
“He dared…” Maude began in astonishment.
“Yes, he dared,” Holly said dryly.
“But milady…ye're not going to oblige him, are ye?”
Holly stripped off her gloves, threw them to the floor and kicked off her silver slippers. Her heart was pounding with the remnants of fury, and a nerve-rattling excitement like nothing she had ever felt before. “I'm going to make his eyes fall out,” she said curtly. “I'm going to make him sorry that he ever said one word about my attire.”
Maude stared at her strangely, having never seen such an expression of feminine vengeance on Holly's face. “Milady,” she ventured cautiously, “ye don't seem quite yerself.”
Holly turned and went to the closed armoire, turning the small key in the door and opening it. She extracted the red gown and shook it briskly, giving it a quick airing. “Hurry, Maude,” she said, turning her back and indicating the row of buttons that needed to be unfastened. “Help me out of this thing quickly.”
“But…but…” Maude was dazed. “Ye want to wear that gown? I haven't had a chance to air it properly and press the wrinkles—”
“It seems to be in good condition, actually.” Holly inspected the billows of glowing red silk in her arms. “But I wouldn't care if it was one big ball of wrinkles. I'm going to wear the blasted thing.”
Recognizing her determination, though clearly not approving, Maude sighed gustily and set to work on the back of the gray gown. When it became apparent that Holly's prim white chemise would peek out over the low-cut bodice of the red silk, Holly stripped off her top undergarment. “Ye're going without yer chemise?” Maude gasped, thunderstruck.
Although the servant had already seen her in every stage of undress, Holly blushed all over, until even her bare breasts were pink. “I don't have any chemises cut low enough to fit beneath this.” She struggled to pull the red gown over her torso, and Maude hastily moved to assist her.
When the gown was finally fastened and the red velvet sash was tied neatly at her waist, Holly went to the mahogany-framed looking glass. The succession of three mirrored ovals joined together afforded a complete view of her appearance. Holly was startled by the sight of herself clad in such rich color, the red strikingly vivid against her white skin. She had never worn anything quite as bold as this for George, a style that displayed the snowy curves of her breasts and the top third of her back. Her skirts moved in a fluid, rippling mass with each step she took, with each breath she drew. She felt vulnerable and exposed, and at the same time
strangely free and light. This was the kind of gown she had worn in all her forbidden daydreams, when she had longed to escape the dullness of her ordinary life.
“At the last ball I attended,” she commented, studying her reflection, “I saw ladies wearing gowns much more daring than this. Some of them were practically backless. This looks almost modest by comparison.”
“'Tisn't the style, milady,” Maude replied, flatly. “'Tis the color.”
Continuing to stare at herself in the mirror, Holly realized that the gown was too spectacular to require further ornamentation. She removed all her jewelry: the diamond bracelet George had given her upon the birth of their child, the glittering earbobs that had been a wedding present from her parents and the sparkling clips that adorned her upswept hair. Everything except the simple gold band of her wedding ring. She handed the items to the maid. “There's a flower arrangement in the upstairs family parlor,” she said, “and I believe it has some fresh red roses in it. Would you fetch me one, Maude?”
Maude paused before complying. “Milady,” she said quietly, “I hardly recognize ye.”
Holly's smile wavered, and she took a deep breath. “Is that a good thing or a bad thing, Maude? What would my husband have said, if he had ever seen me like this?”
“I think Master George would have loved to see ye in that red gown,” Maude replied thoughtfully. “He was a man, after all.”
Eleven
Approaching Holly's door , Zachary knocked gingerly with two knuckles of his right hand. There was no sound or response from within. Sighing, he wondered if she might have already retired to bed. It was only to be expected that she would not want to see him tonight. Silently he berated himself, wondering why he hadn't been able to keep his own damned mouth shut. While he wasn't necessarily a ladies' man, he had a certain way with women, and he had known better than to make a negative comment about Holly's appearance. Now she was probably weeping by herself in a corner of her room, too hurt and furious to even consider attending—