Lapstone Court, Leicestershire, October 1815
‘Oh.’
At the unexpected sound, Henry Melway glanced up from his sketchbook where he was trying – and failing – to capture the details of the marble fountain in front of him.
It was surprising the amount of displeasure that one short syllable could convey. A displeasure mirrored in the expression of the girl glowering at him from the gap between two high yew hedges.
He’d been alone in the center of Lord Furneaux’s maze all afternoon. He’d assumed he’d stay that way. But he wasn’t a barbarian. He had some manners. And anyway, the sketch really wasn’t progressing.
He set his drawing aside and rose from the wooden bench. ‘Lady Charlotte.’
The girl bobbed into a brief curtsy, although her scowl didn’t lighten. ‘Lord Eltham, I didn’t mean to intrude.’
He tried the smile that had got him his way with the female half of the population since he was in his cradle seventeen years ago. ‘I’d appreciate some company.’
The smile failed to work its usual magic. Charlotte Moore continued to regard him as if he was a slug in her salad.
She was an unusual-looking girl. Henry had already noticed her among the crowd of pretty, conventional poppets who proliferated at this house party in the flat Leicestershire countryside. He guessed that she must be about fifteen. His host, Lord Furneaux, had a couple of daughters around that age. Little blonde dolls Henry hadn’t paid much attention to. They giggled.
All the girls in this house giggled.
All the girls. Except for this one, with her angular features, haughty nose, and emphatic dark brows. They were striking attributes, but they dominated what was still essentially a child’s face.
‘No, I should go.’ Her expression remained wary. ‘I wanted—’
‘A break away from the cats?’
She paused in turning to retreat through the maze behind her and cast him a puzzled glance. ‘Do you mean the other girls?’
‘I do.’
He had two older sisters, although they’d mercifully grown out of the spiteful stage. More, he’d noticed that this girl had been on the outer since she’d arrived. In fact, he was surprised quite how much he’d noticed.
He even noticed that the girl’s abundant black eyelashes were wet and clumped. Somewhere recently she’d indulged in a bout of furious tears.
The wariness became more marked when she surveyed him as if unsure whether he meant to bite her. ‘What do you care? Everybody likes you.’
The resentful remark betrayed her unspoken fear that nobody liked her. ‘Of course they do. I’m the heir to an earldom. They’re currying favor.’
With a shake of her head, she took a hesitant step toward him. She wore a crumpled muslin gown in a bilious shade of yellow that made her translucent skin look muddy. Whoever was in charge of dressing her should be shot.
‘No, that’s not it. People like you for yourself. The boys want to be your friend and the girls want you to pay them attention.’
It seemed she’d been watching him, too. How…interesting.
‘You’re very kind.’
Her lips turned down at his response. ‘No, I’m not. I’m very envious. Nobody wants to talk to me.’
He tried a smile again, and this time he caught a glimmer of softening. ‘That’s not true. I do.’
When she rolled her eyes, he laughed. Most of the girls he knew were too busy trying to look pretty to risk making faces.
‘How can I doubt it?’ She ventured another step closer. ‘That’s why you’re hiding here in the middle of Lord Furneaux’s maze. Just in case I should wander along to entertain you.’
He sat down again, liking her wry humor. ‘I admit I did slink off for a bit of privacy, but now you’re here, I welcome the interruption. Won’t you come and join me?’
Henry expected her to demur, or even take to her heels. She was shyer than the other girls, too, which didn’t help her to fit in. He wasn’t by nature given to poetic flights, but something about this slender, dark-haired girl made him think of wild woodland creatures prone to disappear into the shadows at the first sudden movement.
‘Now it’s you being kind.’
He shrugged. ‘Solitude was more appealing in my imagination than in reality.’
She cast him a searching look, then to his satisfaction, she perched on the edge of the bench about a foot along from him.
‘Did you have trouble with the maze?’ he asked when she didn’t do anything to further the conversation.
‘I got lost a couple of times. I came in here to escape Mary and Polly.’
The two meanest girls. And the pushiest. ‘Me, too.’
When that roused a faint huff of amusement, he felt like he’d won a great victory.
‘They do nothing except talk about you. Well, other than tell me I’m too ugly to live.’
Little witches. He’d like to wring their scrawny necks. ‘I’m sorry.’
Her direct gaze startled him. With her coloring, he’d assumed her eyes would be brown, but they were a silvery gray of such clarity that he found himself staring back transfixed.
‘It’s not your fault.’
‘I’m still sorry.’ His smile faded, and he studied her with the eye of the artist he was at heart. When he spoke, his voice was slow and thoughtful. ‘You know, I think you promise to become a very interesting woman.’
‘That’s nice of you.’
He gave a short laugh. ‘You sound surprised.’
‘I just…I just never thought you’d bother talking to me.’ She went back to avoiding his stare, and nervous fingers began to pleat the skirt of the frightful frock. ‘After all, you’re so popular and clever. And handsome. Like a Greek God.’
‘Why, thank you.’ To his chagrin, he felt himself redden. Although not as violently as Lady Charlotte blushed. Her cheeks were as scarlet as ripe strawberries.
‘I do beg your pardon.’
She cast him a quick sideways glance under those sumptuous lashes. She didn’t intend flirtation, but nevertheless, his heart slammed to a stop. One day, she’d do that to lure a lover, and the lucky fellow’s world would turn upside down.
He cleared his throat. ‘For giving me such an extravagant compliment? I’m appalled. You should be hounded from good society, my girl.’
Her gurgle of laughter pleased him. He’d hated to think of her crying her eyes out over nasty nonsense. ‘I think good society has decided I’m not fit to be seen anyway.’
Henry’s lips tightened with annoyance. ‘You shouldn’t listen to those flibbertigibbets. You just haven’t grown into yourself yet. When you do, all those silly little girls will look as boring as white paint. Whereas you’re going to blossom into someone unforgettable.’
Ever since she’d spouted that drivel about Lord Eltham looking like a Greek God, Charlotte had been writhing with embarrassment. But this praise was astonishing enough to banish her mortification.
She gaped at him. ‘Un…unforgettable?’
His smile was kind. And sincere. She told herself that she shouldn’t believe him, but he looked as if he meant what he said. ‘Yes. And irresistible. Even now, you stand out from the crowd as special. That’s why the other girls are picking on you. They’re jealous.’
‘I’m…speechless.’
Actually she was flabbergasted. She’d never pictured herself speaking a single word to the universally admired Lord Eltham. She’d never pictured Lord Eltham paying her enough attention to give her the opportunity to speak that single word to him.
But here she was in his company, and he was saying all sorts of marvelous things. The sort of marvelous things that she’d never imagined anyone saying to her at any time. Let alone the handsomest young man she’d ever seen.
It was no wonder that all the girls sighed over him. Even Charlotte had devoted a few useless daydreams to the tall young viscount with his golden hair and golden skin.
Except it seemed that those daydreams hadn’t been anywhere near as futile as she’d assumed. She wanted to pinch herself, but she’d already been gauche enough for one afternoon, thank you very much.
Half-convinced of his candor, she studied his face for any sign that he mocked her. But the dark blue eyes in those chiseled features remained steady.
‘In fact, I’d like to draw you, if you’ll allow me.’
‘But aren’t you drawing something else?’
She liked the hint of self-deprecation in his laugh. As if she didn’t already like everything about him.
Apart from the fact that despite his kindness this afternoon, he would always be out of her reach. He might say nice things to cheer her up. But when their minds turned to romance, young bucks like Viscount Eltham sought out diamonds of the first water, not odd-looking misfits like Charlotte Moore. However interesting he might deign to call her.
‘I was making a dog’s dinner of trying to catch this blasted fountain. I’m much better with portraits. Do say you’ll let me sketch you.’ His voice lowered into seriousness. ‘I’d like to show you what I see when I look at you.’
If anyone had asked Charlotte an hour ago if she’d agree to someone poring over her much-maligned features, she’d have shrieked in horror. But something inside her had changed since she’d blundered her way into Lord Furneaux’s maze.
When she turned toward Eltham, she even managed to sound composed. ‘I’d be happy to sit for you.’
She’d seen that brilliant smile often since she’d arrived at this purgatory of a house party a week ago. But up close, the flash of straight white teeth and the flare of pleasure in those impossibly blue eyes had a devastating effect on her efforts to behave like a well-brought-up young lady. Instead of an over-emotional idiot.
‘Capital.’ He rose and crossed to sit on the grass near the entrance to the clearing. With an eagerness that she couldn’t help but find flattering, he turned to a fresh page of his sketchbook. ‘Just look straight at me.’
‘Should I smile?’
‘No. It’s too hard to hold a smile.’ Already he danced his pencil over the paper with a speed that bewildered her.
Over the next half hour, they barely spoke. Whenever he paused in his drawing, Eltham examined her with a concentrated attention that nobody had devoted to her before.
Her eccentric father loved her, she knew, but he was more interested in her intellectual development than in what he viewed as frivolous worldly matters like her appearance. Her governess, Miss Peters, only looked at her to nag about some failing.
This probing, unflinching, but essentially benevolent gaze was unfamiliar. For the first time in her life, she felt accepted, not judged wanting. It was a powerful sensation, and one she promised herself she wouldn’t forget.
When Eltham was in company, his quicksilver expressions gave an impression of endless vitality. But during this quiet interval, Charlotte had a chance to see past the surface glitter to the warmth and intelligence beneath.
She suspected that Eltham would remain a handsome man into old age. Perhaps even more handsome than he was now, once the character and humor he’d demonstrated today had a chance to mark his features.
At last, his busy pencil stilled, and he glanced up at her with a smile in his eyes, but not on his lips. ‘I think that’s the best I’m going to do.’
Charlotte had relaxed to a point where she smiled back with an ease that she hadn’t felt since she’d arrived at Lapstone Court. ‘May I see?’
With a grace that made her foolish heart stutter, he rose to his feet and crossed the lawn to sit beside her. ‘Of course.’
Only then did fear kick in. Fear that perhaps he might mock her after all. Fear that even if he didn’t, the portrait might expose her as ugly and unlovable, just as those odious girls said she was.
With an unsteady hand, she accepted the sketchbook. For a moment, she was too afraid to look at the drawing.
‘What do you think?’ he asked.
To her surprise, the question held a hint of uncertainty. A useful reminder that the young viscount was as human as she was.
Or almost.
She made herself glance down at the picture. Her breath escaped in a gasp. ‘It’s…lovely.’
A faint sound of amusement escaped him. ‘You’re lovely.’
Charlotte, trained to seek the truth in all matters, knew she should argue with that erroneous conclusion. But the face depicted was indeed lovely. Yet still unmistakably Charlotte Moore. She took in the drawing as a whole, struggling to work out how he’d managed to make the image both her and not her.
‘Thank you.’
He laughed again. ‘You sound so suspicious. I swear this is what you look like to me. When in a few years you have society at your feet, I hope you’ll recall my prediction.’
The unlikelihood of that event occurring brought Charlotte back to reality with a bump that felt like relief. For a second there, the world had made no sense and the ground had shifted under her feet in a most unsettling fashion.
‘I promise that should such a thing ever happen, I’ll think of you.’
‘Thank you,’ he said without a hint of irony, which she appreciated.
She had a sinking feeling that she’d think of him anyway. Not just because he remained the most spectacular creature she’d ever beheld. Closer contact had only deepened her partiality. Something powerful inside her wished to heaven that the words he’d spoken today were true and that he’d leave this secret place inside Lord Furneaux’s maze as changed as she would.
But she was no fool. Popular young men, however amiable they might be, didn’t tumble headlong in love with skinny, clumsy fifteen-year-old girls in the space of an hour.
‘May I keep the drawing?’ he asked.
It would have been nice to have the portrait, but if Miss Peters found it – Miss Peters had an unpleasant habit of snooping – there would be too many intrusive questions. Charlotte closed the sketchbook and passed it back. ‘If you like.’
He accepted the sketchbook and gave her another of those devastating smiles that made her asinine heart perform acrobatics. ‘Thank you.’
She rose to her feet, regretting the way that real life started to impinge on this enchanted interval. ‘I should go.’
She’d been alone with the viscount too long for propriety. At a house party, society’s strict rules relaxed a little and she wasn’t yet out of the schoolroom, but nonetheless this meeting developed the air of a tryst.
If only that were true.
Showing more of those perfect manners, Eltham stood, too. He bowed his gilded head. ‘It’s been a pleasure.’
With a shy smile, Charlotte dipped into a curtsy. ‘Good afternoon, my lord.’
She turned onto the path that she’d followed to reach the center of the maze. Could one’s life transform in the space of an afternoon? She feared it could. But something told her that the silly girls at this gathering would never again make her cry.
Dempster House, Lorimer Square, London, May 1821
‘By gum, the Incomparable’s here. Prepare to be bowled over, old man. She makes every other debutante this year look as dull as ditchwater.’
As they progressed through the blue-blooded crush filling the Duchess of Granville’s ballroom, Henry hardly listened to his friend. Ivor Bilson was always wittering on about something or other. Usually hunting and fishing. Although this time round, some female seemed to occupy the fellow’s mind.
Henry was just back from his grand tour through Italy and France. While he did his best to hide it, he was still trying to find his feet in London. He hadn’t yet had a chance to assess the season’s crop of marriageable misses.
A quadrille was ending. As he surveyed the crowded room, his attention snagged on a tall, dark-haired woman wearing white.
‘Who is that?’ he asked Ivor, as his heart began to race with excitement.
‘Where?’
Not for the first time, Henry wished that his friend was quicker on the uptake. ‘The lady over there with…’ He dredged up a name from his school days. ‘…Anthony Comerford. The lady in white.’
Ivor made a sound of complaint. ‘They’re all in bally white. They’re debutantes, don’t you know? Makes a chap think he’s lost in a blasted snowstorm, what? You’ll have to do better than that, if you want me to pick one filly out from the rest. Comerford, you say?’ Then his tone changed. ‘That’s her.’
Henry had a powerful inkling that was indeed her. ‘Who?’
‘I told you. The incomparable Lady Charlotte Moore. She’s taken the beau monde by storm. Rumor is half the single gentlemen in England have offered for her.’
‘Has…’ Henry’s mouth turned as dry as a desert, making speech difficult. He’d come back home feeling that he could make some claim to Continental sophistication. Now one glimpse of a beautiful girl left him completely at sea. ‘Has she accepted any of them?’
‘No. Not yet.’
Henry smiled at his friend. ‘Ivor, you’re the herald of joy.’
Confusion clouded Ivor’s good-natured features. ‘Herald of…’
Henry didn’t linger to explain. Instead he strode across to where the Incomparable stood with a group of people, idly fanning herself.
‘Lady Charlotte, I believe this is my dance.’ He was in such a state, he only just remembered to bow.
She turned in surprise. As those extraordinary silver eyes settled on him – they’d been extraordinary even in the unformed young girl he’d met all those years ago – he prayed that she remembered him.
‘Lord Eltham.’ She performed a curtsy considerably more assured than her adolescent effort. That sunny afternoon at Lord Furneaux’s estate, she’d been all coltish awkwardness. But even then, Henry had known that she’d become remarkable.
Clearly the rest of the world had come around to that opinion.
‘Dash it, Eltham,’ Comerford protested, as the orchestra played the introduction to the next dance. To Henry’s pleasure, a waltz. He very much liked the prospect of holding her in his arms and not having to change partners. ‘Lady Charlotte’s promised to dance with me next.’
‘I asked quite a while ago.’ Henry didn’t look away from gray eyes that expressed curiosity and what he hoped was pleasure at their reunion. ‘Perhaps the lady has forgotten?’
Unlike Ivor, Lady Charlotte had a brainbox in tiptop working order. Her lush pink lips curved in a smile that made Henry’s breath catch. By God, she was a beauty.
‘I haven’t forgotten.’ Something restless and troubled inside Henry settled as she turned to Comerford, that glorious smile taking on a hint of apology. ‘I fear, my lord, that you may have to yield to the prior claim.’
Without giving Comerford another chance to object, Henry caught her arm. Even through his glove, the touch sent a surge of heat rushing along his veins. ‘Shall we?’
‘I’d be delighted.’
He hoped his smile wasn’t too wolfish, although he wouldn’t wager money on it. How wonderful that she wasn’t coy. She’d been refreshingly genuine at Lapstone, he recalled. He was grateful that society’s acclaim hadn’t spoiled that.
He took her into his arms for the waltz. Such a simple action, yet all the same, his world reeled. Did she catch her breath at the contact, too? They began to move as if they’d danced a thousand times before.
‘I’ve still got your portrait,’ he murmured.
It was true. It was tucked into the back of his portfolio.
Life since he’d met Lady Charlotte Moore had been packed with excitement and experience, and he’d be lying if he said that he’d pined over the drawing. But every so often, he’d glanced at it with a vague feeling of unfinished business awaiting his attention.
‘After all this time?’ Her lips twitched with the humor that reminded him of the girl he’d met so long ago. He remained surprised how well he remembered every second of that encounter. ‘Surely you’ve found better things to draw than over-emotional chits.’
‘Charming young ladies.’
‘That’s a matter of opinion.’
‘I’d welcome the opportunity to draw you again.’
She arched her eyebrows with a hint of elegant hauteur that stole his breath. What an alluring woman that interesting young girl had become. ‘I’m under a little closer supervision in London than I was at Lapstone, my lord.’
‘No convenient mazes to hand?’
The sound of her laugh made his heart lift. ‘Unless we try the one at Hampton Court?’
His hold on her waist firmed and brought her nearer, within a whisker of impropriety. He wanted to kiss her. Hell, he wanted to steal her away and discover all her secrets. But this was Mayfair, and there were rules about how a man pursued a woman he wanted.
‘Or perhaps we could choose a more conventional path, and I could call on you tomorrow?’
His heart expanded when a sparkling silver gaze rose to meet his. ‘I’d like that.’
Henry reminded himself that he was in the middle of a ballroom in Lorimer Square. He couldn’t whoop with triumph like a hobbledehoy because he’d obtained her agreement. Much as he might like to.
He restricted himself to a low purr of satisfaction. ‘So would I, my dear Lady Charlotte. So would I.’
Happiness surged in his blood as he began to whirl Charlotte around until he felt like they were flying.
© Anna Campbell 2024 Not to be reproduced without permission