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“I hadn’t seen her in an age, either, until a few weeks ago,” Lisburne said. “She didn’t seem greatly improved then. Except for her complexion.”
“What do you reckon?” Longmore said.
Lisburne shrugged. “It’s a mystery to me.”
This was not entirely true, but he hesitated to share his thoughts with Longmore, who was not a man of delicate feeling.
Perhaps all Gladys had wanted was pretty clothes to give her confidence, as well as some hints about, say, graceful deportment. Wasn’t it possible she’d been ill-natured because she was self-conscious about her looks—and because her father made her life a misery? Lisburne recalled the girl he’d seen at his father’s funeral. Maybe she’d known her father was trying to force her on a brokenhearted young man. A girl in her teens—already self-conscious—she must have been in agonies.
“But a ring,” Longmore said. “Swanton must be made of sterner stuff than ever I guessed, if he means to face Boulsworth. Have you seen the betting book?
Thanks to today’s Spectacle, Lisburne had finally looked into White’s betting book. Swanton and Gladys featured in entry after entry.
Lisburne had read the Spectacle every morning. Until today he might as well have been reading gibberish. He’d passed the last few days in a haze, both literal and figurative. Since Wednesday, the skies had dripped and poured almost constantly, and when the rain stopped for a breather, the clouds loomed so black and heavy they seemed like mammoth stones crushing London.
Today’s clearing skies must have cleared his brain, because he realized that Swanton must have confided in him at some point—perhaps several times—and Lisburne hadn’t paid attention. Everything Swanton said had sounded like poetry, and Lisburne was sick to death of poetry.
And so he passed a wretched day.
Still, he had the Warfords’ party to look forward to.
Where Leonie would be. He’d have his dance at the very least.
Warford House
That night
Given the occasion, the Noirot sisters were unlikely to slip in unobserved, though most of the ball’s attendees would agree that, in their case, invisibility didn’t fall within the realms of the probable.
For one thing, here they were making what constituted, in effect, their social debut—and under Lady Warford’s auspices!
All the world knew that Lady Warford loathed the Duchess of Clevedon. Even though Her Grace had received royal recognition, Lady Warford had remained aloof. When her eldest son, Longmore, married the duchess’s sister, her ladyship had taken a step closer to Sophy, but that was all.
Whatever mental revolution the marchioness had undergone had occurred promptly after the latest Vauxhall incident, and news of the scorned sisters being invited raced through London. No invitee still breathing would miss this for worlds. And since nobody wanted to miss a minute, the company arrived punctually.
The dressmakers timed it to a nicety, of course. The last to arrive, they paused at the ballroom entrance at the exact moment the musicians ended the overture from Rossini’s La Cenerentola.
Brunette Lady Clevedon was dramatic in rose satin and black lace.
Blonde Lady Longmore, with her English rose coloring, wore a softer and warmer pink, with green and black embellishments.
And Leonie had chosen creamy white, a dress that seemed to be simplicity itself, if one overlooked the daring lines, the gold embroidery’s exotic design, and the black lace scarf draped over her shoulders, a theatrical flourish.
For a moment a sound passed through the ballroom like the wind driving autumn leaves: whispering that swelled and subsided and swelled again.
Then the three sisters curtseyed—the curtsey—the theatrical, ballerina performance that set their ruffles and bows aflutter and made the gaslight dance over their silk lace and embroidery and jewels.
The sight elicited a universal intake of breath. Then the room fell silent.
The sisters rose, in the same beautiful flurry of motion, and the ballroom began to hum—with speculation, admiration, envy, what-have-you.
Lisburne wasn’t part of the hum. He stood mute and motionless. What happened to him happened inside, where his being seemed to thrum like the strings of a violoncello.
She was so beautiful he could have wept.
She was like a living poem.
She made love like poetry.
And they fit together like the lines of a perfect poem.
Not one of Swanton’s.
But . . . well, Byron.
She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies . . .
Images flashed in Lisburne’s mind, of Leonie standing before the Botticelli, of her briskly abandoning him in order to attend to Gladys, of her quarreling with him in Hyde Park and kissing him, kissing him, kissing him . . . the way she reached up for him and wrapped her arms about his neck . . . the way she laughed when they made love . . . the way she laughed . . . and teased . . . and the way she was . . . too busy.
“Drat you, Simon, what does a fellow have to do to get your attention?”
Lisburne looked away from the living poem, who seemed to be floating down the reception line while all the men in the room ogled her.
They all wanted her.
They all wanted to do to her—with her—what he had done.
A red haze enveloped his mind for a moment. He shook it off. “I think I’m—” He caught himself in the nick of time. He could not have been about to say what he thought he’d been about to say.
He met Swanton’s amused gaze. “Kindly pay attention this time,” Swanton said. “I won’t have you complaining of being the last to know.”
“I am the last to know,” Lisburne said. “Living under the same roof, and kept in darkness while you creep furtively about London.”
“I’ve told you every morning what I was about,” Swanton said. “And every morning you’ve said, ‘Will you, indeed? Well, I’m sure it’ll do admirably.’ ”
“I had things on my mind,” Lisburne said.
“That much was obvious,” Swanton said.
“The Spectacle claims you bought a ring yesterday,” Lisburne said. “Doesn’t that strike you as excessively sanguine?”
“If you’d been paying attention, you’d know all about it,” Swanton said. “You’d know I’ve received encouragement. And I want you to pay close attention now, because a very short time ago, your cousin Lady Gladys Fairfax consented to make me the happiest of men.” He blinked hard. “I’m sure you don’t understand, and you think it’s my sentiment, and I’m blinded by an excess of that article. You’ll say we scarcely know each other. In terms of days and hours, that’s true. Yet I feel as though I’ve known her all my life. From the first time I heard her voice, I knew we were kindred spirits.”
Lisburne remembered what she’d said about the poetic temperament. He recalled the kindliness in her face. He suspected she’d had an extremely difficult girlhood, difficult enough to make her bitter and venomous. But somehow she’d found the strength to rise above it. Certainly Leonie had had a good deal to do with Gladys’s blossoming. But Leonie couldn?
??t fight Gladys’s battles for her. Gladys had found a way to fight—heroically, he thought, given the odds—and the battle had brought out the best in her.
“Pray don’t sob,” Lisburne said. “I wish you happy. I don’t doubt you will be. She’ll manage your affairs admirably and protect you from yourself. Or do you weep at the prospect of facing her father?”
Swanton swallowed. “Tears of happiness, that’s all. As to her father—beyond a doubt he’ll come thundering back to London the instant he gets my and Lord Warford’s letters. But he authorized Lord Warford to act in loco parentis, and I have his consent.”
“You know Boulsworth will do his best to destroy your will to live,” Lisburne said. “Remember what you said about the enemy running away screaming at the sound of his voice?”
“Yes, but I’ll have Gladys, no matter what he says,” Swanton said. “And we’ve worked out strategies for confounding the enemy.” He smiled. “She and I have tried out a dozen scenarios. She makes me laugh so and she teases me so—oh, never mind. I can see you grow ill listening to me.”
Whatever Lisburne was at that moment, he wasn’t ill. A little blinded, perhaps, by the light dawning.
“She makes you laugh,” he said. “She teases. A kindred spirit, you said.”
“Yes, all that and more,” Swanton said. “But I’ve said enough. Now you know, and we may tell the rest of the world. Dash it, Simon, I never guessed it was possible to be so happy!”
After he’d bounced away, a thoughtful Lisburne went in search of Leonie, who’d disappeared into the crowd by that mysterious process she had of hiding in plain sight. His efforts were hampered by this one and that one who had to quiz him about Swanton or bother him about something or other.
Meanwhile, the Warfords wasted not a minute in making the news public. As the dancing was about to begin, a bemused Lord Warford announced the betrothal. Lady Warford was beaming.
A dead silence fell.
Then Lisburne clapped. He saw Gladys’s gaze snap toward him. She smiled and in that moment was—no, not beautiful. But she was radiant, and in that moment it was easy enough to see what Swanton saw in her.
