He had no doubt that he would spend the night with Eugenia Langtree, and that would doubtless whet his appetite for a few more such nights.
He had no fear of failure. She had accepted his valentine and doubtless knew that it was his. Both of them had made several veiled references to roses during the past few days, though each of them had kept the rules and had not come out quite into the open. He had spoken of sculptured gold pendants and she of red roses, her favorites.
They were coming close to ending the game and having at each other with all the energy they had kept carefully leashed for more than a week. A few times in the past few days she had sent away her other admirers on some pretext and granted him a few minutes of her time. Never longer. If she did not move away from him after that time, then he moved away from her. Appetites grew greater with abstention or the merest nibbling at desired foods, he had found from experience.
And yet for all the success of his endeavors and for all the closeness of the final consummation, there was a certain flatness about the game that he had been experiencing with disturbing regularity over the past several months. What was the point? he asked himself in unguarded moments. He would bed Eugenia until they were both sated, and then he would move on to another woman. And nothing significant would have happened beyond the beddings themselves. His conversations with the woman would be as light and insubstantial as they always were with his mistresses and casual amours.
On the whole, he thought, looking carefully at all six roses and selecting the one he would send with Jasper when the boy saw fit to put in an appearance, he would be quite happy to have the evening over and done with.
There was a knock on his door.
“Come in,” he called, and Jasper came breezing in.
“I say, Rog,” he said, seeing the open box of roses, “are you going to have six of ’em? They’ll be scratching one another’s eyes out, won’t they?”
Roger grinned. “It would not have done,” he said, “to have ordered only one, just to find that it was withered and scrawny. What would the lady think?”
“I see your point,” Jasper said. “So I’m to take one to the Langtree woman? This will cost you a whole sovereign, I suppose you realize.”
“And another when you come to report that the lady accepted it, I suppose?” Roger said dryly.
“Naw,” Jasper said. “I’m not greedy, Rog.”
“On your way, then,” Roger said, placing the single rose alone into the box and setting a small card beside it.
He watched the door of his room long after Jasper had disappeared through it, slamming it behind him. He wished it were going to a different woman, one more suited to the romance of the occasion. He wished there were not just sex to look forward to, but romance.
One corner of his mouth lifted in self-derision. Romance? Him? He had always scorned any such thing, and carefully avoided any situation that might lead any lady to think he was romancing her. Any woman with whom he had ever consorted had known that romance was the very last thing on his mind. Sex pure and simple—his only object in his dealings with women.
And was he now dreaming of romance just because it was St. Valentine’s Day and there was to be a masked ball that evening and he had just sent a real rose to his valentine? Somehow the occasion and the rose seemed wasted on Eugenia Langtree—and on his own intentions toward her.
If it were Emmy, now ... He should put the thought from him without more ado. But it was too sweet to think of her and what might have been. What might have been if he had been a different sort of man, if he were more the type who might be worthy of her. Or if he had approached her differently from the start. He could not now imagine how he could have looked at her that first day and thought that perhaps she would be available for dalliance.
He had seen her a fair number of times in the past few days and had even sat beside her for a whole segment of an evening concert. He could not now recall who the performers were. His attention had been taken up entirely with the woman who had sat quietly enthralled at his side. There had been none of the restlessness that was common in women—and men, he supposed—when forced to sit through a musical recital: no playing with a curl or a fan, no looking about to see who else was present, no attempt to hold a whispered conversation either with him or with his uncle at her other side. Just total concentration on the music.
So very typical of Emmy.
He was quite in love with her.
Roger looked down at the five roses in his hand and began to rearrange them absently. Where had that thought come from? And what a ridiculous thought! He did not believe in love. He would not recognize love if it formed itself into a fist and punched him in the nose.
But he was in love with Emmy. How very stupid of him. It was high time he left Bath. Perhaps after all he would satisfy himself with one night in Eugenia’s arms and take himself off the next day—while he still had some traces of his sanity left.
It was an anxious day for Emily. The letter Mr. Harris had written was clear enough—she had read it many times. And her answer had been clear. It had been delivered—she had asked Jasper. It was foolish, then, to worry that nothing would be delivered to her that day. No golden rose. Of course it would come.
But he had behaved no differently to her since writing that letter than he had before. A few times at the Pump Room he had greeted her and talked with Lady Copeland and Lord Westbury. Once at the library he had paused to recommend to her a book she had just withdrawn from a shelf. And one afternoon on the Crescent he had taken her on his arm and strolled with her for five minutes.
But there had not been a flicker of a sign that she was more than an acquaintance, no hint that he had written that note to her inviting her to be his valentine. No hint that to him she was his golden rose.
Of course he could do none of those things. There were the rules, which most gentlemen would keep, out of a sense of honor and of fun.
But even so, she had looked with some unease all week for something in his manner that would indicate a fondness for her. She had seen nothing.
Of course, it was foolish to believe that he was planning to make her an offer just because of that letter. The Valentine’s Ball was merely an entertainment, the invitations and the favors merely a game to brighten up the dull ending of winter. It was foolish to expect more than just a pleasant evening.
And did she want more? She felt a certain cringing from the thought of marrying Mr. Harris. There was something almost cold-blooded in contemplating marriage with a man she scarcely knew and for whom she felt no tenderness at all, merely because she was the eldest daughter of an impoverished family and must marry or spend her life in employment.
But if the rose would only come, she thought, pacing her room while waiting for her hair to dry, then at least she would be saved from humiliation. Lady Copeland knew that she was to be someone’s valentine. And of course Jasper knew. And oh, dear, Mr. Bradshaw knew too. She had told him so.
