What a thing to say. And what a fishing expedition. As if he was everhanging aboutanybody! He was a viscount; he did not hang about anywhere.
And then, why was the lady repeating something she had most likely been told in confidence,ifshe had ever been told it at all. Did she wish to paint Lady Clara as unseemly jealous?
“The Bennington family and I are of long acquaintance,” he said noncommittally.
“Of course,” Lady Mary said. “And so quite natural that you would put yourself down for her supper.”
“Indeed so.”
“Although, there is some talk going round about a scuffle between you and Conbatten over Lady Beatrice’s card?”
Matthew inwardly groaned. No doubt Darden’s friends, always looking for an amusing piece of gossip, had gone round making it more significant than it was.
“There was no scuffle,” he said.
“Ah well,” Lady Mary said, looking very pleased to hear it, “you know theton, always talking. They say there is a battle for Lady Beatrice’s heart. Personally, I think they’ve got it all wrong. It is true the duke pays marked attention, but I have never seen anything but old family friendship onyourside.”
Matthew would very much like to know whotheywere who did all this talking. Of course,theymight be only Lady Mary’s imagination.
Then again, they might not. At least, not as far as the duke paying Beatrice marked attention. Anybody could see that.
“Perhaps the duke does pay marked attention,” Matthew said stiffly. “He is not alone, as far as I can see.”
“Oh no, he is not,” Lady Mary said. “But nobody believes in Lord Darden’s friends—they are only amusing themselves. Everybody knows their circumstances and, while all different, none of them are set to marry any time soon. Goodness, they just put that club together, the Young Bucks Club, I believe they call it.”
This was outrageous…and all too believable. Matthew had thought there was something false in those idiots. They were toying with Beatrice for their own amusement! And Darden was allowing it to go on!
Did nobody in the world have any sense left?
Mercifully, no dance could go on forever. Though he had thought it exceedingly odd to have footmen running about, dispensing champagne on the ballroom floor, he was now rather glad of it.
He took a glass from a passing tray and fortified himself for his dance with Lady Clara. Hopefully, that lady would not have as much to say as Lady Mary had.
*
The dance beforethe supper was approaching ever nearer, until suddenly it was time. Beatrice’s thoughts had been racing this way and that, never stopping at any firm idea.
She could not know if other people’s assumptions about Van Doren were true. It seemed so unlikely. It seemed so impossible. But what if it were not impossible?
Beatrice had a feeling very like she used to have all those years ago, as if her blood had run to champagne when she noted him riding out of the wood and toward the house.
Back then, she would be giddy and grab one of her dolls to leave in the drawing room and then act shocked to her shoes when he hid it. She would demand he retrieve it and he would demand she find it and it would be a merry hour of hunting round the house.
Was this odd returning feeling real though, or just a sort of nostalgia for a time gone by? Was it real, or just the fantasy she had built up back then, and long outgrown?
Beatrice had stolen glances at Van Doren all night and made herself a tedious dancing partner in the process, she was sure.
When she stepped back and viewed him, he was so handsome. So commanding, somehow. She watched his dance with Lady Mary and he did not look over-jolly and forcing amusement, as so many gentlemen were prone to do.
There was something thrilling in it. But, were she to allow her feelings to go any particular way in regard to Van Doren, could it be right? What of her tortured gentleman?
He, though she did not yet know his identity, was consumed by passion. While the idea Lynette had posited, that Van Doren would be brought to his knees, was a thrilling one, it was likely not true. In the end, he was too sensible and too constrained to be brought thus. It was only thrilling in its utter impossibility.
Beatrice began to notice that her requirements, those attributes she had composed so carefully before coming to Town, had not been thought of recently. Why was she not hoping for a gentleman tearing out his hair these days? Therewasa gentleman in such a condition, so why think of anybody else in any manner at all?
Could her father have been right all along? That she would throw her requirements out a window?
But if that was what she did, who did she throw them out for?
