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“I know just what you mean,” Darby said quickly, seeing the blue eyes fill up with tears again. “Shall I call your maid?

I fear that your guests may begin to wonder where you are.”

Esme blinked. “Oh dear. I suppose more rice powder is in order. I do have to spend a great deal of my time covering up evidence of my deranged spirits. You can have no idea.”

For a moment they just looked at each other, an impeccably groomed gentleman with a damp shoulder, and a frowzledlooking, very pregnant gentlewoman with reddened eyes, and then they both broke into laughter.

“When your own wife is increasing, Simon, you’ll grow to see how weepy a condition it is.”

“I look forward to it with bated breath,” he said gravely, kissing the very tips of her fingers.

< 8 =

A Light Supper Is Served in the Rose Salon By taking great care, Henrietta managed to walk without limping to a small table in the Rose Salon, where a light supper was being served. The room was a graceful rectangle, with beautiful arched windows that looked into a conservatory. Those windows lent the conservatory just enough countenance that it was deemed adequately chaperoned, and thus became a pleasant trysting spot for amorous couples. Lady Rawlings had arranged for tables to be spread about the room in charming disarray, while a sideboard at the far end was piled with dainties. Henrietta joined her stepmother and her stepmother’s bosom friend, Lady Winifred Thompson. When Mr. Darby finally sauntered into the room, they all instinctively paused in their conversation. If he had been elegant in the Golden Hind, he was magnificent in evening clothing. He wore a velvet suit of a dark red color, with a complicated lace neck cloth and lace falling over his hands. To Henrietta’s eyes, he looked terrifyingly expensive.

“Oh, my goodness,” Lady Winifred said in a faint voice.

“I remember my father wearing great lace cuffs that buttoned onto his shirt. But one never sees men wearing that Fool for Love

55

sort of thing anymore. You’d think it would look oldfashioned, but it doesn’t at all, does it? I expect my husband will think it rather effeminate.” She giggled. “My husband is so unobservant.”

Henrietta agreed. Lace on Mr. Darby looked anything but effeminate. For years she had welcomed home young ladies from their debut season, girls who returned engaged to marry or not, but universally replete with tales of how exquisite London dandies were, how dazzlingly proper, how gloriously unlike the country bumpkins of Wiltshire. Henrietta had always thought those tales must be exaggerated. She had mentally produced pictures of foppish, delicate men, mincing about London cobblestones in their highheeled shoes. But the truth was far from it. She never thought there were such men in the world, men with hair that gleamed in the candlelight, and cheekbones higher than her own, and a languid elegance that spoke of leashed power. Of maleness. Mr. Darby’s clothes were obviously made in London. But he inhabited them with male grace, and he wasn’t overly fastidious. He wasn’t wearing gloves, for instance. And his hair was much longer than men wore it in Wiltshire and tied at his neck with a ribbon.

Lady Winifred was ogling the man shamelessly. “Lady Rawlings’s nephew, isn’t he? I do believe I met him in London last season. You know, Darby was Rawlings’s heir, at least until Lady Rawlings showed signs of increasing. I doubt not but that he’s come to the country to wait out her confinement.”

“An unpleasant interpretation of his visit,” Henrietta said flatly, as a whole flock of matrons descended on Darby. A woman with a towering arrangement of hair, only to be outdone by a nose that dominated her face, plumped herself into his way like an iceberg before a ship. “I am Mrs. BarretDucrorq of Barret Park,” she announced. “I believe we met last season at Mrs. Crawshay’s musicale.”

56 Eloisa

James

Darby bowed. “I am afraid not, madam, as I do not have the pleasure of Mrs. Crawshay’s acquaintance.”

“Well, it must have been somewhere!” she shrilled. “Perhaps it was Bessie’s house—Lady Panton, that is.”

The woman couldn’t know Elizabeth Panton. Lady Panton was so formal that she wore a feathered headdress to a simple musicale; it was impossible to imagine her responding to a name like Bessie. But what was the point of protesting?

“You are likely right,” he murmured, kissing her hand. “I must remind—ah, Bessie—next time I see her.”

Mrs. Barret-Ducrorq burst into an excited medley of speech, overjoyed at having established her friendship with a leader of the ton. Darby let it wash over him, simply nodding at appropriate intervals and surreptitiously gazing around the room. Stout squires and their flounce-trimmed wives sat about fanning themselves vigorously. The only young women he could see were sallow types with slumping shoulders and damp noses. And the lascivious matron whom he’d met on entering the house, Mrs. Davenport. Or rather, Selina, since she insisted within a minute of their meeting that he address her intimately. Finally, he spied his acquaintance of the afternoon. Even from here he could tell that Lady Henrietta was as poorly gowned as she had been in the afternoon. The color of her gown seemed to be giving her hair an odd greenish tint. Still, he felt a sort of mild interest in making her further acquaintance. Mrs. Barret-Ducrorq was summoning various ladies, in the manner of one auctioning a prize guinea fowl, and introducing him as her bosom friend: Mrs. Colville, Mrs. Cable (where did she get that grotesque tippet?), Mrs. Gower. Soon Darby was surrounded by a circle of matrons asking him about “events” of the town, and the newest styles. Unfortunately, his reputation as an arbiter of fashion had preceded him to the country.

“I’m afraid that I have no particular opinion of pearls,”

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Darby said, bowing for the hundredth time or so. “Boots?

Well, ladies’ boots . . . yes they certainly do match the pelisse this season.”

Just then Selina Davenport managed to push her way into the circle and leaned toward him in such a way that her breasts bounded slightly into the air.

“Mr. Darby, I am simply longing to be told some tattle from London,” she said roguishly. “Due to illnesses and death in my family, I shall be visiting London this spring for the first time in years.” She fanned herself vigorously, her eyes making an unspoken invitation over the edge of her fan.

“I’m sure that you could tell us some fascinating tittletattle about Rees Holland, Earl Godwin, for example.” She leaned forward, and her breasts almost escaped and brushed his coat. “Is it quite true that he has installed an opera singer in his house?”