Only Enchanting by Mary Balogh

21

It had always amused Flavian that any ton party described in advance as “small” and “intimate,” even one given before the spring Season proper began, almost invariably filled several rooms with guests. Anything larger was a “squeeze” and was the very ultimate in success for any hostess.

Marianne’s small evening party looked to be just that when he arrived with his wife and mother, for of course they were early despite the delay his confession in Agnes’s dressing room had caused. Flavian suspected, with an inward, half-amused grimace, that he was fated to become notorious for always arriving early to any social gathering. It hardly bore contemplating.

It did not take long for Shields’s drawing room to fill, however, and for the guests to spill over into the adjoining music room. The dedicated cardplayers among them soon discovered the salon across the hallway, where tables had been set up for their convenience, and the refreshment room next to it did not go long undiscovered.

Of course, any house except perhaps the largest mansion could be filled quite respectably just with his family members. Not that all of them had come to town yet, but there were enough, by Jove. And all of them wanted to pump Flavian by the hand, even if they had seen him during the past few days and already done so. They also wanted to kiss Agnes’s cheek, and say all that was proper to the occasion, and—in the case of a few of the younger male cousins—a few things that were improper, for Flavian’s ears alone, to the accompaniment of bawdy guffaws that brought frowns from the uncles, reproachful glances from the aunts, and the fluttering of fans from the female cousins, who suspected they were missing something interesting.

There were other guests who were not family, of course. Marianne took it upon herself to introduce Agnes, who looked lovely enough and dignified enough to be a duchess, Flavian thought with considerable pride, though this evening must be a severe trial to her. And this was only the beginning.

Perhaps, he thought after a while, his warning to her had been unnecessary. Even if word had spread about her father and his divorce, no one seemed inclined either to remark upon it or to shun the man’s daughter.

Even as he thought it, he heard Sir Winston and Lady Frome and the Countess of Hazeltine being announced. He was halfway between the drawing room and the music room, talking with a group of relatives and other acquaintances. Agnes was on the other side of the drawing room with Marianne, who was leaving her side to hurry toward the door, her right hand extended, a smile of welcome on her face.

Well, of course they had been invited. They were not even mere acquaintances, after all. They were neighbors in the country.

And was it his imagination, Flavian wondered, or had the buzz of conversation faltered slightly while people glanced from the new arrivals to him and to Agnes? But it was over in a moment, and the Fromes and Velma proceeded farther into the room to mingle with the other guests.

Though it had not been his imagination. Mrs. Dressler had set one gloved hand on his sleeve.

“I daresay your mama was disappointed, Lord Ponsonby,” she said, “when you married before you could meet Lady Hazeltine again this spring. It was a very sad thing when your betrothal to her came to an end all those years ago. You were such a handsome couple. Were they not, Hester?”

The lady applied to—Flavian could not at the moment recall her last name—looked a trifle embarrassed.

“Indeed they were, Beryl,” she said, “but Lady Ponsonby is really quite lovely, my lord.”

His mother and Marianne and Shields, as well as the Fromes and Velma, had been in London for a few days before he arrived with Agnes, Flavian recalled. He wondered, belatedly, whether during those days they had kept their matchmaking plans to themselves, all of them, or whether they had divulged their hopes to a select few of their acquaintances.

He would wager upon the latter.

Velma caught his eye across the room, smiled warmly, and raised one hand in greeting. But she did not approach him. She mingled with the groups around her, looking poised and lovely.

He forgot about her. He did what one did at such parties. He mingled and talked and listened and laughed. He kept an eye upon Agnes, but she did not appear to need his support. She was always occupied when he glanced her way and always smiling graciously, a becoming flush in her cheeks.

Dash it all, he thought at one point in the evening, as if he had been struck by some earth-shattering revelation, he was glad he had married her. He would not be married to anyone else in the world. Not for any consideration. Inevitably, he wanted her. But that thought, in the middle of a party while they were surrounded by at least a few dozen of his family members, was unworthy of him. His feelings for her went beyond the sexual. He was deucedly fond of her. He was beginning to understand Hugo and Ben and Vincent and how they must feel about their wives.

There was to be no formal supper, but the refreshment room positively groaned with delicacies both savory and sweet, and even offered a few tables at which guests might sit while they ate, if they so chose.

Flavian was sitting at one of the tables, eating more than his fair share of lobster patties, while Miss Moffatt was giving a brief recital on the pianoforte in the music room. He was with his cousins Doris and Ginny, and young Lord Catlin, who appeared to consider himself the latter’s beau, though Ginny was giving him no noticeable encouragement. Flavian was relaxed and enjoying himself.

Yes, the warning had been unnecessary, but he was glad he had given it, glad he had told her. It was over with, and tonight he would make amends.

That was when Cousin Desmond strolled up to join in the conversation for a minute or two. He would not pull up a chair, though, and he plucked at Flavian’s sleeve and gave him a significant look, coupled with a slight jerk of the head. Flavian put the rest of his patty into his mouth, excused himself, and got to his feet.

“What is it, Des?” he asked when they were out of earshot of the others.

“I am as sure as I can be, Flave,” Desmond said, “that neither m’ father nor Uncle Quent have uttered a word to anyone. Jenkins would not have done so either. And I certainly have not said anything.”

“About the d-divorce?” Flavian asked.

“About Lady Havell,” Desmond said, gripping his shoulder and squeezing.

“Ah,” Flavian said. “Well. We could not have expected the g-gossips to be content with half a s-story, could we? It was bound to come out.”

“I just heard the word whore,” Desmond said. “And the words whore’s spawn. Sorry, Flave. Not in the hearing of any lady, of course, though they are starting to buzz too. I thought you ought to know.”

“Indeed.” Flavian straightened the cuffs of his coat, ran a light hand over his neck cloth, grasped the handle of his quizzing glass, and strolled into the drawing room. He gazed about him with lazy eyes and curled lip in an expression he knew held people at bay.

It was instantly apparent that something had shifted in the atmosphere of the party, even apart from the slight hush his appearance caused. His relatives, almost to a man—and woman—were smiling more brightly and chatting more animatedly than was necessary. Marianne was looking more ostentatiously gracious than a hostess needed to look at this late stage of her party. Shields looked a bit tight about the lips. Flavian’s mother was seated in one corner, with Aunt DeeDee beside her and patting one of her hands. Velma was at one side of the room, fanning her cheeks and looking sweetly sad. Agnes was in the middle of the room, a bit of a space all around her except for that occupied by one lady with tall hair plumes—Lady March, whom he had encountered at Middlebury Park last autumn, he believed.

Flavian took in the whole scene in the blink of an eye, as well as the fact that the room was surely fuller than it had been earlier, despite that bit of an empty space at the center. Had the music room and the card room completely emptied out? But, no, someone was still trilling away on the pianoforte.

He strolled unhurriedly toward the center of the room, and a path opened for him as if by magic.

“Oh, yes, Lady March,” Agnes was saying, and it seemed to Flavian that she had deliberately raised her voice so that more people than just the March lady could hear her. “You are quite right about one thing. Lady Havell is indeed my mother, though Sir Everard Havell is not my father. My father is Mr. Walter Debbins from Lancashire. Had you not heard? I thought it was common knowledge. He and my mother were divorced twenty years ago when they discovered themselves sufficiently unhappy with each other. Not many married couples have that sort of courage, do they?”

She was smiling, though not with artificial brightness. The color was higher in her cheeks, though not unbecomingly so. She looked perfectly poised as she faced scandal and possible ostracism even before the Season began in earnest.

“Indeed,” Lady March said faintly. “And I wonder if Viscountess Darleigh of Middlebury Park, my niece, is aware of exactly who you are, Lady Ponsonby. I understand she befriended you when you were plain Mrs. Keeping.”

“And I befriended her,” Agnes said, her smile softening, “when she was new to her title and position and had been abandoned, even if only temporarily, by her own family. My father made a happy remarriage to my stepmother nine years ago, as my mother did to Sir Everard eighteen or nineteen years ago. They have lived a retired life together in Kensington ever since. Sometimes all really is well that ends well, ma’am, would you not agree?”

She smiled warmly at Flavian as he approached, his quizzing glass to his eye and trained upon Lady March’s plumes. They were of an extraordinary height. She must have them specially made, though Lord knew how she managed to get into a carriage with them. Had March had a hole sawn in the roof? He lowered his glass, smiled languidly, took his wife’s hand in his, and raised it to his lips.

“I called upon them there this afternoon,” he said on a sigh. “My mother-in-law and all that. Have you m-met them, ma’am?”

Lady March appeared to crumple slightly under the full onslaught of his most sleepy gaze, though her plumes, made of sterner stuff, still stood stiffly at attention. He had left her with only one thing to say, and she said it.

“I have not had that pleasure, Lord Ponsonby,” she said, her voice almost vibrating with outrage.

“Ah,” he said, “a pity. Charming couple.”

But she had been bested. So had everyone else who had shared her desire to be spiteful, to embarrass the new Lady Ponsonby, to cut her down to size, perhaps to ensure that she was given the cut direct by the ton as her mother had, merely because she was the daughter of that mother.

And because she had dared come between him and Velma, Countess of Hazeltine?

He looked toward where Velma had been standing when he came into the room. She was still there, slowly fanning her face, smiling sweetly. Their eyes met, and he inclined his head in acknowledgment of the fact that he understood.

She had lied to his brother most cruelly because she had decided to marry him instead, to be Viscountess Ponsonby for longer than just a few months or years until consumption killed David. She had lied when she might simply have explained to David that she wished to be set free and then have waited until after his death to set her cap at him.

What Velma had wanted, she had almost always got. He could remember that now. She had been blessed with parents who doted upon her and could deny her nothing.

How strange that memory could so have shut down until last night.

“Have you eaten, my love?” he asked Agnes, offering his arm for her hand.

“I have not,” she said. “I have been too busy meeting all your family and acquaintances, Flavian. But I am famished.”

He led her in the direction of the refreshment room, though it seemed that half his aunts and uncles then present, not to mention about a quarter of the cousins, wanted to talk to them, to touch them, to laugh with them. To show the family joining ranks, in other words.

There would be no scandal, Flavian guessed. Gossip, yes, for a while. The bulk of the ton, newly arriving in town over the next month, would be regaled with the story of the new Viscountess Ponsonby’s lineage and would chew it over in drawing rooms and clubs for a week or so before turning its attention to more recent and more salacious gossip.

Agnes had rescued herself.

“I could not eat a thing if my life depended upon it,” she said as he showed her to a table.

“Then I shall f-fetch you some tea or lemonade,” he said, “and toast you for your brilliance, Agnes.”

“Forewarned is forearmed,” she said. “I have never known the truth of that before tonight. And I have you to thank.”

She looked pointedly at him when he returned with two glasses.

“My love?” she said, raising her eyebrows.

He was baffled for a moment. But he had called her that in the drawing room, had he not?

“It seemed the right thing to say at the t-time,” he said, raising his glass to toast her and watching two cousins make their way toward them. “My love.”

*   *   *

They did not talk privately again that night. They did not make love either. He came to her bed—it was very late, and she was already lying down. He snuffed the single candle, lay down beside her, drew the bedcovers warmly over them, and wrapped his arms about her, drawing her against him. He sighed once against the side of her face, and was asleep.

This was what she most needed, she realized. She needed to be held just like this. She needed the warmth of him.

She dreaded to think what would have happened this evening if he had not warned her, if he had not found out her mother’s identity and whereabouts for himself and actually gone to Kensington to call upon her.

Even so . . .

Well, even so she was weary to the marrow of her bones. Too weary to sleep. As if meeting so many members of his family was not enough for one evening, some of them stern and pompous, some hearty and welcoming, most polite and willing enough to give her a chance. Of course, now there was not much they could do about it, bar snubbing and offending Flavian, who was, after all, the head of the family, at least his father’s side of it. And as if meeting what seemed an endless stream of unrelated strangers was not enough for one evening. How could everyone keep claiming that London was still empty of company? What on earth was it going to be like after Easter?

And as if seeing the arrival of the Countess of Hazeltine with her parents was not enough for one evening, and watching the ease with which she moved about the drawing room, mingling with Marianne’s guests, looking lovely and a bit fragile. And of course everyone present would remember that she had once been betrothed to Flavian—two beautiful people. And Agnes would wager that everyone knew that Velma and her parents and Flavian’s mother and sister had hoped to see a renewal of their courtship and betrothal this year. Everyone would be watching now to see how the two of them behaved in company with each other—and how the new wife would behave. And whether she knew.

Oh, it had all been quite enough to deal with in one evening, well before Agnes had felt something change in the atmosphere of the room about her, rather as though an invisible hand were making its stealthy way up her spine in the direction of her neck. Just so the whispers of impending scandal crept about the ton, she realized. And she had known what was coming several minutes before it actually did come, first with a strange sort of space growing around her, even though the room seemed to be more crowded, and then with the arrival of Lady March at her side.

“Ah, Lady Ponsonby,” she had said, the emphasis sounding faintly malicious, “I was never more surprised in my life than I was a few minutes ago. I understand you are the daughter of Sir Everard and Lady Havell.”

Strangely, once it was all out in the open, Agnes had felt calm again. The invisible hand on her spine disappeared, was shrugged off for the ghost it was. She was also again and instantly aware of how much she owed to Flavian, furious though she had been with him earlier in the evening.

She curled against him now and felt herself sliding toward sleep after all. Part of her yearned to be back in her own peaceful life with Dora in the cottage at Inglebrook. Except that it was no longer her own life. This was. She had married Flavian.

Given the choice, would she go back? Would she undo everything that had happened?

She fell asleep before she had answered her own questions.

Flavian was gone when she awoke in the morning, and she realized she must have slept late, an unusual thing with her. There was a cup of chocolate on the small chest beside her bed, but its top was a film of gray, and she guessed the drink was cold. She felt a bit glum as she dressed, even though it was a bright, sunny morning. He would doubtless be gone by the time she went down to breakfast, and she would not see him again until goodness knew when. And what would she do with her day? Would her mother-in-law have something planned? Or would she advise remaining at home in the hope that whatever scandal had been brewing last night would blow over before she emerged again?

What was life going to be like after Easter?

Flavian had not gone out, however. He was at the breakfast table, reading the paper while his mother read a letter that must have come with the morning post. Flavian lowered the paper to bid Agnes a good morning and gestured with his head toward her place at the table.

“You have l-letters,” he said. “Plural.”

She fell upon them with what she suspected was undignified eagerness while he watched. She had had none since they arrived in London, and realized how very isolated she had felt. Now suddenly there were three, all of them in handwriting that was familiar to her. She set aside Sophia’s and Dora’s to read at leisure after she had read her father’s.

It was very typical of him—brief and dry. He was pleased to hear of her marriage to a titled gentleman and trusted that her new husband also had the means with which to support her in some comfort. His health was tolerably good, and her stepmother, she would be pleased to hear, was enjoying her usual robust health, though unfortunately the same could not be said for either her sister or her mother, both of whom had taken a chill earlier in the spring and had not yet shaken off its full effects, though they were eating rather better than they had even just a week or so ago, and he entertained the cautious hope that another month would see them restored to full health. He was her affectionate father, etc. etc.

Affectionate.Had he ever been? Well, at least he had never been openly unkind or cruel, as many fathers were.

“Your f-father, I assume?” Flavian asked. “It was franked in Lancashire. Is he likely to turn up on my doorstep, horsewhip in hand?”

“Oh, surely not, Flavian,” his mother said, looking up from her own letter. “Even gentlemen from Lancashire know how to be civil, I trust?”

“He simply hopes that you are able to provide for me,” Agnes said, and his eyes laughed at her even as he tipped his head slightly to one side and looked more searchingly at her.

“He does not disapprove?” he asked. “Or wish he might have attended the w-wedding?”

“No.” She shook her head and broke the seal on Sophia’s letter.

“I heard someone say yesterday,” Flavian said before she started reading it, “that we are b-bound to suffer for all this lovely spring weather we are having. One can always depend upon at least o-one person to say it. But on the chance that he may be right, shall we make the m-most of the sunshine before the suffering begins? Shall we walk in Hyde Park?”

“Today? This morning?” She gave him her full attention. “Alongside Rotten Row? To see and be seen?”

He lifted one eyebrow.

“Your new outfits are very fetching,” he said, “and I can understand your d-desire to show them off. B-but I was hoping to be more selfish and have you to m-myself. There are other, more secluded paths to walk.”

Her heart turned over.

“I would like nothing better,” she assured him.

He closed his paper and got to his feet.

“Is half an hour long enough to r-read your letters and get ready?” he asked.

“Flavian!” his mother protested. “Agnes will need at least an hour just to get ready.”

Agnes smiled. She could have been ready in ten minutes.

“Shall we say three-quarters of an hour?” she suggested.

An hour later they were strolling in an area of Hyde Park that felt more like the countryside than part of one of the largest metropolises in the world. The path was rough underfoot, the trees thick and green around them, the stretches of grass visible between their trunks slightly more overgrown than the lawns elsewhere. Best of all, there was no one else in sight, and the occasional sounds of voices and horses were distant and only served to emphasize their near seclusion.

Agnes inhaled the smell of greenery and felt a rush of contentment. If only every day could be like this.

“Do you miss the countryside, Agnes?” he asked her.

“Oh, I do,” she said in a rush. “But how foolish I am. Any number of people would give a great deal to be in London as I am, to be looking forward to the social Season, to have a dressing room full of new clothes and the prospect of balls and parties and concerts at which to wear them.”

They had stopped walking at the top of a slight rise in the path as though by mutual consent, and they both tipped back their heads to gaze upward through the branches of a particularly large and elderly oak to the blue sky above. He turned about in a complete circle.

“Are you all right?” he asked her. “After last night?”

“Yes.” She laughed slightly. “Is that what is known as a baptism by fire, do you suppose? But who would so diligently have sought out the skeletons in my closet? And why?”

“Velma,” he said. “Because she d-did not get her way.”

She had suspected it, known it, really. But what did the countess have to gain now? Flavian was not going to divorce her, after all, merely on the strength of who her mother was.

Because she did not get her way,he had just said. Was that sufficient motive? Simple spite?

She drew a deep breath and released it slowly.

“Tell me what you know about her,” she said. “About Lady Havell, that is. My mother.”

Neither of them was looking at the sky any longer. They moved off the path into the even-deeper seclusion of the ancient trees, and she stood with her back against the trunk of an oak, while he stood in front of her, one hand braced against the trunk on one side of her head.

“They have been shunned by society ever since their m-marriage, I would guess,” he said. “I believe they are fond of each other but not particularly h-happy.”

“He is definitely not my father?” she asked him.

He shook his head. “I am as sure as I can be that she was faithful to your father until after she left him. You were five years old by then.”

She closed her eyes and lifted one gloved hand to set against his chest. At the same moment they both heard a group of people approaching along the path, talking and laughing until they must have spotted the two of them. There was a self-conscious silence then as the footsteps went past, and some stifled giggling after that until the group had passed out of earshot.

“One can only h-hope,” Flavian said on a sigh, “that we were not r-recognized, Agnes. There is nothing more damaging to a man’s reputation than to be seen in close and clandestine embrace with his own w-wife.”

“What a pity,” she said, “that they misinterpreted what they saw.”

“And that,” he said, “is even more lowering.”

He took a firm step closer, pressing her to the tree along her full length before kissing her openmouthed. She laughed in delighted surprise when he lifted his head a moment later and regarded her lazily. And she wrapped her arms about him as his came about her, and they kissed at far greater length and with warm enthusiasm.

“Mmm,” he said.

“Mmm,” she agreed.

He took a step back and clasped his hands behind his back.

“She admits,” he said, “that you have every right to hate her. She admits that she abandoned you and your s-sister—and your brother too—when she might have stayed. She r-ran away, she told me, after your father had denounced her at an assembly and told her for all to hear he would divorce her for adultery. She had f-flirted rather too incautiously with Havell, she said, but had done nothing more indiscreet than that until she ran away. She might have returned. Apparently your f-father had had too much to d-drink, and everything might have been patched up if she had gone home a few days later. But she d-did not go.”

Agnes closed her eyes again, and there was a long silence, during which he stood where he was, not touching her. It was all so believable. Her father did not drink to excess very often. It was very rare, in fact. But when he did, he could say and do foolish, embarrassing things. Everyone knew it. Everyone made allowances and conveniently forgot his lapses.

And her mother, it seemed, had acted upon the sudden impulse not to return home when she might have done so and had chosen to remain with the man who then became her lover and, later, her husband. A sudden, impulsive decision. She might just as easily have decided the other way. Just as she, Agnes, might just as easily have said no to Flavian the night he returned from London with a special license.

The course of one’s whole life—and the lives of those intertwined with one’s own—could be changed forever on the strength of such abrupt and unconsidered decisions.

“You did not say I would call on her?” she asked him.

“I did not,” he said.

“Maybe one day I will go,” she said. “But not yet. Maybe never. But you are right. It is as well to know. And to know that Dora and Oliver are my full sister and brother. Thank you for going, and for rescuing me from shock and embarrassment last evening. Thank you.”

She opened her eyes and smiled at him.

From a distance they could hear the sound of other people drawing closer.

“Shall we move on?” He offered his arm, and she took it.

They walked in silence until they had passed an older couple, exchanging smiles and nods as they did so. The day was growing warmer.

“Would you like to go to Candlebury, Agnes?” he asked her.

“Now?” she asked in surprise. “But there is the Season, my presentation at court, the ball to introduce me to the ton. Everything else.”

“If you want them,” he said, “we will stay. But everything can wait if we choose—if you choose. It can all wait a month or two months or a year or ten. Or f-forever. Shall we go to Candlebury? Shall we go h-home?”

She stopped walking again and drew him to a halt. She could see the Serpentine in the near distance. Soon they would be among other people walking beside the water.

“But you have been avoiding Candlebury Abbey for years,” she said. “Are you sure you want to go there now? Are you doing this for me?”

“For us,” he said.

She searched his eyes, longing welling up inside her. Shall we go home? he had said. There were memories there for him. Conscious, painful ones of his brother’s last days. And unconscious ones, she suspected. She suspected too that it was both facts that had made him reluctant for so long to return there. Now he wanted to go—for her sake and for theirs.

She smiled slowly at him.

“Let’s go home, then,” she said.