“I’m sorry, but I have a good seven or eight minutes left of a lecture for Thom—”
“She’ll have to hear it later,” Harry said with one of those persuasive twinkles in his eyes. Plum never could hold out against his twinkles. He added a devilish grin to his twinkling eyes, and she knew she was doomed.
“My spleen will become enlarged if I do not unburden myself of the entire lecture,” she protested, but gently for she knew that her spleen could never win against both the grin and the eyes.
“I will personally guarantee that your spleen will not suffer,” Harry said, bowing low to her as the first figure of the dance began. Plum curtseyed, casting a warning glance over her shoulder to her niece. Thom waved and sat down next to a large matron in a voluminous puce gown. Praying she would stay there out of trouble, Plum relaxed enough to enjoy the lively dance, something she hadn’t done in twenty years.
“I’m surprised I remember the steps,” she told Harry as the dance brought them together. “It’s been so very long.”
“You never looked lovelier,” Harry answered before they were separated to dance with their adjacent neighbors.
Plum glowed at his compliment, knowing that he was deliberately attempting to bolster her spirits in what he realized must be a trying night for her, but still pleased that he took the time to tell her how well she looked. The truth was that she was beginning to enjoy herself. Probably a good part of that had to do with the fact that there were so few people present whom she remembered from her two seasons.
A short, red-haired gentleman with a receding chin was her partner for this turn. As she danced forward to him, she realized with a start that she knew him — he had been one of her first beaus. What was his name? Sir Alan? Alec? Sir something-starting-with-anA didn’t seem to recognize her in the least. He smiled at her as she danced around him, returning to stand as he danced a circle around her.
“This is a very charming ball, is it not?” she asked as they came together.
“It is indeed. Very charming.”
“Are you here with your family?”
“Yes, my eldest daughter is coming out. That’s her near the duchess — Mariah, her name is.”
“She’s very pretty,” Plum answered, noting the resemblance between the short, red-haired girl and her partner. “Is your wife here as well?”
“Yes indeed, Lady Davell is just beyond Mariah.”
Davell — he was Sir Ben Davell, the first man to ever send her a bouquet following her coming-out. And here he was, a middle-aged balding man with a daughter almost as old as she had been when they first met.
And he didn’t recognize her.
“I am Lady Rosse,” she said as they clasped hands and made a bridge for others to pass under.
“Yes, I know, you were pointed out to me.”
“Really?” Plum stiffened, wondering why anyone would point her out unless it was to pinpoint her for rumor mongering.
“My wife pointed you out to me. She said you are newly wed to Lord Rosse.”
“Oh, yes, we are.” He was polite, respectful — everything a gentleman should be. There wasn’t even the faintest whiff of anything condescending or smug about him. Plum relaxed again and danced the rest of the figure in a thoughtful mood, returning to Harry even more grateful than before that she’d found him.
“Happy?” he asked at one point in the dance.
“Ecstatic,” she answered a few minutes later, when they were again brought together.
And she was. Everything Harry had promised had come true — she had met nearly everyone present, from the duchess who was a cousin to the hostess to the Feehan sisters, two very old wrinkled ladies who were said to have been the late George II’s mistresses. The Feehan sisters of Plum’s memory had sharp eyes for scandal, and sharper tongues, and yet when she was introduced to them, they cackled over her newlywed status by making a rather questionable remark comparing Harry to a stallion and her to a mare, but not one eyelash did they bat over her. It was as if the last twenty years were nothing but an unpleasant dream, lingering in the back of her mind, but groundless, with no substance.
The fiddles drew out the long last notes of the dance, and she sank into a deep curtsey, smiling at Harry as he took her hand to guide her off the floor. “Thank you.”
“For the dance?”
“For making my life wonderful. No one else could do it but you. No one else could give me such happi—”
The words froze on her lips as the people before her parted, baring to her view the sight of a man bending over their hostess’s hand in greeting. The man straightened up, his eyes meeting hers, recognition dawning as she froze into a giant lump of solid horror.
“Gack,” she gasped, her blood turning to ice.
“What?” Harry asked, his voice concerned.
In a panic, Plum’s first thought was to run. Since that was impossible, nor would it do any good, her second was to get rid of Harry. “Water. I need…water. Or punch. Could you please get me a cup, Harry?”
“Yes, of course.” Harry guided her over to an empty chair. “I’ll be right back.”
Plum cast a quick glance around the room, but no one seemed to have seen anything out of the norm. Thom was chatting with a pretty young woman, and didn’t in the least bit notice when Plum got to her feet to greet the man of middle height and nondescript brown hair who approached her.
“Plum?” the man said, his nostrils flaring for a second, his mud-colored gaze sliding over her bodice. The boldness with which his gaze rested on her left her feeling dirty, as if she needed to bathe in order to remove the taint of his attention. “It is you, is it not? My dearest Plum, what a pleasure to see you again.”
Plum closed her eyes for a moment, swaying a little as the room dipped beneath her feet. “Yes, it is me, Charles. What a horribly unpleasant surprise. They told me you were dead.”
“They were wrong. I was insensible for several months, having received a blow to my head in a boating accident, but as you can see, my health is quite well.” He took her hand and made a show of kissing the back of it.
Plum snatched it back. “Go away.”
“My dear, wild horses could not drag me from your side. Can it be you hold some animosity toward me regarding that regrettable experience so many years past?”
“Regrettable experience? You ruined me, deliberately and willfully.” Plum’s hand itched to strike the smug smile off his face.
He shrugged, still wearing the abominable smile. “A young man’s folly. My family told me you had gone into seclusion, and yet here I return to my native shores to find you as delightful as ever — and quite in the thick of society. You have done very well for yourself, Plum, very well indeed. Might I ask who your protector is?”
“Protector?” Plum’s eyes widened as she realized just what he implied. “Harry is not my protector, he is my husband.”
“Really?” Charles drawled, looking about himself with his quizzing glass. “You managed to marry? How very droll. I had assumed no man would wish to burden himself with another man’s leavings, but then, I have been away for many years. Evidently not all is as I remembered.”
“Not every man has as crass and disgustingly low a nature as you possess, Charles,” Plum said, noting that Harry had returned to the room, and was starting around the dancers with a cup of punch in his hands. She had to get rid of Charles, and fast, and at the same time squelch any notions he had of discussing her past. If she could just get through the evening, then she could think how best to deal with him. “Some men have honor. My husband is well aware of the sad trial I have lived through, and doesn’t give a fig for it. As you can see I am received by all, so nothing you can possibly say about the past will have any effect.”
“No?” Charles said, raising his hand in acknowledgment when an acquaintance beckoned to him. “Indeed, you have done well for yourself, Plum. My congratulations on your success…both in your happy marriage and your literary endeavors.”
Plum froze again, this time into a glacier of fear and horror and every last one of her worst nightmares.
Charles leaned close, his breath hissing in her ear as he whispered, “How very satisfying it is to be the man who taught the infamous Vyvyan La Blue everything she knows.”
For an awful moment, Plum was sure she was going to vomit, but as the seconds passed and Charles took himself off, she managed to push the bile that rose within her down enough to give Harry a feeble smile when he made it to her side.
“Your punch, my lady…Plum? Are you unwell?”
Harry’s voice was warm with concern, breaking through the wall of ice that had enclosed Plum. She turned to him, desperately needing his strength, needing him to comfort her, but the look of concern in his eyes was her undoing. How could she repay him with cruelty for all the kindnesses he had shown her?