Almost Heaven by Judith McNaught
Ormsley beamed. “He did indeed, your grace.”
“I feel twenty years younger.”
Ormsley nodded. “This is a very great day.”
“What in hell is keeping Anderson? I need a shave. I want evening clothes—black, I think—a diamond stickpin and diamond studs. Stop thrusting that cane at me, man.”
“You shouldn’t overly exert yourself, your grace.”
“Ormsley,” said the duke as he walked over to an armoire and flung the doors open, “if you think I’m going to be leaning on that damned cane on the greatest night of my life, you’re out of your mind. I’ll walk in there beside my grandson unaided, thank you very much. Where the devil is Anderson?”
* * *
“We are late, Alexandra,” said the dowager duchess as she stood in Alex’s drawing room idly examining a magnificent fourteenth-century sculpture reposing on a satinwood table. “And I don’t mind telling you, now that the time is upon us, I have a worse feeling about this now than I did earlier. And my instincts are never wrong.”
Alexandra bit her lip, trying to fight down her own growing trepidation. “The Willingtons are just around the corner,” she said, dealing with the matter of lateness before she faced more grim details. “We can be there in a matter of minutes. Besides, I want everyone there when Elizabeth makes her entrance. I was also hoping that Roddy might yet answer my note.”
As if in response to that, the butler appeared in the drawing room. “Roderick Carstairs wishes to be announced, your grace,” he informed Alex.
“Thank heavens!” she burst out.
“I showed him into the blue salon.”
Alex mentally crossed her fingers.
“I have come, my lovely,” Roddy said with his usual sardonic grin as he swept her a deep bow, “in answer to your urgent summons—and, I might add,” he continued, “before I presented myself at the Willingtons’, exactly as your message instructed.” At 5’10”, Roddy Carstairs was a slender man of athletic build with thinning brown hair and light blue eyes. In fact, his only distinguishing characteristics were his fastidiously tailored clothes, a muchenvied ability to tie a neckcloth into magnificently intricate folds that never drooped, and an acid wit that accepted no boundaries when he chose a human target. “Did you hear about Kensington?”
“Who?” Alex said absently, trying to think of the best means to persuade him to do what she needed done.
“The new Marquess of Kensington, once known as Mr. Ian Thornton, persona non grata. Amazing, is it not, what wealth and title will do?” he continued, studying Alex’s tense face as he continued, “Two years ago we wouldn’t have let him past the front door. Six months ago word got out that he’s worth a fortune, and we started inviting him to our parties. Tonight he’s the heir to a dukedom, and we’ll be coveting invitations to his parties. We are”—Roddy grinned—“when you consider matters from this point of view, a rather sickening and fickle lot.”
In spite of herself, Alexandra laughed. “Oh, Roddy,” she said, pressing a kiss on his cheek. “You always make me laugh, even when I’m in the most dreadful coil, which I am now. You could make things so very much better—if you would.”
Roddy helped himself to a pinch of snuff, lifted his arrogant brows, and waited, his look both suspicious and intrigued. “I am, of course, your most obedient servant,” he drawled with a little mocking bow.
Despite that claim, Alexandra knew better. While other men might be feared for their tempers or their skill with rapier and pistol, Roddy Carstairs was feared for his cutting barbs and razor tongue. And, while one could not carry a rapier or a pistol into a ball, Roddy could do his damage there unimpeded. Even sophisticated matrons lived in fear of being on the wrong side of him. Alex knew exactly how deadly he could be—and how helpful, for he had made her life a living hell when she came to London the first time. Later he had done a complete turnabout, and it had been Roddy who had forced the ton to accept her. He had done it not out of friendship or guilt; he had done it because he’d decided it would be amusing to test his power by building a reputation for a change, instead of shredding it.
“There is a young woman whose name I’ll reveal in a moment,” Alex began cautiously, “to whom you could be of great service. You could, in fact, rescue her as you did me long ago, Roddy, if only you would.”
“Once was enough,” he mocked. “I could hardly hold my head up for shame when I thought of my unprecedented gallantry.”
“She’s incredibly beautiful,” Alex said.
A mild spark of interest showed in Roddy’s eyes, but nothing stronger. While other men might be affected by feminine beauty, Roddy generally took pleasure in pointing out one’s faults for the glee of it. He enjoyed flustering women and never hesitated to do it. But when he decided to be kind he was the most loyal of friends. “She was the victim of some very malicious gossip two years ago and left London in disgrace. She is also a very particular friend of mine from long ago.”
She searched Roddy’s bland features and couldn’t tell whether she was getting his support or not. “All of us—the dowager duchess, Tony, and Jordan—intend to stand with her at the Willingtons’ tonight. But if you could just pay her some small attention—or better yet, escort her yourself—it would be ever so helpful, and I would be grateful forever.”
“Alex, if you were married to anyone but Jordan Townsende, I might consider asking you how you’d be willing to express your gratitude. However, since I haven’t any real wish to see my life brought to a premature end, I shall refrain from doing so and say instead that your smile is gratitude enough.”
“Don’t joke, Roddy, I’m quite desperately in need of your help, and I would be eternally grateful for it.”
“You are making me quake with trepidation, my sweet. Whoever she is, she must be in a deal of trouble if you need me.
“She’s lovely and spirited, and you will admire her tremendously.”
“In that case, I shall deem it an embarrassing honor to lend my support to her. Who—” His gaze flicked to a sudden movement in the doorway and riveted there, his eternally bland expression giving way to reverent admiration. “My God,” he whispered.
Standing in the doorway like a vision from heaven was an unknown young woman clad in a shimmering silver-blue gown with a low, square neckline that offered a tantalizing view of smooth, voluptuous flesh, and a diagonally wrapped bodice that emphasized a tiny waist. Her glossy golden hair was swept back off her forehead and held in place with a sapphire clip, then left to fall artlessly about her shoulders and midway down her back, where it ended in luxurious waves and curls that gleamed brightly in the dancing candlelight. Beneath gracefully winged brows and long, curly lashes her glowing green eyes were neither jade nor emerald, but a startling color somewhere in between.
In that moment of stunned silence Roddy observed her with the impartiality of a true connoisseur, looking for flaws that others would miss and finding only perfection in the delicately sculpted cheekbones, slender white throat, and soft mouth.
The vision in the doorway moved imperceptibly. “Excuse me,” she said to Alexandra with a melting smile, her voice like wind chimes, “I didn’t realize you weren’t alone.”
In a graceful swirl of silvery blue skirts she turned and vanished, and still Roddy stared at the empty doorway while Alexandra’s hopes soared. Never had she seen Roddy display the slightest genuine fascination for a feminine face and figure. His words sent her spirits even higher: “My God,” he said again in a reverent whisper. “Was she real?”
“Very real,” Alex eagerly assured him, “and very desperately in need of your help, though she mustn’t know what I’ve asked of you. You will help, won’t you?”
Dragging his gaze from the doorway, he shook his head as if to clear it. “Help?” he uttered dryly. “I’m tempted to offer her my very desirable hand in marriage! First I ought to know her name, though I’ll tell you she suddenly seems damned familiar.”
“You will help?”
“Didn’t I just say so? Who is that delectable creature?”
“Elizabeth Cameron. She made her debut last—” Alex stopped as Roddy’s smile turned harsh and sardonic.
“Little Elizabeth Cameron,” he mused half to himself. “I should have guessed, of course. The chit set the city on its ear just after you left on your honeymoon trip, but she’s changed. Who would have guessed,” he continued in a more normal voice, “that fate would have seen fit to endow her with more looks than she had then.”
“Roddy!” Alex said, sensing that his attitude toward helping was undergoing a change. “You already said you’d help.”
“You don’t need help, Alex,” he snickered. “You need a miracle.”
“But—”
“Sorry. I’ve changed my mind.”
“Is it the—the gossip about that old scandal that bothers you?”
“In a sense.”
Alexandra’s blue eyes began to spark with dangerous fire. “You’re a fine one to believe gossip, Roddy! You above all know it’s usually lies, because you’ve started your share of it!”
“I didn’t say I believe it,” he drawled coolly. “In fact, I’d find it hard to believe that any man’s hands, including Thornton’s, have ever touched that porcelain skin of hers. However,” he said, abruptly closing the lid on his snuffbox and tucking it away, “society is not as discerning as I, or, in this instance, as kind. They will cut her dead tonight, never fear, and not even the influential Townsendes or my influential self could prevent it. Though I hate the thought of sinking any lower in your esteem than I can see I already have, I’m going to tell you an unlovely truth about myself, my sweet Alex,” he added with a sardonic grin. “Tonight, any unattached bachelor who’s foolish enough to show an interest in that girl is going to be the laughingstock of the Season, and I do not like being laughed at. I do not have the courage, which is why I am always the one to make jokes of others. Furthermore,” he finished, reaching for his hat, “in society’s eyes Elizabeth Cameron is used goods. Any bachelor who goes near her will be deemed a fool or a letch, and he’ll suffer her fate.”
At the door he stopped and turned, looking unperturbable and amused as usual. “For what it’s worth, I shall make it a point to proclaim tonight that I for one don’t believe she was with Thornton in a cottage or a greenhouse or anywhere else. That may slow down the tempest at first, but it won’t stop it.”
21
Less than an hour later, in the crowded, noisy, candlelit ballroom, Alexandra was painfully aware that all Roddy’s predictions had been accurate. It was the first time in her recollection when she and Jordan were not completely surrounded by friends and acquaintances and even hangerson eager to incur Jordan’s favor and influence. Tonight, however, everyone was avoiding them. In the mistaken belief that Jordan and Alexandra would be deeply chagrined when they discovered the truth about Elizabeth Cameron, the Townsendes’ friends were politely trying to lessen their inevitable embarrassment by simply pretending not to notice that the Townsendes were present and in the company of Elizabeth Cameron, whose reputation had sunk beneath reproach during their absence from England. Although they ignored Jordan and Alexandra out of courtesy, they, like everyone else at the ball, didn’t hesitate to cast scathing glances at Elizabeth whenever they could do so without being seen by the few people she’d evidently duped into befriending her. Standing near the dance floor where dancers were whirling about—and stealing smirking glances at Elizabeth—Alexandra was caught between tears and fury. As she looked at Elizabeth, who was making a magnificent effort to smile at her, her throat constricted with guilt and sympathy. The laughter and music were so noisy that Alex had to lean forward in order to hear what Elizabeth was saying.
“If you don’t mind,” Elizabeth told her in a suffocated voice that belied her smile and made it obvious to Alex that she was drowning in humiliation, “I—I think I’ll just find a retiring room and see to my gown.”
There was nothing whatever wrong with Elizabeth’s gown, and they both knew it. “I’ll go with you.”
Elizabeth shook her head. “Alex, if you don’t mind . . . I’d like to be alone for just a few moments. It’s the noise,” she lied bravely.
Elizabeth moved away, keeping her head high, threading her way through six hundred people who either avoided meeting her gaze or turned away to laugh and whisper.
Tony, Jordan, the duchess, and Alexandra all watched her as she walked gracefully up the stairs. Jordan spoke first, careful to keep the emotion out of his voice for fear that if he showed how infuriated he was with all six hundred people in the ballroom, Alexandra would lose her slender thread of control, and the tears shining in her eyes would fall down her flushed cheeks. Putting his arm around her waist, he smiled into her tear-brightened eyes, but he spoke quickly because, as Elizabeth walked away, the acquaintances who’d been giving the Townsendes a wide berth were beginning to start their way.
“If it is any consolation, darling,” Jordan told her, “I think Elizabeth Cameron is the most magnificently courageous young woman I’ve ever met. Except for you.”
“Thank you.” Alexandra tried to smile, but her gaze kept reaching for Elizabeth as she moved up the curving staircase.
“They will regret this!” the dowager said frigidly, and to prove it, she turned her back on two of her intimate friends who were now approaching her. The dowager’s acquaintances had been the only ones to join the Townsendes tonight, because they were of her own age, and so several of them were unaware that Elizabeth Cameron was to be ridiculed, scorned, and snubbed.
Swallowing a lump of tears, Alex glanced at her husband. “At least,” she said, trying to joke, “Elizabeth hasn’t been completely without admirers. Belhaven’s been hanging about her.”
“Because,” Jordan said without thinking, “he’s on everybody’s blacklist, and no one has condescended to share the gossip about Elizabeth with him—yet,” he amended, watching with narrowed eyes as two elderly fops tugged Belhaven’s sleeve, nodded toward Elizabeth’s back, and began to speak rapidly.
Elizabeth spent the better part of a half hour standing alone in a small, dark salon, trying to compose herself. It was there that she heard the excited voices of guests discussing something that on any other night would at least have evoked a feeling of shock: Ian had just been named heir to the Duke of Stanhope. Elizabeth felt no emotion at all.
In her state of consuming misery she was incapable of feeling anything more. She remembered, though, Valerie’s voice in the garden long ago as she looked through the hedge at Ian: “Some say he’s the illegitimate grandson of the Duke of Stanhope.” The memory drifted past Elizabeth’s mind, aimless, meaningless. When she had no choice but to return to the ballroom she crossed the balcony and descended the stairs, wending her way through the crowd, avoiding the malicious eyes that made her skin burn and her heart contort. Despite her brief respite her head was pounding from the effort of maintaining her composure; the music she’d once loved blared discordantly in her ears, shouts of laughter and roars of conversation thundered around her, and above the din the butler, who was positioned at the top of the stairs leading down to the ballroom, called out the name of each new arrival like a sentry tolling the time. Many of the names he called out Elizabeth recalled from her debut, and each one identified another person who, she knew, was about to walk down the stairs and learn to their derision that Elizabeth Cameron was there. One more voice would repeat the old gossip; one more pair of ears would hear it; one more pair of cold eyes would look her way.
Her brother’s arrogance in refusing her suitors two years ago would be recalled, and they would point out that only Sir Francis would have her now, and they would laugh. And in some ways, Elizabeth couldn’t blame them. So utterly shamed was she that even the occasional faces that looked at her with sympathy and puzzlement, instead of contempt and condemnation, seemed vaguely threatening.
As she neared the Townsendes she noted that Sir Francis, clad in
He looked very handsome, very sincere, and slightly ill at ease. “Elizabeth,” he said quietly, “you are looking lovelier than ever.”
He was the last person in the world she’d have expected to take pity on her plight, and Elizabeth wasn’t certain whether she was grateful or angry, since the abrupt withdrawal of his offer had vastly contributed to it. “Thank you, my lord,” she said in a noncommittal voice.
“I wanted to say,” he began again, his eyes searching her composed features, “that I—I’m sorry.”
That did it! Annoyance lifted Elizabeth’s delicate chin an inch higher. “For what, sir?”
He swallowed, standing so close to her that his sleeve touched hers when he lifted his hand and then dropped it to his side. “For my part in what’s happened to you.”
“What am I to say to that?” she asked, and she honestly did not know.
“In your position,” he said with a grim smile, “I think I’d slap my face for the belated apology.”
A touch of Elizabeth’s humor returned, and with a regal nod of her head she said, “I should like that very much.”
Amazingly, the admiration in his eyes doubled. When he showed an inclination to linger at her side, Elizabeth had no choice but to turn and introduce him to the Townsendes— with whom, she discovered, he was already acquainted. While he and Jordan exchanged pleasantries, however, Elizabeth watched with growing horror as Valerie, evidently resentful of Mondevale’s brief desertion, began moving forward. Walking with her as if they were moving as one, were Penelope, Georgina, and all the others, closing in on a panicking Elizabeth. In a combined effort to sidle away from them and simultaneously rescue Alex from Sir Francis’s boring monologue and roving eyes, Elizabeth turned to try to speak to her, but Sir Francis would not be silenced. By the time he finally finished his story Valerie had already arrived, and Elizabeth was trapped. Reeking with malice, Valerie cast a contemptuous look over Elizabeth’s pale face and said, “Well, if it isn’t Elizabeth Cameron. We certainly never expected to see you at a place like this.”