The party from Portland House caused quite a stir as they rode through the village. It was generally known that the duke and duchess were gathering their family around them for a few weeks in preparation for the grand ball that was to be held in less than two weeks' time in honor of their fiftieth wedding anniversary. It was many years since all the family had been gathered together here. There had been the time when Master Alexander had lived there, a perfectly quiet and nicely behaved young gentleman until he was joined by Master Jack, Master Peregrine, and the young ladies. Then they had all been holy terrors. The only one of the whole pack who had been invariably courteous to all the lesser mortals of the village was Master Frederick, who had always stayed to smile and nod after the others had taken to their heels, having upset an applecart or done something equally mischievous. But then, everyone had suspected that poor Master Frederick did not have all his wits about him.
Now those who were on the street or close to a window as the barouche passed, followed closely by a group of horses, saw that indeed all those naughty children had grown up into remarkably handsome and fashionable ladies and gentlemen. The vicar's wife was one who saw them coming. She shrieked to her girls, who were all in the room with her, variously employed, and rushed to the study to inform her husband that the young people from the house were approaching. Her son was there too, perched on the edge of his father's desk, swinging a leg and mending a pen.
Thus it was that by the time Hortense and Patience had been helped from the barouche and the men had all dismounted and secured their horses to the picket fence that surrounded the vicarage, the buxom figure of Mrs. Fitzgerald was curtsying in the doorway, the thin, slightly stooped figure of the vicar behind her rubbing his hands together, a gaggle of girls behind them, each striving to get a view of the visitors. Only Bertrand Fitzgerald dared venture out of the house. He came bounding down the pathway, right hand extended.
"Jack, Perry, Freddie!" he exclaimed, shaking hands heartily with each one in turn. "How bang up to the minute you all look. I say, this is famous. Where's Alex?"
"Rehearsing," Freddie explained, "for Grandmamma's play, y' know. Has brains, has Alex. Big part. Must practice lots. I just have a small part. No brains, y' see. Can't hold the lines in m' head."
He spoke the last words to Mrs. Fitzgerald, who was smiling and curtsying in front of him. Bertrand had already been claimed by the girls.
"What, Fitz," Hortense cried, pushing past Peregrine, "are we invisible just because we are females? For shame."
"Well," Bertrand said, standing back and looking admiringly at his former playmates, "aren't you the grand ladies all of a sudden? I wouldn't have recognized either of you without tangled curls and smudged noses and tears in your dresses."
Jack had immediately singled out the prettiest and the youngest of the three Misses Fitzgerald. "Rose," he said, taking her hand and holding it far longer than was necessary, "the last time I saw you, you had so many freckles one might not have put a pin between them. I would not have guessed then that you would grow into such a beauty. And to think that I have already wasted three days at Portland House."
The seventeen-year-old Rose blushed deeply and smiled, totally enslaved.
"Come along, Frederick," the oldest Miss Fitzgerald said in her rather masculine, no-nonsense voice. "You shall tell us all about the play inside. Here you are blocking the pathway so that no one else can get near the door."
"How right you are, Ruby," Freddie said, looking behind him in surprise. "Damme, but I didn't notice. You're a sensible female. Always were, I remember." He allowed her to take his arm and lead him inside.
It was noticeable that all members of the party were in a considerably more cheerful frame of mind one hour later when they were on their way back home. Finally they had contacted sanity and normality again.
Merrick and Anne looked into each other's eyes for a few uncomfortable moments before he turned away and began pacing back and forth in front of her.
"Why must you take this whole damned thing so seriously, Anne?" he said. "Are you trying to put us all to shame?"
"No!" she protested. “I am merely trying to do my best. Grandmamma wants us to perform this play for an audience. It seems to me that we owe it to her to make the performance as good as we are able."
"What do you owe Grandmamma?" Merrick asked, coming to a stop before Anne and glaring at her. "A public place in the family? Are you reveling in it, Anne, and are you hoping that if you act like her blue-eyed girl, she will persuade me to take you back home with me? Is that what you want? To be the Viscountess of Merrick, to be shown off to all the ton?"
There were tears in Anne's eyes, but she kept her chin up and looked steadily back at him. "No," she said, "you know I could not be so conniving, I think. The duchess has been kind to me, Alexander, and she has made me feel a part of her family. I have never before felt part of any family."
"I cannot act this scene with you, or any of the other scenes," Merrick said. "Can you not understand that I want no part of you? How can I stand with you here, speaking words of love and admiration, watched by Claude and frequently by several of the others? I would prefer to be alone, trying to forget your existence."
His words were deliberately brutal, and he turned away as she bit her lip. He could see that she was trying to control her facial muscles so that she would not cry before him. His words were foolish, anyway. How could he say he wanted no part of her when he could not stay away from her at night? How could he claim to be trying to forget her existence when he had made love to her each night with such obvious hunger? He ran his fingers through his hair, leaving it tousled. He took a deep breath.
"I do not know the words of the scene as well as I should," he said. "I had better sit down and read through them again before Claude returns."
"Alexander," she said. Only the slightly higher-than-usual tone of her voice indicated her distress. "Can you not forget who I am while we are acting this play? Can you not pretend that you are Charles Marlow and that I am Kate Hardcastle? Must we show everyone in your family that there is so much bad feeling between us? I shall not impose more of my company upon you than these rehearsals call for, and I shall be quite content to return to Redlands after the ball. You need not be afraid that I shall try to remain with you. Why would I want to stay where I am considered nothing? Why should I deliberately court a life of abuse and misery?"
Her face was very white and very set, Merrick noticed when he looked at her, startled. It was the first sign of spirit he had ever seen in her. He bowed formally, picked up his book from a table where he had flung it earlier, crossed to the opposite end of the ballroom, and seated himself with his back to her, the book open on his lap.
He failed to notice during the ten minutes that elapsed before the return of Claude that the book was upside down. Damn it, but he hated her. He wanted to hurt her. He had never in his life felt so out of control of his destiny. She was nothing. She was a nobody, without vitality or personality. He could no longer say she was without beauty; she was damned pretty, in fact. But she was so bland. Her answer to everything seemed to be to stare accusingly at him out of those large gray eyes, which were as often as not filled with tears. He wanted to shake her, slap her, provoke her somehow to… what? He did not even know. Did it matter to him what she did? He did not even want her in his life. She did not fit into any of the plans he had ever made for himself.