She was not at all sorry. Or sorry for the fact that her purse was considerably lighter than it had been when she left home. She bought a plain ivory fan for Jennifer and a small vial of perfume for Dorothy.
She was balancing five packages in her arms as she walked along, telling herself with a smile that it was a good thing she had not brought more money with her. If she had, she would doubtless be lost behind a mountain of boxes by the time she reached the carriage.
She was still smiling when she collided with a large gentleman who was on his way out of a bootmaker’s. Two packages flew off in opposite directions, and the other three slid to her feet.
Ellen bent with anxious haste to retrieve the perfume and the porcelain jar.
“Beg pardon, ma’am,” the gentleman said, stooping down at the same moment. Ellen grimaced at the strong smell of brandy on his breath and realized that the collision had been caused not so much by her own carelessness as by the fact that he was foxed.
“There,” he said, holding out to her the two packages that she had not retrieved herself. “I hope there’s nothing in them to break, ma’am.”
Ellen stood staring stupidly at him and made no move to take the parcels that he held out to her. His eyes were glittering as they always had done when he was in his cups. His cheeks were perhaps a little more flushed than they had used to be. They were certainly more fleshy. And he was altogether heavier. His double chin looked strangled by his cravat.
He looked at her, his eyelids rather heavy. He frowned. “Do I know you?” he asked. “Deuced if I can place you, ma’am. I’ve had one too many, I’m afraid.”
“I’m Ellen,” she said.
“Ellen.” His hands, which had been holding out the parcels to her, dropped to his sides. “Well. You grew into a beauty after all. I knew you would. I’m foxed, I’m afraid. I wouldn’t have taken a drop if I had known I would bump into you. Ha! I really did bump into you, eh, Ellen?”
“Yes,” she said. My lord? Sir? Father? Papa?
“Who died?” he asked, indicating her black clothes with a somewhat uncoordinated wave of an arm.
“My husband,” she said.
“A soldier, wasn’t he?” he said. “I’m sorry, Ellen. Did he treat you right?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Better than your father did?” he asked. He grinned suddenly and hiccuped. “Pardon me. Indigestion. You don’t know to which father I refer, do you?”
“How are you?” she asked. Her lips and her jaw felt stiff. They would not quite move as she wanted them to move.
“As you see,” he said, making that expansive gesture with his arm again. “Not a care in the world, girl. That’s me.”
“I’m glad,” she said. And then she became aware of the world around them again. “I must be on my way.”
“Oh, yes,” he said jovially. “Mustn’t keep you.”
But after she had hesitated and hurried past him, he called to her.
“You forgot your parcels,” he said, holding them at the ends of outstretched arms. And when she walked back to retrieve them, “Do you have a kiss for your papa, Ellen?”
She looked mutely at him.
“I was your papa,” he said, his arms still extended. Attracting attention. “You don’t always have to beget a child to be its father, Ellen. Wasn’t I a good papa?”
“Yes,” she said, taking her packages from his hands. “Most of the time.”
“I was human,” he said. “We are all human. Come and see me. Will you come to see me, Ellen? I will stay sober if I know you are coming.”
“Yes,” she said. “I will come. Tomorrow. Shall I come in the afternoon?”
“For tea?” he said. “We will have a tea party, Ellie. Just the two of us.”
Ellie!
“Yes,” she said. “Just the two of us.” She had forgotten, completely forgotten, that old pet name. His arms were still spread out to both sides. A few pedestrians had been forced to step from the pavement into the roadway in order to pass him. He had drawn several curious glances.
Ellen turned and hurried away from the Earl of Harrowby. Her legs felt decidedly shaky by the time Dorothy’s coachman had helped her into the carriage and closed the door behind her.
“PERHAPS I SHOULD have called on them myself before now,” the Countess of Amberley was saying to her husband. “It is so hard to know what is the thing to do. They both looked so completely broken up when I met them in the park-you were still in Brussels at the time-that I felt it would be intruding to call on them. Especially when they did not call on me, as I had invited them to do.”
“She was looking quite cheerful this morning,” the earl said. “It is to be hoped that she is recovering, my love.”
“Do you think Dominic just imagined that she returned his feelings for a while?” she asked. “I still find it hard to believe, Edmund. She was so devoted to Captain Simpson, and he had been dead for only a month when you arrived there. Surely she could not have fancied herself in love with Dominic or anyone else, could she?”
“I really don’t know,” he said. “I know only what Dominic went through.”
“I would be so prostrate with grief if anything happened to you,” she said, “that I don’t think I would even know that anyone else existed in the world.”
He took her hand in a warm clasp. “It is impossible to know how one would act in a situation of such extreme catastrophe,” he said. “Impossible, Alex.”
“You are telling me that I am judging her too harshly if it all turns out to be true, then,” she said. “And you are right, of course. I am afraid my upbringing still clouds my vision at times, Edmund. I still tend to see things in very black-and-white terms, as Papa always does.”
“Mama and Madeline are entertaining the Simpson ladies this afternoon,” he said. “Did I tell you that?”
“No,” she said. “I didn’t know. Dominic is in communication with her, then? Or with Miss Simpson, perhaps. He seemed very fond of her when we were still in Brussels. This is all very intriguing, Edmund.”
“Perhaps we should take up matchmaking,” he said, easing the kid glove from her hand and laying his own fingers the length of hers on the seat between them. “With whom shall we match Dominic, Alex? With Miss Simpson, Mrs. Simpson, Anna, or Susan Jennings? We have quite a choice, don’t we?”
“I wouldn’t dream of even trying to interfere,” she said. “What a dreadful idea, Edmund. He will never marry Anna, though. He has never had any sort of tendre for her. Besides, she is your first cousin. And he would never seriously consider marrying Susan, would he? Oh, I do hope not. She is such an artificial little creature. And why are you grinning at me in that perfectly odious way?”
He made a kissing gesture with his mouth. “You fall into a trap so easily, Alex,” he said, lacing his fingers through hers and carrying her hand to his lips. “I love you.”
“Horrid man!” she said, maintaining her dignity and turning to look out the window.
ONE FACT WAS CLEAR to Lord Eden. He was still in love with Ellen Simpson. He wished it were not so. And he had really convinced himself that his infatuation with her had been a purely temporary thing brought on by the stress of circumstances. Until he saw her again, that was.
But it was not so. He loved her and had not slept at all during the night following their walk in Kensington Gardens. He had scarcely slept the night before, either, and even when he had, he had woken several times, his mind grappling each time with the question of whether he should be in his mother’s drawing room when she came to tea with her stepdaughter.
Something else was clear to him too. If he saw much more of Miss Simpson, there would be people to think that he owed the girl something. Like an offer of marriage. He had come perilously close in Brussels to committing himself. He did not want to put himself into the embarrassing predicament of feeling honor-bound to offer for the stepdaughter when he loved the stepmother. And had been her lover.
Then, of course, there was Anna. She had never made any secret of the fact that she intended to marry him when she grew up. But what had always amused him when she was a girl was somewhat more serious now that she was a lovely young lady who had made her come-out and who was definitely on the market for a husband. One of these days he was going to have to have a good talk with Anna. And she was coming to tea as well, with Aunt Viola.