Lord Havelock's List. Annie Burrows
was not going to harbour a single uncharitable thought towards them. Not when they’d been the only ones of her extended family to make room for her in their lives. The girls could have protested when their mother told them Mary was to share their room. But they hadn’t. They’d just said how beastly it must be for her to have nowhere else to go and emptied one of the drawers for her things.
Mary had tried to repay them all by making herself useful about the house. And until tonight, she’d thought she was beginning to make a permanent place for herself.
But it was not to be. Aunt Pargetter, who wasn’t even really an aunt at all, but only a distant connection by marriage, might be kinder than most of the relatives she’d met so far, but it was absurd to think she would house her indefinitely.
Even so, she was not going to tamely submit to her misguided plans to marry her off. No matter how kindly meant the intention was, such a scheme wouldn’t do for her.
In the morning, she would find out where the nearest employment agency was located and go and register for some kind of work. Not that she had any idea what she might do. She darted a look at Aunt Pargetter, wishing she could ask her advice. But it would be a waste of time. Aunt Pargetter, though kindness itself, was also one of those females who thought marriage was the height of any woman’s ambitions and wouldn’t understand her preference for work.
Well, then, she would just have to, somehow, discover where the agency was on her own. Although what excuse she could give for wishing to leave the house, she could not think. Everyone knew she had no money with which to go shopping. Besides, since she was a stranger to London, either Dotty or Lotty, or probably both, would be sent with her to make sure she didn’t get lost.
She became so wrapped up in formulating one plan after another, only to discard it as unworkable, that she scarcely noticed when the dancing came to a halt and people began to make their way to the supper room. Until Viscount Havelock brushed the fronds of the potted palm to one side, smiling down at her as he offered her his hand.
‘Are you ready for a bite to eat? I must confess, all this dancing has given me quite an appetite.’
‘Oh. Um...’ He wasn’t out of breath, though. Her cousins were fanning their flushed faces, Mr Morgan was mopping his brow with a handkerchief, but Lord Havelock wasn’t displaying the slightest sign of fatigue. He was obviously very fit.
Not that she ought to notice such things about a man.
Flustered by the turn of her thoughts, she took the viscount’s hand and allowed him to place her hand on his sleeve.
It must just be that something about him reminded her of her brother’s friends. Several of them had been of his class and had about them the same air of...vitality. Of vigour. And the same self-assurance that came with knowing they were born to command.
She regarded her hand, where it lay on his sleeve. The arm encased in the soft material of his evening coat felt like a plank of oak. Just like her brother’s had. And those of his friends he’d sometimes brought home, who’d escorted her round the town. Not that this viscount actually worked for his living, like those lads who’d served in the navy. From what she knew of aristocrats, he probably maintained his fitness by boxing and fencing, and riding.
He was probably what her brother would have called a Corinthian. She darted a swift glance at his profile, taking in the firm set of his jaw and the healthy complexion. Yes, definitely a Corinthian. At least, he certainly didn’t look as though he spent his days sleeping off the effects of the night before.
And, if he was one of the sporting set, that would explain why he wore clothing that looked comfortable, rather than fitted tightly to show off his physique. He might not be on the catch for an heiress at all.
Her cheeks flushed. She couldn’t believe she was speculating about his reasons for being here. Or the body underneath his clothing. Not that she’d ever spent so much time thinking about a man’s choice of clothing, either. Just because he seemed better turned out than any other man present, in some indefinable way, she had no business making so much of it.
‘I hope the crowd of people we are following are heading to the supper room,’ he said, breaking into her thoughts.
‘I...I suppose they must be,’ she replied, but only after casting about desperately for an interesting reply and coming up empty.
‘You are not a regular visitor to this house?’
She shook her head. ‘I have only been in London a few days,’ she admitted. ‘I don’t know anyone.’
‘Apart from the lady you are with. Your...aunt?’
Mary shook her head again. ‘I had never even met her before I turned up on her doorstep with a letter of introduction from my lawyer. And to be perfectly frank, I’m not at all sure the connection is...’
Suddenly Mary wondered why on earth she was telling this total stranger such personal information. It couldn’t be simply because there was something about him that put her in mind of her brother and his fellow officers, could it? Or because he’d given her that look, earlier, that had made her feel as though he was genuinely interested?
How pathetic did that make her? One kind word, one keen look, a smile and a touch of his hand and she’d been on the verge of unburdening herself.
Good grief—she was as susceptible to a good-looking man as the cousins she’d decried as ninnies not an hour earlier. She, who’d sworn never to let a handsome face sway her judgement, had just spent a full five minutes wondering how he managed to keep so fit and speculating about the cut of his clothes, and what lay beneath them.
‘You don’t really have any family left to speak of, is that what you were about to say?’
She couldn’t recall what she’d been about to say. Nor even what the question had been. Her mind kept veering off into realms it had never strayed into before and consequently got lost there.
‘Your...aunt, or whatever she is,’ he persisted, while her cheeks flooded with guilty heat, ‘said you are in mourning. Was it...for someone very close?’
Well, that dealt with the strange effects his proximity had been wreaking in her mind and body. He might as well have doused her with a bucket of cold water.
‘My mother,’ she said. ‘She was all I had left.’
She might be in a crowded ballroom tonight, on the arm of the most handsome and eligible man in the room, but the truth was that she was utterly alone in the world, and destitute.
‘That’s c...’ He pulled himself up short and patted her hand. ‘I mean to say, dreadful. For you.’
They’d reached the doorway now and beyond she could see tables laid out with a bewildering array of dishes that looked extremely decorative, but not at all like anything she might ever have eaten before.
Since they’d both come without an invitation, space was found for them at a table squeezed into the bay of a window.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said when he noted her gaze darting about anxiously. ‘I shall make sure we find your aunt once we have eaten and return you to her side in complete safety.’
She was amazed he’d noticed how awkward she felt. And that he’d correctly deduced it was being separated from her aunt that had caused it. Most men couldn’t see further than the end of their noses.
He must have noticed the way she’d eyed the food with trepidation, too, because he took great care, when offering her dishes, to ask if she liked the principal ingredient of each. Which deftly concealed her ignorance. For he could have explained what everything was, making her feel even more awkward, whilst puffing off his own savoir faire. As it was, since the other men at their table were passing dishes round, and helping the ladies to slices of this, or spoonfuls of that, nobody noticed anything untoward.
Eventually, her plate, like that of everyone else at the table, was piled high and conversation began to flow.
Except