Margaret McPhee - Regency Desire

‘I hope you enjoy yourself, too, Alice.’

‘Oh, I’ll be doing that, all right. You needn’t worry on that account.’

‘Will you be all right with Frew?’

‘I know how to deal with Frew. He’ll be getting a few dances and not a thing more.’

The two of them laughed, knowing that Alice could more than handle herself.

The ballroom was crowded. Alice caught sight of Venetia and Linwood standing talking with Linwood’s parents, Lord and Lady Misbourne, and Venetia saw her, but they could not give any acknowledgement, or even appear to notice one another. Ton and demi-monde. Two different worlds indeed, even if they were standing only a few yards apart in the same room.

Alice was wearing a new dress from Madame Boisseron. It had cost a small fortune, much more than Alice would ever normally have paid for a dress, but she had bought it, and a few others, with the winnings from her card game. The skirt was plain ivory silk, the bodice was gold silk, suggestively cut and fitted, but without even a hint of cleavage on display. The dressmaker had said that it would make every man that looked at it unable to take his eyes from her, which, judging from Frew’s reaction, seemed to have been an accurate prediction.

It had small gold sleeves that were really just two bands of silk framing her fully exposed, naked shoulders. She wore not so much as a ribbon or a necklace, neither a bracelet nor a ring, and yet Madame Boisseron had been right to say the dress was designed to be worn this way, without a single item of adornment. Alice had known it the moment she looked at herself in the peering glass. And she knew it now from the way every gentleman in the room was looking at her. And the way Venetia raised her eyebrows and sent her a secret smile.

Razeby was dancing with some respectable young lady across the dance floor. Alice told herself it did not matter. Every man in Razeby’s position had to do the same, eventually. It was just as he had said—he had a duty to marry and provide an heir. She ignored the stab of jealousy and moved her mind to more pleasant thoughts.

She glanced across at Frew, and the fact that he so clearly thought himself so handsome and a gift to all of womankind made her want to chuckle; he set not a single firework alight in Alice’s arsenal.

‘You are looking especially beautiful tonight, Miss Sweetly,’ he said.

‘You’re too kind, Mr Frew.’

‘My given name is Edward.’ His eyes stared deeply into hers, affecting a smoulder that at best appeared contrived, and at worst as if he had contracted an ocular complaint.

‘How interesting, Mr Frew.’ She smiled.

Razeby would have laughed at the response. Frew just looked slightly aggrieved.

She refrained from teasing him further and resigned herself to a very dull evening in his company. ‘So what was that poem you recited in the Green Room the other night?’

‘I wrote it just for you, Miss Sweetly.’ Frew began to recite the flowery words again, but Wordsworth had nothing to worry about. After two verses she knew that if Frew made one more reference to long thrusting swords and softly dewed maidens she would not be able to keep a straight face.

Halfway through the dance his hand took hers and their steps led them to exchange places. It was the point she had been waiting for. She glanced again towards Razeby, whispering his name in her mind as if to call him.

Razeby’s eyes moved to meet hers, as if answering her call. She watched his gaze drop to her dress and sweep over it before coming back up to her face. She held his gaze, gave him a small teasing smile. Nice? it asked.

Very nice, indeed! His eyes answered with an unmistakable interest.

She gave him a naughty arch of her eyebrows, knowing full well what it would do to him, before she turned back to Frew.

She leaned her mouth closer towards Frew’s ear, let him hold her that little bit closer than respectability decreed. ‘Tell me that last line again, Mr Frew. You do have such a way with words.’

Frew positively puffed out his chest, and, looking like a man that thought his luck was in, he obliged.

By the next time she could glance in Razeby’s direction she saw he was watching Frew with a distinctive glower.

She drew Razeby an admonishing look.

He put on his innocent face.

She gave that smile that told him she was not fooled for a minute by his protested innocence.

He grinned an admission.

The dance took them away from one another. She did not see him again, only Frew. And she could not help feeling a little deflated at that. But not as disappointed as Frew at only being allowed a chaste kiss of her hand when he delivered her home.

When she lay in bed that night it was not Frew she was thinking of or his terrible poetry, but Razeby.

No one could accuse her of avoiding him. Not after Dryden’s. Not after White’s. And not after tonight. She smiled because it felt like her plan was coming together. And she smiled just because she had enjoyed the little exchange with him and it made her feel warm and dangerous and excited. In the back of her mind she heard again the whisper of Venetia’s warning. There was a truth to it, she acknowledged, because as surely as Alice dangled an enticement before Razeby, she felt the pull of him. There was a rapport and an attraction that existed only with him. And that was a very dangerous thing. Venetia was right; she should have a little more care in her dealings with Razeby.

‘You know you are more than welcome to come, Razeby, but do you really think it is a good idea?’ Linwood asked his friend as they sat together in the drawing room of Linwood’s home a few nights later. He got up and poured two glasses of brandy from the decanter that sat on the nearby desk, passing one of them to Razeby.

‘A man is entitled to one night off.’ Razeby accepted the brandy with a murmured ‘thank you’. He knew what Linwood was saying was true. Going to watch Alice in one of her plays in the company of Linwood and his wife was the worst idea in the world. He knew it and yet here he was sitting in Linwood’s drawing room, suggesting the idea. ‘Besides, I have a wish to see the play.’

Linwood raised a single, dark, sceptical eyebrow. ‘Or a wish to see Miss Alice Sweetly.’

‘Maybe,’ he conceded. ‘She is the most talked-about actress in all London. Her reputation as a serious actress on stage challenges both Venetia’s and Mrs Siddons’s. Maybe I just want to see how her performance has developed.’ And part of that was true. But only part.

Linwood did not look convinced. ‘Your presence will not go without comment.’

‘Because Alice was once my mistress? Am I never to set foot in the Theatre Royal again?’

‘No one is saying that.’ Linwood met his gaze. ‘But what happened to the clean severance?’

‘The severance was clean. Alice understands the situation as well as I do. There is nothing between us save for civility.’ But he was lying. There was something very much more than civility between them. Something that was driving this compulsion he felt to see her.

‘It is not as if I have lost sight of what I am doing. I will be at Almack’s tomorrow.’ There was no harm in just seeing her. He drank the brandy down and glanced away towards the window. It changed nothing, save made him feel better. ‘I will have myself a wife before the Season is done, Linwood. I have to. There can be no two ways about it.’

‘I understand that it is “over” between you and Alice, but have you considered that when it comes to finding a wife there is always next Season?’ asked Linwood.

Razeby smiled and met Linwood’s eyes. ‘No, my friend, there is not,’ he said quietly. It was as close to telling him the truth as he could come.