Chapter Three
“If I could just have my spectacles back,” Arabella said reasonably, “I would be much more comfortable.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” her aunts snapped, in unison once more.
“You can’t wear a ballgown with spectacles,” Aunt Maria added dismissively. “You would be a figure of fun.”
“I shall be funnier when I fall flat on my face,” Arabella murmured.
If they heard, they pretended not to, so she sighed and followed them out of the hotel rooms. It had been a faint hope. Watching people would have passed the time. She knew from experience that sitting against a wall for several hours was incredibly dull with nothing to occupy one’s mind. Her nerves were usually too jangled to concentrate on books she had read, or the one she had begun to write. But tonight, she thought optimistically, she would be invisible, close herself into her imaginary bubble and make plans.
She didn’t expect to dance. She was rarely asked, except by gentlemen who wished to oblige her father or brother. Even gazetted fortune hunters avoided her for fear of her powerful family. There were always easier pickings than the Duke of Kelburn’s plainest daughter. In any case, she never looked her best in the overelaborate costumes foisted on her by her worldly sisters and aunts. She looked like a coat stand someone had thrown a gown and too many jewels over. And they would curl her hair, which always made her feel like a stranger with a tight scalp.
Not that it mattered. If tonight was not a success, and she could imagine no reason why it would be, her aunts would simply give up on what they saw as her last gasp.
Uncle Smedley, Maria’s husband, awaited them in the foyer. He made a ponderous compliment about the bevy of beauty it was his pleasure to escort, and offered the older ladies his arms. Which at least gave Bella, trailing behind, a brief moment of amusement as the three of them tried to get out of the front door in a row.
Although the summer daylight was only just beginning to fade, the Assembly Rooms were lit up by a thousand candles. Carriages were dropping people off at the door and driving off to make way for the next one. Presumably, these passengers were local gentry coming into town for the event, or those too frail to walk the distances from the further edges of town. Arabella gritted her teeth and prepared to endure.
If she’d hoped to pass the evening in dull anonymity, she was doomed to disappointment. A man in a black coat took their cards from them at the ballroom door and announced loudly: “Mr. and Mrs. Smedley. Lady Sarah Niven and Lady Arabella Niven.”
Even Arabella could see the immediate turning of heads. As the old fisherman had told her, the presence of the Duke of Kelburn’s family could not but cause a stir.
Bella peered at her feet to make sure there were no stairs to stumble down.
“Look up!” Uncle Smedley hissed. “And smile, for God’s sake.”
She wasn’t sure baring her teeth at this point would have quite the effect Uncle Smedley hoped for. The thought of her snarling at the inoffensive revelers at least made her want to laugh, though for everyone’s sake, she swallowed that back, too.
“Don’t skulk behind your aunts,” Smedley commanded. He had, apparently, taken his wife’s scheme to heart. “Allow yourself to be seen. Promenade with grace. Look as if you’re graciously pleased to be among them.”
I’m not, she thought miserably. I want to leave.
Since she couldn’t, without making an almighty fuss that would be unbearable, she walked blindly behind her aunts and obediently sat where they bade her. A waiter offered them a choice of champagne or lemonade.
Champagne was more than she’d hoped for from a provincial assembly. She rather liked the little fizz of fun that came with it. However, before she could grasp the glass, Uncle Smedley thrust the lemonade into her hand.
She bit back her annoyance, vowing to find her own drink when his back was turned. Sipping her lemonade, she leaned back and prepared to be ignored.
However, she reckoned without Uncle Smedley, who brought her a callow youth who could have been barely twenty years old. The boy asked her civilly to dance, and with the eyes of her family glaring at her, she could not refuse.
Arabella was not a great dancer. Despite knowing the steps, she always felt clumsy and disconnected. As a result, making conversation was doubly difficult. Somehow, she got through the ordeal. She suspected the young man was as relieved as she when the dance ended, and he politely conducted her back in the direction of her aunts. Bella was eight and twenty years old. She felt ridiculous being taken back to her family like some young debutante. But she allowed it since she could then go back to being a wallflower. Providing Uncle Smedley didn’t make it his duty to drag unwilling dance partners to her all evening. Perhaps he would consider his duty done and retire to play cards or something.
However, before they even reached the wall, they came upon Aunt Sarah in conversation with a distinguished looking gentleman. Aunt Sarah halted Arabella by simply grasping her arm.
Her erstwhile partner, whose name she couldn’t recall, effaced himself, as Aunt Sarah said, “Ah, my dear, allow me to present Mr. Tranter, who is visiting Blackhaven with his mother. Mr. Tranter, my niece, Lady Arabella Niven.”
The man turned toward her, smiling. He had a soothing kind of smile and an unthreatening expression. And at least he was not twenty years old. Or sixty. He looked to be in his late thirties perhaps, and smartly dressed without any excesses of fashion. A gentleman without pretensions.
“How do you do,” he said politely. “Lady Sarah tells me you have not been well.”
“Oh, just a cough,” she said hastily. “It is almost gone. And you, sir. Your mother is sick?”
“Oh, just a little convalescence. She heard such wondrous stories of Blackhaven’s waters that nothing would do but that she must try them. Do you find them beneficial?”
“Well, they are inoffensive,” Bella said doubtfully. “I’ve only been here two days, so I cannot really tell…”
“Would you grant me the honor of a dance, Lady Arabella?” Mr. Tranter asked kindly as she floundered into silence. “I know you will want to rest a little now, but perhaps the supper dance?”
With her aunt’s eyes boring into her face, she could only smile and acquiesce. Returning to her seat with some relief, she sustained a lecture from her uncle on how to engage the interest of men, and another from Maria on how to dance without exhausting oneself. Arabella tried to think of her imaginary, peaceful cottage.
“Smile,” Aunt Sarah hissed in her ear, and she saw with panic that Uncle Smedley was hauling yet another gentleman to talk to her. He seemed to be dragging his heels and when he came close enough for her to make out his expression, it was distinctly hunted.
This was utterly humiliating. Misery prevented her even hearing this latest victim’s name.
Even worse, almost as soon as the man sat down beside her—on the very edge of the chair—her uncle bustled off again. He was clearly enjoying his duty. And if she failed to entice at least one gentleman to call on her aunts tomorrow, he would scold her mercilessly.
Her breath caught on a cough, which she managed to swallow down. The man beside her made some bored comment about the weather, to which she nodded, still trying to catch her breath. Aunt Sarah pinched her arm to make her respond.
“I believe it will rain,” Arabella gasped. “I hope it will rain.”
“Why?” the man asked, inevitably.
Arabella didn’t know. She’d only said the first words that came into her head. “Variety,” she managed stupidly.
The man’s face twitched, as if he found her either mentally defective or just stupid. Aunt Sarah pinched her again more viciously, her irritation palpable and accusing. Around her, the chattering voices seemed to have grown louder, shouting over the music, and suddenly the whole situation seemed unendurable.
She almost jumped to her feet with some vague idea of reaching the cloakroom before she exploded into a fit of coughing.
“Excuse me,” she gasped, and swung away directly into the path of two oncoming gentlemen. They halted at once. She tried to swerve around them, with a quick glance of apology, and froze.
The taller of the two gentlemen was familiar. In fact, his hard, saturnine face had haunted her waking thoughts at odd moments since she’d tried to pull him from the sea yesterday.
“You,” she blurted in astonishment.
“You,” he returned. “Escaping again?”
“Yes,” she gasped, and seized his arm like a lifeline. Obligingly, he turned and began to walk with her away from her stunned family and the no doubt highly relieved stranger.
“Can I fetch you a fast horse?” he offered. “Prepare you a ship?”
This time it was laughter, albeit rather shaky laughter, that caught at her breath. “I wish you could. What are you doing here?”
“Looking for you.”
“Liar. Is Captain Alban here, too?” The captain’s presence would at least explain the upsurge of noise. Perhaps she hadn’t imagined it after all.
“Oh, he’s here.” Although the doorway was crowded, he made a path for her without more than a couple of glances and then she was into the large foyer. It was hardly deserted. A few gentlemen stood talking there, and two ladies crossed from the cloakroom toward the entrance. But compared to the ballroom, it seemed like a haven of quiet, and she could breathe.
“Thank you,” she managed.
“Are we leaving the ball?”
“Don’t tempt me.”
“A dull affair?”
“Worse.” She cast him a quick glance. “For me,” she added apologetically. “There is nothing worse than having people forced to talk with you or dance with you.”
“Forced?” For once, he actually looked startled.
“The fault is in me,” she confessed. “I don’t enjoy such affairs. However, I can breathe again, so we had better go back in case my aunts think I have eloped with a stranger or been abducted.”
Obligingly, he turned with her back toward the ballroom. “Then the fast horse and the ship are no longer required.”
“I believe I’d settle for a glass of champagne,” she said, as they reentered the ballroom.
“That is simple to arrange,” he said, veering left to a table full of glasses, where he snagged one and presented it to her before lifting one of his own. “Your health,” he toasted.
“And yours,” she agreed cordially, and sipped the champagne, savoring the bubbles on her tongue. She no longer felt any desire to cough, and if her breathing was a little erratic, it was no longer unpleasantly so. It seemed to be just the excitement that came with this man who made her laugh without ever smiling himself. This man who’d kissed her for some reason she’d yet to fathom. She’d liked that, too.
“What now?” he inquired. “For purposes of enjoyment, should I return you to your family, or would you rather avoid them?”
“Avoid them,” she said guiltily. “But it won’t be possible. My uncle will be furious with me. Between him and my aunts, we shall be cornered in seconds.”
“Nonsense. It’s just like running a blockade.”
She couldn’t help the laughter bubbling up, and it turned out he was right. They evaded her aunts’ original charge by merely walking in the other direction. A moment later, Uncle Smedley strode furiously in from the left. Arabella’s companion veered into a throng of slightly rowdy young gentlemen and led her out the other side before doubling back around them.
Unhurriedly, he handed her onto a chair and stood slightly to one side, leaning his shoulder against a pillar. “You’re on watch duty,” he told her.
Since the dance had just ended, couples leaving the dance floor milled around the ballroom, blocking her view of everyone else.
“I was horribly rude to that man,” Arabella said guiltily.
“What man?”
“I can’t remember his name. But my uncle marched the poor soul up to me quite against his will. Which is somewhat unpleasant for both of us, don’t you think?”
“If it’s true,” he said dubiously. “Though I don’t see why you should be forced to talk to people you don’t want to. Especially if they’re rude and stupid enough not to appreciate the honor.”
She smiled. “I like talking to you. You joke with a perfectly straight face.”
“Who said I was joking?” He finished his champagne and bent to place the empty glass on the table beside her.
Over his shoulder, she saw both her aunts approaching. “Oh-oh.” A quick glance to her left showed her Uncle Smedley almost upon them, skirting the other side of the ballroom as couples stood up for the waltz. “We are undone,” she said ruefully, taking a last sip of the intoxicating champagne. The last ten minutes had been thoroughly enjoyable, but it was time to face the music.
“Nonsense,” said her companion, straightening. He appeared to have taken in the situation at one glance, and now he held out his hand. “If you’d care to dance?”
Laughter surged once more as he drew her to feet, took the glass from her and set it beside his. Then, without looking right or left, he led her onto the dance floor and took her in his arms.
Instantly, she was reminded of how close he’d stood when he’d kissed her by the harbor wall. Warm blood seeped into her face, but the dance began and she followed him blindly.
“My uncle doesn’t approve of unmarried women waltzing,” she said breathlessly.
“Is he your guardian?”
“Lord no, my father is still alive, and besides, I am far too old to have a guardian.”
“Then why worry about what he thinks?”
She regarded him curiously. “You have a novel approach to the world. Do you not care what anyone thinks?”
“No. If I ever did, I stopped a long time ago.”
“I suppose it comes with your profession,” she allowed. “But surely you must at least care what Captain Alban thinks?”
His lips twisted. “Up to a point that is unavoidable.”
“I can’t see them. Are they glowering at me?”
“I neither know nor care. Someone has taught you to waltz.”
“Oh, I was taught all the dances. Waltzing is easiest in some ways since at least I can see my partner’s face and not get him muddled with the gentleman next to him in the set.” In other ways, such as the physical closeness, it was hardest. Not everyone was welcome in such proximity. This man was. Large, a curious mixture of safe and unsettling, he overwhelmed her.
“That is not always a blessing.”
“So I’m told,” she said ruefully.
He blinked. “No one can have objected to your face.”
“Not directly. I look bored or stupid or frightened, apparently, and I don’t smile enough.”
“Not from here. If people bore you, don’t dance with them.”
“It would be unkind to refuse,” she pointed out. “Even when they’re forced into it. You see? Even you didn’t refuse.”
“I wanted to dance with you. It was my idea, if you recall.”
The thought hadn’t previously entered her head, but it struck her now that he was enjoying this as much as she. He liked her. The idea staggered her, and for a moment she could only gaze up at him, speechless.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Arabella.” Her wits had gone begging. She should have given him her surname, but he seemed to find nothing wrong in that.
“It suits you,” he murmured.
“I don’t know your name either.”
He was silent, raising his eyes and gazing beyond her for a moment, before he turned her, dancing her forward and then back. “I’m afraid you’re not going to like the answer to that.”
“Why not?” she asked, intrigued. “What is your name?”
“Alban.”
*
Her eyes widened. He’d been right. It truly had never entered her head that he was Alban himself. Certainly, he’d never corrected her assumption that he was one of Alban’s men. And so, he’d added deceit to the list of his crimes.
Worse, her family was clearly wealthy and utterly respectable. He’d done her no favors in anyone’s eyes by dancing with her. But in truth, she’d looked so ill at ease and put upon when he’d entered the ballroom, that his first priority had been to get her away from the source of her distress. His second had been to give her just a little fun, to bring back her animation and make her eyes laugh as they’d done yesterday on the boat. To make her happy if just for a few moments, which was as much, in his experience, as one could hope for.
Well, she would still have had the fun when she asked to be delivered back to her tyrannical aunts. Or when she walked away from him. He even slowed a little, loosening his hold to make it easier for her.
But the gentle, hazel eyes were unreadable, beyond astonishment.
Unexpectedly, her lips twitched. Her breath caught, but on laughter. “Oh dear,” she said shakily. “I’m dancing with Britain’s hero.”
Will had said something similar. Alban frowned now as he had then. “When,” he asked abruptly, “was I heroic?”
“When you saved me from the combined onslaught of my aunts and uncle and the poor gentleman whose name I can’t recall.”
If he ever laughed, he’d have done so, then. Instead, he swung her around a little too dramatically for English ballrooms, and her eyes laughed up at him in appreciation. His throat constricted. He really had come here in the hope of seeing her. She’d intrigued him that much on their first meeting. When he’d first seen her in the ballroom looking so hunched and tense and hunted, so stiff in her elaborate ball gown, he’d given in to his urge to protect her. That was still there, but he wanted more. He wanted to gaze at her quiet beauty and suffuse it with passion. He wanted to know her. Perhaps it was the contrast, but those smiling eyes had just blotted out every pair of fine eyes that had ever seduced him.
This girl was hardly the seducing or seducible type. But he couldn’t pretend he didn’t want to try, for he did and with a strength he couldn’t remember.
Perhaps she misunderstood his expression. Or perhaps lust stood out in his eyes too obviously.
She blurted, “I’m grateful for the rescue, but you may return me to them, or just let me go, whenever you like.”
“I don’t like,” he said honestly. “Do you want to go back to them yet?”
She bit her lip. “No.”
“Then stop worrying and dance.”
“I never imagined a pirate dancing a civilized waltz at an English provincial Assembly.”
“Piracy is only a secondary line of business. I am merely a trader.”
“A free trader? My brother—my middle brother, Sebastian—fell in with some once on the south coast. He had a fine adventure, and my father won some excellent brandy. But I suppose I shouldn’t tell you that.”
“Not unless your father needs some more brandy.”
“Seriously?” she said, awed. “Do they smuggle here, too?”
“All around the coast.”
“Is that why you’re here?”
“No, I told you. I came to see you.”
“I mean, is it why you came to Blackhaven?” she said severely.
“No,” he admitted, “I came to see an old friend who had some news for me.”
“Bad news?” she asked with quick sympathy.
“I don’t know yet. Have I got you into more trouble with your family?”
She thought about it, and smiled in a way that deprived him of breath. “I don’t believe I care.”
“That’s my girl,” he approved.
He was ridiculously disappointed when the dance ended, like some callow youth with his first crush. For in truth, although she was small and frail, she did fit rather comfortably into his arms, where he was all too aware of her delightful curves and the gentle rise of her breasts. The worst danger was in holding her closer, an urge that was increasingly difficult to resist.
He thought quite seriously about keeping her with him, at least until the end of the ball. He thought she would cooperate that far. But since he didn’t truly want to ruin her life, he guided her instead toward one of the aunts who sat rigidly beside the uncle, trying not to cause comment by glaring at him. So long as they didn’t glare at her in the same way, he would not object.
“Aunt Maria,” she said in a rush. “Allow me to present Captain Alban. Sir, my aunt, Lady Maria Smedley. And Mr. Smedley, my uncle.”
Smedley rose to his feet, outrage darkening his face. Ignoring him, Alban bowed to Lady Maria. “Ma’am. Thank you for lending me your niece, who has been most kind. I am acquainted with no one else in town.” Apart from Will, but in the circumstances, he was sure Will would forgive the denial.
He could see the aunt dredging up his name from her memory. Her eyes were just widening with horror when he turned to her husband. “Sir.”
Smedley’s eyes were not entirely free of horror either, but mingled in there was a hint of awe. Perhaps Will wasn’t so wrong about his heroic reputation. Which was quite funny, for he was hardly comparable to the late Lord Nelson. Or Lord Wellington. Either way, the man clearly struggled for something to say. Good.
Alban glanced once more at Arabella, lifting his eyebrows in silent question.
She said in a rush, “Perhaps you’d call on us one afternoon, Captain? We are staying at the hotel.”
Both her aunt and uncle looked suitably appalled.
“Thank you, I will,” he said, more to annoy them than because he’d any real intention of doing so. He inclined his head, closing one eye, and walked away, although not before he’d glimpsed her quick smile of response.
“Well,” Will said, when Alban found him in the card room which opened just off the main ballroom. “That should put the cat amongst the pigeons.”
“What should?” he asked, sitting down beside his friend and indicating he should be dealt in the game.
“I found out who they are,” Will murmured. “They’re the Duke of Kelburn’s family. You’ve just danced with his eldest daughter.”
Alban paused, his hand over his cards as he stared at Will. “Kelburn?”
“Precisely.”
Alban picked up the cards. He hadn’t thought of Kelburn in years. He’d only ever met the man once, and yet there had been a time when, young and furious, he’d hated him with a vengeance. Nick, his brother, had even called him the author of Alban’s troubles. Which wasn’t true, of course. Alban himself was the cause, and his own father had made it worse. He’d learned to live with that over the years, had become someone else far removed from his old world. In truth, he should never have dipped his toe back in by coming here, certainly not in pursuit of the Duke of Kelburn’s daughter.
On the other hand, such a pursuit would make a fine revenge.