A Heart Revealed Part 20

Knowing that Suzanne would be happy with her blacksmith made it easier for Amber to mitigate her regret at disappointing her. It was not so easy to think of Mr. Richards, however, whose memory brought so much conflict to her heart and mind.

Amber had tried to read Hamlet upon her arrival at Hampton Grove, but Shakespeare's words now sounded with his voice in her head. The sound of hoofbeats made her think of him arriving at the cottage, her morning chocolate was the same color as his hair, and her own solitude reminded her of what it felt like to be in his company. She had only known the enjoyment of his presence a handful of hours, and yet every hour without him she felt as though she was missing something. Something she could never have. Something she could never forget.

Each time the sadness seeped inside her, she tried to think only of that kiss, the feel of his heartbeat beneath her hand, the scruff of his face against her own, the way he smelled of wood smoke and leather and tasted of tea. It was a bittersweet remembrance to be sure, but she hoped that in time the ache in her chest, the question of "what might have been," would fade and leave only the sweetness behind. She hoped it with her whole battered, bruised, and broken heart.

"Enough of this," she said before taking a deep breath and looking at her reflection in the mirror. She must be mindful of the moment at hand-Darra's wedding ball. The gown and turban drew upon the color of her eyes and complimented her skin, browned from the time she had spent in the Somerset sun. She would look wild to the rest of society but to her mind she had not looked this beautiful for many months. The brows she'd painted on looked very much like her true eyebrows once had, her figure was as well defined-though not so prominently displayed-and she was grateful for the chance to feel as much an equal with the other women here as she could ever hope to.

Yet her optimism could not protect her entirely from the discomfort she knew awaited her. There would be whispers regarding her appearance after so long an absence, a few braver guests would ask after her health, and everyone would comment when she was out of range how changed she was, how she was a shadow of the woman she'd been in London. What a pity. What a shame. Amber knew precisely how they would look at her and talk of her because she had been one of them only a year ago, eager to put herself above someone else, quick to find another's flaws.

But perhaps a few generous young men would ask her to dance-how she longed for a dance. Never mind that she would wish it were Mr. Richards's hands she held through the steps, wish it were Mr. Richards's arms around her, and wish it were Mr. Richards's compliments she folded into her heart to pull out and read over on future nights.

An unexpected memory of her last ball came to mind, but instead of shrinking from it she remembered the man who had given her his coat. She could only a.s.sume the coat was still in London, where she had left it in the wardrobe. Remembering him reminded her that there was kindness amid the ton-not everyone was cruel. She would take Suzanne's counsel and look for those of her society who would not dismiss her for being imperfect. No, she would never be one of ton again and they would never know the extent of her deformity, but perhaps for one night-this night-she could expect better of people. The man with the coat was to be a reminder of the possibility.

"You shall find joy in this night," she said to her reflection, lifting her chin in her most regal expression. "Your sister is marrying her prince, and you are allowed to celebrate with her. Every happy memory is that much more light you will take with you. Be glad for it."

It was one thing to give herself such direction, but quite another to enter the ballroom and feel the glances turn toward her and hear the whispers rise out of the surprised guests. In that moment she wanted nothing more than to slip back to her room and beg off the evening, but she knew her role and lifted her chin as she made her way to her parents. They welcomed her with a kiss on the cheek and a press of her hands. Only she could see the wariness in their eyes, but it served to raise her determination to be exactly who they wanted her to be tonight. She would give them no reason to regret allowing her to attend. If she played her part well she hoped to be allowed as a guest for the wedding to be held in a few weeks' time in Suffolk.

"Amber?"

She turned with a polite smile toward her Aunt Janice, her mother's youngest sister. Janice had married a vicar and though no one spoke of it being a disappointment-he was clergy, after all-it was understood she had not made her parents proud. Amber had once thought her softheaded and plain, but perhaps for the first time, Amber noted her kindness and sincerity rather than her lack of fas.h.i.+on and position.

"Aunt," she said, leaning forward to press cheeks with the woman so unlike Lady Marchent. "How are you?"

"I am very well," she said. "How are you? I hear you have been recovering from an unfortunate reaction to, what was it, a hair rinse?"

"It was nothing some country air could not remedy," Amber said, more sincere than either of her listening parents would believe. The country had healed her, in a sense. However, there was more healing that would need to take place now. Realizing that she had a safe companion for a time, Amber looped her arm through that of her aunt's and turned in the direction of the refreshments on the other side of the room. "Would you accompany me for a drink and tell me of my cousins?"

Being with Aunt Janice helped increase Amber's confidence as they encountered family and friends. Amber was careful not to engage any one guest too long; she could feel them looking at her and realizing that something was not right in her face. She would turn away when their confusion appeared, wave at someone on the other side of the room, or begin a topic of conversation.

In time her aunt became engaged with some other distant relation, however, and Amber felt herself panic as she stood alone on the edge of the dance floor. While a few gentlemen had approached her in greeting, they had kept a polite distance and, in truth, she had not tried over much to engage them. She was increasingly nervous about having so much attention from any one of them. She was not the Amber Sterlington she'd been before, and under a gentlemen's gaze she felt more aware of what she was not. Perhaps she would not dance after all tonight. Perhaps, just as leaving Yorks.h.i.+re, that was for the best.

"Upon my word," said a lyrical voice behind her. "Is it truly Miss Amber Sterlington my eyes are seeing?"

Chapter 46.

Amber turned and smiled at the man dressed in gold pantaloons and a salmon-colored coat with gold trim upon the lapels. "Lord Fenton," she said, allowing him to bow over her hand, which he exaggerated, of course, though he was careful not to spill the gla.s.s of white wine he held in one hand. "I did not know you were attending this evening."

While Amber was acquainted with Lord Fenton from her time in London, his family was not so connected to hers that she would have expected him to attend Darra's ball. Perhaps it was an a.s.sociation to Lord Sunther's family that warranted him an invitation.

"I hope you are not disappointed to see me, then."

"Not at all," Amber said, smiling. Fenton was a flirt but his insincerity was comforting; his affections were a game for him rather than true intention. "It has been an age, has it not? How have you filled these months since last we saw one another?"

He waved his free hand through the air with aplomb. "Oh, I stay quite busy with all manner of dissipation, I a.s.sure you." He shrugged and leaned toward her, which prompted her to fix her gaze to the floor as though listening intently so as to keep him from looking directly into her face. "Should I tell you the half of it you would be quite scandalized."

"Well then, you must tell me the whole of it," Amber said, glancing up enough to catch his eye and give a sincere smile. "For then I shall only believe half, which will likely still be far above the truth. You only wish to appear the rake, Lord Fenton, but your true nature is not so well concealed."

Lord Fenton threw back his head and laughed loudly, causing Amber embarra.s.sment as several guests turned to look their direction. When he met her gaze again she noticed a rather sincere look in his eye. "Would you join me for the next set, Miss Sterlington? I believe it is a cotillion."

"Certainly, Lord Fenton, but I hope you will not abandon me before it begins. Tell me of your family. What travels have you had this winter?"

Fenton raised his eyebrows in surprise. "My family?" he repeated. "For what should you have interest in so boring a topic? Would you not prefer an accounting of London, perhaps some on-dit concerning a few of the more nefarious characters of our society?"

"Those things hold little interest for me," Amber said, then watched his eyebrows rise a second time. She faced the dance floor, avoiding his scrutiny.

"A girl spends a few months recuperating in Yorks.h.i.+re and suddenly cares nothing for the society of her peers?"

Amber snapped her head back to look at him. "You know I was in Yorks.h.i.+re?"

He took a seemingly contemplative sip of his wine before answering her question. "I do believe it has changed you, Miss Sterlington," he said when he lowered his gla.s.s, all the while looking at her closely. Too closely.

"How did you know I was in Yorks.h.i.+re?" she asked again while looking away from his piercing gaze. It was only after she she'd spoken that she realized if she'd been more coy in her questioning, she would not have confirmed the truth. Her family had a.s.sured her no one knew the humble nature of her retreat. They wanted the impression that she was in a grand place, waited upon and coddled for her recovery, not hidden away.

"Did you like it there, Miss Sterlington?"

Amber turned her head to find him looking even more strongly into her face. His voice had lost its flippant quality, and she was quite speechless with surprise. She took a step away but he moved with her, causing her heart rate to increase.

"Did you, Miss Sterlington?" He sounded very intent, which unnerved her. "Was Yorks.h.i.+re to your liking?"

"What are you about, Lord Fenton?" Amber said, casting her eyes about as though someone might rescue her. Of course no one would. They were all keeping their distance.

"I am asking you a simple question, Miss Sterlington," he said. "I would like to know how you feel about your time spent in Yorks.h.i.+re. I can explain my intention once I know your mind, but I fear I must know what you thought of it. I have heard it to be quite savage."

"It is not savage," she said, unsure what her course should be even while she looked about the room for some means of escape. His attention was most discomfiting. "Wild, perhaps, in land and weather, but it was peaceful and . . . generous and comfortable, too."

"And the people?"

"Were good and kind," she said easily, thinking of the Dariloos-and Mr. Richards. They were the only people she had actually met from Yorks.h.i.+re. "Among the best I have ever known."

"One might wonder, then, why you left a place toward which you feel such warmth."

Amber looked away from him as a volley of memories washed over her, the final one being the expression on Mr. Richards face when he'd promised her a visit the following week-a day now long past.

"One might wonder that, yes," she said in almost a whisper, then looked at Lord Fenton again. Why did he speak as though she were not returning to Yorks.h.i.+re? How would he know she had been there at all? "I'm surely unable to explain adequately my reasons for leaving, Lord Fenton, but it was for the best, and I would ask that you not press me further."

"And where shall you go now? Shall you remain at Hampton Grove? Will you return to London in time for the season?"

"I shall set about my own household," she said, content to make her intentions known. Lord Fenton would certainly share her plans with everyone of their acquaintance, preventing her from having to do so herself. "My father has agreed to settle my inheritance upon me, and I shall live a quiet life, which I have come to prefer. I am to be an independent woman."

"In Yorks.h.i.+re?"

"Not in Yorks.h.i.+re," Amber said, wis.h.i.+ng she did not feel a stab of disappointment at the admission. "Why are you asking such-"

"Why not in Yorks.h.i.+re? If you were so very happy there and found the people and way of life so pleasing, why would you not return to it for your life of independence?"

Amber did not answer him and wondered if he had been sent for information-perhaps from her parents, though she did not know why they would be interested or why they would not ask her directly if they were. There was obviously a purpose behind his questions, however. She backed up another step and dropped into a curtsy.

"Upon greater thought I am feeling rather . . . drawn at the moment and shall not be able to stand up with you for the next dance. Please excuse me, my lord."

"Do not go," Fenton said, sounding alarmed. He reached for her arm, but she moved out of his grasp and then met his eye and lifted her chin in defiance. What was he about? "I am sorry to have been impertinent."

"I do not feel well and insist you let me leave," Amber said strongly, prepared to make a scene if necessary.

He seemed to sense her determination, and she thought she might have seen regret regarding his behavior already. "I would not prevent you from leaving, of course. Will you return when you have recovered?" Lord Fenton asked. "Perhaps you would give me the chance to explain myself."

"Certainly," she said, but only so he would allow her to leave. She had no intention of returning.

He did not detain her any longer as she slipped from the ballroom and then to the drawing room next door. It was not lit for the evening, and she closed the door, more comfortable in the darkness and the solitude. She s.h.i.+vered slightly-the fire from earlier in the day had died out-and moved to the French doors that led to the same veranda connected to the ballroom.

The veranda was lit with torches, and a number of guests stood about the stone bal.u.s.trade conversing and sipping wine despite the cold, or perhaps preferring it to the heat of the ballroom. She crossed her arms over her chest and rubbed the exposed skin between her long glove and puffed sleeve. Had she appeared long enough to fulfill the curiosity of the gossips and satisfy her parents' need for the appearance that all was well with their family?

She was considering how she might best make her excuses when a flash of a salmon-colored coat on the veranda drew her attention to the view from the window. There were not many men who would wear such a coat, and upon closer inspection, she verified that it was indeed Lord Fenton heading toward the garden stairs, though his steps were longer and his movement more masculine than she had ever seen before. He still held a gla.s.s of wine in his hand, but hurried as though unenc.u.mbered.

The garden was not lit for the a.s.sembly tonight-it was too cold to be inviting to the guests-but Lord Fenton was intent upon it nonetheless. Amber watched him hurry down the steps, then continue toward an arrangement of benches beneath a trellis that would be heavy with wisteria in a month's time. A movement from beneath the trellis caught her eye, and she leaned closer to the gla.s.s as a man stepped out of the shadows.

Lord Fenton's step slowed as he reached the unknown man, and if not for having seen him leave the ballroom, she would not have been able to identify Lord Fenton now for how dark the gardens were. He had fled the ballroom just as she had. Had he been intent on a conference with this man hiding in the gardens?

Amber thought back to Fenton's strange questions and the even stranger intensity behind them and felt her breath catch in her throat. Her nose hit against the gla.s.s as she tried for as clear a view as possible. The man Lord Fenton conversed with had broad shoulders. Long legs. Conservative dress. Dark hair.

"It cannot be," she whispered to herself, then fumbled for the doork.n.o.b. She could not stop herself from exiting through the French doors once she pushed them open. She lifted her skirts as she fairly flew down the steps, along the garden path, and then came to a stop as the two men turned to face her.

Her eyes, however, were on only one of them.

"Mr. Richards?"

Chapter 47.

For a moment Mr. Richards's expression showed only shock-likely the very same she had on her own face-but then he smiled, and her heart fairly melted until her mind caught up with the understanding that he was here, at her family estate in Somerset. That meant he knew who she was-who she truly was. He knew she'd deceived him.

And then she remembered the fabric wound about her head to hide the further truth she was determined he never see. She took a step backward.

His smile fell. "Amber," he said as he moved toward her.

The sound of her name on his lips should have been honey to her ears, but instead it burned within her a sharp point of shame, pain, and regret. She had sent that letter to avoid this-all of this.

"You should not have come," she said, taking another step away from him. Would he follow her when she ran away? Why did some traitorous part of her hope that he would when she knew it would make everything worse?

"I had to come," he said.

Tears filled her eyes, overflowing immediately as she shook her head. She turned to the ironic refuge of the ballroom and lifted her skirts. She needed the last memory of him to be that kiss-that beautiful and encompa.s.sing kiss full of enough pa.s.sion and goodness to last her a lifetime.

Mr. Richards grabbed her arm, but she wrenched it from his grasp and took another step only to have him grab both of her arms to further restrain her.

"Wait," he said, his mouth close enough to her ear to make her s.h.i.+ver despite her panic. "Let me explain."

She could not spare the hope sparked by finding him here. She could not risk a different parting memory even as she realized she would never forget this. Already her memories of him would include this. She lunged forward, twisting in an attempt to pull out of his grasp. She was not a blus.h.i.+ng debutante playing a game of refusing advances she wanted him to accelerate. She could not stand for him to know- She choked on a scream when she felt a pull upon her turban. She tried to lift her hands to her head, but Mr. Richards's grip on her arms prevented her, which meant someone else had hold of the turban. Not again.

"Fenton!" she heard Mr. Richards yell.

"You wanted her to stay," Lord Fenton said as the fabric slid off her smooth head.

Mr. Richards released her as her chest caught fire and her knees gave out. She crumpled to the gravel path, and the rocks cut through the thin fabric of her gown as she crossed her arms over her head and clenched her eyes closed.

"Go away!" she pleaded, curling into herself as a firestorm of fear and emotion erupted within her. They had seen her; they knew. The horror of the moment swirled together with her memories of Mama and Darra seeing her for the first time and the looks upon the faces staring down at her when she dared lift her head at Carlton House. Those reactions had haunted her all these months, and she pulled even further within herself, desperate to hide.

She should never have let Mr. Richards use the library at the cottage. She should never written him that thank you letter or joined him for tea. She should never have believed that a little bit of happiness was worth this risk. Great sobs broke from her chest. If they would leave her now, if they would just go, she could at least be spared seeing their reaction.

Mr. Richards's voice-so close to her huddled body-broke through her sobbing. "Amber, this isn't how the evening was supposed to go. Please don't cry. Let me explain."

She only pulled herself into a tighter ball. "Go," she sobbed with her head nearly between her knees. How repulsive and indecent she must look. Why would they not go? "Leave me. You owe me nothing. Please go."

"This is not as I planned."

She could hear the pleading in his voice, but she recoiled from it. A hand reached beyond the fortress of her arms to touch her face, and she pulled away, wis.h.i.+ng she dared throw the skirts of her dress over her bare head, wis.h.i.+ng she could disappear completely.

Suddenly, strong arms gripped her waist and she was lifted from the ground. She did not fight, only tried to protect her head as she was carried to a bench where she was deposited. She bent over at the waist, her arms protecting her head in a position that surely looked as though she were fearful of being struck.

"Look at me, Amber," Thomas said gently as he knelt before her. "Let me explain."

Her arms were now preventing her seeing him rather than him seeing her. She heard the crunch of gravel as he moved closer, took both her wrists and pulled her arms away from her head-just as her mother and Darra had done on the night they learned of her state. She clenched her eyes even tighter.

"Amber," he said in a soft tone that washed over her. Softness. Kindness. Would he speak to her so if he were here to exact revenge upon her? Would he go to such efforts?

She felt the smallest glimmer of hope in the measure of his tone, and she lifted her head. When she met his eyes, he smiled.

Smiled?

She stared at him, shocked and confused that he could see her for exactly what she was and not react with revulsion. He turned his head to the side. "Fenton, your wine."

Amber's eyes left Mr. Richards's face only long enough to see Lord Fenton step forward. She looked away from his expression, which was decidedly shocked. And yet Mr. Richards's had not been.

Thomas took Lord Fenton's wine gla.s.s and removed his handkerchief from his pocket. After dipping the edge of the cloth into the wine, he turned to face her, and she looked him over, certain she would see proof of his mask, his disguise of the disgust he must be hiding. He did not show even the shadow of being repulsed, however. He did not even seem angry or embarra.s.sed, and she did not know what to think as he lifted the wet handkerchief to her face.

She held his eyes as he cleaned first her cheeks, which she feared were stained by the lining she had put around her eyes, then wiped at her painted-on eyebrows. She closed her eyes under a wave of fresh humiliation and attempted to gain control of herself, caught between fear and the effect his gentle touch had upon her. He continued dipping the handkerchief into the wine and clearing the paint from her face until he sat back upon his heels and waited for her to open her eyes. When she met his gaze, he was smiling still. She could not speak. Why was he not running away? How could he abide to look at her?

He leaned forward and placed his hands on either side of her face. The effect of his touch was instant, and her body s.h.i.+vered in reaction to the warmth she felt. "You are the most beautiful woman I have ever known," he whispered. He leaned in and kissed her lightly on the lips, then the right cheek, then the left. And then he pulled her head forward and kissed her upon the top of her hideous, horrible, terrible head.