She mocked her younger self for feeling as though he’d thrown her a lifeline, for it had turned out to be no more than a gossamer thread of wishful thinking. Which had snapped the moment she had to put it to the test.
‘I danced with him once or twice during my own Season,’ she told Rose, striving to make it sound as though it had been a trivial matter.
‘And you have never forgotten him,’ observed Rose with typical astuteness.
‘No.’ She sighed. And then, because if she didn’t give Rose the impression she was being open with her, she would never let the matter drop until she’d wrung the very last ounce of the truth from her, she admitted, ‘He is not the kind of person one forgets. He is so…unique.’
‘Really? In what way?’
‘Well, for one thing, he was an incorrigible flirt,’ she said tartly. ‘I used to watch him regularly reducing the prettiest girls in the room into giggling, blushing confusion, then saunter away while they all sighed after his retreating back. Usually straight over to the plainest, most unprepossessing of the wallflowers drooping on the sidelines, where he would make her evening by leading her into a set of country dances.’
‘Well…that was kind of him.’
When Lydia frowned, Rose added, ‘Wasn’t it?’
‘I do not think kindness forms part of his character,’ she said repressively. ‘It just amused him to set female hearts a-flutter. His real interest was always gambling. No doubt what he is doing now,’ she said, indicating the group of men who had all subtly shifted position to include him in their number, ‘is arranging to meet them in the card room later.’
‘But…’ Rose was frowning ‘…if he only danced with the wallflowers, how is it—?’
‘I was quite ill, if you recall, by the time I met your father. My chaperon insisted I attend every event to which I’d received an invitation, in the hope I would somehow make a conquest. Which wore me down. So I was not in looks.’
What an understatement! Mrs Westerly had insisted she apply rouge to disguise her pallor and rice powder to conceal the shadows under her eyes. It had made her resemble a walking corpse. Or so the charmed circle surrounding that Season’s reigning beauty had sniggered, as she’d walked past.
The night she’d tumbled so hopelessly in love with Nicholas Hemingford, she had been, indisputably, the most desperately unhappy female in the place. Her Season had started out badly and gone steadily downhill. And after overhearing the cutting comments about her appearance, she’d started to try to edge her way out of the ballroom, desperate for some respite from the heat, the crush, the overwhelming sense of failure. Otherwise he might never have noticed her.
Just as he had not noticed her tonight. He was sauntering away from the group of men now, heading unerringly for the furthest corner of the ballroom, where a rather plump young lady was sitting somewhat apart from the others, looking a bit forlorn.
Oh lord, he was doing it again.
The plump girl’s face lit up when he bowed over her hand. Lydia knew just how that girl felt as he escorted her across the room to the set which was starting to form. She would hardly be able to believe that a man as handsome as Mr Hemingford had actually asked her to dance without any coercion from the matrons who sometimes prompted the younger men to do their duty by the girls who lacked partners. Her heart would be fluttering, her soul brimming with gratitude. Pray God this one didn’t mistake his casual fit of knight-errantry for anything meaningful and get it broken.
‘Why do you suppose,’ said Rose thoughtfully, ‘he only dances with plain girls?’
‘Well, he would tell you,’ she replied, ‘that everyone deserves to enjoy themselves when they attend a ball, no matter what. He would say that he hated having to look at long faces, and if nobody else would do anything about it, then he would.’
‘But you don’t think that was true?’
‘Oh, no.’ She laughed a little bitterly. ‘Once, he actually admitted that there was no point in asking any of the eligible females on the premises to dance, because their chaperons would not have granted him permission. He was considered too dangerous.’
‘Dangerous?’ Rose’s eyes widened. ‘And was he?’
‘Oh, yes.’ To the peace of mind of lonely, desperately unhappy females, anyway.
She inhaled sharply. Then breathed out slowly.
There was no point in getting angry about the way he’d made her yearn for the impossible. Nor the careless way he’d tempted her into believing it was within her grasp. It had all happened what felt like a lifetime ago.
Except that seeing him again made it feel as though it had only been yesterday.
At her first sight of him, she’d reacted exactly as she had done when she’d been an impressionable girl of Rose’s age. And she could hardly tear her eyes away from him as he led the plump girl on to the floor.
Though there was some consolation in noticing she was not the only female tracking his progress across the ballroom with fascination.
For there was something about the way he moved that always drew admiring glances. While some men could manage to look impressive only when standing perfectly still, striking a pose, Nicholas Hemingford brought a kind of languid grace to the steps which had the effect of making her insides turn to molten toffee.
When the gentlemen lined up, facing her, he ended up standing practically opposite her. And though she didn’t want to, she simply couldn’t help taking the opportunity, while his attention was all on his partner, to take a good long look at him.
Oh, but he was just as handsome as ever. His light brown hair was cut slightly shorter nowadays, but other than that, he’d hardly changed at all. Just as fit and trim, and elegantly dressed as ever.
Typical! Why couldn’t he have run to fat, or developed the raddled complexion of so many of his contemporaries? But, no—he’d managed to carry on with his dissipated lifestyle and emerged unscathed. Just as he’d always done.
She snapped open her fan and waved it vigorously before her heated cheeks. It gave her something to occupy her hands, instead of clenching them into fists and pounding them into the nearest hard surface.
The movement must have caught his eye, for his head jerked up and for a moment or two he looked straight at her.
Her heart pounded against her ribs. She lifted her chin and stared right back at him.
Yes, Nicholas, it’s me. Look. I survived. And now I’m back. And what have you to say for yourself?
To her shock, and fury, his gaze slid right past her without so much as a flicker of recognition.
‘It did not look as though he remembered you, Mama Lyddy,’ said Rose, unwittingly touching on the bruise he’d just inflicted.
‘No. Well,’ she bit out, ‘why should he? It has been eight years since he last saw me. And I was only one of a large crowd of insignificant females he favoured with his attentions.’
All these years, in spite of everything, she’d hugged her memories of him to herself in secret. But it looked as though he’d forgotten all about her.
Because she hadn’t really meant anything to him, had she?
‘Is something the matter?’
‘It is a little lowering,’ she admitted, ‘to be so completely unmemorable.’
It was worse than that. Until now, she’d harboured a faint hope that he might have meant what he’d said, even if only for those few heady moments when he’d held her in his arms. The words he’d murmured into her ears that had made her feel