Eden felt as if she walked through a waking dream. Her enervation seemed to have passed for good, but the sense of unreality lingered. If Lady Saville noticed her constant glances toward the door, she was too polite to question it.
Lord Rushborough was at the center of a group of well-wishers. He saw Eden at once and watched her with an intensity that made her neck prickle. She felt his possessiveness, his confidence that soon she would be his. But she was spared close conversation with him by the sudden attention of Lady Saville’s guests.
For Lord Rushborough’s sister, it must have been one of those social triumphs that all London hostesses savored. Lady Saville presented Eden as if she were the queen of some distant but friendly nation.
Her efforts were not in vain. It seemed that Eden had been missed, after all. Lord Rushborough’s country house party had paved the way. Eden had every reason to believe that Donal would find equal acceptance once he learned to get about in Society.
Surely Donal would arrive at any moment.
Just as at the house party, Eden was able to slip behind a mask and make the necessary conversation, showing the right amount of gratitude for the condescension of her peers and professing interest in the latest gossip. Entirely absent, however, was the heady sense of pleasure she had so briefly enjoyed at Caldwick. What had happened since then made that quite impossible.
And as she went through the motions, she was continuously alert for the footman who would bring her word of Lord Bradwell’s return.
“She is more reserved than I remember,” she overheard one bejeweled matron murmur to another between sets, “but I quite like the change. She has a dignity about her. I am convinced that is why the marquess proposed. He certainly had no need to, when one considers her reputation—and of course Winstowe left her with nothing.”
“My dear,” said another, “it is common knowledge that her affairs have greatly improved since last November, else she would not return to London. Her reputation is no worse than most, and she has certainly suffered, forced to rusticate as she has been. But you are right about the change in her, though I am not sure it is so much for the better. She has become quite brown in the country.”
Eden listened without interest. Once she would have laughed at such talk, amused to be the subject of conversation and convinced that it could not hurt her. And indeed, it could not, but for different reasons. She knew now how unimportant it was.
“Lady Eden, I cannot tell you how very glad I am to see you returned to London.”
With half her attention, Eden recognized Mrs. Bathurst, who had once been a frequent companion in her larks and capers. Mrs. Bathurst was very pretty, very young, and very fast, and had earned her reputation with enthusiasm.
“London has been insufferably dull without you,” Mrs. Bathurst continued, as if Eden had welcomed her with great joy. “We must reassemble our merry band and set the city on its ear as we did before. You must have been so dreadfully bored in the country—you, who loathe it so!” She laughed, a high-pitched giggle that grated on Eden’s ears. “I have an excellent idea for a most amusing pastime. You must have heard how inordinately proud Mr. Porter is of his new curricle. I thought that perhaps…”
Eden never learned Mrs. Bathurst’s plan. A man entered the room, preceded by a nervous footman, and the young matron halted in midsentence.
The new arrival paused in the doorway, handsome, regal, and dressed in green so dark as to be almost black.
Eden’s mind went blank. She watched the man walk into the room, saw all heads turn and conversation stop.
He was magnificent. He wore his clothes as if he had been born in them, as if they had grown to fit him like flesh. Their cut and color were just unusual enough to attract attention without evoking fashionable censure. He carried himself like a prince, like a king… like one who was so sure of his inborn superiority that he had no need to put it on display. His face was almost too perfect, as if it had never known worry and could not suffer the effects of age.