Chapter Three

Three

Stella didn’t go back to the ballroom. She was too flustered by her encounter with Mr. Hayes. The thought of him returning to sit on the edge of the dance floor, watching her in that all-too-perceptive way of his, made her insides melt into a puddle of warm treacle.

She was too used to being invisible. That was the problem. Her new auburn hair had already brought her some degree of attention—the comfortable kind of admiration she’d aspired to provoke as a girl. But to suddenly be seen in her entirety…

It made her feel naked. Wholly exposed.

When Mr. Hayes looked at her, it wasn’t with simple masculine admiration. It was with something else. A sort of elemental recognition that Stella felt all the way to her core. She’d as soon parade through the ballroom in her altogether than go back now. No doubt the sensation would be the same.

I must paint you, he’d said. I shall run mad if I don’t.

Her heart was still fluttering in response to the heated declaration over an hour later, when she was tucked safe in her upstairs room. Her ball gown, petticoats, crinoline, and corset lay on the bed behind her. Clad in her warmest wool dressing gown, she sat by the fire drinking a cup of milky tea.

She felt unmoored. Out of her depth. And it was only partially owing to her unsettling encounter with Mr. Hayes. Much of her uneasiness stemmed from the fact that she was far from home, cut adrift from the things that made her intrinsically who she was. Not only her gray hair, but her beloved horse, Locket, too.

Locket was a spirited mare with wildfire in her veins. Silvery white in color, she possessed the imposing size of her famous Thoroughbred sire, Stockwell, while still blessed with the elegantly contoured face and wide-set eyes of her crossbreed Arabian mother. Not many could ride her, excepting Stella. She was accustomed to exercising her daily—a necessary activity for both of their physical and mental well-beings.

When Stella had departed London, she’d been obliged to send Locket home to Fostonbury in company with her groom, John Turvey. It had been the kindest thing. The most sensible, too. It was Fostonbury, not London, where Stella would return at the close of the house party.

In her mare’s absence, a certain hollowness had taken up residence in Stella’s breast. She and Locket shared a special relationship. It was more than a partnership. More, even, than a friendship. It was a manner of mutual dependence. Stella couldn’t be fully herself—happy, steady, brave—without Locket nearby. And Locket…

Well.

Without Stella’s intervention, Locket wouldn’t have much chance of living at all. Indeed, when Stella had first encountered the flighty mare, Locket had been on the way to the knackers.

“ You saved her life, ” Anne had observed once when she and Stella had been riding together in the early days of their friendship.

“ Rather, she saved mine, ” Stella had replied. “ I would never have been bold enough to come to London for the season if Locket wasn’t with me. ”

Stella certainly didn’t feel bold now, hiding in an upstairs room, nursing her tea while the ball continued below.

It was there Anne found her as the small, arch-top clock on the mantelshelf struck eleven.

“At last!” Anne entered, closing the door behind her. “I’ve had the devil of a time finding you.”

She was still wearing her ball gown—a masterpiece of rich crimson velvet trimmed with black floral embroidery and red velvet roses. It had been commissioned from court dressmaker Ahmad Malik on the same occasion that Stella had ordered her own ball gown. Mr. Malik was known for his daring, yet intrinsically elegant, creations. It was how their dear friend, fellow horsewoman Evelyn Maltravers, had first met and fallen in love with him.

Auburn-haired, bespectacled Evie was a valued member of their small band of equestriennes. Mrs. Julia Blunt—formerly Julia Wychwood—was another. They were all of them horse lovers, and all of them excellent riders. They’d bonded together during the course of several unsuccessful London seasons, forming an unbreakable bond of friendship.

Stella hadn’t seen Anne since they’d entered the ballroom this evening. Then, Hartford had promised to find Stella a suitable partner. Perhaps he would have done, too, if Stella had remained.

It was all beginning to sink in now. All this effort on her hair and her gown and she hadn’t even danced one dance. What an extraordinary waste.

Though her heart wouldn’t know it.

The single encounter with Mr. Hayes had fired her blood more effectively than a dozen waltzes with a dozen nameless, faceless gentlemen.

“I’ve been all over the house,” Anne said, brushing a stray golden blonde lock from her brow. “First the ballroom, then the conservatory, and even the rose garden.”

“I’m here, as you see,” Stella replied.

Anne came to sit in the chair beside her. Her form-fitting velvet bodice was cut low off the shoulders. The crackling flames in the hearth cast shadows over the alabaster curve of her bosom and throat. “Are you ill?”

“No, no. Only tired.” Stella gave her friend a brief, rueful smile. “I’m sorry I ran away.”

“I should think so,” Anne said with mock severity. “It isn’t like you to shrink from a challenge.”

“I suppose I wasn’t feeling myself.”

“Undoubtedly.” Anne cast a speaking look at Stella’s hair. She hadn’t approved of Stella purchasing the Circassian dye, let alone using it. “I thought this masquerade was meant to make you more daring?”

“It isn’t only the dye. You know how restless I get when I’m too long from Locket.”

“Is that what’s troubling you? Surely you have confidence in your groom.”

“Oh, Turvey will feed her and water her well enough. But it’s me Locket will be wanting. We’ve not been apart since I accompanied my brother to that dratted ecumenical conference in Exeter during the summer. And that was only a few days. I can’t help but worry over how she’ll manage now that I’ll be gone a full week.”

The house party extended through Christmas. Lady Arundell, Anne, and Stella wouldn’t be departing until the following Monday.

“Dancing might have taken your mind off things,” Anne said.

“It might have.” Stella paused, adding significantly, “Under other circumstances.”

Anne comprehended her meaning. She’d been present when Stella had first crossed paths with Mr. Hayes at the British Museum, and had seen firsthand how the encounter had disconcerted Stella.

“You had nothing to fear in the end,” Anne said. “It turns out, the gentleman in the wheeled chair is perfectly harmless. He’s only the brother of one of the guests. An aspiring artist, I understand. Apparently, he’s lately returned from several years’ studying in Paris under some famous painter or other.”

“He studied in Paris?” Stella echoed in some surprise. She’d known Mr. Hayes resided in France, but she hadn’t realized he was quite so cosmopolitan as that. She’d imagined his impertinence had arisen purely from the intensity of his fascination with her, not from the mere fact that he was accustomed to consorting with Parisian sophisticates and bohemians.

Was he truly a portrait painter, then? Not just an overbold gentleman intrigued by the appearance of a formerly gray-haired young lady, seeking to discompose her with nonsensical flattery, but a man who saw something of artistic merit in her face and figure?

“It goes a long way toward explaining his forward manner toward you at the King’s Gallery,” Anne said.

“Yes,” Stella acknowledged, taking a thoughtful sip of her tea. “I suppose it does.”

“So you see, you had no cause to flee. Indeed,” Anne continued, leaning forward in her chair, “you’d have done better to remain. So much occurred after you went.”

Stella caught the quiver of excitement underlying her friend’s words. She came to immediate attention, her own troubles temporarily forgotten. “My goodness. What happened?”

“Oh, Stella.” Anne’s sherry-brown eyes glowed with warmth. “Hartford and I are going to be married!”

“ What! ” Stella hastily sat her cup on the small, inlaid rosewood table beside her, lest she spill what remained of her tea. “When?” she sputtered. “How?”

“There was such a to-do in the library. All manner of chaos with his family. But the long and short of it is that, once the others had gone away, Hartford proposed to me and I accepted.” Anne’s gaze held the shimmer of happy tears. “We’re going to be ridiculously happy together.”

Matching tears sprang to Stella’s eyes. Crossing the short distance between them, she caught her friend up in her arms. The two of them hugged each other fiercely. “My dear, I’m so dreadfully pleased for you both.”

“So am I. Pleased. Elated. Stunned.” Anne uttered a shaky laugh. “What an evening! I still can’t believe it’s real.”

“You do love him, don’t you?”

“I do,” Anne said. “God help me. And he loves me, too. He vows that he always has.”

“Of course he has. How could he not?” Stella drew back to search Anne’s face. She’d never seen her friend’s countenance so full of joy. Not even when they were galloping their horses together in Rotten Row. “Oh, Anne. What a turn up!”

“I know. Only think—yesterday I was still in my blacks, today I’m in crimson velvet, and soon I shall be in white.”

Anne and her mother, Lady Arundell, had been mourning the loss of the late Earl of Arundell for nearly seven years. Anne had only emerged from her blacks yesterday—a shocking event in itself. A betrothal was yet another happy alteration to her circumstances. One that must be universally acclaimed.

“Another wedding,” Stella said. “Just as Julia predicted.”

Anne laughed again. “Yes, she did, didn’t she? I’d almost forgotten.”

A newlywed herself, bookish, raven-haired beauty Julia had briefly returned to town a few months ago with her dour, battle-scarred husband, Captain Jasper Blunt, to attend Evie’s wedding to Mr. Malik. The simple ceremony had been held at the home of Evie’s uncle, Mr. Fielding, in Russell Square. It was there where Julia had remarked that one wedding generally prompted another. She’d given Stella a meaningful nudge as she’d said it.

Naturally, Julia had assumed Stella would be next. They none of them would have thought it would be Anne, their starchy, black-clothed leader who had long professed herself content with the single state.

Stella felt a twinge of sadness to think of it now. It wasn’t because she had a particular longing to be married. It was because she wanted her freedom, and, rather ironically, marriage was the only way to secure it. Until such time as she was wed, she must live under her brother’s thumb. Worse, she could now anticipate living under the thumb of her brother’s future wife. And the reign of the sanctimonious Miss Amanda Trent didn’t promise to be a comfortable one.

It was one of the reasons Stella had come to Hampshire—to thwart her brother’s matrimonial plans. Without her to play chaperone, he’d be less likely to spend the holiday courting Miss Trent. Less likely to propose to her.

But Daniel’s plans couldn’t be thwarted forever. He would marry someone eventually. And when that day came, the hourglass of Stella’s fate would effectively be turned over, and the sand would begin to run. She would no longer be needed at the vicarage. Possibly, no longer wanted.

The only solution was for Stella to find a husband of her own.

It was easier said than done.

She had but one viable prospect at present. Squire Smalljoy was a widowered parishioner of her brother’s in Fostonbury. Though viable was overstating the case. The man was pushing sixty. One might better describe him as willing .

“ He won’t mind your gray hair ,” Daniel had said.

As if that were the only consideration! What about compatibility? What about friendship? What about love ?

Not to mention the fact that Stella would rather almost anything than end her days in Derbyshire, less than five miles from her brother, cursed to spend the rest of her life in the same deplorable state in which she’d entered it. A shadow. A secondary concern. And wed to a stodgy old farmer besides. A man who, on their marriage, would have rights to her meager funds. To her body. To her horse!

But Stella wouldn’t sour Anne’s moment with self-pity over her own situation.

“I expect it was inevitable,” she said, smiling. “We’re all of an age, and we are taking part in the London season. Marriage is the goal, is it not?”

“It never was for me,” Anne said. “Not to any other gentleman but Hartford, certainly. Once you’ve experienced true love, it’s impossible to settle for anything less.”

“Nor why should you?” Stella returned. No one should have to settle for a loveless match. Not even country girls with gray hair and no great fortune to speak of.

As ever, Anne appeared to comprehend the trend of Stella’s thoughts. “You won’t have to settle, either.” She clasped Stella’s hands, giving them a reassuring squeeze. “We’ve six more days left at Sutton Park. That’s ample time to meet a suitable gentleman. If it’s truly marriage that you want.”

“What I want,” Stella said, steering the conversation back on its proper course, “is to find but a fraction of the happiness you have, dearest. How well the state becomes you.” She summoned back a smile, even brighter than before. “Now, tell me again how Mr. Hartford proposed. I long to hear every romantic detail!”

?The following evening, after dinner, Stella and the rest of the guests repaired to the Earl of March’s capacious drawing room. Papered in apple-green silk damask and furnished in grand rococo style, it was lit by a pair of magnificent Italian crystal montgolfière chandeliers. The whole of the room had been decorated for Christmas with pine boughs, garlands of holly and ivy, and a towering tree that glittered with blazing candles and gilded fruit.

A line of liveried servants awaited them, armed with trays of celebratory champagne, in anticipation of the earl’s formal announcement of his grandson’s engagement.

The news wasn’t exactly a secret. The assembled company had already been buzzing with whispers all day, stealing covert glances at Mr. Hartford, the earl, and the earl’s eldest son, Viscount Brookdale.

“I daresay people have already guessed what the announcement’s to be,” Stella said to Anne as they collected their glasses of champagne from a passing footman.

“It’s not the engagement they’ve guessed at,” Anne returned. “It’s the source of the drama that embroiled the family last night in the library.”

Stella’s brows lifted in inquiry. Though her friend had referenced familial chaos, she’d yet to go into the particulars.

But Anne was no more inclined to explain now than she’d been in Stella’s room last night. “It’s not my secret to tell,” she said.

Mr. Hartford stood on the opposite side of Anne, his hand resting rather possessively at the small of Anne’s back. He was a tall, broad-shouldered gentleman, with seal-brown hair and blue eyes that were forever alive with droll humor. “If it is still a secret,” he said mildly, “it won’t be for long.”

Stella looked between them. “What happened?”

“Do you see that gentleman standing next to my cousin?” Mr. Hartford asked.

Stella followed his gaze. Across the room, Mariah Spriggs, the stepdaughter of Mr. Hartford’s uncle, Viscount Brookdale, stood near the doors with a handsome, dark-haired young man. The two of them were holding twin glasses of champagne, smiling at each other as they conversed.

Mr. Hartford lowered his voice. “That gentleman is Marcus Neale. My half brother.”

Stella’s eyes jolted back to Mr. Hartford in immediate understanding. He didn’t have any siblings. Nor half siblings. Not that she was aware. Which meant—

“Exactly,” Anne said, reading Stella’s thoughts. “Mr. Neale was born on the wrong side of the blanket. His existence came as something of a surprise to the earl and Viscount Brookdale.”

It was an understatement if Stella had ever heard one. The Earl of March may be a genial, absent-minded botanist, perpetually tottering about in soil-stained clothing with his white hair standing half on end, but his son and heir, Viscount Brookdale, had a reputation for being one of the most severe, straitlaced, and morally upright members in parliament. The fact that Lord Brookdale’s equally moralistic late younger brother had sired an illegitimate child must have come as a profound shock.

“Has the earl acknowledged him?” Stella asked. “More to the point, has Lord Brookdale?”

“They will,” Mr. Hartford said with unwavering certainty.

But not tonight, it appeared. Tonight was for happy news, not for scandal.

Separating himself from the assembled company, the Earl of March moved to stand in front of the room. He raised his voice above the murmurs of the fashionably clad guests still milling about. “Ladies and gentlemen. Esteemed guests. I ask you to raise your glasses on this, the happiest of occasions.”

Stella obligingly raised her glass. She exchanged a giddy smile with Anne.

Anne was beaming. Beside her, Hartford wore a broad smile of his own. His face shone with warmth as he gazed down at his soon-to-be bride.

“I’m pleased to announce the engagement of my grandson, Felix Hartford, to Lady Anne Deveril, daughter of my dearest friend, the Countess of Arundell.” Lord March lifted his glass high. The champagne sparkled like liquid gold in the blaze of candlelight from the chandelier above him. “A toast to their health and happiness, and to a long and fruitful marriage!”

Cheers erupted throughout the room, along with murmurs of appreciative surprise.

Stella took a deep swallow of champagne as guests came forward to congratulate Anne and her betrothed. In the happy commotion, Stella was nudged back by the growing crowd, further and further away from her friend, supplanted by the swell of well-wishers.

It was to be expected. This was Anne’s moment to shine. The moment many a young lady dreamed about all her life.

Not Stella, of course. Not Anne, either, up to now. To be sure, Anne had been the least romantic of all of Stella’s friends, and the least prone to excess sentimentality. But judging by the turn of Anne’s countenance—the shimmer in her eyes and the radiance in her cheeks—those jaded feelings had altered, now she was engaged herself. As for Stella…

Happy as she was for her friend, Stella felt herself as cynical on the subject of romance as ever. Withdrawing from the crowd, she wandered toward the bank of velvet-draped windows that lined the opposite end of the drawing room.

Perhaps it was sour grapes. She hadn’t any prospect of romance in her own life, so she must disdain it in everyone else’s. It was unworthy of her. The action of an embittered spinster, not that of a girl of two-and-twenty. She was meant to be eager and optimistic in the face of her future. If not forever, then at least for now. She should be enjoying her moment of auburn-haired freedom to its fullest.

That’s why she’d colored her hair in the first place. To revel in the attention that would come her way once her silver tresses were temporarily no more.

Tipping her glass, she drained the remainder of her champagne. The vintage was an expensive one. Powerful, too. It fizzed in her veins. Emboldened by the feeling, she scanned the room for prospective suitors.

She was wearing another of Mr. Malik’s creations: a dinner dress of pale violet glacé silk, cut low off her shoulders, with a heart-shaped neckline and double skirts trimmed in Maltese lace. A suave older gentleman, hovering at the fringes of the crowd with his wife, cast Stella an appraising glance as she passed.

Stella stiffened a fraction. She had no interest in married men, and—flattering as it was to be thought alluring—she found it offensive that any of them should be so shameless as to telegraph their interest in her.

She wasn’t seeking a love affair. She wasn’t even looking for love. Not any longer. With two seasons behind her and only five days of the house party remaining, she hadn’t the time for girlish daydreams. On the contrary. Now was the time for ruthless pragmatism.

What she required was an eligible bachelor. Preferably, someone under the age of forty. A handsome face would help, but it wasn’t a necessity. It was a handsome bank balance Stella required. Her future husband must be a man of property. A man with an estate where Stella and—more importantly—Locket could live out their days in peace.

It was that which was essential. Safety and security. Stella was resolved to be realistic about it.

She strolled on, covertly examining every gentleman she passed.

Or perhaps not so covertly.

Her frank perusals were met with varying degrees of interest and alarm. Perchance she was being too bold. But honestly, if a lady must wait for a gentleman to approach her, she could find herself waiting until doomsday. And this dratted Circassian gold dye wouldn’t last forever. At the party’s end, Stella’s hair would revert to gray.

And so would her life.

She wasn’t going to squander her all-too-brief chance, even if she must take the reins herself. She may have to settle for less than love, but she deserved a good man. A decent man. A man who, if she was very lucky, might make her heart beat the tiniest bit faster.

She’d nearly reached the window when she saw him.

Mr. Hayes was seated in an alcove on the opposite side of the Christmas tree, his wheeled chair arranged beneath a patinaed oil painting of a flock of Hampshire sheep dozing under a shade tree. He wasn’t alone. A well-dressed lady and gentleman were with him, talking companionably. But Mr. Hayes wasn’t attending to them. He was looking at Stella.

He met her inquisitive gaze with a slight smile.

Stella’s heart gave a queer double thump.

Thus far, she’d been endeavoring to avoid him. It hadn’t been difficult. Sutton Park was an enormous gothic pile of a house, and the party was a large one. On their first full day in residence, the guests had quickly clustered into factions, disappearing to play games or to conduct horticultural business. They’d only all been in one place at dinner. Stella had been seated near the top of the long, mahogany dining table, and Mr. Hayes at the bottom, her view of him obscured by towering silver candelabras and a long row of elaborate filigree epergnes, filled with exotic flowers cultivated from the earl’s famous greenhouses.

She’d felt his presence nonetheless, on the other side of that sparkling wall of candlelight, silver, and foliage. That same strange crackle of awareness she’d felt when she’d faced him in the anteroom last night.

“ You’re a shining star ,” he’d said. “ Hasn’t anyone ever told you so before? ”

The wondrous, bewildering compliment had played over and over in Stella’s mind throughout the day, setting her stomach fluttering and her pulse beating hard at her throat. It was how she knew that she wasn’t offended by his request to paint her. Not entirely. The truth was, she was altogether too intrigued by it.

And by him.

It was an interest she didn’t dare indulge. That was precisely how silly young wallflowers got themselves into trouble—by melting at the first outrageous compliment to come their way. Young ladies who were so starved for masculine attention that they allowed themselves to be persuaded to do all manner of things harmful to their reputations. To cast off their modesty, their virtue. To become artists’ models, for heaven’s sake!

Stella refused to be counted among their number. She may be daring when the occasion called for it, but her reputation was worth more than that. She was worth more than that. It would be demeaning to entertain any sort of connection with a gentleman whose sole interest lay in her artistic possibilities—an interest seemingly fueled by the peculiar color of her hair. She had her pride, after all. It was the very reason she’d been avoiding him.

But there was no avoiding him now.

He’d seen her already, of course. No doubt he’d marked her the moment she’d entered the room. Hadn’t he said he noticed everything?

She came to an uncertain halt, faced with a dilemma: to acknowledge the man or to ignore him. The latter course might be rude, but the former would surely be foolish beyond permission. To acknowledge Teddy Hayes would be to encourage him. And Stella had no desire to do that.

Did she?