“Cecil! What a thing to say!”

He gave her a twinkling glance. “Now you are a different story. Alas, my figure is not what it once was.”

“As if I cared about that!”

“Then why would you think that I do not relish every one of your curves?” he said, and the look in his eyes confirmed his words. “But even more, Claribel, I love the fact that you come to our bed with pleasure. You are my —”

“Mr. Pinkler-Ryburn!” Claribel exclaimed. “You forget yourself.” But her cheeks were hot, and her fingers trembled in his. “We are fortunate,” she added, as softly as he. Then she whisked her hand away. “Enough of this foolishness. What on earth was Lady Islay saying about fairy tales?”

“All those people who called her ‘the ugly duchess’ are eating their words,” her husband said. “The countess has turned into a swan, and she’s dropped them all on their arses by making fun of it.”

“I’d forgotten all that,” Claribel said, wrinkling her nose. “My mother said it was all frightfully ill-bred and wouldn’t let us read the papers for a week.”

Cecil bent over and dropped a kiss on her nose. “I know, darling. That’s why you are the sweet tartlet that you are, and Theo is the rather stern and magnificent cake that she is.”

“I am not a tartlet.” But she couldn’t help smiling.

Nineteen

The Pinkler-Ryburn ball reminded Theo of nothing so much as a host of sparrows perched on a railing. They would descend from a tree in a huge group, chattering madly. One bird would take wing and the rest would hysterically soar up after, the whole group coming down almost immediately on a railing all of ten yards to the left. Or to the right.

The key to controlling the evening, she decided, was to be the sparrow that determined the behavior of the flock. When the ballroom became intolerably crowded, Theo drifted onto the terrace, taking with her a core group of gentlemen glued to her side by a pleasing mixture of lust and admiration. What’s more, they were men who conformed to her sense of elegance.

When Mr. Van Vechten joined them, his velvet coat an aggressive shade of purple striped with peach, she was just dismissive enough that he retreated as quickly as he had come. The same went for Mr. Hoyt, who was rumored to have a fortune in gold, but unfortunately had a penchant for displaying his treasure in the form of garish buttons.

Glimpsing her little group, convulsed with laughter as Theo sparked jokes with her coterie, the ballroom emptied onto the terrace.

Feeling nearly as constricted as she had inside, Theo decided, rather mischievously, to go for a walk in the gardens. There was no question as to her companion; she tucked her arm under that of Lord Geoffrey Trevelyan.

They had both grown older. She learned that he had married that first season (though not, obviously, to Claribel), and that his wife had died some two years after. There were creases at the corners of his eyes now, and a lean cast to his cheeks. But everything else was the same: the dark, slanting eyes and the wicked little smile flickering around his lips. And her heart still gave a little thump at the sight of him.

By the time she and Geoffrey had returned to the terrace, Cecil’s guests were rocketing tipsily down dark paths, pretending that they were in Vauxhall.

Theo led the way into the ballroom, now thin of company, and allowed Geoffrey to sweep her into a waltz. She was besieged when that waltz drew to a close and another followed; it seemed that everyone wanted to dance with the swan, and they didn’t want a quadrille.

No, they wanted that low husky laugh at their jokes, and those slender, coltish legs thrillingly near their own.

“There’s something about the look of her,” Colonel MacLachlan told Cecil, longing tangible in his voice. “She’s not my usual type at all, I don’t mind saying. I like small and round. Plus, she mocked me, and I know she would no more consider bedding me than the Regent himself!”

But his eyes still followed Theo down the length of the ballroom. She was in the arms of a man old enough to be her father, and yet anyone could see that when she smiled at him, the man straightened, took the turn of the waltz a bit more dashingly.

“Theo is like the huntress Diana,” Cecil said, rocking a little on his heels. He was thoroughly enjoying the burst of popularity his cousin-by-marriage was experiencing. “Beautiful and yet slightly deadly, ready to whip out a bow and arrow, or turn a man into a squealing swine. Sensual, and yet with just a snowy touch of the virginal about her.”

“Good Lord, man, you sound like a poet,” MacLachlan said, startled. “Don’t let your wife hear you talking like that about the countess.”

Cecil only laughed. He wasn’t worried about Claribel; they understood each other, and their happiest moments were their most intimate. That sort of bond meant that she knew damn well that he wouldn’t stray. Besides, he was of the private opinion that Theo would be remarkably uncomfortable to live with.

Her rules were enchanting to read about, but the same tendency to catalogue perfection could be seen throughout her life. She proclaimed, rather than suggested. She was too fierce in her opinions, too unforgiving, too witty.

Too much fuss. Too many feathers.

As befitted a swan, of course.

Even as Theo enjoyed her meteoric rise through the ton and the hushed attention that polite society gave to her every utterance as regards style, the constant mentions of swans (and never ducklings) was wearing.

By the fall of 1815, the papers were in the habit of asking for another of her “rules”; La Belle Assemblée never failed to include a detailed illustration of her every costume.

She thought that it would be quite nice if James returned to find his wife the talk of the ton and a force to be reckoned with.

And so it was that Theo had the ghost of one person—her mother—standing at one shoulder, and the ghost of another—James—at her other shoulder. And while she did not cast a romantic haze over the short days of her marriage, she had thought a great deal about where fault lay—and indeed, whether “fault” was a useful question in a marriage.

James, she concluded, had been pushed by his father into an action that he knew was morally objectionable. And yet, in his own way, he loved her. She was sure of that.

The limit she and Cecil had set was drawing near, and Theo knew she must accept the fact that it would be miraculous if any news of James emerged at this point.

Just after 1815 turned to 1816, she summoned Cecil to meet with the family solicitor, Mr. Boythorn, who prosed on at length about a “death in absentia” petition to the House of Lords, detailing Theo’s inability to enjoy either the duties and responsibilities of a wife, or the freedom and protections of a widow.

“We should have a memorial service for my husband,” Theo said when he paused for breath. “After we declare him dead in such a cut-and-dried manner. It would be absurd, I suppose, to wear mourning for a year. But I shall wear mourning for at least a short time. James was very young when he left England, but there are many who remember him.”

“When I was a boy, everyone called me Pink,” Cecil put in. “James never joined in.”

The solicitor cleared his throat. “A memorial service in St. Paul’s Cathedral would be most appropriate. It would indeed be fitting to hold a service after Lord Islay has been formally recognized as deceased. A small plaque could also be arranged, to commemorate the life of this courageous young man. It is my belief that the Percival foundered almost immediately.”