Almost Heaven Read online

  “I’m sure you never did,” Elizabeth managed to say in a controlled voice, but she was beginning to break under the strain.

  “No, indeed,” said Georgina with a twittering laugh.

  Elizabeth felt as if she were suffocating, and the room began to undulate around her. The Townsende group had been like an isolated island all night; now people were turning to see who’d had the daring to go near them. The waltz was building to a roaring crescendo; the voices were getting louder; people were pouring down the staircase a few yards away; and the butler’s endless monotone chant rose above the deafening din: “The Count and Countess of Marsant!” he boomed. “The Earl of Norris! . . . Lord Wilson! . . . Lady Millicent Montgomery! . . .”

  Valerie and Georgina were looking at her pale face with amusement, saying words that were receding from Elizabeth’s mind, drowned by the roaring in her ears and the butler’s rhythmic calls: “Sir William Fitzhugh! . . . Lord and Lady Enderly! . . .”

  Turning her back on Valerie’s and Georgina’s scorching hatred, Elizabeth said in a ragged whisper, “Alex, I’m not feeling well!” But Alex couldn’t hear her because Sir Francis was droning on again.

  “The Baron and Baronesss of Littlefield! . . . Sir Henry Hardin! . . .”

  Elizabeth turned in desperation to the dowager, feeling as if she was going to either scream or faint if she couldn’t get out of there, not caring that Valerie and Georgina and everyone else in the room would know that she had fled from her own disgrace. “I have to leave,” she told the dowager.

  “The Earl of Titchley! . . . The Count and Countess of Rindell! . . .”

  The dowager held up her hand to silence one of her friends and leaned toward Elizabeth. “What did you say, Elizabeth?”

  “His Grace, the Duke of Stanhope! . . . The Marquess of Kensington!”

  “I said,” Elizabeth began, but the dowager’s eyes had snapped to the landing where the butler was stationed, and her face was blanching. “I wish to leave!” Elizabeth cried, but an odd silence was sweeping over the room, and her voice was unnaturally loud.

  Instead of replying to Elizabeth’s statement, the dowager was doing what everyone else was doing: staring at the landing “Tonight only wanted this!” the older woman said in a furious voice.

  “I—I beg your pardon?” Elizabeth asked.

  “Do you swoon?” the duchess demanded, dragging her eyes from the landing and pinning Elizabeth with the direst of looks.

  “No, not in the past, but I really don’t feel well.” Behind her Valerie and Georgina erupted into laughter.

  “Do not even consider leaving until I say you may,” the dowager said tersely, sending a speaking look to Lord Anthony Townsende, a pleasant, unaffected man who’d been her escort tonight, and who suddenly clamped Elizabeth’s elbow in a supporting grip. The entire crowd in the ballroom seemed to be pressing infinitesimally closer to the staircase, and the ones who weren’t were turning to look at Elizabeth with raised brows. Elizabeth had been the cynosure of so many eyes tonight that she took no notice of the hundreds of pairs glancing her way now. But she felt the sudden tension growing in the room, the excitement building, and she glanced uncertainly in the direction of whatever seemed to be causing it. The vision she beheld made her knees tremble violently and a scream rise in her throat; for a split second she thought she was having a distorted double vision, and she blinked, but the vision didn’t clear. Descending the staircase side by side were two men of identical height, clad in matching black evening clothes, wearing matching expressions of mild amusement on their very similar faces. And one of them was Ian Thornton.

  “Elizabeth!” Tony whispered urgently. “Come with me. We’re going to dance.”

  “Dance?” she uttered.

  “Dance,” he averred, half pulling her toward the dance floor. Once there, Elizabeth’s shock was superseded by a blissful sense of unreality. Rather than deal with the horrible fact that the gossip about her former relationship with Ian was now going to erupt like a full-fledged volcano, and the equally appalling fact that Ian was there, her mind simply went blank, oblivious. No longer did the noise in the ballroom pound in her ears; she scarcely heard it at all. No longer did the watchful eyes wound her, she saw only Tony’s shoulder, covered in dark blue superfine. Even when he reluctantly guided her back to the group around the Townsendes, which still included Valerie and Georgina and Viscount Mondevale, Elizabeth felt . . . nothing.

  “Are you all right?” Tony asked worriedly.

  “Perfectly,” she replied with a sweet smile.

  “Do you have any hartshorn with you?”

  “I never faint.”

  “That’s good. Your friends are still standing around to watch and listen, eager to see what happens now.”

  “Yes, they will not want to miss this.”

  “What do you think he will do?”

  Elizabeth raised her eyes and looked at Ian without a tremor. He was still beside the gray-haired man who looked so like him, and they were both surrounded by people who were gathering around and seemed to be congratulating them on something. “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Why should he do anything?”

  “Do you mean he’ll cut you?”

  “I never know what to expect from him. Does it matter?”

  At that moment Ian lifted his gaze and saw her, and the only cut he thought of was a way to cut through the drivel and good wishes so that he could get to her. But he couldn’t yet. Even though she looked pale and stricken and heartbreakingly beautiful, he had to meet her casually, if there was any hope of putting the right face on it. With infuriating persistence the well-wishers gathered around, the men toadying, the women curtsying; and those who weren’t, Ian noticed with fury, were whispering and looking at Elizabeth.

  Ian lasted five minutes before he signaled his grandfather with a curt nod, and they both disengaged themselves from three dozen people who were waiting to be formally presented to the Marquess of Kensington. Together they started through the crowd, Ian nodding absently to acquaintances and trying to avoid being waylaid, but pausing to bow and shake hands now and then so it wouldn’t seem that he was heading straight for Elizabeth. His grandfather, who had been apprised of the plan in the coach, carried the whole thing off with aplomb. “Stanhope!” someone boomed. “Introduce us to your grandson.”

  The stupid charade chafed against Ian’s straining patience. He’d already been introduced to half these people as Ian Thornton, and the pretense that he hadn’t was an infuriating farce. But he endured it for the sake of appearances.

  “How are you, Wilson?” Ian said at one of their innumerable pauses. “Suzanne,” he said, smiling at Wilson’s wife while he watched Elizabeth out of the corner of his eye. She hadn’t moved, didn’t seem to be capable of movement. Someone had handed her a glass of champagne, and she was holding it, smiling at Jordan Townsende, who seemed to be joking with her. Even from this distance Ian could see her smile lacked its entrancing sparkle, and his heart twisted. “We’ll have to do that,” he heard himself say to someone who was inviting him to call at their house, and then he’d had all he was willing to endure. He turned in Elizabeth’s direction, and his grandfather obligingly stopped conversation with a crony. The minute Ian started toward Elizabeth the whispers hit unprecedented volume.

  Alexandra cast a worried look at her, then at Jordan. “Ask Elizabeth to dance, please!” she implored him urgently. “For heaven’s sake, get her out of here. That monster is coming straight in our direction.”

  Jordan hesitated and glanced at Ian, and whatever he saw in the other man’s expression made him hesitate and shake his head. “It’s going to be all right, love,” he promised with only a twinge of doubt as he stepped forward to shake Ian’s hand, exactly as if they hadn’t been playing cards a short while ago. “Permit me to present you to my wife,” Jordan said.

  Jordan turned to the beautiful brunette who looked at Ian with blazing blue eyes. “A pleasure,” Ia