Page 48 of The Runaway Duchess

His mother’s illness.

The thumping of feet grew louder as Mr. Barnett bowed with even more vigor. The room was crowded enough that dancers kept colliding. Tomas might find his services in higher demand tonight than yesterday, when those little boys had nearly drowned themselves.

“Come along!” That forward girl—she’d danced close enough to catch Neal’s eye, thick braids bouncing. Those could whack a man and knock his wig off. “Come along, co!” she cried.

Neal tossed her a smile, made a small regretful gesture.

Lavinia frowned. “Why did you settle in London in the first place? You weren’t there very long.”

“A year,” he said absently. “January to January.” His gaze tracked the dancing now, and his fingers drummed his thigh in time to the music. “I went for Varnham,” he added, almost an afterthought.

His gardening business. He was the head of the nurseries, not a jobbing gardener. She should stop thinking of him as such, despite his brown neck and dirty fingernails.

Maybe he’d been engaged not to Elizabeth Fletcher but to Elizabeth Davenport. Not out of the question if one emphasized the business rather than the gardening side of things. A businessman would have just cleared the threshold of eligibility for Elizabeth Davenport.

Pointless considerations.

His foot was tapping. The music had gotten inside him. He was bursting with it. She should release him from his agony.

Go on, she should say. You want to dance, dance.

Maybe it wasn’t the music, though. Maybe it was that girl.

“But you live in Truro now,” she said, plowing on with the conversation. “And you’re still running Varnham.”

“We have several branches, but the main branch is in London.” With seeming effort, he refocused his attention on her. “I couldn’t have taken over the business without first spending significant time there. But that wasn’t my intention in going. I went to London for Charles Varnham, James’s father. The rest followed.”

She didn’t understand and must have looked her question, but the jig ended with a roar that made utterance a wasted effort. The crowd shifted, couples rearranging, more people herding toward the center of the room. Another jig started up, the tempo faster. Red-faced, Tomas emerged from the dense center of the crowd, beckoning.

Say it.

“Go on.” She turned to Neal, smiling brightly. “You want to dance.”

He observed only a moment of perfunctory hesitation.

She watched with a sinking heart as he joined the dance, stamping the rhythm on the floor in those old boots, his long, muscled legs swinging as he pivoted to give Davy a deliberate bump with his shoulder. Davy spun around, grinning, and cut a mad caper that Neal mimicked but with an added flurry of steps that proved impossible for Davy to replicate. He tried, gamely, tripping as he did so, to the groans of onlookers. What a funny style of dance it was. Far too loud and frenetic and leggy for London. High knees not being encouraged in the best circles.

Lavinia studied the dancers, picked out Loveday and Kelyn and the reedy blond Strout girls from the harbor, all smiling as they twirled, hands on their hips.

Suddenly, she felt as though she were standing outside it all, behind a thick wall of glass. She didn’t belong among these revelers, nor did she belong anywhere else. If Cranbrook found her, he’d soon discover he didn’t want her. Her mother might take her back, but back to what? Two poor relations were double the inconvenience. Returning, she’d only make things worse.

She’d belonged with George. His Vinnie. But even George hadn’t wanted to keep her.

She’d spent two years in hiding already, hiding from the truth.

George would never have married her. He’d made her feel so special. The golden god of her childhood looking upon her at last, seeing her.

You, Vinnie. It’s always been you.

But he’d let her dangle. He’d toyed with her. She’d been his plaything, nothing more.

The music sounded distant in her ears. She had to brace herself against the windowsill. No one knew who she really was. Not Neal Traymayne, certainly. But not her mother, either. Her papa. They’d both believed her to be a pretty, silly, capricious, but ultimately biddable young girl, their innocent daughter. They’d be appalled if they knew of her deceit. She’d lied to them, and to herself, for George, for love. Or rather, for dazzlement and delusion. For a fairy tale.

Now she was running from Cranbrook, and her parents would never understand what drove her. Visceral repulsion, yes. But she couldn’t sacrifice herself, even if she had the stomach to suffer the old goat’s caresses. For Cranbrook, only a virgin sacrifice would do. Fresh ingredients.

She felt a wave of nausea.

The air smelled of beer and mildew, damp wool and warmed flesh. Her breath came shorter. She should push her way to the door, keep running, this time down to the harbor, where she’d climb aboard one of the boats. Sail north, all the way to the north pole, present herself to the polar bears as a long-lost cub. Forget humankind.