The Lady and Her Secret Lover Page 3

  “The season?” Louisa asked. “Or society in general?”

  “The season,” she said with a smile.

  “Not particularly.”

  “And not your first,” Ellie said, more to herself as she noted the deeper color of Louisa’s gown.

  “No, not my first. My third, in fact. Third,” she repeated, feigned terror on her face, and Ellie laughed. “Every year I find less and less reason to want to find a husband. Every year at season’s end, I find less has changed and the urgency dwindles more—for myself, at any rate. I understand I need somewhere to live, eventually, but I’m not entirely sure marriage is for me. I understand my father wants to make connections, to further his control in government, but I don’t feel that urgency in the way he does, even as he threatens to leave me destitute should I fail to secure a match.”

  Ellie knew her eyes widened.

  “I apologize. That was terribly forward. That was… I shouldn’t have said that. I’ve no idea what’s come over me. It’s as though we’ve been friends for ever,” Louisa said as her spine straightened and she seemed to restore her socially required postures, creating a sort of invisible barrier between them where before they’d been drifting so cautiously the one toward the other. Something in Ellie sank the slightest bit.

  “I feel that as well,” Ellie replied. “Please don’t stop now.” She allowed herself to drift. “Just before I came in here…” Ellie took a deep breath and steeled herself. “Before I came in here, my mother told me to find you. Well, not you you, but Viscount Mayjoy’s daughter. She thought you’d make a good companion.”

  “I see,” Louisa said, the sadness in the words heavy.

  “But that’s not… I didn’t come because of that. I came because of the potted palms. Not exactly that either. I came because of you, the woman I saw in the potted palms. Nothing to do with your father. I didn’t know you were the same, but I don’t want there to be anything between us so I wanted to…”

  “Wanted?” Louisa asked.

  “I want to know you, to know Louisa. The rest of it is merely the fancy dressing of society.”

  “Shall we carry on as we’ve begun? As though we are good friends?” And Louisa leaned in, the slightest of degrees, but it was enough. “Perhaps the very best of friends?” she said without a breath to back it up.

  Ellie couldn’t believe her luck. Finally, she’d found someone she felt safe with. But she could see Louisa didn’t feel quite safe yet. Ellie would strive to become a place she could. “Yes, please.” Ellie squeezed her hand and never wanted to let go. She was desperate to tread lightly to keep this flighty butterfly on the same path.

  They sat together, silent, for a time. Quiet when other women came in, assessed them, straightened themselves, and left. Ellie skimmed her fingers over Louisa’s delicate gloves, following the embroidery and the pearl buttons without even considering how forward the action was. They were happy to sit and simply be, and for Ellie it was wondrous. She felt as though she’d been running for months now in preparation for tonight, but this…this peace was unexpected. She treasured it, wanted to settle into it.

  The door swung wide again, and a smallish woman with blond hair and stunning dress entered. Louisa stood, tearing her hand from Ellie’s as she did so. Ellie followed.

  “Ma’am,” Louisa said, her head bowed and knees bent in a respectful curtsey.

  Not sure who she was, Ellie mirrored her movements. It would do no good to her season to upset a matron this early on, and she could tell this woman was of import, if not to Louisa then to society.

  The woman stopped in front of them, and Louisa gestured to Ellie. “My Lady, might I introduce Miss Eliot Rigsby?” she said in a voice almost unrecognizable in its formality. The woman nodded, and Louisa turned to smile at her. “Miss Eliot Rigsby I present you The Viscountess Mayjoy.” Her mother.

  Ellie knew her eyes widened and she almost stumbled in her curtsey. Her family was money but theirs was power, and she could tell the difference by the way it oozed from this woman’s presence. “My Lady, an honor to meet you,” she said before rising. All this training for just such a moment, and she’d survived. Well, managed at any rate. She smiled warmly as the viscountess examined her tip to toe. She’d known the ladies of the ton were quite forward in their opinions. She waited.

  “Well,” the Viscountess said, her head turning to Louisa while her eyes continued to measure Ellie. “It seems you’ve a friend. How lovely.” Ellie didn’t believed her words. “You must invite her to tea,” she finished, and her eyes left Ellie and she felt like she could breathe again.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Louisa said with a small dip of a curtsey. How many was that now? So formal. Was the family always so formal?

  “Miss Eliot Rigsby, I will direct the invitation to your mother, Lady…?”

  Ellie stopped breathing again. She was fit to pass out if she kept on like this. “Ma’am, my mother is Mrs. Eliot. She’s often with her sister, the Countess Rigsby.” Her mother had said to use the title only if she found herself in a situation in which it seemed quite necessary.

  The woman’s interest waned. “I know of Rigsby. He worked with Mayjoy on several occasions.” The intonation inferred that Ellie’s uncle, an Earl, was more of an assistant to the viscount than a higher member of the peerage in his own standing. “Well, Louisa, you’ve had enough rest. You should return. I’m certain Miss Eliot Rigsby has also been missed, as she’s one of the lovelier of this year’s set.” The t of set was pronounced so hard Ellie flinched.

  “Yes, My Lady,” Louisa said, then nodded to Ellie and disappeared through the door to the ballroom.

  Ellie waited a moment, out of respect, to be sure the viscountess was done with her, which she apparently was. She didn’t give her a nod, a farewell, another glance, or by-her-leave. She walked to the mirror to asses her countenance then abandoned Ellie in the middle of the room.

  Ellie gave the slightest curtsey to no one in particular and returned to the ballroom. She didn’t catch sight of Louisa again, as much as she tried. As much as she wished to. Ellie was caught up by the crush and the introductions and the dances with men she now wished to be rid of. When she finally had a moment to speak with her mother, she told her of Louisa and the coming invitation. Her mother decided that had made the evening a success and they should leave early, as if to give the appearance of unaffectedness, or some such notion. Ellie wasn’t sure, and to be honest she couldn’t be bothered to care. All she could think of was that blue-eyed girl from the potted palms.

  The invitation came two days later, and provided no warning. They were expected that very day. Within the hour, in fact. Ellie and her mother rushed to ready then took a hack and told the footmen to send the carriage along behind as soon as it was readied—to bring them home. Ellie had been told that peers were an odd bunch, expecting everyone to grovel at their feet, and her mother was none too happy to provide a knee to bend. Ellie was as well at the moment—anything for Louisa—for she knew, she knew, Louisa was someone she had to know.

  Louisa’s home was beautiful, and large, and rather…overwhelming. The house was on Gloucester street, facing Portman Square, minutes from Hyde Park. Ellie knew then that Viscount Mayjoy was powerful to hold such a property in London, perhaps even moreso than her uncle. The brick house was five stories straight up, and the public foyer held a beautiful neoclassical stairway that wrapped the circular entry from the main floor to the glass dome on the roof in spectacular fashion.

  When she’d first seen Louisa at the ball, she’d been alone and quiet, and Ellie had assumed that meant Louisa was not part of the haute ton, but she quite obviously was regardless that Louisa was, quite plainly, an aspiring matron. Ellie tried to breathe as the army of liveried servants took wraps, hats, and gloves awaiting further orders for the arrivals from their masters. She was in well over her head, and her mother beamed.

  “Oh, you did quite well in this friendship, Maitland, quite well,” she whispered. She was over
joyed and took Ellie’s arm, giving her a squeeze. “You shall have entry to the best of the Season with this friendship. You must stick with this girl and make her happy to ensure she invites you to everything!” Ellie had never seen her mother quite so happy and while Ellie understood, it soured her stomach nonetheless. “Well done, my daughter, well done.”

  Ellie heard footsteps like a metronome clicking on the hard floor of the balcony above them but wrapped around those perfect footsteps was a rather erratic rhythm, one that seemed to chase, relent, then surpass the other. She looked up to the balcony, attempting to see past the carved ornate balustrade that encircled the upper floors, to see a flurry of blue. Ellie shook her head at the sight—Louisa.

  The blue calmed before Louisa came around the final bend and began to descend the staircase to the ground floor. Louisa beamed and it infused her blood, sped her heart, and rushed her skin in countless tiny pricks of electricity. Standing still in that moment was the most difficult thing Ellie’d ever endured, and she could tell Louisa was preventing herself from soaring down the balustrade with everything in her.

  Ellie waited what seemed forever as she gave her mother a chance to inspect her friend. She attempted to hide her excitement, to no avail. Ellie knew her smile gave too much away. She stopped herself before she tapped an impatient foot. As excited as her mother was, her consternation should Ellie misstep now would be wicked.

  But then Louisa was before her. She curtseyed to her mother as she greeted her, then she turned her full glory to Ellie. It was one thing to see this sort of beauty in a dimly lit retiring room. It was something else altogether to see this woman beneath the bright light of a colorful glass dome, where it filtered, bounced and wound its way down, lighting every small nook and cranny, creating a halo of light around her that matched the light she held within. Ellie exhaled with her curtsey, and Louisa took her hands and led her away while the butler spoke to her mother.

  They went back up those stairs, but this time it seemed only a moment before they’d reached the top, turned to the left, went up the second case, rounded the walkway, and entered a parlor.

  It seemed to Ellie that this visit was to be so many small breaths that put together would be a gust strong enough to lift her and cast her against the ground. As beautiful as that five-story entry was, this room was more. It brought the majestic beauty close where you could see it intimately and even touch it if you dared. From the velvet-patterned wall paper, to the delicately designed and painted woodwork, this room was created to give everyone something to contemplate, without ever seeming that they were avoiding conversation.

  Ellie’s caught up realizing she’d been presented to the Viscountess Mayjoy. She hadn’t had time to consider her at the ball, she’d been so overwhelmed. She gave her best curtsey and as she inspected the woman, she realized Louisa must get all of her looks from her father. This woman was air, light, and simplicity where Louisa was all drama, depth, and color.

  The Viscountess motioned to the settee across the tea butler, and her mother sat. Then the inquisition began. Where was their home, where did they summer, what were her hobbies, who were her friends… She could only hope she fared properly as she delivered her rote responses, so well trained into her she hadn’t even to consider them.

  “Louisa,” Lady Mayjoy said. “Leave us to our discussions.”

  “It was lovely to make your acquaintance ma’am…again,” Elie said and she curtseyed to Lady Mayjoy, then nodded to the others in the room as she followed Louisa to the door. Once down the hallway, almost back to the grand staircase, she could breathe. It seemed to her that voices in the rotunda would carry so she didn’t speak yet.

  Louisa took her hand, leading her down the stairs and back up the opposite set instead of down the main case. Louisa rushed her to the end of the walkway and through a set of double doors. She released her, then turned, closing both heavy doors and throwing the latch across the top to bar entry.

  “Finally,” Louisa said. She walked toward her, lifting her hands. Ellie waited, unsure what her intention was. When her cool hands came to rest on her cheeks, Ellie took a breath. She closed her eyes and felt the cool fingertips coasting over the crests of her cheeks, then down her jaw, to her neck. The light shifted behind her eyelids, and Louisa kissed her cheeks beside her own lips, first on her left, then her right. Ellie felt those soft kisses all the way to her toes, like her body filled with bubbles and threatened to lift her from her shoes.

  “Hello,” Louisa said quietly.

  “What was that?” Ellie asked as she opened her eyes to see this girl close enough to distinguish the threads in her eyes.

  “Just a friendly greeting,” she replied with a nervous smile.

  Ellie needed a minute to compile her thoughts, so she turned to the room. Then she lost all thought. As if the great rotunda was not enough, as though the sitting room with all its delicate furnishing and intricate detail were nothing more than a simple room, as if even Louisa, in all her beauty, could not fully impress any of the visitors to this house. This room, in its vastness and grandeur, certainly could.

  It relegated all other aspects of this home to mere introductions to beauty. Rooms meant to prepare you for what you were to be witness to.

  Ellie stood, enraptured, no idea what she should do next. Louisa’s warm hand wrapped around hers, and she squeezed back as though to steady herself. “I’m…” She didn’t know what to say.

  “This is my favorite place in all the world.”

  “I can imagine why,” Ellie said. The ceiling extended the remaining three stories to yet another glass ceiling, but this one was tinged with pale colors, which created a pattern to the light that fell around the room. Like swimming in a subtle rainbow.

  “My father prefers to view the sculptures with the torches lit, and my father’s wife prefers the gas lamps. I prefer to see them like this, with the sun overhead through the ceiling,” Louisa said.

  “Yes, this…this is magical.” At first glance, a pattern in the tile would look to be a certain color and pattern, but then a cloud would shift, the light would change, and everything she thought to be simply wasn’t. As though this room, this world, was never the same. She walked to one of the massive sculptures and, reaching out, she looked to Louisa for permission.

  Louisa nodded. “Never let anyone else see you touch them. It’s not allowed.”

  Ellie stretched her fingers and warmed them in preparation then reached out across the base, where her toes met the marble. She slid her hand up one strong thigh, closing her eyes and feeling the shape of the muscle. She could imagine it shifting against her hand. When her fingertips met the abdomen of the man, she shifted away from the center of him, then skated her hand down the round of his hip, and back down his leg. “I’ve never— I can’t believe… He’s magnificent,” Ellie whispered.

  “Why do you go by Ellie?” Louisa asked as they moved to the next sculpture.

  “I don’t, exactly. I— I was lonely as a child. My mother kept me close. My older sister, the first Maitland, died when she was out with the governess and other children—”

  “You were named for your dead sister?”

  “Yes and I— I always wanted to be someone else instead of her.”

  “Middle name?”

  Ellie smiled. “No. That was hers first as well.”

  Louisa stopped her, then hugged her. Ellie was…she wasn’t sure what she was. Nobody’d ever reacted to her this way. She sank into the warmth of the arms around her and she wanted… For the first time in her life, she wanted.

  She let out a shuddering breath as though to let go of everything she’d thought she wanted before. Then she breathed deep, taking this new want into her and holding it. Then Louisa let go, slow and a bit unsteady as though she wished to stay. Oh, but Ellie shouldn’t read too much into this. They were friends and she wanted her friendship more than anything.

  “I’m sorry that happened to you,” Louisa said.

  Her family
had never understood why she didn’t like her name, and it wasn’t exactly that she didn’t like it, it simply wasn’t hers and somehow Louisa understood that so easily, with so little explanation.

  “Ellie,” she started again. “Ellie ellie Eliot… that’s how the young kids teased. I suppose I started to pretend that… well I was young and—it seems strange, now. Anyway, I decided if I ever had truly close friends, they would call me Ellie. And now I’m rambling. I suppose it’s not terribly imaginative,” Ellie finished.

  “It’s beautiful,” Louisa said. “Ellie.”

  “I don’t want… Please don’t…”

  “It’s our secret. I promise.”

  Ellie smiled and walked up to another sculpture, this one a woman. She was soft and round and inviting. She was laid out on a large pedestal, one knee out to the side as she lay on her hip, her body curled around that leg as though she held something precious in her lap, but there wasn’t anything.

  “I used to crawl up in that space with a quilt and sleep,” Louisa said from behind her. “You can see the wear on her leg, unfortunately. But I always felt so safe in the lee of her strength.”

  “What about your mother?”

  “Actually, Lady Mayjoy is not my mother. My mother died when I was born.”

  That explained why she’d called her her father’s wife. “Lou—” She stopped, her words and her breath lost as Louisa placed two fingers to her lips to silence her.

  “No, please. I never knew her. If I ever wanted for a mother, there were the nursemaids and nannies and governesses, and this lady here. She was my favorite because she never yelled at me.”

  Ellie’s heart broke for the baby who’d never known a mother’s love. She took Louisa’s hand and pressed a kiss to her palm. “I’m sorry," she said, then let it drop when she realized how forward the action was. But she watched as Louisa curled her fingers into her palm as though to keep it. As she tucked it against her breast, Ellie turned toward yet another large piece of marble, determined not to react. “Do you look like your mother then?”