by Mary Balogh
She desperately hoped this was no harbinger of things to come.
She must compose herself before any of the ladies joined her, she thought after she had arrived safely in the primrose salon. And she must stay well out of the orbit of the Duke of Bewcastle for the next thirteen and a half days. It really ought not to be difficult. He probably would not even recognize her when he saw her again. And she was not the sort of person he would notice in the normal course of things.
The Duke of Bewcastle could not, despite the fact that she had inadvertently assaulted him with lemonade, be even the slightest bit dangerous to someone as lowly as she.
And why should she be so discomposed by him anyway? He was not the sort of man she could ever wish to impress.
IT WAS LEMONADE, Wulfric soon realized. But while lemonade might be a refreshing enough drink for those who did not wish to imbibe wine or something stronger on a warm day, it was certainly not a comfortable eye wash.
He did not complain aloud. The Renables appeared to have noticed nothing amiss even though the creature who had spilled it on him from the gallery above had had the impertinence to call down an apology and then scamper away like a frightened rabbit—as well she might. The Renables were busy with Mowbury.
Wulfric wiped his eye with a handkerchief and hoped it did not look as bloodshot as it felt.
But it was not an auspicious beginning to a two-week visit. No servants in any of his own establishments would remain long in his employ if they spied upon guests, spilled liquids on them, apologized aloud, and then ran away. He hoped this was just an aberration and not a sign of poor, slipshod service to come.
The creature had not even been wearing a cap. He had been given a distinct impression of bouncing curls and a round face and big eyes, though he had not, of course, had a good look at her.
Which fact he did not in any way regret.
He dismissed her from his mind. If the Renables could not control their own servants, then poor service was ultimately their concern, not his. He did, after all, have a valet with him to see to his personal needs.
He still had hopes that the house party at Schofield Park would be to his taste. Mowbury, a man in his thirties who had read voraciously and traveled extensively, especially in Greece and Egypt, had been an interesting companion during the long journey from London. They had known each other and been friends of sorts for years. The Renables greeted him affably. His room was an elegant, spacious apartment overlooking the lawns and trees and flower beds at the front of the house.
After changing into fresh clothes and sitting before the dressing room mirror while his valet shaved him, he went down to the billiard room, where the gentlemen had been asked to gather, and discovered the Earl of Kitredge and Viscount Elrick there ahead of him. Both gentlemen were older than he, and he had always found them congenial company. It was a promising sign. Mowbury and his younger brother, Justin Magnus, were there too. Wulfric had never had any dealings with Magnus, but he seemed an amiable young man.
Perhaps this was, after all, just the thing for him, Wulfric thought as he settled into conversation. He would enjoy two weeks of interesting company and then be ready to return to Lindsey Hall for the rest of the summer. After all, one could not become a hermit simply because one’s brothers and sisters had all married and one’s mistress had died.
And then the door opened again and he heard two extremely unpleasant sounds—feminine giggles and male laughter. Male and female voices mingled in a flurry of merry sound. The ladies went on their way; a large group of gentlemen came inside the room. And there was not one among them, Wulfric estimated, who was above twenty-five years of age. And not one of them—if he was to judge by their laughter and posturing and swaggering—who had a brain in his head.
And if he was not very much mistaken, just as large a group of their female counterparts had just walked by.
They were the very people who filled London ballrooms every Season for the grand marriage mart. They were the very reason why he avoided all such entertainments unless circumstances absolutely forced him to attend.
They were his fellow guests.
“Ah,” one of their number said—Sir Lewis Wiseman, a fresh-faced, genial youngster whom Wulfric knew by sight, “it looks as if almost everyone else has arrived too. A fellow does not really need a betrothal party in his honor, but Audrey’s sister and her mother disagree—and Audrey too, I suppose. So here we all are.” He blushed and laughed while his young companions slapped him on the shoulders and made foolish and bawdy comments.
Wiseman, Wulfric recalled now when it was too late, had recently announced his betrothal to Miss Magnus—Lady Renable’s sister. This was a house party in honor of the betrothal. And since both halves of the couple were very young people, most of their invited guests were also very young.
Wulfric was appalled.
He had been brought here under false pretenses to frolic with the infantry of both sexes?
For two whole weeks?
Had Mowbury deliberately misled him? Or had someone deliberately misled Mowbury?
He had no one to blame but himself, of course, for believing a man who was so vague in his dealings with the outside world that he had been known to put in an appearance at White’s Club wearing two quite mismatched boots. It was altogether possible that he had forgotten about the recent betrothal of his sister.
Wulfric’s hand curled about the handle of his quizzing glass, and almost unconsciously he assumed his most chilling, forbidding demeanor as the young gentlemen showed some inclination to treat him and the other elders with boisterous camaraderie.
He blinked a few times. His eye, he realized, was still aching slightly.
CHRISTINE’S SISTER-IN-LAW, Hermione Derrick, Viscountess Elrick, was one of the first ladies to arrive. Tall and fair and slender, she was looking as beautiful and elegant as ever though she must be past forty by now. Christine, feeling as if her heart were about to beat right out of her bosom, stood up and smiled at her. She would have kissed her cheek, but something in the other woman’s demeanor stopped her and so she stood awkwardly where she was.
“How are you, Hermione?” she asked.
“Christine.” Hermione greeted her with a stiff nod and ignored the question. “Melanie informed me that you were one of her guests.”
“And how are the boys?” Christine asked. Oscar’s nephews were no longer children, she realized, but young men who were no doubt out in the world, experiencing life on their own account.
“You have cut your hair,” Hermione observed. “How extraordinary!”
She turned her attention to the other ladies present.
Well, Christine thought as she sat down again, her person was not to be ignored, it seemed, but her voice was. This was an unpromising beginning—or rather an unpromising continuation of the beginning.
Hermione, the daughter of a country solicitor, had made an even more brilliant match than Christine when she had married Viscount Elrick more than twenty years ago. She had welcomed Christine warmly into the family and had helped her adjust to life with the ton, including sponsoring her for her presentation to the queen. They had become friends despite the gap of more than ten years in their ages. But the friendship had become strained during the last few years of Christine’s marriage. Even so, the terrible quarrel after Oscar’s death had taken Christine by surprise and shaken her to the roots. She had left Winford Abbey, Basil’s country home, the day after the funeral, crushed and distraught and quite penniless after purchasing her ticket on the stagecoach, intent only upon returning home to Hyacinth Cottage to lick her wounds and somehow piece her life together again. She had neither heard from nor seen her brother- and sister-in-law since—until now.
She fervently hoped that they could at least be civil with one another for two weeks. After all, she had done nothing wrong.
Viscountess Mowbury, Melanie’s mother, small and rotund, with steel-gray hair and a shrewd eye, hugged Christine and told her she was pl
eased to see her pretty face again. Audrey also expressed delight and blushed and looked very happy when Christine congratulated her on her betrothal. Fortunately, Christine’s troubled relationship with Oscar’s immediate family had never affected her amicable relations with his aunt and cousins, who had not themselves spent much time in London during those years.
Lady Chisholm, wife of Sir Clive, with whom Christine had once had an acquaintance, and Mrs. King, whom she had also known, were polite.
And there were six very young, very fashionably and expensively clad young ladies, presumably friends of Audrey’s, who clearly knew one another very well and huddled in a group together, chattering and giggling and ignoring everyone else. They must all have been still in the schoolroom when she was last in London, Christine thought. Again, she felt positively ancient. And her second-best muslin suddenly looked like a veritable fossil. It was one of the last garments Oscar had bought for her before his death. She doubted it had ever been paid for.
“The Duke of Bewcastle is to be one of the guests,” Lady Sarah Buchan announced rather loudly to the huddled group, her eyes as wide as saucers, two spots of color high on her cheekbones.
The girl could perhaps be forgiven for believing she brought fresh and startling news. She had only recently arrived with her father, the Earl of Kitredge, and her brother, the Honorable George Buchan. But everyone already knew because it was the one piece of information with which Melanie had regaled and impressed each of her arriving guests, having apparently recovered completely from her chagrin with Hector for inviting him.
“I never saw him even once all through the Season,” Lady Sarah continued, “even though he was in London all the time. It is said that he rarely goes anywhere except the House of Lords and his clubs. But he is coming here. Imagine!”
“Only one duke and hordes of us,” Rowena Siddings said, her eyes dancing with merriment and her dimples showing. “Though the married ladies do not count, of course. Nor does Audrey because she is betrothed to Sir Lewis Wiseman. But that still leaves an uncomfortably large number of us to vie for the attentions of one duke.”
“But the Duke of Bewcastle is old, Rowena,” Miriam Dunstan-Lutt said. “He is well past his thirtieth year.”
“But he is a duke,” Lady Sarah said, “and so his age is of no consequence, Miriam. Papa says it would be beneath my dignity to marry below the rank of earl at the very least, though I had dozens of offers this spring from gentlemen most girls would consider perfectly eligible. It is not at all unlikely that I will marry a duke.”
“What a conquest it would be to win the hand of the Duke of Bewcastle,” Beryl Chisholm added. “But why should we concede the victory to you, Sarah? Perhaps we should all compete for him.”
There was a flurry of giggles.
“You are all remarkably pretty young ladies,” Lady Mowbury said kindly, raising her voice so that she could be heard across the room, “and are bound to marry well within the next year or two, but perhaps you ought to be warned that Bewcastle has avoided every attempt to draw him into matrimony for so long that even the most determined mamas have given up trying to attract him for their daughters. I did not even consider him for Audrey.”
“But who would want to marry him anyway?” that young lady said from the complacent safety of her betrothed state. “He has only to step into a room to lower the temperature by several degrees. The man lacks all feeling, all sensibility, and all heart. I have it on the most reliable authority. Lewis says that even most of the younger gentlemen at White’s are in awe of him and avoid him whenever possible. I think it was unsporting of my brother to invite him here.”
So did Christine. If Hector had not invited the duke, then she would not be sitting here now, feeling partly uncomfortable and partly bored—and she would not have dripped lemonade in his eye. She felt somehow stranded between the older ladies, who moved together into a group and were soon deep in conversation with one another, and the young girls, who were closer, so that she became a de facto member of their group as they lowered their voices and resumed their giggling.
“I propose a wager,” Lady Sarah half whispered. She must be the youngest of them all, Christine estimated. She looked like an escapee from the nursery, in fact, though she must be at least seventeen if she had made her come-out. “The winner will be the one who can entice the Duke of Bewcastle into making her a proposal of marriage before the fortnight is over.”
“That is quite impossible, I am afraid, Sarah,” Audrey said while the others stifled giggles. “The duke does not mean to marry.”
“And no wager is even remotely interesting,” Harriet King added, “if there is no chance of its being won by someone.”
“What shall we wager on, then?” Sarah asked, still flushed and bright-eyed and determined not to let go of her idea entirely. “Whichever one of us can engage him in conversation? No, not that—that is too easy. Whoever is the first to dance with him? Does your sister have any dancing planned, Audrey? Or . . . what, then?”
“The one who can engage his undivided attention for a whole hour,” Audrey suggested. “Believe me, that will be difficult enough to accomplish. And the winner—if there is a winner—will have earned her prize. An hour in the duke’s company would be akin to an hour sitting on the North Pole, I would imagine.”
There was another flurry of giggles.
But Sarah ignored the warning and looked with sparkling eyes at every member of the group—except Christine, who was not really a part of it though she had overheard every word.
“An hour alone with him, then,” she said. “The winner will be the first to accomplish that feat. And who knows? Perhaps she will make him fall in love with her, and he will offer marriage after all. It would not be at all strange, I declare.”
There was a pause for the inevitable giggling.
“Who is in?” Lady Sarah asked.
Lady Sarah, Rowena, Miriam, Beryl, her sister Penelope, and Harriet King all took up the challenge to the accompaniment of a great deal more squealing and giggling and indulgent smiles from the older ladies, who demanded to know what was so amusing them.
“Nothing,” Harriet King said. “Nothing at all, Mama. We were merely discussing the gentlemen who are expected here.”
Christine smiled too. Had she ever been this silly? But she knew she had. She had married Oscar on the strength of a two-month acquaintance, merely because he was as handsome as a Greek god—it had been a common description of him—and she had fallen head over ears in love with his looks and his charm.
“And you, Cousin Christine?” Audrey asked when the older ladies had returned their attention to their own conversation. It had been agreed upon that Audrey would hold the bank—one guinea from each of the participants, the whole amount to go to the winner or back to each individual at the end of the two weeks if no one could claim the prize.
Christine pointed at herself in some surprise and raised her eyebrows. “Me? Oh, no, indeed,” she said, and laughed.
“I really do not see why not,” Audrey said, cocking her head to one side and observing Christine more thoroughly. “You are a widow, not a married lady, after all, and Cousin Oscar has been gone for two whole years. And you are still not very old. I doubt you have reached the age of thirty yet.”
The other young ladies turned in a collective body to gaze askance at someone who was close to thirty. Their silence spoke quite eloquently enough to assure Christine that at her age she had no hope whatsoever of engaging a duke’s attention for a full hour.
She wholeheartedly agreed with them, though not because she was twenty-nine rather than nineteen.
“I really cannot see the attraction of paying for the privilege of being frozen into an icicle for all of one hour,” she said.
“You do have a point,” Audrey conceded.
“You are the daughter of a country schoolmaster, are you not, Mrs. Derrick?” Harriet King asked with obvious disdain. “You are afraid of losing the wager, I daresay.”
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“I am indeed,” Christine conceded with a smile—the question, she understood, had been rhetorical. “But I do believe that I would be even more afraid of winning. What on earth would I do with a duke?”
There was a moment of silence and then another burst of giggles.
“I could offer an idea or two,” Miriam Dunstan-Lutt said, and then blushed at her own risqué words.
“Enough of this,” Audrey said firmly, holding up one hand for everyone’s attention and checking quickly to be sure that no one in the other group was listening. “I really cannot allow you to preclude yourself merely on the grounds that you do not wish to win, Cousin Christine. I shall put in the guinea for you. I shall, in effect, wager on you. And is that not shocking when ladies are not supposed to wager at all?”
“What gentlemen do not know will not hurt them,” Beryl Chisholm said.
“You will lose your guinea, I do assure you,” Christine told Audrey, laughing and wondering how the Duke of Bewcastle would react if he knew what was transpiring in the primrose sitting room.
“Perhaps,” Audrey agreed. “But my expectation is that no one will win, and so my money is sure to return safely to me. Of course, since the wager is not to draw the duke into a marriage proposal but only into a lengthy conversation, I could enter the competition myself, but I don’t think I will. I don’t think seven guineas is sufficient inducement. Besides, Lewis might be jealous, and it would be no defense to explain to him that I was attempting to win a wager.”
A bell rang from somewhere beyond the sitting room, the signal that everyone had now arrived and that they were all expected to assemble in the drawing room for tea.
“And so,” Harriet King said to Lady Sarah, “you have never even met the Duke of Bewcastle?”
“No,” Sarah admitted, “but if he is a duke, he surely must be handsome.”
“I have met him,” Harriet said, linking her arm through Sarah’s in preparation for leaving the room with her, “and would not normally set my cap at him. But I cannot risk being bested by the widowed daughter of a country schoolmaster who may or may not have passed her thirtieth birthday, can I?”