Worth Winning

by Elling, Parker

  At least not the way aphids had. And of course, comets. Or, for that matter, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Buxom, Merry Widow.

  “I, er, I do apologize, but I seem to have been woolgathering. What were we laughing about?”

  Claire’s lashes dipped and then came back up. If Charles hadn’t known better, he would have sworn that there’d been a hint of triumph in her gaze. Surely not—what young, attractive woman would be pleased to find out a man hadn’t been paying proper attention to her?

  “Oh, you ought not to tease me so, you know I couldn’t possibly repeat it, but come, let’s change the topic.” Her hand tightened playfully on his arm, and she said, quite suddenly, “Where did you say you were from?”

  Charles had not been the catch of the town, the matrimonial prize, for nothing. He might not remember what he had said a moment ago and whether or not it had been meant, or could even possibly have been construed as humorous, but he did know that he had not, and would not, have talked about where he’d come from. “I didn’t.”

  “You didn’t?” She fluttered her eyelashes and somehow gave the impression of being both sweet and confused at the same time, as if befuddlement were an attribute she’d figured out how to optimize.

  “Oh my.” Claire’s eyes opened quite wide, showing off blue eyes that seemed almost layered, they were so deeply, vibrantly blue. “Is it a secret?” she whispered, conspiratorially, head tilting in a beguiling manner.

  And when he didn’t answer right away, she whispered again, with a meaningful glance at Julia, “I won’t tell, I promise.”

  Charles allowed his gaze to flit to, and even linger upon, Julia’s personage—as usual, just a few steps too far away to participate in their conversation: it was almost as though she were trying to be thought of as a chaperone for her stepsister. Looking back into Claire’s eyes, and seeing the seemingly fathomless vacantness reflected there, Charles almost shuddered.

  Not that he was unused to silly women. Or stupid people of either gender. His cousin Harrison was a moron of the first order—and without a carefully kept budget, which Charles’s own secretary helped attend to . . .

  But somehow, he had expected more of Claire.

  Perhaps, he reminded himself, it was because they were merely stepsisters. Stepsisters who were years apart. He had no reason to assume that Miss Morland’s intelligence and almost frightening astuteness would somehow have manifested in the younger Miss Claire Covington as well.

  Miss Covington appeared too flighty to keep two thoughts strung together at the same time.

  Charles sighed. Given a dowry, she’d probably make a good match in high society—dim-witted, lovely English roses were all the rage among the peerage right now. And then, just as Julia would have undoubtedly corrected him, he found himself amending his own thoughts: malleable, empty-container-for-brains wives were always popular, regardless of time period or even class distinctions.

  Glancing again at Julia, and thinking how refreshing and downright invigorating conversations with her always had been, Charles couldn’t, for the moment, fathom why anyone would choose such a faded, pretty watercolor, when such vibrant oil paintings were available.

  Like the Rembrandt he sought to win: bold, yet still beautiful.

  “It’s not a secret,” he said, relaxing his arm under her hand. Though of course, he’d been quite careful about revealing as little about himself as possible. Even giving away where Dresford’s primary seat was might be too telling, given the correct company. He said finally, “I spend most of my time in London.”

  Claire’s silence and wide-eyed gaze egged him on to add, “I worked there, until very recently.”

  She smiled ingenuously while Julia—drat the girl—continued to flit around them, never quite close enough for him to draw her into their conversation. “You’ve come to Munthrope for a vacation, then?”

  He sighed again. A place less suitable for a vacation was difficult to imagine. Still, he applied himself to answering Claire’s seemingly endless stream of vapid questions and hoped that come tomorrow, he’d be rewarded with Julia’s, and just Julia’s, company.

  *

  An hour later, the two sisters waved good-bye to Charles Alver—Julia, with a mixture of disappointment and relief, and Claire, with something akin to joy.

  “Oh that was fun,” Claire said, once she was certain Mr. Alver was out of earshot. In response to Julia’s questioning look, Claire said, “I haven’t played the dim-witted debutante for so long I’ve forgotten how fun it can be!”

  “You were playing a role?” Julia asked incredulously. She had deliberately tried not to pay attention to the goings-on between her young stepsister and Mr. Alver. Though Claire had volunteered for the walk, saying that she could at least delay whatever situation Julia felt had developed and thus buy her stepsister some time, there had always been a niggling doubt in the back of Julia’s mind about whether Claire might be trying to attract Mr. Alver for herself.

  Or worse, that without even trying, Claire might simply prove to be too pretty, too vivacious, too tempting, for any man to ignore. She had therefore been a little perplexed by the annoyed expressions she’d seen flitting across Charles’s face at various points in their walk.

  Until now, that is.

  “You were pretending to be dumb?” she asked.

  “Oh, I’m always pretending. Men don’t like women who are smarter than they are, and well, with the men around Munthrope . . .” she trailed off and looped her arm through Julia’s, shrugging her shoulders slightly. “I like being popular. Pretending to be dumb helps with that.”

  She giggled and widened her eyes. If Julia hadn’t known better . . .

  “But why do that with Mr. Alver? He’s hardly a simpleton.”

  “True, but he needed to be punished.” Claire flicked at a leaf that had fallen on Julia’s shoulder, and Julia swiped at her hand, annoyed that her stepsister seemed to be deliberately evading her questions.

  “Look, I have absolutely no interest in your Mr. Alver. I’m here only to serve as a distraction while you sort out your own feelings and thoughts about the man. That doesn’t mean that I like to be ignored.”

  “He walked with you and talked with you, rather exclusively, the entire morning.”

  “Yes, but his attention was clearly focused on you.” Claire tightened her arm around Julia’s and gave a tinkling laugh. “Don’t tell me you didn’t notice? He kept glancing your way and trying to catch your eye, which, I’ll have you know, is extraordinarily annoying. So . . .”

  “So, you were merely getting even?”

  “Of course,” Claire admitted without a trace of guilt. “Besides, men are far easier to handle when they underestimate you.”

  Julia rolled her eyes, but Claire merely smiled winsomely as Julia asked, “And if I have no desire to manage or handle any of the men around me?”

  Claire’s eyes opened wide again, and she said innocently, with only the glimmer in her eyes betraying her, “Marriage isn’t for everyone.”

  Chapter 14

  The next few days were unadulterated torture. Charles got up every morning, well before what he would normally have considered country hours, to walk with Julia.

  Each and every morning, Julia greeted him as they’d agreed, but she always brought with her, her young stepsister, Claire, which was decidedly not a part of their original bargain. And that particular young miss seemed to be getting stupider with each successive meeting, each conversational topic somehow proving duller and more mind-numbingly tedious than the previous one.

  On Saturday, Claire noted that the green leaves were quite vibrantly, clearly, sharply green. She’d revealed that she had painted during her younger years and that she considered herself quite the expert on things like the greenness of leaves. Then she’d asked for his opinion—an exchange he was hard pressed to think of without a shudder. He’d been fairly certain that in her company, his cognitive abilities had started to decline, and thus the conv
ersation had gone something along the lines of “Their greenness?” “Yes, their greenness.” “Ah, their greenness. Huh.” After he’d stammered something, anything, in an effort to wrap up the discussion and move onto something new, she’d somehow figured out a way to delve more deeply into the topic, meditating aloud about the tinge of yellow that looked almost mixed in, and how while lime green was, of course, distinctly different from hunter green, and how she absolutely hated when varying olive hues were inappropriately labeled as merely darker green. To conclude, she’d observed, quite ingeniously, that some leaves seemed to have not only hints of yellow, but also blue.

  Charles had restrained himself, barely, from noting that with enough blue and yellow, one might once again end up at the green that had been the start of their conversation. He was, after all, certain that he never again wanted to discuss the color green, or any of its possible shades. Ever.

  Sunday, both Claire and Julia had disappeared directly following Mr. Morland’s service, and despite the smirk he’d seen plastered over Robeson’s face, and the grin even Oliver had thrown in his direction, Charles found that he couldn’t quite bring himself to be disappointed. Julia on her own would have been fine, but throw Claire into the mix . . .

  Still, he reminded himself, there was a bet in play, and more important, the looming threat of a humiliatingly public apology hanging over his head.

  And so Monday, Charles arose, went to the copse of trees that seemed to have become their tacitly agreed-upon meeting place and listened with barely contained contempt to Claire’s monologue about the varying textures of hair ribbons. Textures. Of hair ribbons!

  Tuesday, she talked about the weather. Incessantly. Not the science behind the weather (which would surely have been what Julia would have lectured him on) or even the expected forecast (which might have at least required some participation on his part). No, she’d remarked on the temperateness of the weather and how the weather was always temperate in Munthrope and that she had a partiality for temperate weather.

  He’d wondered, vaguely, if it was her new word of the day.

  Temperate.

  And this morning? Well, he’d groaned, actually groaned, when he’d woken to another nearly fogless, sunny, temperately mild country morning.

  He’d wished for rain. Or better yet, a hurricane. Anything that would have kept the women indoors and given him an excuse to . . . well, sleep in. Pull the covers over his head and just concede defeat. At least temporarily.

  As he walked toward the cluster of lemon trees, he almost hoped he wouldn’t see them, but both women were there, Julia, looking almost miserable and withdrawn, and Claire greeting him with a blindingly bright smile, an effect that was ruined when she’d looped her arm into his and said something about fabric. Or maybe fables. Or was she talking about stables?

  He wasn’t certain. And he no longer cared. Though he’d tried to engage Julia in conversation on each of the other two days, he’d been alarmingly unsuccessful, and chatting with Miss Covington didn’t require attention or even that he respond with monosyllabic grunts.

  So what, then, was the benefit of paying attention?

  His head hurt less when he didn’t listen to the beautiful Miss Covington.

  In the past, he’d always had the luxury of simply leaving any conversation he deemed even remotely mundane or inappropriate. Once, when a particularly forward debutante had placed her hand on his arm and leaned forward to whisper a compliment, he’d simply left. Lowered his arm, turned, and walked away. Another time, when a rather inane young chit had asked his opinion about something or other that he had no interest in, he’d simply stated, “My apologies. I stopped listening because your topic was of no interest to me.”

  All the men and women in their circle had laughed.

  The poor chit, whose name he’d forgotten, had blushed and stammered and then apologized. To him. She’d apologized for boring him, and he’d accepted her apology, as if it were his due. As if she’d wronged him by being so boring and trying to elicit his interest.

  He sighed.

  “Are you quite all right?” Miss Covington asked, a trace of genuine concern in her voice.

  “Oh course.”

  “It’s just that you sighed.”

  “Yes?”

  “Oh, I thought you were upset. Well, since you’re fine, I can continue. As I was saying . . .”

  Lord, but he missed being a lord sometimes. Or, more precisely, he missed being the type of lord whom everyone pandered to, whose rudeness was not only excused but often imitated.

  He was about to sigh again, when he realized that such an action would inevitably draw Claire’s attention and that he’d then have to waste precious moments interacting with the stupid girl. And that, of course, was the worst part of all: he wasn’t at all certain that Claire was actually unintelligent. Though she droned on and on about colors and textures and whatever it was she was chattering on about at the moment, he’d seen the occasional twinkle in her eyes, which spoke of mischievousness—a state of being that required a certain modicum of intelligence, didn’t it?

  He closed his eyes and almost tripped.

  So why, then, was the girl acting deliberately stupid? If she sought merely to be a chaperone for Julia, surely there were less painful ways to go about it?

  “Miss Morland,” he said again. “What are your thoughts on the topic?”

  As usual, Julia looked as though she’d rather be anywhere but here. Today she seemed particularly distracted. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t listening.”

  Neither was I, Charles almost admitted. “Well, it does seem to be a topic Miss Covington feels strongly about,” he said, trying to recall a topic, a noun—anything that would allow him to name correctly whatever they’d just been discussing, so that he could try, again, to draw Julia into the conversation.

  “Oh no, I wouldn’t say that. Whatever gave you that impression, Mr. Alver? I don’t feel at all strongly about this particular issue. Though I would love to hear your opinions, being as you’re from London.”

  There was a distinct glimmer in the younger girl’s eyes, one that she quickly masked.

  “That does it,” Charles thought. The girl was torturing him on purpose, and Julia was letting her get away with it. “I must go,” he said finally, realizing that a tactical retreat was overdue. His mind flitted across a variety of excuses, rejecting all of them. He wasn’t used to making excuses; he was used to coming and going as he pleased.

  “It has, of course, been a pleasure,” he said, stalling, wondering if he could claim to have a headache, again. “But I fear I’m just too unused to keeping country hours.”

  A lie, but at least a polite one.

  “Oh, but of course. We’d hate to keep you,” Claire said, adroitly extricating her arm from his. “You’ll be at the ball on Friday?”

  “Ball,” he thought, laughing inwardly. It was quaint what these people called balls. He’d been told that the Vickreys were hosting twenty couples, more or less, which barely qualified as a dance by his definition, much less a ball. He’d had weekend hunting parties where he’d hosted more people. But all he said, trying to keep his snobbery in check, was, “Of course. I hope you’ll both”—and here he paused, practically choking on his next words—“I hope you’ll both save a dance for me.”

  And with that, he left. It meant he’d made no progress, but at least he could have a couple of mornings away from Claire, which he hoped would give him the time and space to strategize what to do about the precocious Julia Morland.

  Punishment was high on his list.

  For regardless of whether Claire was a dim-witted buffoon or a frighteningly convincing actress, he was certain by now that he’d been played by both the young ladies, and the only one he was interested in holding accountable—holding, being of course the primary action—was of course one Julia Morland.

  *

  “Well, I got rid of him for you, and it only took what, five days?”

  Juli
a watched Charles’s retreating back and had to bite back a smile. He’d so clearly wanted to retreat for days now. “Yes, and you have my unending thanks. I have no idea what I would have done if he’d insisted on walking with us all day today.”

  “Off to conduct more experiments?” Claire asked a bit airily.

  “Yes,” Julia said.

  “You can tell me what all of this is about, you know.”

  “I’m not supposed to.”

  “Why? Because Jack’s involved somehow?” At Julia’s look of surprise, Claire continued, “I know you’re doing something not-completely-science-y. Otherwise your father would be more involved. I also know you’re working out of the LeMays’ old gardener’s house, which means that Jack, even if he’s not involved, knows about it, somehow. I’m not a twit.”

  “Though you’re quite good at acting like one.”

  “Yes, and not always in front of your Mr. Alver.”

  When Julia remained silent, Claire gave a delicate shrug of her shoulders. “Fine, don’t tell me. It’s not as if I have any reason to care about what Jack LeMay is up to.”

  With that, she gave a brief wave and sauntered off, leaving Julia looking at her and feeling a bit exasperated.

  She’d never understood why Jack and Claire had simply stopped getting along a few years ago. In her mind, it simply made no sense. She and Jack were friends. She and Claire were friends. And up until a few years ago, the three of them had been a bit of a trio, hanging out, playing pranks. And then it had all changed—rather suddenly, really. Nowadays, they were forever sniping at, or about, one another.

  Julia shook her head and continued walking. She didn’t have time to worry about old grudges right now. She had experiments to conduct, a tryst with Charles she wished she could forget, and Robeson’s unwanted advances to contend with.

  Unlike Charles, Robeson had made no attempt to seek her out since last week, after he’d pleaded his case so convincingly. Instead, he’d sent notes around Sunday afternoon, and again Tuesday, just to say that he’d thought of her and that he hoped she was thinking of him.