by Claudia Dain
“That sounds very nearly tragic,” Sophia said, looking not at all tragic, but rather flagrantly amused. “I think a poll must settle it. Now, do answer honestly, which I know is very difficult for a man to do.”
It was at this juncture that Miss Prestwick snorted in what had to be assumed was suppressed laughter.
“Now, how shall we organize it? Just around the room then?” Sophia mused.
“Alphabetically?” Edenham said pleasantly, his brown eyes shining with mirth.
“Far too difficult for me to manage,” Sophia answered, smiling at Edenham.
“By age? Oldest to youngest?” Miss Prestwick blurted out.
“Oh, I think not,” Sophia said. “Someone could well find himself insulted.” And she looked at Edenham again and chuckled.
Was Edenham the oldest man in the room? Perhaps Ruan and certainly John Grey were of the same approximate age. Ruan didn’t look insulted in the slightest, in fact, he was watching Sophia flirt with Edenham with a very nearly bored expression. Very nearly bored. He was watching, after all. And John Grey, well, his expression was impossible to read. He simply had no expression whatsoever.
The same could not be said of Miss Prestwick. She was watching Sophia dangle charm and gaiety like a ripe plum in front of Edenham’s face and looked completely outraged by the prospect. Poor girl. She clearly didn’t have a particle of charm to fight with. Of course, he was watching her and she could have turned some effort upon him, but she was clearly too simpleminded to know any better.
“By either age or alphabet, I shall not be first,” Iveston said. “Shall it be a simple test of bravery then? Shall I not prove my courage and stout heart by declaring that I, for one, want to marry?”
Miss Prestwick looked struck dumb. It was a look which suited her.
“Do you, Lord Iveston? How charming of you,” Sophia exclaimed. He felt the distinct urge to preen under her praise. He did not, however. “And when did the urge to mate first come upon you?”
“I believe the subject was marriage, Lady Dalby?” Iveston countered smoothly, his brows raised in mock admonition.
Sophia smiled and did not look the least contrite. Miss Prestwick looked appalled. Iveston felt the stirrings of a smile tease the corners of his mouth. “But as to marriage, knowing it was to be forced upon me at some distant point, I have not anticipated it eagerly. Until recently. Having seen two of my brothers so blissfully wed, I can now begin to imagine wanting a bit of bliss of my own.”
Oddly, most oddly, the moment the words were out of his mouth he felt the truth of them. He’d been avoiding marriage for almost as long as he could remember. But Blakes and Cranleigh were so nauseatingly blissful that it did make the whole concept of marriage slightly more bearable. Indeed, even attractive.
But of course, both Blakes and Cranleigh had married for love. As the heir to a dukedom, he didn’t suppose he’d have that luxury. In truth, he hadn’t ever considered it. His entire idea concerning marriage, and he did have just the single idea, was to avoid it for as long as he possibly could, which surely was a most reasonable position and very much as Tannington had stated it. Though it did sound rather harsh when expressed, merely proving the point that some things should never be expressed. An idea Miss Prestwick was clearly a stranger to. She seemed unable to keep herself from expressing all over the room.
“How beautifully phrased,” Sophia said.
“If nonsensical,” Tannington said.
“Perhaps not so much nonsensical,” Penelope Prestwick said with all the studiousness of a Latin tutor, “as highly emotional. I do believe, indeed it seems quite obvious, that the best marriages are made without undue emotion. Emotion makes everything so very cloudy.”
“If one dislikes clouds, that is a disadvantage,” Edenham said.
Little Miss Prestwick sat back on her chair and closed her mouth into a firm and very sultry pout. It was quite charmingly done, which was quite odd of her, wasn’t it? She wasn’t the charming sort at all, quite the opposite.
“I thought everyone preferred a day without clouds,” Mr. Prestwick said, very nicely coming to the aid of his sister.
“Cloudy nights can be quite romantic,” Edenham said, “though I don’t presume to think there is a universality of opinion on that. Perhaps it is an acquired taste.”
“As so much is,” Sophia said mildly.
“And the longer one lives, the more tastes one acquires,” Ruan said. “Or perhaps it is only that one learns to be adept at pretending to have wide and varied tastes.”
It wasn’t so much that Ruan was staring at Sophia, but that Sophia reacted so unusually to his remark. She came quite close to bristling. It was a fact well established that Sophia did not bristle.
“To what purpose, Lord Ruan?”
“To please a man, Lady Dalby,” Ruan answered promptly. “A woman will do much to please a man.”
“Only if a man has already done much to please her,” she countered.
“My mother often gets into these sorts of conversations,” Dalby said casually, looking about the room. “I learned early on to only listen to every third word. I kept my innocence until nearly the age of ten.”
Sophia laughed and broke the brittle spell that had risen up between herself and Ruan, patting Dalby on the knee. “At every third word, you would have formed very strange ideas indeed. I know for a fact, Markham, that you are still very much the innocent about very particular things.”
“But not in regard to pleasing a woman,” Dalby replied, his dark eyes alight with humor, “because I learned that from Father.”
“A most adept teacher,” Sophia said.
“Most,” Dalby agreed. “Father made certain I understood that the way to please a woman is to give her what she wants.”
“And so we are back to where we started,” Edenham said.
“But what is it that a woman wants?” Iveston asked. “Very often I am not convinced they know themselves.”
“Do you think we all want the same thing?” Penelope asked sharply.
She looked at him directly and he returned her look, suddenly aware that very few women of marriageable age ever looked at him directly and certainly not with the sort of impassioned, determined, studious look that Penelope Prestwick was in the habit of displaying over the most inconsequential of topics. Yet this was not one of those, was it? This was a topic near to her heart and he found he could not much blame her.
“No, Miss Prestwick, not precisely the same thing,” he answered, looking into her dark eyes. “But close enough, yes? Do you know what you want?”
“Of course I do,” she answered instantly, her eyes flaring.
“And you can explain it? Put it into a single sentence?” he prodded, wondering what her eyes would do next.
“Naturally. I have given it a great deal of thought, as you can well imagine,” she said. Her eyes did the oddest thing then, they got very wide and soft, like a cloudless summer night.
“And?” he prompted, his voice gone quite soft, to match her eyes, actually.
“I want to get married, Lord Iveston,” she said, her own voice as soft as his.
The moment stretched out between them like a silken cord, until Sophia said, “Of course she wants to get married, Iveston, but why shouldn’t she? Yet best not to ask whom she wants to marry as that would be in extremely poor taste.”
Iveston did not ask. But Penelope, who did have the worst aptitude for this sort of thing, looked instantly at Edenham. And then she flushed.
And that was answer enough.
Seven
AS a matter of courtesy, the party, while not departing Dalby House, did split into various groups. It was an awkward time of day for callers as it was well past time for the preparations to begin for their various evenings out. Still, they did not leave, not a one of them, and Sophia was hardly in the habit of throwing people out onto the street. Or that was the rumor. Even Sophia might be pushed to throwing if the circumstances required it.
“W
e should leave,” George Prestwick whispered to Penelope, after he had dragged her to one of the front windows of the white salon.
“I’m not leaving!” she whispered in response. What could George be thinking? Edenham was here, now, and not another woman in sight, if one discounted Sophia, which she would and did. When would a chance like this ever come again?
“It would look better if you did, Pen,” George said with a bit more force than was usual for him. What on earth had gotten into him? Was it possible that he was distressed at the thought of her imminent marriage? It had better be imminent. “We have quite outstayed our welcome, I am certain. Lady Dalby can’t have expected half of London to pop into her salon, particularly at this time of day.”
It was late. It was past seven and everyone was at home preparing for their evenings out. Everyone who wasn’t in Dalby House, that is. If Edenham wasn’t leaving now, then she wasn’t leaving now. It was as simple as that. What was wrong with George that he couldn’t see the obvious?
“Why should we be the first to leave?” she snapped under her breath, eyeing Edenham from across the room. He was talking to Sophia’s brother, Mr. John Grey, about what she couldn’t imagine. “No one else is leaving.”
“True,” George conceded, turning away from her to look across the room. “Do you think this happens often to her? That people come and refuse to leave her?”
“Her? You mean Lady Dalby?” Penelope said on a huff of disbelief. “I shouldn’t think so. Why ever would you suppose that, George?”
“They’re staying for some reason, Pen, and I don’t think it’s because of us, do you?”
Well. Actually, she had hoped so.
“DARE I hope that we may leave now?” Cranleigh said to Iveston.
“You need to learn to enjoy life more, Cranleigh,” Iveston replied, looking about the room. “Relax.”
“I have a new wife at home, Iveston. Relaxing is the farthest thing from my mind,” Cranleigh said, shifting his weight slightly.
They were all standing now, even Lady Dalby, the afternoon visit having turned into something more resembling a formal At Home. Iveston glanced around the room again. Miss Prestwick looked somewhat agitated. He thought he could deduce the reason why. Very difficult to catch a man’s eye when the room was simply clogged. He ought to know as women had been trying to catch his eye for years. All except this one, this little Miss Prestwick who obviously had more money than breeding. Certainly, for wouldn’t a woman of careful breeding make it a point to chat him up? Wasn’t he the most desirable, that is to say, most eligible man in the room?
He most certainly was.
Peculiar little thing not to act upon that fact. One did wonder how badly addled she was, to have missed the mark so. It had not escaped his notice that her brother was very nearly her keeper, smoothing the way for her as best he could. Given that she was so odd, he clearly had a time of it. Iveston didn’t envy the man his task. Penelope Prestwick would exhaust and exasperate the most devoted of men, which George Prestwick certainly appeared to be.
“Peculiar, isn’t it?” Cranleigh said softly at his side. As they were both looking at Miss Prestwick, Iveston thought the question remarkably apt. “She may be the first unmarried woman to ignore you completely. How does it feel, Iveston? I should think you’d be relieved.”
Iveston looked askance at Cranleigh. Marriage had done something to him, something quite unappealing. Why, his brother now had a sense of humor. Most inconvenient, particularly at the moment.
“I am.”
Cranleigh grinned. “You look it. Truly.”
Iveston lifted his chin and said, “She’s obviously some sort of imbecile. Why, she can barely hold her own in Society.”
“You think so?” Cranleigh replied casually. “I had a nice conversation with her at the Prestwick ball and found her very entertaining.”
“Trained bears are entertaining.”
“Oh, come now. She’s not anything like a trained bear. You’re just being vicious, likely because you’re not accustomed to being ignored by a likely female.”
“Which is my entire point,” Iveston said in a low rumble of annoyance, “she’s not a likely female. She’s the most unlikely female I’ve ever encountered.”
“Get her talking about her roses,” Cranleigh suggested, a perfectly lovely smile on his lips. As Cranleigh was not in the habit of putting on perfectly lovely smiles, Iveston, naturally, was instantly on his guard. “She delights in them. I should think you’ll be as entertained by her as I was.”
“I don’t care to talk to her about anything. She appears quite preoccupied at the moment in any regard,” Iveston said stiffly.
“Oh, well, if you’re going to wait for her to stop twittering about Edenham, you’ll never find your chance. Of course, that may very well be just what you intended. Is it?”
Cranleigh, really, was the most obstinate, most … well, his wife had named it best when she’d called him a bully. Normally Iveston was not bothered by it for the obvious reason that Cranleigh’s bullying had never before been so forcefully focused on him. It was quite a nuisance now, and he wasn’t enjoying it in the slightest.
“I have no intentions at all regarding Miss Prestwick.”
“And she has none regarding you,” Cranleigh countered. “It’s quite remarkable, isn’t it? Usually they fall all over you and now …” Cranleigh shrugged in the most insulting manner imaginable. “I suppose you’re afraid to approach a woman who hasn’t got her children by you already named. Lack of practice and all that.”
“Are you implying that I can’t manage women?”
Iveston was not at all amused, which he assumed was more than apparent by his frozen expression. Cranleigh, more than any of his brothers, with the possible exception of Blakes, who really was too observant for anyone’s good, was quite adept at reading him. Why, Cranleigh had very nearly made it his life’s work to protect Iveston from all sorts of trouble, usually of the female sort, and Iveston had got quite used to it. Perhaps too used to it?
“I think you manage them very well,” Cranleigh replied softly, eyeing Miss Prestwick from where they stood. They were very near the door into the front hall, which Iveston suspected was not at all accidental. “As long as by managing you mean avoiding them entirely. Now that I think upon it, you haven’t managed very many, have you, if by managing you mean actually interacting with them.”
“I suppose you’re trying to be funny? You’re failing miserably.”
“I suppose you think I can’t add? How many, Iveston? How many women have you … managed?”
“More than enough. More than you, certainly. You’ve been at sea rather a lot in the past few years, haven’t you?”
“But Iveston, all ships do eventually heave anchor. I’ve enjoyed more than a few ports of call.”
“A metaphor, Cranleigh?”
“Not entirely,” Cranleigh answered with a brief smile.
“What are you suggesting?” Iveston asked, for he knew Cranleigh as well as Cranleigh knew him. In discussions of this sort, a wager was the inevitable outcome.
“Nothing at all tawdry, I assure you.” To which Iveston snorted in disbelief, which caused John Grey and his three sons to look at him in sudden interest. Iveston nodded curtly and refocused his attention back to his brother. “Miss Prestwick seems a lovely enough woman.” And here Iveston came very nearly close to snorting again. He did manage to refrain. “I would not see her ill used for our entertainment.”
“Your entertainment, Cranleigh. Don’t forget, I think her a trained bear.”
“As to that, Iveston,” Cranleigh said with that same, small smile, “I should think that, what with your self-proclaimed skill at managing women you should be able to coax something from Miss Prestwick, particularly as you state she is already trained to respond to either encouragement or direction. Which, would you say?”
“A lump of sugar, would be my guess,” Iveston said stiffly, avoiding looking at Miss Prestwick
, whom he was certain, was staring at Edenham with all the subtlety of a cannon blast.
“Now, now, you shan’t get far with her with that attitude,” Cranleigh said, grinning, the sot.
“I haven’t agreed to anything, you realize,” Iveston said, “and I can’t think how you’d induce me to. I have nothing to prove to either you or myself, and certainly not upon the very peculiar Miss Prestwick.”
“Don’t you?” Cranleigh asked. “Not even to Miss Prestwick? I do think that is where the heart of the matter lies. Why not prove to Miss Prestwick that you are not a man to be discarded without a second glance?”
“Come, come, I don’t want even a first glance from her,” Iveston said stoutly.
“Of course you don’t,” Cranleigh said. He sounded distinctly sarcastic. “But she doesn’t know that, does she? Shall we not wager that you cannot attain her interest for, say, a week?”
Iveston looked at Miss Prestwick. She was, as to be expected, arguing with her brother while staring at Edenham. Edenham, also fulfilling expectation, was ignoring her. One could almost feel some pity for the odd little thing. Almost.
“A week? I should go mad. Say a day instead.”
“A day? But how can anything of that sort be measured in a day?” Cranleigh countered. “Unless you expect to shadow her every moment of that single day.”
“Hardly,” Iveston said coldly. Iveston, when the occasion required it, could be quite as stiffly formal as any marquis could be. He found, in this instance, that the occasion required it fully. “I should go barking mad. What say you to three days?”
“Three days,” Cranleigh mused, rocking a bit on his heels. “I should think three days ought to work out nicely. How are we to measure it and who is to be the arbiter?”
“Oh, come now,” Iveston said. “It shall be as perfectly obvious as it’s always been. She’ll behave as they all do, all simpering looks and sweet smiles and dipping bodices. It will be obvious to all.”
“Perhaps, but I would feel better about it if we had a disinterested third party.”
“Edenham?” Iveston said, grinning.