But then why had Lady Elizabeth taken such umbrage if Lady Sarah were not playing some kind of game with them all?
Besides, Lady Sarah had already given Sofia a couple of set-downs, cunningly disguised under a mantle of kindness. So perhaps Lady Elizabeth was a bit more intelligent than these two girls. She certainly looked it.
‘Oh, but I am forgetting my manners. Dear Miss Underwood,’ said Lady Sarah, stretching out a pale, slender, pearl-braceleted arm in her direction. ‘Please, do come near, so that I may make you known to my...’ she smiled mistily in turn at the girls who remained ‘...dear, dear friends.’
Sofia saw no point in rocking Lady Sarah’s boat. So she stepped forward and made her curtsy to the room in general.
‘Now this,’ said Lady Sarah, patting the hand of the girl with the pale, protuberant eyes, ‘is Lady Margaret Pawson. Her father is the Earl of Trimley.’
‘Pleased to make your acquaintance,’ said Lady Margaret with a distinct lack of sincerity.
‘I am Lady Beatrice,’ said the other girl, striding up to her and shaking her hand in a rather mannish fashion. ‘My father is an earl, too, but don’t let that weigh with you. I don’t think His Grace is going to choose his bride according to rank.’
‘Whatever,’ said Lady Sarah rather sharply, ‘makes you think that?’
‘Well, otherwise, why would he have invited a nobody,’ said Lady Beatrice, rolling her head in Sofia’s direction. ‘No offence,’ she added, to Sofia.
‘I am sure that Miss Underwood,’ said Lady Sarah, ‘is not a nobody. His Grace would never wed a nobody. Just because we know nothing of her...’
‘Oh, yes, you must tell us all about yourself,’ put in Lady Margaret. ‘We are positively dying of curiosity.’
‘Yes, who are your people?’ said Lady Sarah. ‘My father clearly knew yours when they were up at Oxford, but that is neither here nor there. All sorts of people go there, Mama says.’
‘Oh, that wasn’t my father you saw earlier on,’ said Sofia. ‘That is my Uncle Ned. He married my father’s sister and they took me in when Papa died.’
‘So you are not the daughter of a mere viscount?’
Sofia refused to react to that provocation. Ladies, so Aunt Agnes was always telling her, never displayed emotion in public. They remained polite and calm at all times. And so, very politely, Sofia smiled at Lady Sarah.
‘Oh, dear me, no,’ she said. And then, for some reason that escaped her, instead of explaining that actually she was the granddaughter of an earl, found herself saying, ‘My father had no title whatsoever. Except what the army gave him, which was Captain at the time of his death.’ And then, to round it all off, added, slightly inaccurately, ‘And my mother was the daughter of a Portuguese wine merchant.’
There was a collective gasp.
‘Then...how do you come to know His Grace?’
‘We met during a fireworks display at Burslem Bay,’ she said, also slightly inaccurately. But then, since you couldn’t slap someone you’d only just met, the only thing left for a lady to do was to shock them.
‘Fireworks? How very unconventional,’ said Lady Sarah, with a puzzled air. ‘Most unlike His Grace.’
‘Perhaps he wanted another female to make up the numbers,’ said Lady Margaret, eyeing her up and down.
‘That would account for it,’ Sofia agreed cheerfully.
‘I don’t know,’ put in Lady Beatrice with a frown. ‘There’s no accounting for what a man will look for in a wife. So Mama says.’
‘Well,’ said Lady Sarah, as if gathering her strength. ‘You must have some tea. Your nerves must be positively shattered by the dreadful display of, well, I can only describe it as shrewishness, from Lady Elizabeth.’ She waved a regal hand at the maid who’d been hovering in the background. ‘Though one must make allowances, I suppose, since she has recently lost her father. Who left the entire family in an...’ she raised one eyebrow ‘...embarrassing state.’
The maid, meanwhile, had gone to a sturdy sideboard upon which a teapot, cups, saucers and so on, were set and was pouring Sofia a cup.
Sofia went to a chair directly opposite the sofa occupied by the Ladies Sarah and Margaret, accepted her cup of tea and took a meditative sip. If Lady Sarah could call Lady Elizabeth a shrew behind her back and spread gossip about what sounded like financial difficulties, there was no telling what she might say about Sofia, either.
In spite of all her protestations, Lady Sarah had no intention of being anyone’s friend. And only a fool would believe she ever could be.
‘Shouldn’t wonder,’ suddenly blurted Lady Beatrice, who’d been staring intently at Sofia all the while, ‘if His Grace has had one of those what-do-you-call-its? A coup de foudre. Because you are far prettier than the rest of us.’
‘Only if you care for dark looks,’ Lady Sarah objected. ‘And a certain whiff of the prize ring.’
‘Well, his last two fancy pieces were dark-haired,’ the fragile-looking Lady Margaret pointed out, ignoring the jibe about Sofia’s black eye. ‘So he obviously does.’
Sofia’s tea went down the wrong way and for several minutes she could do nothing but cough and wipe at her streaming eyes, while the other ladies fell into a twitter about Lady Beatrice’s uncouth manners, which ended only when that lady, also, stormed out of the room.
‘Oh, dear, and I did so want us all to be friends,’ sighed Lady Sarah in the direction of the slammed door.
‘Bea cannot help it, you know,’ said Lady Margaret. ‘She is always speaking before she thinks it through. And she’s always sorry after. She will apologise once she’s got over her chagrin about having said something so unladylike, you just see if she doesn’t.’
Ironically though, Lady Margaret wasn’t showing any symptoms of acknowledging she’d been just as unladylike in mentioning the Duke’s preference for dark-haired paramours.
‘Dear Meg,’ said Lady Sarah, pityingly, ‘always so ready to think the best of everyone.’
‘And anyway, it isn’t likely, is it,’ Lady Margaret persisted, ‘that someone as high in the instep as His Grace would make his choice out of any consideration but rank and fortune? Not when he is in such a hurry.’
‘A hurry?’ Lady Sarah’s eyes narrowed. ‘Whatever do you mean?’
‘Oh, well...,’ Lady Margaret’s face flushed. ‘I am not supposed to repeat this, only, Mama says it is on account of his stepmother’s latest...’ she lowered her voice ‘...indiscretion.’
‘His stepmother? What,’ said Lady Sarah, ‘has she to do with it?’
‘Well,’ said Lady Margaret, leaning forward, her eyes gleaming with pleasure at being the bearer of some gossip Lady Sarah had not yet heard, ‘you must know about that guardsman she took up with. The one who was young enough to be her son. And how she and His Grace came to cuffs over the affair.’
‘Yes, yes, everyone knows that,’ snapped Lady Sarah.
‘Well, the latest on dit, according to Mama, is that he’s determined to put a stop to her scandalising London on such a regular basis by forcing her to return to Theakstone Court. And that is why he’s suddenly become so determined to find a bride this Season. It is his way of prising his stepmother out of his town house. Because when he takes a bride there, then naturally she will be the mistress of the house and his stepmother, and all the servants who have remained loyal to her, will have to decamp to the dower house.’
‘Oh? Well, then I am truly grateful to her for being so scandalous,’ said Lady Sarah with a cat-like smile.
No. It couldn’t be true. He wouldn’t just get married to spite and thwart his own stepmother. Would he?
Except...it did account for the way he’d assembled a clutch of candidates with the intention of making one of them an offer by the week’s end.
Her heart plummeted. Once again she’d let a man pull the wool over her eyes. He’d
made her think he was decent, forthright, and...and...
She set her teacup down on a convenient side table and got to her feet. ‘Would you excuse me, Lady Sarah? Only I have spilled some tea on my gown and will have to sponge it off if I have a hope of looking respectable by dinner time.’
‘Oh, of course,’ said Lady Sarah, oozing false sympathy. ‘I completely understand. It must be perfectly horrid to have so few gowns that you need to clean one rather than simply changing into another.’
She made a little signal to the maid, who went to open the door. ‘It was so lovely to meet you and have this little chat. I do hope you will come and take tea with me again some time.’
‘Thank you so much,’ Sofia replied with a polite smile, knowing full well that her hostess didn’t mean a word of it. She’d discovered all she’d wanted to know and was now dismissing her. There would be no invitation to take tea again.
And even if there were, Sofia would turn it down flat.
Chapter Twelve
Sofia opened her wardrobe door and frowned at the selection of gowns hanging there. Not one of them could hold a candle to anything she’d seen the other girls wearing. Except for her ball gown, but if she wore that tonight, what would she wear for the last night of the house party, for which she’d planned to keep it?
Her gaze snagged on the sombre bronze twill of her Sunday best. It had long sleeves and a modest, square neckline that would make her look a bit Quakerish if she wore it to dinner, but at least it was one of the few she’d chosen and had made up from new. So, she’d feel like herself.
And she would also, she hoped, send out the message that she was not going to compete for the Duke’s hand. Because what kind of girl would fight for the right to join forces with a man who was getting married primarily to spite his stepmother?
The sober Sunday dress it was then. Setting her lips into a determined line, she pulled off the third soiled gown of the day and dragged on her fourth fresh one.
There. She regarded her reflection in the mirror with a critical eye. So much for Lady Beatrice’s fanciful notion that the Duke had taken one look at her and fallen wildly in love. Men did not fall in love with girls like her at first sight. She was too plain and dull and boring.
Although, she hadn’t been behaving in a boring fashion when he’d first seen her, had she? Nor had she been exactly dull during their subsequent meetings. She studied the oval of her face, the curves of her figure beneath her gown, the sheen of her newly brushed hair...
And ground to a halt at the bruising round her eye.
Which prompted her to recall precisely how she’d escaped being dull when she’d been out with the Duke. She’d handed him her dog and more or less accused him of having hidden vices and finally suggested Snowball might meet with a ghastly fate in his kennels.
Which squashed the silly, hopeful flutter flat. It was far more likely that he had invited her along to make up the numbers, as Lady Margaret had suggested. There was probably some other damsel who should have come, who’d had to cry off at the last moment.
Or something of that nature.
And anyway, she didn’t care what his motives for inviting her here might be. She had no ambition to become a duchess. And no intention of marrying any man who could use the institution of marriage to further such shabby ends.
So it was with a rather defiant smile on her lips that Sofia left her rooms.
Which petered out the moment she reached the door to her aunt’s suite and realised that she ought to knock and go down to dinner with her aunt and uncle, if he was about.
Only, if Aunt Agnes saw her in this gown she might insist Sofia went back to her room and get changed again. And then she’d have to reveal the fates that had befallen all the other gowns that were suitable for wearing in company.
Just as she was wondering how she could prevent Aunt Agnes from stifling her little rebellion before it had even got going, she spotted a large footman, loitering at the end of the corridor.
‘Excuse me!’ She waved to attract his attention, then scurried right up to him.
‘Yes, Miss Underwood,’ he said, surprising her by knowing who she was. ‘How may I help you?’
It was the same young man who’d escorted her to Lady Sarah’s rooms, she realised. And, now she came to think of it, from the kennels to her own rooms before that.
‘I was hoping you could help me find my way to the dining room,’ she said.
‘You mean the Rubens room, miss. That is where everyone will be foregathering.’ He stepped forward and pointed out a staircase, leading down from the corridor to their right. ‘Go down one flight and you will find one of my colleagues, who will point you in the right direction from there.’
‘Thank you,’ she said with a smile. ‘Just like a treasure hunt.’
He looked puzzled.
‘You know,’ she said. ‘You get your first clue, which leads you to the location of the next, until finally you come to the place where the treasure is hidden. Or, in this case, my dinner.’
‘I never thought of it like that before,’ he said, his wooden features splitting into a grin. ‘But what with this place being so big and in the past some people wandering off along the wrong corridors, His Grace was determined there was to be none of that, this week.’ His cheeks turned red. ‘That is...’
She giggled. And then, because he’d been the friendliest member of staff she’d come across in Theakstone Court, she asked him his name.
‘My name?’ He could not have looked more startled if she’d pulled out a pistol and asked him to hand over his valuables. ‘Well, it’s Peter. But I don’t see why...’ He pulled himself up, clearly remembering that it was his job to serve His Grace’s guests, not question them.
Which reminded her she ought not to be standing here chatting, either, but making her way to the next hurdle she had to overcome.
Dinner.
‘Good evening, Peter,’ she said brightly and made her way to the next sentinel. She didn’t embarrass any of the other footmen by stopping to chat with them and thus reached the large room where everyone was gathering for dinner in less than fifteen minutes. But then, none of them were so young, or so friendly. In fact, they’d grown ever more stately and more intimidating the closer she’d drawn to the immense salon in which all the other guests appeared to have already arrived. Peter, she deduced, as she stood in the doorway gazing in mild revulsion at the pictures of writhing limbs festooning all the walls, must be a very junior footman, to be standing sentinel on a corridor that housed such a lowly, insignificant set of guests as her family. It struck her even more forcibly how very out of place she was here, amidst a veritable sea of silks and satins and diamonds and feathers.
Though she need not have worried that her aunt would have forced her to change out of her deliberately drab dress. If Sofia had knocked dutifully on her door, Aunt Agnes wouldn’t have answered. Because she was already here, hanging on Uncle Ned’s arm. Uncle Ned, who was at the centre of a cluster of men who, to judge from their average age, just had to be the fathers of all the hopeful brides. And he was at the centre. Never mind the fact he was a mere viscount, he was keeping them all rapt with some anecdote, at the end of which every single one of them gave an appreciative chuckle.
The rest of the Duke’s guests were ranged about the room in groups of two or three, apart from one young man who could only be described as posing by a window. He’d raised one arm and was leaning on it as he gazed out into the park, his long, fair curls tumbling over his forehead.
It was just as Sofia was smiling in amusement at the impression the rather beautiful young man was at such pains to create that Aunt Agnes spotted her—first the smile froze on her face and then she went rigid.
Finally she detached herself from Uncle Ned’s arm and bore down upon Sofia with eyes flashing in a way that warned Sofia she was about to pay for her moment
of rebellion.
Sofia braced herself.
‘Where have you been? I looked for you when all the other young ladies came down from tea—’
‘Not all of them, surely?’ The Ladies Elizabeth and Beatrice had both left Lady Sarah’s rooms before she had.
‘That’s beside the point,’ said Aunt Agnes, a little taken aback by Sofia’s uncharacteristic interruption. ‘The point is,’ she continued, firmly taking charge of the conversation once more, ‘that gown. What on earth possessed you to change into that...monstrosity?’
‘It’s a very lovely gown...’
‘For church! Only an imbecile would think it suitable for dinner in this sort of company...’
All of a sudden, out of nowhere it seemed, the Duke was there.
‘I am sure,’ he said to Aunt Agnes in a tone of mild reproof, ‘Miss Underwood has a perfectly logical explanation for coming to dinner dressed as she is.’
Sofia sucked in a breath as she fought to decide which emotion was uppermost. On the one hand, she was grateful to him for coming so swiftly to her defence. On the other, he knew full well why she’d had to change her gown. At least on the first occasion. He’d practically ordered her to do it.
‘The blue silk,’ she said to her aunt, as calmly as she could, ‘got muddy when I went to the kennels...’ Aunt Agnes pursed her lips and shook her head.
‘And then I spilled tea down the topaz which I changed into. This,’ said Sofia, gesturing to her serviceable skirt, ‘was the best I had left.’
Aunt Agnes was just taking a breath to say something Sofia was certain she wasn’t going to like, when the Duke intervened.
‘Does Miss Underwood not have a personal maid to see to her clothes?’
‘Well, no,’ said Aunt Agnes. ‘But...’
He drew down his brows in such a way that her retort petered out. He didn’t need to say, out loud, that if Sofia didn’t have a maid of her own then it was surely down to her aunt to ensure she came down to dinner suitably attired, rather than berating her when it was too late to do anything about it.
A Duke in Need of a Wife Page 10