Laughter rolled around the room.
Sylvia, however, remained steady in her seriousness. “Very well, then, what of Montesquieu?” There came the stirrings of disagreement. “Just a moment; hear me out.” And just like that, they did, giving her the space she’d requested to make her point. “Montesquieu was of the opinion women were weaker than men and expected them to obey the commands of their husband . . . but he also believed women had the ability to govern.” And Clayton hung on to every word Sylvia uttered. Before this, he’d been captivated by her humor. Bewitched by her touch. And enthralled by her intelligence and wit. But this? Witnessing her complete and magnificent mastery of this discourse would be one thing he remembered for the remainder of his days. “Or what of Voltaire? He deliberately wrote women to be like men and, in so doing, highlighted the idea that women and men are interchangeable and that we all possess the same potential.”
How effortlessly she guided the meetings. She’d defused the volatile exchange, bringing them away from a place driven solely by emotion and to one where the members were using reason and intellect to defend any divergent opinions they possessed in a way he’d never witnessed any member of Parliament capable of doing.
She was nothing short of awe-inspiring.
“Are you then defending marriage?” Miss Bragger asked Sylvia.
And Clayton didn’t realize he held his breath until she slid her gaze his way. Only because her answer mattered in the sense of knowing Norfolk hadn’t ruined her for love. Not because it meant there might be a chance for a union between them. No, not when he’d already turned his back on that possibility. That couldn’t be the reason he hung in a suspended state, waiting for her answer.
“I am pointing out that if we generalize old men as being one way, then we are no different from those closed-minded thinkers,” Sylvia explained.
“She is quite amazing, is she not?”
It took a moment for Clayton to register that faintest of whispers . . . now coming from his seatmate.
For one horrifying heartbeat, he believed he had been so transparent in his admiration for Sylvia that this stranger, Miss Dobson, whom he really knew not at all, had detected it.
Except as he glanced at Miss Dobson, Clayton observed the frank appreciation she had trained on Sylvia.
“We are not inferior . . . We should never settle for anything less than a relationship where we are treated as the equals that we are,” Sylvia was saying. “Do I believe it is likely to find such a husband and such a marriage? No. I do not. Did I have that when I was married? No, I did not. But neither should we believe and speak in absolutes.”
The day’s Mismatch Society meeting was proving to be one of the most lively and thought-provoking ones since their inception.
Sylvia herself had been completely and entirely engaged.
That was, however, until she had happened to glance across the room, in the midst of the point she’d been making, and seen Clayton leaning close to Miss Dobson. Just as he had been since the members had broken up into pairings, as they did at the end of each group discussion.
Miss Dobson . . . was perfect. Why had Sylvia not thought of it before now? In her mind, she kept a mental inventory of the potential bride for Clayton. Fact: the young lady was clever and possessed of a genuine sense of humor. Fact: they were comfortable with and around one another . . . as had been evidenced by the stolen exchanges they’d shared during the meeting. In short, Miss Dobson was perfect for Clayton.
Fact: for some reason, instead of triumph, Sylvia was overwhelmed by the need to have herself a good cry.
Then she made the mistake of looking across the room to where Clayton sat . . . on the same bench as Miss Dobson. Their heads bent close, they were completely engrossed in whatever topic they now spoke on.
“And it is quite shocking, but I rather approve,” Clara, her partner in discussion for the day, was saying.
“I agree,” Sylvia said for the sake of saying something.
What were Miss Dobson and Clayton talking about?
And was it really so funny, whatever it was they were talking about? Because it shouldn’t be. The manner of the day’s business was serious stuff. Was there really all that room for hilarity?
Just then, Miss Dobson laughed. Louder and longer than she’d ever heard. In fact, Sylvia couldn’t think of a time when the generally quiet young lady had ever been so exuberant.
“Though I’m sure many will disagree with me,” Clara continued to carry on with what had become an entirely one-sided discussion.
Miss Dobson giggled. Giggled. The sound of innocence and everything Sylvia was not.
“Do you not think so?” Clara asked.
Sylvia gritted her teeth. She thought they should get on with more serious talk. “I do.” She absolutely thought that.
“Then I shall make it official . . . I shall order my club shuttered . . .”
Sylvia blinked slowly. What in . . . ? She whipped her attention away from Clayton and his future bride over to her sister-in-law . . . and found the beautiful woman smiling back.
“Of course I’ve no intention of closing up my music hall.” Clara winked. “I do, however, have your attention.”
Heat slapped Sylvia’s cheeks. “Forgive me.” Since she had happened to glance over earlier at Clayton and found him charming his seating partner, Sylvia hadn’t been able to properly focus on anything. In fact, since then, she had been useless. “I was . . . distracted.”
Another of Miss Dobson’s laughs filled the room. This time, that innocent, bell-like sound that Sylvia had once been in possession of, too, was followed by Clayton’s deeper and more rumbling one. Do not look. Do not look.
“I see that.” Her sister-in-law lifted a perfectly golden brow and arched her head ever so slightly in the direction of his partner for the day. “You care about the gentleman,” Clara said softly, her tones so hushed they were reserved for Sylvia.
“Of course I do,” she said automatically. “He is a friend.”
“A friend,” Clara repeated.
Sylvia’s back went up defensively. “Yes, friend. We have known one another for many years.” Even if there had been a few in between where she had not seen him. They had resumed all this time later, picking up as easily as if there had never been a parting.
“I know friends. They do not glare at poor Miss Dobson, the way you are, for her speaking to the gentleman.”
Sylvia blanched. Good God, had she been so very obvious?
Her sister-in-law covered her fingers and squeezed them lightly. “Everyone is thoroughly engaged in today’s discussion. I likely wouldn’t have noticed . . . what I did, had I not been partnered with you today.”
Sylvia sank in her chair from the relief of that. “Truly?”
“Well, not me. I notice everything, and as such, I have also paid attention to the looks you and the viscount steal of one another during the meetings.”
They didn’t steal looks. They happened to look at one another at various points. It was all by coincidence and chance. Why, it was no different from when each of them happened to glance at other members in the room. Why . . . why . . .
She was lying to herself. And if she was, what exactly did it mean?
“You yourself have pointed out numerous times, Sylvia,” her sister-in-law whispered, “that you have seen marriages that are actual partnerships. You have seen there can be love. And you know there are some good men. Not a lot,” Clara allowed, “but some. And as you have had a long friendship with the gentleman, then you know that he is one of the good ones. Which might be why you were struggling so much, setting him free for someone else?”
Clara’s words sent terror clamoring inside her. What her sister-in-law said . . . it all made sense. “It is more complicated than that,” she said, glancing down at her tightly clasped hands.
“How so?” Clara gently pressed her.
“Because I swore never to . . . to . . . lose myself so completely to a man.” And th
is? What her sister-in-law was proposing? It challenged everything Sylvia had sworn to never again do. “It broke me when Norman rebuffed my love,” she said on a ragged whisper. “And he rejected me. He rejected me in every way. I lived in a constant state of feeling terrible about myself. Why can I not be enough?” But he had been an ideal. The unattainable rogue who could never be interested in someone as ordinary as herself . . . and it had been so thrilling when he was. Like pretend. A fairy tale. Clayton, however, was a man whom she’d admired and respected and cared about and trusted . . . And if he were to break her heart, she would be destroyed. That would shatter her beyond the place that she could ever recover from. “I cannot lose like that again.”
“Sylvia,” Clara said, shifting even closer to her on the sofa. “I was not hurt in the same exact way you were. But I was one who thought just like you . . . that it was too dangerous to trust a man. All they ever wanted to do was control me and make me their plaything. They didn’t respect me. They treated me as an object for their pleasures. And I hated them for it. I hated them all.” There was a surprising lack of sting to those vitriolic words she now spoke. “I even hated your brother when I first met him,” she continued in that matter-of-fact way. “I believed he was just like all the others. And do you know, Sylvia?” Clara held her eyes with her own. “If I had not taken a chance that was different and better, think of all I would have lost. What if you do not think of it so much as losing yourself in a man, but finding yourself in new ways?”
Clara spoke of loss. And yet Sylvia had lost so much from her marriage to Norman. And even as her sister-in-law was making the most sense, Sylvia didn’t know if she was brave enough to do it all again.
Annalee banged the gavel, marking an end to Clara’s questioning and the latest meeting. Sylvia came to her feet, and caught Clayton’s gaze. She discreetly motioned to the floor, silently asking for him to stay.
While he spoke to his sisters, Sylvia made a show of tidying her notes. She waited until all the young women and members had filed from the parlor, until it was just Sylvia and Clayton.
They stood across from one another, and spoke at the same time.
“I very much enjoyed—”
“You probably already know—”
They both stopped at the same time. Sylvia gestured to Clayton. “Please, you first.”
“I was going to say how very much I enjoyed today’s discussion. The points you made were ones I hadn’t considered; I wanted to thank you for including me in the society.”
Sylvia bit the inside of her lower lip. Why must he be so wonderful? It only made it all the more difficult, relinquishing him to another. “Thank you for that.” She swept her hand toward the upholstered sofa nearest them. “If you would?” After he sat, Sylvia joined him. “As I was saying, you probably know why I asked to speak with you.” Good, she had managed unaffected breeziness.
He nodded.
“Miss Dobson.”
Clayton glanced around, and puzzled his brow. “I am afraid I do not—”
“She is your bride,” Sylvia clarified.
“My . . . ?”
“Bride,” she supplied once more, and then Sylvia sat there, her body reflexively tensed. Clayton didn’t recoil or immediately reject, and that which should have marked her decision and this exchange a success ushered in another wave of tears that she wanted to cry. “I see how well you suited one another. She is lovely. She’s quite clever and kind and perfect with your sisters.” And she was an innocent. Miss Dobson still wore the glow of that innocence in ways Sylvia never would again. That was what Clayton deserved.
“I have no interest,” he began slowly, “in marriage to Miss Dobson.”
Her heart jumped a beat. “You do not?”
“I’m sure she is quite lovely. And she is all those things that you say. However, she is young, and she is lacking in the maturity and life experience that I would hope to have in the woman I one day marry.”
In short, he would not rule out a woman of more advanced years and experience . . .
A woman like yourself.
Unnerved, Sylvia jumped up. “This is helpful. Very helpful. Thank you so much. For clarifying, that is.”
After Clayton took his leave, Sylvia thought about what he’d said he wished for in his future wife, and smiled.
Chapter 22
That evening, following her discussion with Clayton, Sylvia found her night like so many others before it . . . in attendance at a ball.
Lingering on the sidelines of Lord and Lady Waverly’s ball, Sylvia found herself thinking back to a time when she’d enjoyed these affairs—back when she’d made her Come Out and she’d had Clayton’s company to make the night joyous. The memories proved even stronger this night, given this was the place they had first met. When she had been so innocent, and capable of freely smiling and laughing. Things she’d never thought to be able to do again, but that had proven so easy since he’d reappeared in her life.
“You should drink champagne,” Annalee shouted over the swell of the orchestra. With two glasses in hand, she offered one to Sylvia. “Wine makes them all the more enjoyable.”
She waved off that offering, to which Annalee shrugged. “The more for me,” she said, and alternated a sip from each glass.
“I thought you said you loved attending balls,” Sylvia said, making the decision to accept that drink after all to hopefully slow Annalee’s consumption of alcohol.
“I do.” Her friend tapped Sylvia with the edge of the painted fan dangling from her wrist. “I said they make them more enjoyable.” Annalee followed that with a wink and a laugh.
Smiling, Sylvia relieved the woman of her other refreshment.
“But . . .”
“You promised.” Several times about the same topic, that of Annalee’s concerning level of drink.
Annalee pouted. “You are terribly stuffy sometimes.” She softened that by placing a kiss upon each of Sylvia’s cheeks. “But I do love you so.” The young woman’s still lucid gaze caught on someone in the crowd, and she waved exuberantly at whomever she had spotted. “Would you be so very offended if I abandon you for a bit? I know you do not like these affairs.”
Sylvia cut her off with a laugh. “Go. I am perfectly content. And I told you, I—”
“Or you can join me? We would so love to—”
“Go,” Sylvia repeated.
She watched on, bemused, as Annalee cut a path directly through the crowded dance floor, the partners presently in the midst of a waltz, and all the while Annalee walked, she gestured with her arms as if she were conducting the orchestra, dancing gingerly between partners . . . until her form was lost to that crowd.
Giving her head a shake, Sylvia turned her focus to the two glasses she’d been left holding. An attentive footman immediately appeared. With a murmur of thanks, Sylvia deposited one flute. She made to set down the other before thinking better of it and holding on to the drink.
When the servant rushed off, she turned her gaze on the crowd once more.
Despite her friend’s assumption, Sylvia did not dislike attending balls. In fact, she rather enjoyed them. She wasn’t much of a dancer. But she enjoyed the music. She despised gossip. But she appreciated the swell of laughter and the din of people conversing. When she’d been married, it had been those affairs that had kept her from drowning in sorrow at loving a man who’d spent most of his nights away from her. Surrounding herself with crowds had allowed her to forget for a short while just how alone she was. And how lonely.
Upon her husband’s death she, an expectant mother, had gone into mourning. Then as a new mother, she had been overwhelmed by a state of depression. Most of her days she’d spent crying. And when she hadn’t been crying, she’d been fighting tears.
She had never imagined she would ever attend another ball. She’d never expected that she would want to.
Then she found her way back to the living, and had recently begun to attend these affairs.
And
yet, since Clayton had reemerged, she found herself discovering . . . the artificial sense of fulfillment that was to be found here. Now she found herself thinking what it would have been like to spend her days and nights with—
“What is the wager on how many times Lady Waverly’s brow turns up in disapproval?”
Sylvia gasped and looked up.
Clayton!
At some point, he had slid into the spot beside her. Arms folded across his massive chest, his focus turned out, there would have been the question as to whether he was, in fact, speaking to another. If another had been around. If it hadn’t been just they two together in company.
Just as he’d been that night they’d first met.
Her heart doubled its rhythm. In a way it had not during their first exchange. How had it not? And how had this awareness of him changed so much all these years later?
Mimicking his body’s positioning and his focus on the waltzing dancers, Sylvia spoke out of the corner of her mouth, delivering her exact same response from that night, too. “I believe the estimate was one hundred. Alas, she went through that number at the receiving line alone.”
“Perhaps, then, we can try our hands at another wager in the card room?” And also just like that long-ago night, he offered his elbow to her.
At last, they looked at one another and smiled. Sylvia placed her fingertips upon his sleeve and allowed him to lead her on to those rooms. “You’re here.” Happiness drew that exclamation from her.
“My brotherly responsibility.” As they walked, Clayton angled his head in a nearly imperceptible tilt, directing Sylvia’s focus to the young bespectacled lady. Surrounded by the company of her mother and the viscountess’s equally eccentric friends, Anwen was nearly three decades younger than all her companions. Just then, Clayton’s sister laughed at something one of the matrons said.
“I worry about her,” he said quietly as they proceeded along the perimeter of the room.
Sylvia stole another look, and puzzled her brow in confusion. “She appears happy. Is she not?”
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