Over the past three and a half years, Hugh had become remarkably adept at ferreting out every possible shortcut.
Third door on the right, then in, turn left, cross the room, and exit through the French doors. As an added benefit, he could take a moment to rest on one of the sofas. Most of the ladies had gone off to the village, so it was unlikely that anyone would be there. By his estimation he had a quarter of an hour before the shooting was due to start.
The drawing room wasn’t terribly large, just a few seating arrangements. There was a blue chair facing him that looked comfortable enough. He couldn’t see over the back of the sofa that sat opposite it, but there was probably a low table between them. He could put his leg up for a moment, and no one would be the wiser.
He made his way over, but he must not have been paying proper attention, because his cane clipped the edge of the table, which led directly to his shin clipping the edge of the table, which in turn led to a most creative string of curses clipping out of his mouth as he turned around to sit.
That was when he saw Sarah Pleinsworth, asleep on the sofa.
Oh, bloody hell.
He’d been having a better than average day, the pain in his leg notwithstanding. The last thing he needed was a private audience with the oh-so dramatic Lady Sarah. She’d probably accuse him of something nefarious, follow that with a trite declaration of hatred, then finish up with something about those fourteen men who had become engaged during the season of 1821.
He still didn’t know what that was supposed to be about.
Or why he even recalled it. He’d always had a good memory, but really, couldn’t his brain let go of the truly useless?
He had to get through the room without waking her up. It was not easy to tiptoe with a cane, but by God that was what he would do if that was what it took to make it through the room unnoticed.
Well, there went his hopes of resting his leg. Very carefully, he edged out from behind the low wooden table, careful not to touch anything but carpet and air. But as anyone who had ever stepped outside knew, air could move, and apparently he was breathing too hard, because before he made it past the sofa, Lady Sarah woke from her slumber with a shriek that startled him so much that he fell back against another chair, toppled over the upholstered arm, and landed awkwardly on the seat.
“What? What? What are you doing?” She blinked rapidly before spearing him with a glare. “You.”
It was an accusation. It absolutely was.
“Oh, you gave me a fright,” she said, rubbing her eyes.
“Apparently.” He swore under his breath as he tried to swing his legs over to the front of the chair. “Ow!”
“What?” she asked impatiently.
“I kicked the table.”
“Why?”
He scowled. “I didn’t do it on purpose.”
She seemed only then to realize that she was lounging most casually along the length of the sofa and, with a flurry of movement, straightened herself to a more proper upright position. “Excuse me,” she said, still flustered. Her dark hair was falling from its coiffure; he deemed it best not to point this out.
“Please accept my apology,” he said stiffly. “I did not mean to startle you.”
“I was reading. I must have fallen asleep. I . . . ah . . .” She blinked a few more times, then her eyes finally seemed to focus. On him. “Were you sneaking up on me?”
“No,” he said, with perhaps more speed and fervor than was polite. He motioned to the door that led outside. “I was just cutting through. Lord Chatteris has made arrangements for target shooting.”
“Oh.” She looked suspicious for about one second more, then this clearly gave way to embarrassment. “Of course. There is no reason you would be sneak— That is to say—” She cleared her throat. “Well.”
“Well.”
She waited for a moment, then asked pointedly, “Don’t you plan to continue to the lawn?”
He stared at her.
“For the shooting,” she clarified.
He shrugged. “I’m early.”
She did not seem to care for that answer. “It’s quite pleasant outside.”
He glanced out the window. “So it is.” She was trying to get rid of him, and he supposed she deserved a certain measure of respect for not even trying to hide it. On the other hand, now that she was awake—and he was seated in a chair, resting his leg—there seemed no reason to hurry onward.
He could endure anything for ten minutes, even Sarah Pleinsworth.
“Do you plan to shoot?” she asked.
“I do.”
“With a gun?”
“That’s how one usually does it.”
Her face tightened. “And you think this is prudent?”
“Do you mean because your cousin will be there? I assure you, he will have a gun as well.” He felt his lips curve into an emotionless smile. “It will be almost like a duel.”
“Why do you joke about such things?” she snapped.
He let his gaze land rather intently on hers. “When the alternative is despair, I generally prefer humor. Even if it is of the gallows variety.”
Something flickered in her eyes. A hint of understanding, perhaps, but it was gone too quickly to be sure he’d seen it. And then she pursed her lips, an expression so prim it was clear he’d imagined that brief moment of sympathy.
“I want it known that I do not approve,” she said.
“Duly noted.”
“And”—she lifted her chin and turned slightly away—“I think it is a very bad idea.”
“How is that different from a lack of approval?”
She just scowled.
He had a thought. “Do you find it bad enough to faint?”
She snapped back to attention. “What?”
“If you swoon on the lawn, Chatteris must give Daniel and me ten pounds each.”
Her lips formed an O and then froze in that position.
He leaned back and smiled lazily. “I could be persuaded to offer you a twenty percent cut.”
Her face moved, but she remained without words. Damn, but it was good fun to bait her.
“Never mind,” he said. “We’d never carry it off.”
Her mouth finally closed. Then opened again. Of course. He should have known her silence could be only fleeting.
“You don’t like me,” she said.
“Not really, no.” He probably should have lied, but somehow it seemed that anything less than the truth would have been even more insulting.
“And I don’t like you.”
“No,” he said mildly, “I didn’t think you did.”
“Then why are you here?”
“At the wedding?”
“In the room. Lud, you’re obtuse.” The last bit she said to herself, but his hearing had always been fairly sharp.
He rarely trotted his injury out as a trump card, but it seemed a good time. “My leg,” he said with slow deliberation. “It hurts.”
There was a delicious silence. Delicious for him, that was. For her, he imagined it was awful.
“I’m sorry,” she mumbled, looking down before he could ascertain the extent of her flush. “That was very rude of me.”
“Think nothing of it. You’ve done worse.”
Her eyes flared.
He brought the tips of his fingers together, his hands making a hollow triangle. “I remember our previous encounter with unpleasant accuracy.”
She leaned forward in fury. “You chased my cousin and aunt from a party.”
“They fled. There is a difference. And I did not even know they were there.”
“Well, you should have done.”
“Clairvoyance has never been one of my talents.”
He could see her straining to control her temper, and when she spoke, her jaw barely moved. “I know that you and Cousin Daniel have patched things up, but I’m sorry, I cannot forgive you for what you did.”
“Even if he has?” Hugh asked softly.
br /> She shifted uncomfortably, and her mouth pressed into several different expressions before she finally said, “He can afford to be charitable. His life and happiness have been restored.”
“And yours has not.” He did not phrase it as a question. It was a statement, and an unsympathetic one at that.
She clamped her mouth shut.
“Tell me,” he demanded, because bloody hell, it was time they got to the bottom of this. “What, precisely, have I done to you? Not to your cousin, not to your other cousin, but to you, Lady Sarah Whatever your other names are Pleinsworth.”
She glared at him mutinously, then got to her feet. “I’m leaving.”
“Coward,” he murmured, but he stood as well. Even she deserved the respect of a gentleman.
“Very well,” she said, the color in her cheeks rising with barely restrained anger. “I was supposed to make my debut in 1821.”
“The year of the fourteen eligible gentlemen.” It was true. He forgot almost nothing.
She ignored this. “After you chased Daniel out of the country, my family had to go into seclusion.”
“It was my father,” Hugh said sharply.
“What?”
“My father chased Lord Winstead out of the country. I had nothing to do with it.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
His eyes narrowed, and with slow deliberateness he said, “It does to me.”
She swallowed uncomfortably, her entire bearing rigid. “Because of the duel,” she said, rephrasing so that the blame could be put back squarely on him, “we did not return to town for an entire year.”
Hugh choked back a laugh, finally understanding her silly little mind. She was blaming him for the loss of her London season. “And those fourteen eligible gentlemen are now forever lost to you.”
“There is no reason to be so mocking.”
“You have no way of knowing that one would have proposed,” he pointed out. He did like things to be logical, and this was . . . not.
“There is no way of knowing that one wouldn’t have done,” she cried. Her hand flew to her chest, and she took a jerky step back, as if surprised by her own reaction.
But Hugh felt no sympathy. And he could not stave off the unkind chuckle that burst from his throat. “You never cease to astonish me, Lady Sarah. All this time, you’ve been blaming me for your unmarried state. Did it ever occur to you to look somewhere closer to home?”
She let out an awful choke and her hand came to her mouth, not so much to cover it as to hold something in.
“Forgive me,” he said, but they both knew that what he’d said was unforgivable.
“I thought I did not like you because of what you did to my family,” she said, holding herself so rigid that she shook, “but that’s not it at all. You are a terrible person.”
He stood very still, the way he’d been taught since birth. A gentleman was always in control of his body. A gentleman didn’t flail his arms or spit or fidget. He did not have much left in his life, but he had this—his pride, his bearing. “I shall endeavor not to press myself into your company,” he said stiffly.
“It’s too late for that,” she bit off.
“I beg your pardon?”
Her eyes bored into his. “My cousin, if you recall, has requested that we sit together at the wedding breakfast.”
Apparently he did forget some things. Bloody hell. He had promised Lady Honoria. There was no getting out of it. “I can be civil if you can,” he said.
She shocked him then, holding out her hand to seal their agreement. He took it, and in that moment when her hand lay in his, he had the most bizarre urge to bring her fingers to his lips.
“Have we a truce, then?” she said.
He looked up.
That was a mistake.
Because Lady Sarah Pleinsworth was gazing up at him with an expression of uncommon and (he was quite sure) uncharacteristic clarity. Her eyes, which had always been hard and brittle when turned in his direction, were softer now. And her lips, he realized now that she wasn’t hurling insults at him, were utter perfection, full and pink, and touched with just the right sort of curve. They seemed to tell a man that she knew things, that she knew how to laugh, and if he only laid down his soul for her, she would light up his world with a single smile.
Sarah Pleinsworth.
Good God, had he lost his mind?
Chapter Five
Later that night
When Sarah came down for supper, she was feeling a bit better about having to spend the evening with Hugh Prentice. The row they’d had that afternoon had been awful, and she could not imagine they would ever choose to be friends, but at least they’d got everything out in the open. If she was to be forced to remain at his side for the duration of the wedding, he would not think she was doing so out of any desire for his company.
And he would behave properly as well. They had struck a bargain, and whatever his faults, he did not seem the type to go back on his word. He would be polite, and he would put on a good show for Honoria and Marcus, and once this ridiculous month of weddings was over, they would never need speak with each other again.
After five minutes in the drawing room, however, it became delightfully clear that Lord Hugh was not yet present. And Sarah had looked. No one was going to accuse her of shirking her duty.
Sarah had never much liked standing alone at gatherings, so she joined her mother and aunts over by the fireplace. As expected, they were nattering on about the wedding. Sarah listened with half an ear; after five days at Fensmore, she could not imagine there was any detail she had not yet heard about the upcoming ceremony.
“It is a pity the hydrangeas aren’t in season,” her aunt Virginia was saying. “The ones we grow at Whipple Hill are just the shade of lavender-blue we need for the chapel.”
“It’s blue-lavender,” Aunt Maria corrected, “and you must see that hydrangeas would have been a terrible mistake.”
“A mistake?”
“The colors are far too variable,” Aunt Maria continued, “even on a cultivated shrub. You would never have been able to guarantee the shade ahead of time, and what if they did not match Honoria’s dress perfectly?”
“Surely no one would expect perfection,” Aunt Virginia replied. “Not with flowers.”
Aunt Maria sniffed. “I always expect perfection.”
“Especially from flowers,” Sarah said with a little chuckle. Aunt Maria had named her daughters Rose, Lavender, Marigold, Iris, and Daisy. Her son, whom Sarah privately thought might be the luckiest child in England, was called John.
But Aunt Maria, though generally kindhearted, had never had much of a sense of humor. She blinked a few times in Sarah’s direction before giving a little smile and saying, “Oh yes, of course.”
Sarah still wasn’t sure if Aunt Maria had got the joke. She decided not to press the matter. “Oh, look! There’s Iris!” she said, relieved to see her cousin enter the room. Sarah had never been as close to Iris as she was to Honoria, but they were all three almost the same age, and Sarah had always enjoyed Iris’s dry wit. She imagined the two of them would be spending more time together now that Honoria was getting married, especially since they shared a profound loathing for the family musicale.
“Go,” her mother said, nodding in Iris’s direction. “You don’t want to stay here with the matrons.”
She really didn’t, so with a grateful smile to her mother, Sarah made her way over to Iris, who was standing near the doorway, quite obviously looking for someone.
“Have you seen Lady Edith?” Iris asked without preamble.
“Who?”
“Lady Edith Gilchrist,” Iris clarified, referring to a young lady neither of them knew very well.
“Wasn’t she recently engaged to the Duke of Kinross?”
Iris waved this off as if the recent loss of an eligible duke was of no consequence. “Is Daisy down?” she asked.
Sarah blinked at the sudden change of subject. “Not that I
have seen.”
“Thank God.”
Sarah’s eyes widened at Iris’s rather fast use of the Lord’s name, but she would never criticize. Not about Daisy.
Daisy was best in very small doses. There was simply no getting around that.
“If I make it through these weddings without murdering her, it will be a small miracle,” Iris said darkly. “Or a large . . . something.”
“I told Aunt Virginia not to put the two of you in a bedchamber together,” Sarah said.
Iris dismissed this with a flick of her head as she continued to glance about the drawing room. “There was nothing to be done about that. Sisters will be put together. They need to conserve rooms. I’m used to it.”
“Then what is wrong?”
Iris swung around to face her, her pale eyes large and furious in her similarly pale face. Sarah had once heard a gentleman call Iris colorless—she had light blue eyes, pale strawberry blond hair, and skin that was practically translucent. Her brows were pale, her lashes were pale, everything about her was pale—until one got to know her.
Iris was as fierce as they came. “She wants to play,” she seethed.
For a moment Sarah did not comprehend. And then—terrifyingly—she did. “No!” she gasped.
“She brought her violin up from London,” Iris confirmed.
“But—”
“And Honoria has already moved her violin to Fensmore. And of course every great house has a pianoforte.” Iris clenched her jaw; she was quite obviously repeating Daisy’s words.
“But your cello!” Sarah protested.
“You’d think, wouldn’t you?” Iris fumed. “But no, she’s thought of everything. Lady Edith Gilchrist is here, and she brought her cello. Daisy wants me to borrow it.”
Instinctively, Sarah whipped her head around, looking for Lady Edith.
“She’s not here yet,” Iris said, all business, “but I need to find her the moment she gets in.”
“Why would Lady Edith bring a cello?”
“Well, she plays,” Iris said, as if Sarah had not considered that.
Sarah resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Well, almost. “But why would she bring it here?”