Tess bit her lip.
“Damnation!” Annabel said, narrowing her eyes. “You’ve stolen the best suitor in the house, have you?”
“Not willingly,” Tess protested.
“You’re lucky I hadn’t formed a tendresse for the man. I must have been born without a romantic bone in my body, which is remarkable good fortune. Just look how seriously Imogen took that dreadful Lady Clarice last evening.”
That reminded Tess. “I just told Rafe that we would join Lady Clarice and Miss Pythian-Adams in a trip to some Roman ruins tomorrow.”
“Botheration,” Annabel exclaimed. “I shall cry a headache. I don’t want to be seen in these dreadful clothes.”
“I suppose we could decline. After all, if Miss Pythian-Adams is half the paragon that Lady Clarice described, it will be humiliating for Imogen.”
Annabel shook her head. “If Miss Pythian-Adams is attending, then so must we.”
“Why? I should think it will simply be more difficult for Imogen once she meets this stronghold of lady like civility.”
“Stronghold? You’re describing her as a stronghold? Bad phrase,” Annabel said. “Perhaps Draven Maitland, impossible bounder though he is, will be struck with shock at the sight of his bluestocking next to our darling Imogen.”
“But I don’t want that! The last thing I want is Imogen to marry Maitland.”
“You, darling, are not the issue here. Imogen wishes to marry him, foolish though her desire may be, and I have not seen any good whatsoever from denying people their heart’s desire. Remember what happened to Mrs. Bunbury’s daughter?”
“Lucy? Lucy caught a fever and died.”
“Pish,” Annabel said. “I can’t believe I forgot to tell you the truth of it. Lucy had caught a child, not a fever. Mrs. Meggley, in the village, told me. Lucy died in childbirth, and it was all because her mother refused to let her marry the fellow she wanted.”
“Oh, poor Lucy,” Tess said. “He wasn’t a fellow, Annabel. Ferdie McDonough was a good match for Lucy, and her mother shouldn’t have prevented them. Although,” she added, “I don’t see how you can blame Lucy’s mother for death in childbirth.”
Annabel waved her hand impatiently. “It’s not precisely the death that I blame her for. But when a woman’s as determined as Lucy—or our Imogen, for that matter—one might as well accept it. Now if Maitland truly means to marry this cultivated woman of his, there’s nothing more to be done about it. But given that charming little display of temper he put on last night, he doesn’t seem all that attached to Miss Pythian-Daisy, or whatever her name is. My guess would be that Lady Clarice put the match together and he accepted for the sake of the Pythian-Daisy estate.”
“Were he to back out of the marriage, it would mean a breach-of-promise suit, and you said it was terribly expensive.”
“The Maitlands can afford it. Did you see Lady Clarice’s gown?”
“I don’t want Imogen to marry Maitland,” Tess said stubbornly. “He would be a terribly uncomfortable husband. Just witness his attack of temper last night. I would loathe a husband with such a disregard for propriety.”
“Ah, but it’s only the lucky ones like ourselves who are able to choose a spouse for compatibility,” Annabel said, wiggling her toes before the fire. “Just think, Tess, once we’re married, we shall never have to wear darned stockings again!”
“I would never know yours are darned,” her sister said, squinting at her toes. “You do darn beautifully.”
“Yet another skill that I will gladly discard by the wayside,” Annabel said. “Along with accounting, gardening, and counting one’s pennies. Or ha’ pennies, as the case was with Papa.”
“I wish you wouldn’t be so harsh about him in front of Josephine,” Tess said, sitting at the dressing table and beginning to pull pins from her hair. It tumbled to the edge of the stool.
“Well, Josie isn’t here,” Annabel pointed out. “There’s no one here but you, my dear, and I’m not going to start pretending to be in some sort of ecstasy of grief over Papa’s death. He never gave a twig for us.”
She said it so harshly—and that was so unlike Annabel’s normal style—that Tess bit her lip. “I think he loved us,” she said, drawing the brush through her hair. “He simply had trouble—”
“He simply loved his horses more,” Annabel put in. “But you’re right. I’ll try to preserve Josie’s tender sensibilities.”
Tess put down her brush. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry he made you do the accounting, Annabel.”
“I wouldn’t have minded,” her sister said, staring hard into the fire. “I wouldn’t have minded if he had given a thought to us, to our futures.” Her voice trailed off.
“He did think of our futures,” Tess protested.
“Not enough,” Annabel said. And that was true. Viscount Brydone had used his daughters to make his life more comfortable and refused to allow them suitors because he swore he would take them all to London someday, so they could marry in style.
“He loved us,” Tess said firmly, picking up the brush again.
“The important thing for me,” Annabel said, “is to find a man who doesn’t know a horse from a donkey. If Mayne has decided to court you, I’m in perfect agreement, since his conversation was a trifle too horsey at dinner last night. I would prefer that my husband is more interested in dancing slippers than horseshoes. So if you would like to marry the earl, Tess, please do it with expediency, so we can all go to London. I imagine he has a palatial residence, don’t you think?”
“I suppose you are right.”
“And he has exquisite taste,” Annabel continued. “Did you see the little fringes on his boots? I’m certain I’ve never seen anything so elegant at home. Without doubt he will know all the best modistes in London.”
“I am surprised that you don’t make a greater play for his hand yourself,” Tess said a trifle irritably. “Since you view him as an archetype of taste.”
“While I find Mayne’s taste in black velvet irreproachable,” Annabel said with honest surprise, “and I also find his legs rather appealing in those tight pantaloons—” She ducked the small cushion that Tess threw at her—“I am quite certain that London is full of men of precisely the same qualifications as the earl. He shows a preference for you, and one must be careful not to make decisions based on unseemly enthusiasm for a man’s legs.”
“You make it all sound so mundane,” Tess said with a sigh, drawing her brush through her hair again.
Her sister was grinning at her. “Not that I intend to ignore the matter when it comes to choosing my own husband, naturally.”
“Hush up, you wicked thing!” Tess scolded.
“I must go,” Annabel said, jumping to her feet. “I am trying to teach Elsie, my maid, how to braid my hair, and I must say, it’s rather a chore. Elsie may have made an excellent nursemaid, but she can’t seem to manage hair.”
“She must be Gussie’s sister, then,” Tess said rather gloomily. “I keep waiting until Gussie leaves, and then quickly brushing out my hair and repinning it.”
Annabel looked shocked. “I’m never pinning up my own hair again—ever! I don’t mind if Elsie has to do it twelve times.”
At that moment the aforementioned Gussie herself arrived, so Annabel left. Gussie was a robust young woman who was prepared for nursemaid duties, having watched her mother pop seven small children into the world, but was rather less prepared for the duties of being a lady’s maid.
She was making a game try at it though. “Mrs. Beeswick says that I should wash your forehead in camomile,” she said cheerfully. Without a second’s pause she tipped Tess’s head back and sluiced a thoroughly wet cloth on her forehead.
Tess felt cold water trickling down her neck and wondered whether she should say something acerbic. But Gussie had launched into her favorite activity—talking—and Tess felt it would be rather rude to cut her off.
“Being a lady’s maid is such a lot of work,” Gus
sie confided. “It’s not merely what I do in your room, miss. It’s what I have to do downstairs that’s the worst of it. Ironing. Ironing, ironing, ironing!”
“I’m sorry,” Tess murmured. The soggy facecloth slopped against her lips as she spoke.
“It’s not your fault, Miss. It’s the position. And Lord knows, I do understand what an opportunity this is!”
“Wonderful,” Tess murmured. There was icy water inching its way down her breastbone. “Wonderful.”
Chapter
11
Next morning
Rafe woke with a bitter taste in his mouth, the sensation that his eyelids would not open, and a feeling of sick apprehension. Two minutes later he remembered why that was. Today marked the arrival of Miss Pythian-Adams, the cultivated paragon, and he had agreed to accompany his wards to some benighted hole in the ground thought to be a Roman ruin. If Maitland accompanied his fiancée, there was likely to be yet another dustup between Lady Clarice and her son. It was enough to make a man break his rule of never drinking before the sun was over the yardarm.
He dragged himself out of bed and washed in a foul temper. To this point, he had quite enjoyed having wards, especially Tess. But Imogen was another kettle of fish. To be blunt about it, he didn’t like Imogen. She was too passionate for her own good, what with the way she almost visibly shook at the very sight of Mailand. Had the girl no pride? And her adoration was a mystery in itself: the man was a rakehell, for all he spent his blunt on horses rather than hussies. He lived for speed and the race.
Rafe shuddered. One overly passionate young lady and a loose fish like Maitland was a recipe for disaster.
His valet entered his room and held out a frothing drink without a comment. Rafe drained it in one gulp. One of these days he had to stop hitting the brandy with such vigor. Just not today.
Stoically he climbed into an ice-cold tub of water and poured a bucket over his head. When he stopped shaking, and the frothing stopped in his stomach, he felt considerably better.
Try as he might, he couldn’t remember Miss Pythian-Adams, although surely he’d met her on some occasion or other. He vaguely thought she might have red hair. Since Peter had died and he became a duke, he’d spent the majority of his time trying to avoid anyone who might be a marriageable female, so it was no wonder he had no memory of the girl.
Naturally, he was not the only person in the house thinking of Miss Pythian-Adams.
“I just don’t understand how she managed to catch Draven,” Imogen was telling Tess. They had sent Gussie down to the kitchens on an errand, and Imogen was currently occupied in removing all of the hairpins that Gussie had stuck around Tess’s head, preparatory to recombing her hair and putting it up again. “Draven is the last man on earth to appreciate literary cultivation. Do you suppose that his mother obliged him to ask for Miss Pythian-Adams’s hand?”
“I doubt it,” Tess replied.
“Well, why not?” Imogen said, putting down the brush. “Parents do enforce their children’s choice of spouse, you know. Do you think—do you think she’s more beautiful than I?”
Tess met her little sister’s anxious eyes in the mirror. She felt horribly torn. On the one hand, it seemed cruel to encourage Imogen in any fashion. But it was so heartrendingly difficult to squash her hopes. “I doubt that Miss Pythian-Adams is more beautiful than you are, Imogen,” she said finally. “But on a practical front, beauty may be the least of Miss Pythian-Adams’s traits. She’s an heiress, and she has Lady Clarice’s approval.”
Imogen’s eyes flared. “You’re saying that Draven would marry for lucre!”
“I’m saying that we do not know why Maitland asked for Miss Pythian-Adams’s hand in marriage,” Tess said a bit wearily. “But we do know that the question was asked. It would be best if you could resign yourself to the fact.”
“I’m tired of resigning myself!” Imogen said, snatching up the brush again. “He should love me, not her!”
There was nothing much to say to this nonsense, so Tess held her tongue.
“If only Papa had been more provident, we might have had a governess, and I would know just as much as she does about poetry, and Romans, and sketching, and the rest.”
“Of course you would,” Tess said.
“I didn’t know precisely which fork to use last night,” Imogen went on angrily. “And that is Papa’s fault too. He should have thought that we would have to compete with—with women of this nature!”
“Papa didn’t think that way.”
Imogen started pinning up Tess’s hair. “When Draven sees the two of us together, he’ll turn to me,” she said after a moment.
But Tess refused to play along. She had come to the conclusion that their indulgence of Imogen’s hopeless adoration had been a mistake. “I very much doubt that.”
“I do not,” Imogen said, sticking in hairpins so fiercely that Tess felt like a pincushion. “Draven does not love this woman. He could not love a bluestocking. So there must be something behind their engagement, and that something is likely to be Lady Clarice.”
But an hour later, Imogen was not quite so certain.
Gillian Pythian-Adams was no weedy-looking bluestocking, lanky, pale, and clutching a leather-bound copy of Shakespeare. She was not wearing pince-nez, and she didn’t wear her hair raked into a tight bun, the way any self-respecting cultured woman did. Instead copper-colored curls peeked from under her bonnet, and green eyes surveyed the world with aplomb. And even a bit of humor.
Imogen felt the thump of her heart as it tumbled to the bottom of her boots. Any man would be happy to gaze at Miss Pythian-Adams all day long, even if she engaged to read him poetry. Even if it was historical poetry.
“How do you do, Miss Imogen?” Miss Pythian-Adams was saying. It should be outlawed for such an educated woman to have a dimple. Let alone be allowed to wear a lilac pelisse that made Imogen faint with envy.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Imogen replied from between stiff lips. No wonder Draven had never done more than kiss her—a stupid, badly dressed Scottish lass with the temerity to worship him. He probably considered kissing her akin to visiting the sick: a charitable action.
“I’m so excited about visiting the ruins,” Miss Pythian-Adams said. Even her voice was pleasing: not too low, not too high. “And it is a true pleasure to find that there are four young ladies with whom to be friends in this vicinity.”
Imogen met Tess’s eyes over Miss Pythian-Adams’s shoulder (she was, perhaps, a wee bit short by Essex standards but really, that would be the only negative thing one could say).
“I’m sorry, darling,” Tess mouthed.
Imogen smiled in a lopsided kind of way. She was so shocked that she didn’t even feel like crying.
“Lady Clarice told us that your sketches have been published in The Ladies’ Magazine,” Tess said, walking about and putting her arm around Imogen’s waist. “We were all terribly envious. You must have a wonderful gift for sketching.”
“In fact, no,” Miss Pythian-Adams said. Then she smiled, a little embarrassed smile. “I gather Lady Clarice neglected to say that my father is on the Board of Directors of the journal in question?”
She was modest as well. Likeable, even. Imogen felt as if her heart was about to break.
“Will Lord Maitland be joining us today?” Tess asked Miss Pythian-Adams.
“I expect not,” she replied briskly. “You probably don’t realize this, having just met Lord Maitland, but he has such a ruthless obsession with his stables that—”
But at that moment Maitland himself strode into the room and came straight over to them.
Tess watched carefully. Imogen lit up like a Roman candle at his approach (so much for subtlety). Miss Pythian-Adams allowed him to kiss her hand, but displayed no particular sign of exhilaration. Maitland showed no sign of preference for one lady over another; in fact Tess would venture to say that he kissed her own hand with precisely as much enthusiasm as he kissed that of his promi
sed wife.
Finally, they all clambered into carriages and headed off in the direction of the ruins. The Essex sisters ended up in a carriage with their guardian.
The sky was a ravishing pale blue, and it promised to grow quite hot. Tess watched a faint wisp of a cloud evaporate. “I want you to promise to keep your bonnet on,” she said to Josie, who had the tendency to throw her bonnet to the winds and toast her face.
Josie looked around at her sisters. “We look like a flock of buzzards!” she said with a gurgle of laughter.
“Only the best sort of buzzards wear bonnets,” Rafe said. He had a little silver flagon of something that Tess regarded with some disapproval.
Still, she couldn’t help smiling at him. “That was your clue to flatter us, Your Grace, rather than confirm our dreary appearance. May I assume that you are not exactly used to handing out compliments like a Lothario?”
“Don’t call me Your Grace,” he growled. “And I’ve never made myself into a noodle for a lady, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Why not?” Josie asked, with interest. “You’re not so old yet.” There was a hint of doubt in her voice.
“Josie!” Tess admonished, and turned to Rafe. “I do apologize for Josie’s brazen question. We are used to talking amongst ourselves in the most impertinent fashion.”
“I like it,” Rafe said, obviously unperturbed. “I may not be so old yet, Miss Josephine, but I feel old. And thank goodness, to this point I haven’t met the woman who could turn me into a jackanapes.”
“If you’re not turned into a noodle by Annabel or Tess,” Josie said with utter conviction, “then I’m afraid you’re doomed to remain unmarried.”
“I shall resign myself,” Rafe said, with obvious cheer.
“You’re a grave disappointment to me,” Annabel told him.
“First my mother, now you,” Rafe said, with a patently counterfeit sigh.
“I suspect that you are an old hand at avoiding the attentions of women,” Tess said, watching her guardian smile at Annabel. Just so would a brother smile at his beloved younger sister who was showing the first signs of beauty.