Chapter 9
CHAPTER 9
“ D o you have extra hairpins in your reticule?”
“Yes,” Helen said with a sigh.
“And your maid? She will be ready to sew any hems that tear?”
“Yes,” Helen said again. “But—you do realize this is a dinner party, not a ball? My hems should not tear.”
“Don’t assume anything . And you have spare gloves, in case you stain yours?”
Helen tried to surreptitiously massage the spot between her brows without drawing too much attention to the action.
“You do realize that you sound like an overbearing aunt, don’t you, George?” she asked, her temper getting the best of her. But he had been like this for ages now, and the fact that they’d gotten as far as hairpins was, by Helen’s reckoning, a sign that things had gone way too far.
“I promise that I—with my experience of hairpins and hems, which I daresay outstrips yours by a wide margin—know that I have everything I need. Now, can we please get into the carriage? We’re going to be late otherwise.”
Helen knew that it was only this last little addition that saved her from the lecture she could see brewing in her cousin’s expression. She had, in fact, saved her retort for this precise circumstance.
Planning it had been the only thing that had gotten her through George’s incessant nagging all day. Helen’s own feelings about tonight’s dinner party might have been complex, but as they piled into the carriage, she felt only relief that it had finally arrived so that George could finally stop pestering everyone about it.
“Is everything all right, Helen?” Patricia asked her sotto voce , tugging on her arm as George piled into the carriage—before the ladies, as he hadn’t a gentlemanly bone in her body. He didn’t even extend a hand backward to help them pile into the carriage.
No, Helen thought. Everything is far from all right. I am going to a dinner party hosted by the kinsman of a man who has seen me in a state of dishabille . Oh, and he lewdly showed me his…masculine bits—and I looked at them!
Her internal monologue did not much care that the duke had been nearly fully clothed—and that she, herself, had never gotten past her stays.
She had seen the outline of his…person. That was enough. More than enough! Far more than she should have allowed to happen.
Except, in another way, it was not enough at all, something that was made all too apparent by the highly distracting dreams she kept having about that card game.
Dreams in which the Duke of Godwin did something instead of nothing after she’d removed her gown. They would be playing cards, and suddenly, her gown was around her feet, and he crooked a finger, beckoning her forward…
The dream was maddeningly imprecise on the details that came next, but each time she dreamt it, Helen would wake up hot, panting, and with a curious ache between her legs. Once, she’d even woken with her hand under her chemise, touching lightly against her own breast.
It was, in short, not even a little bit all right.
“Yes, of course, darling,” she told her sister. “Everything is fine.”
Patricia gave her a doubtful glance but was prohibited from saying anything further by George’s impatient cajoling, called out from the dark interior of the carriage.
“For Christ’s sake, you two are slow as treacle! What the hell is happening out there? Would you get in the damned carriage already? We’re going to be late!”
Patricia crossed her eyes and stuck out her tongue to illustrate how she felt about this. Helen couldn’t have said it better if she’d tried.
As their host, the Marquess of Featherston had a courtesy title rather than a landed estate of his own—that he would not inherit until his father passed and he became the Duke of Rutley—his house was not as centrally located in Mayfair as his connection to the illustrious Lightholders might suggest. Instead, he had something of a hybrid between the customary bachelor lodgings that a gentleman might occupy between his time spent in his family house and his inheritance and a proper townhouse.
Last name or not, title or not, the house said, the marquess was a Lightholder.
“Oh,” Helen said when they pulled up to the marquess’ street, only to find themselves stuck in a long line of carriages. “I thought this was…a dinner party?”
“It…was,” George said, his tone matching hers. The two cousins united for once by their mutual shock.
“It seems pretty large for a dinner party,” Patricia said doubtfully.
This was, the three learned when they finally made their way to the front of the queue, an apt way to put it. The space inside the marquess’ home was laid out for dining rather than dancing, but instead of the customary ten or so guests that frequented such events, he had crammed at least thirty attendees into the long dining hall of his house.
George looked at the crowded room, his expression as crestfallen as if someone had told him his favorite haberdasher had gone out of business.
“So…not the intimate party he’d hoped for,” Patricia murmured so only Helen could hear.
“Apparently not,” Helen agreed.
Normally, she would have indulged in a perverse sense of pleasure at her cousin’s disappointment. Helen didn’t typically consider herself the kind of person who normally enjoyed others’ pain, but she wasn’t normally being blackmailed into marriage—for herself or for her sister—either, so she felt entitled to let her Christian spirit lapse, just this once.
Tragically, however, she could not even properly delight in George’s dismay because he was here.
The Duke of Godwin.
It took all of her energy to seem like she wasn’t noticing him. She worked very hard to make it seem as though she did not see that his waistcoat fitted him extremely well or that he looked more regal than any of the other gentlemen in attendance. She was so engrossed in the act of not noticing the man who had haunted her dreams these past several nights, in fact, that she similarly failed to notice the man approaching them, an easy, charming smile on his face.
“Hey.”
Helen jumped half a foot in the air. Patricia gave her a look like she’d gone very suddenly insane.
Helen tried to recover quickly as the man looked on, amused, though not in a way that spoke of unkindness.
“I beg your pardon, sir,” she said, dipping a curtsey. “I was…woolgathering.”
“Do not trouble yourself over it,” he said affably. “Sometimes the mind is not considerate of your location when it decides to come up with something interesting. I, myself, am often distracted by my own flights of fancy. That said, as the host of this humble little soiree, I felt it behooved me to come introduce myself to two unknown, undeniably lovely ladies—so you shall have to forgive me for the interruption.”
All of this was said with such easy, inviting smoothness, with a cadence of voice that carried the listener along in soothing acquiescence, that Helen nearly missed the import of what the man was saying.
Their host. This was Ezra Swinton, the Marquess of Featherston.
The Duke of Godwin’s cousin.
Despite herself, Helen immediately found herself cataloging the similarities and differences between the irksome duke and his kinsman. She could see the resemblance; they were both tall and both written in graceful lines. They both had dark hair and blue eyes—though the marquess’ features, on both counts, were darker hues than those of his cousin.
There, however, the similarities ended. No matter their shared height, the men were not alike in figure. The duke was muscular where the marquess was slender, the kind of man one expected to see with a fencing foil in his hand.
Most markedly different, however, was the energy about them. While the duke’s imposing aura was unmistakable even at a distance—indeed, Helen was still struggling to ignore it from across the room—the marquess was the kind of man who put one at ease. They were both charming, to be certain, but the duke had the charm of the mesmerist, who sought to bring you into his thrall, while the marquess had a more social sort of charm, one that would make all and sundry flock to bask in his warmth.
“My lord,” Helen said, bobbing a curtsey. “My apologies for not recognizing you sooner. I am Miss Helen Fletcher, and this is my sister, Miss Patricia Fletcher. Our cousin is George Fletcher, Viscount Northton.”
Some flicker of awareness crossed the marquess’ features, and, again, Helen was put in mind of his elder cousin. The two men might present very different facades to the world, but both clearly had things lurking beneath their cultivated surfaces that they did not easily share.
“Ah, yes,” the marquess said, his tone absent. Helen suspected this was a show. “Viscount Northton. New to Town, aren’t you all?”
“Indeed, my lord,” Helen agreed, thinking this was a far more polite way to observe her accent than the duke’s comment about the loose morals of Northern girls. Then she reminded herself to stop comparing the marquess to the duke—and, indeed, to stop thinking of the duke at all.
“My cousin is around here somewhere,” she said. “I’m sure he’s eager to see you again.”
“Ah, no; I’ve not yet had the pleasure. We would be making acquaintances,” Lord Featherston corrected.
Helen fought against a frown. The marquess didn’t know George? She thought about all the ways George had spoken about this party. She supposed that made sense, except… how on earth had they ended up at this party?
She had an annoying suspicion she knew the answer.
It was perhaps unfair to be irritated with the Duke of Godwin for doing the thing they’d bargained for him to do, but would it kill the man to be a bit more communicative? Between the teasing and the goading and her getting half-naked, could he have not said, Oh, by the by, I’ve arranged an invitation to my cousin’s dinner party; perhaps Mr. Whatsit or Lord So-and-So would make a nice match for your sister ?
“Ah, of course,” she said vaguely, hoping her face did not betray her. Then, remembering her mission to save herself and her sister from George’s nefarious clutches, she aimed for her own lackluster attempt at charm. Better not to let an opportunity slip her by, especially when she never knew how many chances she would be granted.
“But then I can only assume that you do not know my lovely sister, either,” she said. Was she meant to flutter her eyelashes here? She’d seen ladies do such things, but Helen had always thought it rather seemed like they’d gotten a mote of dust in their eye more than anything else. She decided against risking it. “Patricia, do come meet Lord Featherston.”
Either the marquess really was interested in speaking to her sister—as he should be, Helen thought loyally, as Patricia was the loveliest girl she knew—or he was too well-bred to do anything other than give in to her clumsy social maneuverings. The pair began chatting, and Helen mumbled an excuse before slipping away, sending up a quick mental prayer that Patricia would manage to talk about something other than animals for at least three minutes.
As Helen weaved through all the well-heeled people (whose names she feared, she should know but did not), she tried to repress the knot of anxiety in her stomach. It wasn’t that it was untoward to leave her sister alone with a gentleman when they were in a crowded room—there were at least a dozen experienced chaperones in the bustling parlor where they gathered for pre-dinner drinks—and it wasn’t that she’d disliked the Marquess of Featherston.
It wasn’t even that she felt that Patricia might not be happiest in marriage to a future duke—though she did suspect that this was true. Duchesses, as far as Helen knew, did not spend much time helping to foal horses.
No, it was more that if Patricia did make a match with this future duke, then Helen would forever be connected to a different current duke.
And that was not part of the plan.
“There you are, little rabbit.”
For the second time that evening, Helen nearly jumped out of her skin. Of course, he was right behind her. Of course. He never did care a whit about her plans, did he?
She turned to look up at him, wishing she could scowl. If she tried it, though, no doubt George would be upon her in an instant, reprimanding her for daring to feel anything less than obsequious delight at being in the company of a duke.
Instead, through a gritted smile, she hissed, “You cannot call me that here.”
He waved an airy hand, which was all well and good if one was a duke who held the ton in his powerful grasp and another thing entirely if one was the plump, Northern daughter of a former viscount trying very hard not to fall into a snare of a marriage with one’s dreadful cousin.
“No one is listening to us,” he said. “But very well. I shall refrain. Do note, however, that you have very clearly implied that I can call you that elsewhere; I shall do so with vigor and delight.”
“I’m sure I never doubted it,” she said venomously, which made him laugh because he was very probably a lunatic.
“Do you know, Miss Fletcher, that I believe inviting you here tonight was a stroke of genius. Not that I wish to be overly proud,” he added in a humble tone that she didn’t believe for an instant.
“You? Never,” she retorted. He laughed again. Did a dukedom make one impervious to insults?
“In any case,” he went on, settling in beside her as if he intended to stay a while, “I am glad I caught you before we went in to dine. That way, we can plan our attack.”
“Our attack?”
“My dear Miss Fletcher—” She gave him a flat look. “—surely the veritable army of matchmaking mamas in the ton have taught you that snaring a husband is no fairy tale. No, it is a battle, one that is best won with proper strategy.”
“Strategy.”
“Yes—and don’t just repeat what I’m saying. It’s irksome. I am man enough to admit that you were right about that.”
“Ha!”
“Yes, that’s irksome, too; well done you. Now, stop playing about and tell me first how clever I am for inviting you here, then report please on what qualities you desire in a husband.”
Helen cast a skeptical eye up at this version of the Duke of Godwin. He’d put away the more predatory aspects of his personality and had brought to bear the polished Society gentleman instead. It was disorienting in the extreme.
He was also saying absolutely mad things.
“How is this clever?” she asked. “For one, introducing me about was my plan, not yours, so the praise belongs to me, I daresay. And two, all you’ve done is make my cousin so smug it might actually kill him.”
And while this would solve a great number of Helen’s problems, she did not consider death by self-satisfaction a likely enough outcome to praise the duke for it prematurely. Hope did, however, spring eternal.
“Nonsense,” he scoffed. “At most Society parties, you’re only likely to encounter one type of gentleman. At a political hostess’ event, you’d meet the Parliamentarians. At the home of a devotee of the demimonde, you’d find disreputable sorts. My cousin Ezra, by contrast, knows the most bizarre mix of people. Aristocrats, actors, well-to-do merchants. I think there is a Germanic prince in the mix around here somewhere. Therefore, you get the benefit of several appointments in one. That is called efficiency. Speaking of, stop dawdling. Tell me what you desire in a husband.”
“I’m not dawdling . You are perpetually rushing me; do you know that?”
“You are perpetually doing things too slowly. Now, come along, Helen; we’ll be called into the dining room soon enough, and then we’ll have no further opportunity to converse.”
She blinked up at him in shock. Did he realize that he’d called her by her Christian name? She couldn’t tell for certain; he was looking out over the room with a critical eye, and she could not accurately parse his expression from this angle.
She could tell, however, that there was something different about him tonight. He seemed…relaxed, somehow.
She didn’t understand it. She wasn’t sure she liked it. She’d never particularly liked confounding things. But, she reminded herself, liking the duke was something she was actively seeking to avoid, so she might as well give in to his ridiculous demands.
“Very well,” she sighed. “I mean, I suppose the foremost quality would be a willingness to marry me.”
He sent her a sharply annoyed glance, one that lacked the teasing edge of most of their interactions.
“Don’t be obtuse, Miss Fletcher,” he said. Oh, it was Miss Fletcher again, was it? “If that was all you needed, we’d have a dozen candidates in an hour, and you wouldn’t need my help at all. Do be specific, would you? It’s the only way we’ll make any progress.”
This was…oddly complimentary and insulting at once. She considered demanding that he give her this list, as it would save her a great deal of effort but feared that he would accuse her of dawdling again, whereupon she would be forced to kick him in the shins, and then they’d be embroiled in scandal.
Not worth the risk then, she supposed. Pity that.
She huffed out a breath. “Fine,” she said. “I suppose…someone with a higher rank than my cousin would be ideal, if possible. That way I could insist that Patricia come along with us when I married—and I suppose that’s another quality. I need someone who would accept my sister into his household.”
She glanced up just in time to see a quizzical look on the duke’s face, as though he were puzzling through something and a piece had just fallen into place, though he looked away as soon as their gazes met.
“Right,” he said sharply. “So that leaves us with earls, marquesses, and dukes…though I daresay a viscount more powerful than your cousin might suffice and—forgive me for saying it—they nearly all are.”
Helen paused to dreamily reflect on the look on George’s face, wondering if he had heard the duke say as much.
When she didn’t respond, having lost herself in the delight of this imagining, he prompted, “Anything else?”
She, being too new at the idea of wanting things for herself in a marriage that went beyond “not George,” had to think.
“I suppose I’d like him to have enough money that bringing Patricia along wouldn’t be too much of a burden,” she allowed.
The duke looked insulted.
“Yes, I wasn’t planning on pawning you off on a pauper. Goodness. Do try harder, Miss Fletcher.”
She hadn’t realized he took his reputation as a matchmaker so seriously. He gave her an impatient look.
“And kind,” she said after a moment’s further consideration. “I’d like him to be kind.”
Now, the Duke of Godwin looked appalled.
“Kind?” he echoed. “My darling girl, have you no imagination? You’re supposed to say, ‘And he should be tall, with shoulders as wide as the skies, and eyes one could drown in.’ Not this pragmatic nonsense about affording your sister’s keep.”
Helen narrowed her eyes at him. “Now I’m wondering what kind of young ladies you spend time with. ‘Shoulders as wide as the skies.’ Good Lord.”
“Young ladies,” he lectured, “are supposed to be romantic.”
“I will give you,” she said pleasantly, “all my pin money if you say this directly to your elder sister’s face.”
This was not a huge gamble, as Helen’s pin money counted in the pennies at this point. It was, however, an even lesser gamble than that because she’d only had to experience one meeting with the exceedingly appropriate Lady Catherine Lightholder to imagine how that comment would be received.
The duke opened his mouth and then closed it again without saying anything. It was several long seconds before he opened it again.
“That,” he said imperiously, “hardly signifies.”
Helen puffed up with pride. The duke was thus only saved from a truly undignified amount of gloating—because finally, finally, she’d come out on top of one of their little bouts—because they were called to assemble for dinner.
The problem with Ezra, Xander thought sullenly into his soup course, was his unpredictability. Sometimes, his younger cousin was entirely consumed with his own nonsensical affairs, such that you’d scarcely expect the man to notice a bomb detonating directly next to his head. Sometimes, by contrast, he was keenly observant and too clever by half. Sometimes, he did things in the proper, correct ways, and sometimes, he got ideas about how to do things differently.
And sometimes—the worst times, in Xander’s opinion—he did all these things at once while you were in his sights.
This was how Xander found himself in his present state of affairs.
One, observant Ezra had noted Xander’s offhanded comment about inviting Viscount Northton and his cousins to the party and figured out (God only knew how; Ezra had his own mysterious ways that rivaled any deity’s) that Xander’s interest was primarily in the elder Miss Fletcher.
Two, chaotic Ezra had grandly announced that, in the interest of making his party memorable, they would be seated unconventionally. This absence of conventionality had led—surprise, surprise—to the Duke of Godwin, the highest-ranking gentleman in the room, seated next to a little slip of a nobody from the outer ranks of the country, namely one Miss Helen Fletcher.
Third, proper, correct Ezra had observed the convention of turning the table, indicating that each gentleman of the party should speak to the lady on his right. And fourth, oblivious Ezra had forgotten to then turn the table , which meant that Xander was stuck with a partner that was not the beguiling Miss Fletcher, but instead, an ancient Italian Contessa who either did not speak a word of English or was pretending not to.
Except—fifth, finally, frustratingly—whenever Xander glanced up to glare at his cousin, he found Ezra grinning back at him, which meant that perhaps none of this was an accident but rather a complex ploy to annoy Xander.
And it was working .
For he could see his little rabbit, could hear her—hell, he could smell her, a pleasant light soap smell that gave him carnal fantasies about bathing her that did not belong at the dinner table—but he could not speak to her.
“You know, Mr. Belkin,” she was saying, “I do not consider myself terribly mechanically minded, but that is quite fascinating.”
“I anticipate that it will revolutionize how we start our fires,” the American to her left said excitedly. “Just think; instead of carrying about a steel and flint, then blowing endlessly on the tiny spark that is produced, this mechanical ‘tinderbox’ uses a small spark to illuminate flammable gas, creating a flame not unlike a candle that can then be used to light…well, whatever one wishes to light, I suppose.”
“Marvelous,” Helen breathed. “It is terribly disheartening when you get that spark and then it doesn’t catch, no matter how hard you try. A device like this… it will save so many people a great deal of time and effort. It’s fascinating .”
No, it was boring .
Xander liked nothing about this conversation. He didn’t like its topic, and he didn’t like how the little rabbit’s comments on the topic indicated that she’d had to light her own fires far too frequently. When he found her the right husband, she’d never think about tinderboxes—mechanical or otherwise—ever again. He didn’t like the boring man who thought that creating a spark was worth a lifetime of effort. He didn’t like that the man seemed to enchant Miss Fletcher almost without trying.
Mr. Belkin laughed. “I think so,” he agreed in that simply awful accent of his. It was a thousand times worse than Helen’s sweet, Northern pronunciation, all flat vowels and lazy articulation. “But I am afraid that I too often bore ladies with my pontification on the matter.”
One did so like to see a modicum of self-awareness.
Not, Xander observed crossly, that Helen was helping.
“Not at all,” she said. “If I’ve one complaint about Northton—where I grew up, near the Scottish border,” she added, for the benefit of the American. “It’s the damp cold. It gets in everything . And it’s a misery to light a fire when you’re already half chilled through.”
She’d need a husband from the South, then, to avoid the recurrence of such an event, Xander mused.
“We haven’t that sort of cold where I’m from, in South Carolina,” the man said, “but we’ve plenty of damp. Drives you mad, trying to light a fire sometimes.”
“It’s wretched!” she agreed with a trilling laugh.
A jolt of horror went through Xander. Was this American trying to flirt with Helen? Good God, he wasn’t about to let her go off with an American . Madmen, all of them, with no regard for heritage or history. Worse, lived in America . It was a barely civilized backwater! No, no, she could do better. She would do better.
Xander was about to turn around and tell her so—to the devil with decorum and Ezra’s stupid rules—when his cousin took that exact moment to finally turn the bloody table.
He whipped around to Miss Fletcher (avoiding the glimpse he caught of his wretched cousin’s grin; Ezra would pay for this, mark his words) so fast it almost hurt.
Miss Fletcher did not respond so quickly.
“I’ve never been to America,” she was saying. “But it sounds?—”
“The table has turned, Miss Fletcher,” he said icily, though he reserved his most severe glare for Mr. Belkin, who was little more than a scrawny, hapless pup—which was to say, not even one of the interesting types of Americans, the mad brawny ones who saw fit to wrestle cattle or some such undignified nonsense.
Indeed, this breed of American merely gulped, nodded, murmured something hastily to Helen, and turned to speak with Baroness Whitney on his other side.
Helen, meanwhile, was giving him the sort of unimpressed look that one couldn’t help but encounter when one had sisters (not to mention female cousins) who seemed to insist on resisting Xander’s masculine duty to protect them.
Not that he had any such duty to Miss Fletcher, of course, not beyond their bargain. But he was a man of his word, and he would find her a suitable spouse—not some American twig. That was the only rational reason why he objected.
Obviously.
“That was rude,” she informed him primly. “I thought that the whole thing with you Lightholders is that you’re supposed to be prim and proper. But that,” she paused meaningfully, “was very rude.”
He was torn between being pleased that she’d apparently investigated his family’s reputation, being annoyed at the way that she characterized that reputation, and rejecting her assessment altogether.
He chose the third.
“It was pragmatic,” he said, instilling as much ducal authority as he could into the declaration. Miss Fletcher’s only response was to narrow her eyes. Insufferable woman.
“Oh, yes,” she said dryly. “I can see how it really makes things easier to be snappish at dinner guests. How wise of you.”
“Your tone is noted,” he told her. “But we have a deal, and I intend to uphold it. Even if that means distracting you from the petty flirtations of American social climbers.”
She looked shocked. God, what would it take for this woman to recognize her own desirability? He was starting to take it as a matter of personal offense.
“Flir—” she started, turning halfway back toward Mr. Belkin.
She was interrupted when Xander reached out and grasped her wrist in his hand.
This was, of course, insane, and Xander would later wonder if this wasn’t evidence that Miss Helen Fletcher was not some kind of witch. Or a sprite—they had all kinds of legends about spirits and such up near Scotland, did they not? He’d always taken them as nonsense, but perhaps they were real because he had grabbed a woman’s arm at a dinner party for everyone to see.
She looked horrified— as well she bloody should , he thought furiously—as he snatched his hands back under the table.
“Right,” he said briskly, struggling to get some element of control over this rapidly unraveling situation. He wasn’t sure how, but he blamed Ezra. Something about his wily cousin’s twisty machinations had made him forget that the line between the Xander he was with his family and the man he was as the Duke of Godwin was a demarcation that could never, ever be crossed.
Not even if doe-eyed little Northern lasses made him want to leap right over that divide sometimes.
“Our being seated next to one another is an unlikely boon,” he went on, as businesslike as if he were in a meeting with his solicitor—or so he hoped. “It lets us assess candidates.”
“Candidates?” she asked, fiddling with a fork and not meeting his eye.
“If you plan to marry, you shall have to speak with someone first,” he pointed out, knowing he was motivated by peevishness. He was perversely satisfied when she looked up to glare at him.
“Your advice truly is invaluable,” she sniped in return.
“Don’t be difficult; you should select a potential candidate to speak with after dinner. Knowing Ezra, we shall all die of old age before we get to leave this blasted party, so it’s a good opportunity for you. Now, whom do you consider a good option for potential matrimony?”
He felt an uncomfortable twist in his gut as she looked around the room. The wait was excruciating as she assessed her options.
“What about him?” she said after a too-long moment, subtly inclining her head at a man a few feet down the table.
“Lord Bainbridge?”
“Yes? With the—” She made an adorably bizarre little twist of her hands that was utterly meaningless to Xander. “—on his waistcoat.”
Hm. In context, this was rather evocative of whatever horror was happening with Bainbridge’s attire.
“Well, if the waistcoat itself doesn’t rule him out?—”
“I’d hardly have pointed him out if it did, would I?” she interjected crossly.
“—then he still wouldn’t work,” Xander said, speaking over her. “His estate is in Northumberland.”
She looked baffled. “So?”
“So,” he said with more patience than this merited, “you just said that it’s chilly and damp in the North.”
For an instant, she looked more baffled, and then her eyebrows flew to her hairline.
“I beg your pardon; were you spying on my conversation?”
“No,” he scoffed instantly. “Of course not. I merely overheard.”
“And what, pray tell,” she asked, “is the difference between overhearing and spying?”
“Malice,” he responded promptly. Nice try, little rabbit; she was going to have to try harder to catch him out. He was the eldest of approximately a thousand cousins at his last count. “Now, you are once again getting distracted. Choose someone else.”
With a highly put-upon sigh, she looked back at the gathered guests.
“Fine,” she said. “What about that gentleman there? Lord…Cutter?”
Was she not taking this seriously in the least?
“You must be speaking in jest.”
She looked as though she wanted to throw up her hands in exasperation. As she was holding a fork and knife, he supposed he was grateful that she didn’t.
“What’s wrong with him, then?” she demanded.
Xander gave her a scathing look. “He’s five and forty. At least.”
“So?”
“ So?” She was looking at him with such innocent irritation that he could only assume she was in earnest. God, he was going to have to do this whole thing himself, wasn’t he? She was hopeless. Hopeless!
“Miss Fletcher,” he said, forcing his voice to be calm. “Do you wish your children to have a father they can rely upon? Or should they head directly to the cemetery when seeking advice from the old pater ?”
“My children?” She pressed the back of her wrist to her forehead like a damsel in a painting. “Your Grace—” He’d never heard his honorific sound more like a series of swears. “—I feel as though you have perhaps misunderstood my purpose here. I am merely trying to secure a future for myself and my sister. I am not seeing some great love match?—”
“Love?” he couldn’t stop himself from interrupting on a scoff. “God, no, you shan’t find that here.”
“I know.” He didn’t like that she was acting like he was the one being absurd when it very clearly was her who was in the wrong. Even so, he found he liked the way there were little crinkles around her eyes, as if she was suppressing a smile.
“Well, good.”
“Good,” she agreed.”
He narrowed his eyes at her. She stopped suppressing the smile and let it shine.
Damnable, pretty women. They should be outlawed.
“Fine,” Xander said with a very put-upon air about him. He had best complete this end of the bargain with Miss Fletcher posthaste; it was turning him into a world-weary matron, clucking over the wickedness of her charges. “Try again. And, Miss Fletcher, do be serious this time.”
Xander had sisters; he recognized the look on her face as one of a woman struggling not to kick him under the table. She was so expressive . It was not at all proper.
“You’d think we were finding you a spouse,” she grumbled as she looked around. “So picky…”
She paused thoughtfully as she looked about. Eventually, her gaze landed upon a golden-haired man only a few years Xander’s elder, who was speaking expressively with the delighted middle-aged woman at his side.
“What about Comte de Gournay?” she asked. “I hardly have my finger on the pulse of gossip, and even I know he needs to marry in order to secure his inheritance. And he’s supposed to be quite nice.”
And handsome , she didn’t say. Xander heard it anyway.
“No,” he said flatly.
“I am sure that I cannot wait to hear why not,” she said to her dinner plate. “He’s young. He’s a comte. He doesn’t live in the North. Once he gets his inheritance, he’ll be wealthy. So, what, pray tell, is wrong with him?”
How was it not obvious?
“He’s French ,” Xander explained.
Miss Fletcher let out a sound like she was being strangled slowly. Xander felt this might be the first thing they’d agreed upon the whole evening.