Chapter Eleven #2
“I don’t think Miss Lucilla Wintergreen likes him above half,” one of the others said.
Marple’s friend shrugged. “She spends a lot of time in his house, and he is going to get his mother to invite her to move in. If he can’t seduce her, he’ll compromise her.
She’ll marry him then, right enough. And then I’ll try my luck with the shrew.
She must be desperate to wed after three failed seasons, and if not, I’ll take the same route to marriage as my future brother-in-law.
And then I’ll beat her till she learns to obey. ”
Like hell.
Bane was well aware of the disadvantages he presented as a husband, but if she chose him, he would love and cherish her every day for the rest of his life. And even if she did not choose him, he could still arm her with knowledge about her cousin’s plans, and the plans of his friend.
Yes, and he’d tell his brother, too. Drake needed to know about the risk to Cilla.
The set currently on the floor was ending. Bane sidled along the wall behind the potted plants until he could emerge some distance from the pack of curs he’d been listening to, and then strode in the direction of Lady Marple.
Was the old bat part of the plot against her nieces?
Marple’s friend Curston had claimed that Livy’s aunt did not know of the dire straits her son was in, and if that was true, Curston’s father was keeping secrets from his lover.
On the other hand, the young viscount was as ignorant as he was arrogant.
In Bane’s experience, a family’s womenfolk were much more attuned to the misdemeanors of their so-called lords and masters than said menfolk wanted to believe.
It was, Bane assumed, a matter of survival.
Certainly, Bane’s stepmother and his half-brother’s wife had known how their husbands strayed, and usually with whom—for all that they feigned ignorance to maintain the peace and their own dignity.
Livy was already with Lady Marple. “You don’t have to dance with me, Mr. Sanderson,” she blurted. “I will not hold you to your offer. I know your brother dragooned you into it.”
Bane was amused. “Drake doesn’t make my decisions for me, Miss Wintergreen,” he told her.
Perhaps she thought he was laughing at her, for she lifted her chin and sniffed as if offended. “I am not interested in a pity-dance,” she said, through gritted teeth.
“Good. Neither am I. I wish to dance with the only woman in this ballroom who is worth a second look.”
He meant every word, but she had made up her mind to be contrary, or she thought he was spouting empty flattery for she snapped back, “Go and ask her, then.”
“I was referring to you, Miss Wintergreen. And before you accuse me of laying it on with a paddle, I meant every word.”
Was that alarm in the lady’s eyes? And if it was, should he be encouraged by it or discouraged? Drake had arrived, and was raising his eyebrows at their banter. It was banter, was it not? Bane nodded at Drake but kept his attention on Livy.
“I am not sure that I wish to dance,” the lady commented, crossing her arms defensively, then shooting a glance at her aunt and letting them drop to her side again. Were ladies not meant to cross arms? Bane would never understand all the silly rules these people imposed on one another.
“Perhaps you would prefer a stroll rather than a dance?” Bane suggested, as Miss Cilla joined them.
“Perhaps you are afraid I will stand on your feet,” Livy retorted, which certainly sounded as if she wanted to step out on the floor with him.
Good, for he had been looking forward to this dance all evening. He grinned at her. “Deathly afraid, that a little sylph like you might damage me. Do you commonly suffer the experience of crippling your partners?”
Livy’s lovely eyes were alight with the joy of verbal battle. “My previous experience is not based on dancing with elephants.”
“Your previous experience is based on dancing with rabbits, if this evening is typical. An elephant is much more up to your weight.”
“Are you calling me overly large, Mr. Sanderson?”
He laughed out loud at that. “Not compared with me, Miss Wintergreen.” He winged his elbow at her and could have cheered with relief when she placed her hand on his arm and allowed him to lead her onto the floor.
Drake and Cilla joined them, and the dance was one where two couples formed a group of four people who stayed together through the dance, though they occasionally combined with another group to make a broader set of patterns with eight dancers.
It was a vigorous dance, too, with no time to stand out briefly and talk to one’s partner unheard by the rest of the crowd on the floor.
The lady he was fast growing to love was as graceful as she was lovely.
Even better, she was the right size. He didn’t have to shorten his steps to match hers, or stoop to put his hands on his waist when the dance called for him to assist her in a short jump, or bend himself almost in half to go under her raised arm.
Reinforcing the point, he had to do all those things when he repeated the patterns with her sister while Livy danced them with Drake.
Bane’s mind jumped to a quite different sort of dance, a private one.
He was abstemious, his mother’s fate fueling a disinclination to promiscuity.
Even so, he was not a virgin, having been less disciplined in his youth, when his blood ran hot and his position as son—even illegitimate son—of the wealthiest man in the town won the favor of a number of daring females.
He had always had to temper his passion to the size of his lovers, fearing he might otherwise cause an injury.
And if he thought any further about how Livy’s height and size might change the experience, he would embarrass himself.
Modern cut-away evening coats for men meant that the results of private thoughts became a matter of public display—not something he wanted to experience right here on the dance floor.
Time to think of something deflating. The missing engineer. The parlous state of the rural poor or, even worse, those who had flocked into London after last year’s failed harvest, looking for work that did not exist.
For a short time, his mind ran on two tracks, one matching his movements to the demands of the dance and relishing the company of his lady, and the other adding detail to a plan he and Drake had made for funding for a dame school in the slums.
A man called Basingstoke, the vicar of an inner-city parish, was setting up a network of them, each paid for by private donors who believed that all children, boys and girls, had a better chance of escaping poverty if they could read, write and do basic arithmetic.
Calculating costs worked to subdue his animal appetites—they’d need enough to rent a room, hire a teacher, pay for basic supplies such as slates, chalk, and coal for heating, and more.
It was achievable. He hoped his courtship of Livy would likewise be merely a matter of working out the steps, calculating the costs, and putting a plan into practice.
Truly, they seemed to be made for one another.
By the time the music came to an end, he was ready to give her all his attention. Now, if he and Drake could only find a table for four, so he could share what he had heard and warn his brother and the Wintergreen sisters!
He was foiled in his intentions by Lady Marple, who met them at the door of the supper room, and insisted on them taking seats at a large table where she had gathered the rest of her fledglings and their partners.
She had organized for the cur who had boasted of his intention to marry and suppress Livy to sit on the other side of his quarry from Bane, and placed her son next to Cilla, with Drake between the two sisters.
They’d have no help from Lady Marple, Bane deduced.
He managed to make it through supper without landing a fist in the cur’s face, but it was a close-run thing. Both Curston and Lord Marple ignored Marple’s sisters, who were their partners, to talk to Livy and Cilla, flattering and condescending by turns.
At least the next dance, in which he was to partner Cilla, was another long dance.
With luck he’d be able to let her know to lock her door and be careful around Marple, and to warn Livy about the cur, the Honorable Mr. Curston.
The word “Honorable” meant he could be the younger son of an earl, or the son of a viscount or baron.
What he was not, was honorable in any sense of the word, except the purely technical designation of the aristocratic ranks.