Chapter Eleven
It is most inconvenient, Irene could not help but think as she turned her fork over and over her salmon, to discover too late that one was devastatingly in love with one’s best friend, and at the same time to discover that he did not reciprocate those feelings.
Dashed inconvenient.
“Reeny?”
“Don’t call me that,” she muttered, shooting her brother a glare.
He looked right back, evidently not bothered. “Then maybe you should answer to ‘Irene.’”
Irene looked up. The entire dining table—her parents, Gwen and Michael, the Marquess and Marchioness of Dalton, who were their hosts for the evening; the Quintrells; the Duke and Duchess of Axwick; and Wilfred—were staring.
She smiled weakly. “I’m sorry, I was… I was lost in my thoughts. What was the question?”
Her mother sighed and her father shook her head, which in many circumstances would have made her feel most unpleasant. As it was, her stomach had been churning greatly already and Irene was not sure whether she could feel any more nauseous.
“Pass the lemonade, Michael,” Gwen said in the silence.
“Get it yourself. You can reach,” came the response.
The two siblings began to bicker, as they so often did, and Irene slumped back against her chair and smiled weakly at the gentleman seated opposite her.
Wilfred.
“Do you think that there is anything more impossible?”
That was what she had said. There, in his own hallway, when she had given him the perfect opportunity to tell her that he loved her.
She had given him the best opening: ensured they were alone, tried to show with her eyes that she wanted to be wrong, that she wanted him to throw caution to the wind…
And he had made it most clear that he would never love her.
Which is unfortunate, Irene thought darkly as she poked at her salmon. Because in that moment she had come to a fairly calamitous realization.
That she was completely in love with him.
Wilfred. There he was, seated beside her mother and regaling her with a charming story making all around him laugh.
Wilfred, who, whenever he arrived unexpectedly at their house, was immediately welcomed in as family, his protests that he could not stay for luncheon always soundly ignored.
Wilfred, who smiled and winked across the table when her father tried to explain to Gwen, the youngest of the Pernrith Chances, that she could not attend Lady Dalton’s card party next week because Irene and Teddy were going and it simply wasn’t done to have so many daughters out in public.
Wilfred. Her Wilfred.
And she was in love with him.
“—such a pleasant ball,” Lady Dalton was saying to Wilfred with a glance toward her daughter. “You simply must host another one.”
“—heard from my man in the country that the frosts there are simply criminal—” the Duke of Axwick was saying in a gruff voice, his gray hair matched by the grayness of his beard. “Absolutely shocking for this year’s crops—”
“—had to send her to that finishing school in France,” one of the Quintrells was muttering to Lord Dalton. “A very impressive place, they tell me. I shall have to hope—”
“You are very quiet,” came his low, warm voice from the other side of the table.
Irene started, hating how her body responded to him. She looked up into his handsome face, the handsome face she had somehow not noticed for years on end, and tried to smile.
How precisely did one smile at one’s best friend whom one now realized one was in love with but in the very same instant that the person had realized it, they had been politely and kindly rejected?
“Yes,” she said aloud, unable to say anything more.
Wilfred nodded slowly as the chatter around the dining table raged. “Yes.”
Why, Irene thought furiously as she forced herself to spear a piece of salmon and shove it in her mouth, did I have to fall in love with someone who is so utterly out of reach?
Not just because he was Wilfred, although that did not help. Best friends did not become husband and wife. It simply was not done. Then again, best friends were not very often man and woman. Not in Society, at the very least.
But really, the cause had to be because he already had fallen in love with someone else. This Miss Fletcher, though he spoke of her infrequently, was clearly the woman he was in love with—a woman she had only met once and who clearly did not appreciate Wilfred like she did.
As he ought to be.
“—ladies should go through,” came a voice from a long way away.
Irene blinked. ‘Go through’? But surely not. She had not even finished her…
She looked down. The salmon was gone, though when it had departed, she was not sure. There was a splendid slice of some sort of jelly in a bowl before her, entirely untouched.
Oh. Right.
In a sweeping rustle of silks and muslins, the ladies departed from the room.
Irene was tempted to ask Wilfred to join her—after all, the last thing she wanted to do was titter about tittle tattle with her mother and her friends, Teddy was playing on the pianoforte, and Gwen was looking so irate, she was hardly going to be in the mood to talk.
Wilfred’s eyes followed her around the room. It was all Irene could do not to trip over her own feet.
It is most inconvenient, she could not help but think as she sat demurely with her hands folded in her lap as her mother chattered elegantly on. She had never noticed Wilfred like… Well, like that.
As a man.
And now that she had realized that his hand on her waist in the waltz had made her want to press her lips against his and take all her clothes off, she had to simultaneously discover that he had absolutely no interest in her whatsoever.
It was dashed irritating.
And painful. Irene did not like to admit it, even to herself, but she had cried herself to sleep the previous night. Wilfred was lost to her, lost when she had not even realized she wanted him so badly. She ached for his company, his touch in a way that she had never thought possible.
But the specter of Miss Fletcher hung over her hopes and dreams, destroying them entirely.
“I said, Reeny, are you quite well?”
Irene blinked. Wilfred was seated beside her on the sofa, which was impossible because the men hadn’t yet joined the ladies.
“You do look a little pale, Reeny,” her father said, kneeling before her and pressing a hand against her forehead.
Clearly, she had been lost in her own thoughts far longer than she had thought. Irene tried to smile. “I feel quite well, Papa.”
“You do not need to be brave, little one,” said the Viscount Pernrith in a low voice, the drawing room filled with chatter as others continued their conversations.
Irene started as someone took her hand, but as she looked, she saw that it was Wilfred. He had done so without a second thought, clearly, and no one had thought anything of it because… Well. It was Wilfred.
It’s Wilfred. Irene squeezed his hand and blinked away tears that rose unbidden. His warmth, his comfort—it meant so much to her and she was going to lose it because she was so foolish as to not notice how precious he was. How special.
“You do not feel quite yourself, do you?” Wilfred asked quietly.
Irene gave a shaky laugh as she spoke the truth. “N-No, not really.”
“I can take her back to your house in my carriage, my lord,” Wilfred said in a low murmur. “Your family undoubtedly would like to stay and enjoy the rest of the evening—it would be no trouble and I was thinking of departing, anyway.”
Irene watched her father glance around the room.
Her mother was having a clearly very pleasant conversation with Lady Dalton, and Gwen was now playing the pianoforte in the corner and singing a duet with a man Irene did not recognize while Teddy turned the music sheets.
Evidently, her family would not wish to leave so early.
The Viscount Pernrith bit his lip. “If you are certain you do not mind the fuss, Aynor. But I will have to insist her brother accompanies her as well, whatever his wishes.” He leaned forward. “There are too many ladies who love to gossip at this gathering.”
“I understand. And it would nonetheless be an honor,” said Wilfred calmly, rising to his feet and pulling Irene up with him. “Come on, Reeny.”
Gazes fixed on them as they started to walk to the hallway door, and Irene caught a whisper from Lady Dalton.
“But, Lady Pernrith—your unmarried daughter, and a gentleman, all alone in a carriage? If my Marjorie were here instead of at her finishing school on the Continent, I would never let her go without a chaperone.”
“Of course we shall not allow such a thing.” The viscountess’s laughter was a little strained, no doubt because she knew how often Irene and Wilfred truly were left alone. “My husband is just getting our son… Ah, here’s Michael now.”
Michael, who was never exactly one to enjoy a dinner at one of his parents’ friends’ homes, nevertheless wore a pinched expression as he allowed the footman to hand over his hat and coat, jamming them on as his eyes darted toward Irene on Wilfred’s arm.
Then the annoyance seemed to wash away and he smiled, though Irene could not tell what he was smiling about. She felt too ill to contemplate it all.
Her attention. as her brother stomped outdoors ahead of them, was still focused on her mother’s conversation.
And her heart broke as she heard her mother’s continued shaky laughter.
“Though I must remind you, Lady Dalton, that’s just Wilfred!
He’s a brother to her, a brother to all of them.
I don’t have to worry about him! Were it not for proper rules of decorum, I’d consider him as proper a chaperone to my daughters as their own brother. ”
Lady Dalton tutted. Clearly, she did not agree.
But the viscountess was right. Much as Irene may now wish otherwise, Wilfred would never again attempt anything resembling the ravishing Society seemed to worry occurred between an unmarried woman and an unrelated man every moment they dared to be left alone: Wilfred was not in love with her, and had no designs on her person.