Chapter Thirteen
Don’t think about how much you love him.
Don’t stare at the curl falling down over his forehead.
Don’t consider what those fingers would feel like if they traced the lines on your palm…
Irene choked.
“I have said it before and I will say it again,” Wilfred said with a smile, handing her a napkin and shaking his head. “You drink your hot chocolate too quickly.”
It was all she could do not to snort, not a particularly ladylike thing to do in public.
Though in all truth, the thoughts that had been swirling around her mind were hardly very ladylike, and if anyone else at Don Saltero’s Chelsea Coffee House had known them, Irene was certain she would be censored immediately by public opinion.
Especially since she had once again managed to evade her poor, overworked lady’s maid.
Then again, she was sure, had Wharton made it all the way to the coffee house with them and not been lost on the streets of Bath, she would have understood.
The Pernrith Chance servants were used to Irene and Wilfred’s unconventional friendship.
But they had no idea that things had changed.
And things had changed. At least in Irene’s mind.
As it was, no one—not even Wilfred—knew what she had been thinking. Which was all to the good.
“Y-Yes,” she managed to splutter without too much difficulty, though she could still taste the burning-hot liquid in her nose. “Too fast. Too fast.”
Not, Irene couldn’t help but think, that the same could be said of my revelation about my feelings for Wilfred.
Too fast? Too slow. So slow that Wilfred had evidently no idea of her affections and so had found someone else to return his ardor. Someone else to laugh with. Someone else to caress…
Heat blossomed across Irene’s entire body, but she trusted to the fact that she had just inhaled a large gulp of hot chocolate to cover that fact.
“You look a little warm,” Wilfred said, voice dripping with concern. “Maybe you should slow down with your beverage.”
Irene tried to smile. “‘Slow down’?”
She had already been too slow, and now she feared no amount of speeding up would ever provide her with the goal she so desired.
Wilfred. Wilfred Matthew Kirk Chesterham Zouch. The Duke of Aynor.
It was only ‘Wilf’ who really mattered to her, the name he had given when they had first met all those years ago, and now there would be another woman who would call him that. Another woman who would enjoy that intimacy.
Or rather, Irene thought as her stomach twisted into a painful knot, this Miss Fletcher would be the only woman. For how could she, Irene, even contemplate calling this handsome, charming, kind gentleman by such an intimate name once he was…married?
The thought was so unpleasant that Irene purposefully took an unpleasantly deep swig of her hot chocolate. The liquid burned, but it could not completely burn away the dissatisfaction curdling within her.
“Wilfred,” Irene said, not quite sure what she was going to say next, but knowing she had to say something. “Wilfred? Wilfred!”
Wilfred started. “I beg your pardon?”
His eyes had drifted off into the distance before being returned by Irene’s… Well, yell.
Her gaze narrowed. He had been slightly distracted ever since they had met at Don Saltero’s Chelsea Coffee House twenty minutes ago.
It was one of their favorite places—had been a family favorite, according to her Aunt Alice, which was a strange thought.
It was difficult to imagine her parents, uncles, and aunts as young people.
As it was, she and Wilfred had been coming here often.
There was one in London, the original Don Saltero’s Chelsea Coffee House, and there had been one in Bath the last few years.
It was usually a place she and Wilfred—usually, unfortunately, with Wharton successfully accompanying her—came to laugh and gossip and observe people.
But Wilfred had perhaps been doing far too much of the latter. His attention was meandering, his answers unspecific, and when Irene took a closer look at him, it was to see a vagueness in his eyes she had not seen before.
“Wilfred,” Irene prompted.
Wilfred did not appear to hear her.
Surreptitiously turning around to see what the dolt was looking at, Irene could see nothing that would particularly capture the man’s attention.
There was Miss Quintrell, a pretty, young woman to be sure, but Irene could recall Wilfred once saying how intimidated he was by her intellect.
Surely, he could not have been staring at her.
“—never saw such a thing in all my life—”
“No, indeed. I was startled to see it—”
There was a pair of gossiping ladies that Irene vaguely recognized: a Mrs. Lymington and a Mrs. Howarth. Their voices modulated in volume, and precisely what they were speaking of—or who—disappeared from legibility.
She realized with a start that despite her earlier confidence no one in the place would recognize her, there were quite a few people she recognized now.
A slight, sinking feeling inside her might have, on introspection, revealed a little bit of regret that she had managed to leave her lady’s maid behind somewhere three blocks over.
But Wilfred was clearly looking at someone, and Irene had to wonder who.
There was Lady Romeril, though Irene knew Wilfred well enough to know that he would not wish to seek an audience with her.
There was Lord Dalton, a gentleman of some consequence, true, as he had a fortune and had recently acquired his marquess title after the passing of his father.
He had been the Earl of Burnell before then.
But he was not a gentleman with whom—as far as she was aware—Wilfred had any close connection.
There was his daughter, who had gone abroad for the better part of a year now, if Irene remembered correctly, and had only just returned in the past few days.
The thought flashed through Irene’s mind before she could capture it, and her stomach turned. Yes, but Lady Majorie had quite a sizable dowry… Wilfred had no need of sizable dowries. Surely, Wilfred had no interest in her?
No, she knew that he did not. Irene’s mind realized the truth in that instant, and it was painful.
She knew Wilfred had no interest in Lady Marjorie because she had already met the woman he was in love with.
Miss Fletcher.
“Wilfred, you seem…distracted,” Irene hazarded.
Wilfred nodded ambiguously, though as he made no verbal reply, it was impossible to know whether he had actually heeded her.
Irene bit her lip. Was he thinking of Miss Fletcher? It was rude of him, indeed, if so, but then…if he was in love with her…
“—absolutely outrageous—”
“—would never permit my daughter to do such a thing—”
“—utterly scandalous—”
The whispers of two ladies behind them had now grown to such a volume that Irene could no longer ignore them.
“If she were my daughter, I would take her in hand. In fact—”
“Mrs. Lymington, you cannot think to—”
The scraping of a chair was accompanied by the swishing of skirts, and Irene blinked in surprise to find both Mrs. Lymington and Mrs. Howarth standing by their table.
“Mrs. Lymington. Mrs. Howarth,” Wilfred said, starting as his mind had so evidently been elsewhere. “Good afternoon.”
“Is it, Your Grace?” said Mrs. Lymington curtly as she glared at the two of them—quite rudely, Irene could not help but think, and entirely unprovoked. “Is it, indeed, Miss Chance?”
Wilfred looked at Irene with blank confusion, and she shrugged, though a lump caught in her throat.
It was not the most genteel of openings, to be sure, but she was starting to understand what was going on here, and she was not sure she could survive the chastising her mother would have in store for her once she found out.
“I would be mortified, I say, mortified,” Mrs. Lymington was saying, “if my daughter should act in such a manner!”
Irene could not help the delicate flush—what she hoped was a delicate flush—rising to her cheeks.
“To gad about Town with a gentleman to whom you are neither married nor engaged, not a chaperone in sight!” Mrs. Lymington hissed, as though speaking the crime any louder would increase its potency.
“Whispers have reached me about the two of you, but I was glad that I had never borne witness to it. And now… Well, I’ve never seen the like! ”
Indignation burned on Irene’s cheeks. “Mrs. Lymington, it is none of your business.”
“If your father and mother cannot keep you in hand, then it is my duty as—”
“Please, Mrs. Lymington, do calm yourself,” Wilfred said, his gaze flickering from Mrs. Lymington, fairly thrumming with outrage, to Irene, wondering if she could melt under the table and never be seen again.
“You are making a scene. And I will have you know, I do not consider myself to have ever gadded about in all my life. I don’t even own a gad. ”
Irene snorted with laughter and attempted to immediately cover it up with a sip of hot chocolate.
Mrs. Lymington’s eyebrows rose. “You can treat such perfidy with lightness, Your Grace!”
“I can treat it as my business, and not your own, Mrs. Lymington,” Wilfred said calmly.
Irene swallowed. There was a resonance in his voice she had not heard before, a gravitas, a certainty, a comfort in the rightness of one’s speech and a confidence that one was not to be shaken.
It was…devilishly attractive.
Mrs. Lymington was gaping. Like a fish, Irene thought silently. Like a pike that had been brought to dry land much against its will. “But—but—but—”
“Miss Chance and I are good friends, and her chaperone is not far behind,” Wilfred continued in that calm, considered, and utterly unflappable voice.
“We have just merely… lost her a moment. Regardless, her parents see no reason to object to the two of us spending time together. It is their opinions that matter in this. Not yours.”