Chapter Four
Malcolm was so ill at ease he could hardly see straight.
It was humiliating to be this nervous.
In the end, it was Philip who had lent him the clothes.
Of his brothers, he was the only one large enough for him to share clothing with, and even then, only just. Philip spent most of his days at study whereas Malcolm was in the fields.
So even though they both had inherited their father’s height, his brother was two stone lighter than him.
His clothes dug into Malcolm’s waist and shoulders and legs and made him feel even more like a beast caged and displayed for show.
Philip had brought over a second set of evening clothes from Beatrice’s—where he had been forced to decamp due to the influx of guests.
Malcolm would have preferred to dress in his own room, but he wasn’t confident enough to ensure that he would look acceptable without the help of his brothers.
And Severn, George, and Philip had insisted anyway.
They had all dressed, then, in George’s chambers.
“The ladies will go mad,” George said with a laugh when Malcolm had first emerged from behind the screen in the evening clothes. “They will be protesting that we’ve kept the most handsome Parkhorne brother from them.”
“Enough,” Malcolm had said gruffly, embarrassed, and hating himself for it.
But his brothers’ cheering of him had helped. They had even had a few nips of whiskey which, for a moment, had dulled his nerves.
Now, however, in the dainty drawing room itself, newly done over for the occasion, Malcolm found that he could not keep his hands from shaking. He actually felt a bit faint.
He had no choice, however, but to dutifully follow George across the drawing room and toward the lady he was supposed to occupy himself with delighting for the evening.
What a joke that was, he knew.
What was he supposed to entertain a lady from London with? She would expect wit and a familiarity with fashion. And he was only familiar with his almanac and crop rotation techniques.
A buzzing filled Malcolm’s ears. His throat went dry.
Dimly, he was aware that he and George had stopped in front of a sofa.
He was also vaguely aware that George was talking.
He realized, with horror, that he had no idea how to greet a lady.
He knew how to greet his sisters and Mrs. Salisbury and the men who worked the farm and the people who lived around Parkhorne—but how did one greet a lady?
Was there something he was supposed to know?
He wasn’t sure why this greeting would differ from all others—but it must. Mustn’t it?
George had stopped speaking. The women on the sofa, whom he hadn’t even been able to take in, were staring up at him.
Clearly, George had introduced him to Miss Scarlett Perkins.
The only problem was that he had not been listening. And so he had no idea which of the women before him was Miss Scarlett Perkins.
Three women sat on the sofa.
One was an elegant woman of about Mrs. Salisbury’s age. She must be Mrs. Perkins.
And then there was a young lady before him who was—his throat constricted in pain.
She was extraordinarily beautiful.
Were all women in London this beautiful?
No, it couldn’t be, because the young lady next to her on the sofa, the one who must be her older sister, was nowhere near as comely.
This lady had auburn hair and skin that looked like fresh cream and a lush, abundant figure that had him thinking thoughts that he didn’t need experience in London society to know were unacceptable in this context.
Her pert, elegant nose sat above full lips that were parted in what appeared, to his eye, to be something like surprise.
Her fine, dark eyes, the color of hazelnuts, contained a lively intelligence.
Her cheeks were flushed the most becoming pink.
And she was looking at him as if he were a complete simpleton.
He needed to speak.
Given the extreme beauty of this lady, Malcolm reasoned that she must be Miss Tilly Perkins, the younger sister, the prize who had so captivated George and who was, by all accounts, to wed him.
He lurched forward, not towards the stunning beauty nearest to him, but towards her merely pretty sister by her side.
“Miss Perkins,” he said, bowing his head.
And then, knowing he needed to acknowledge both of them, he nodded towards the beauty, saying, “Miss Matilda.” He turned his attention back towards the plainer sister, the beautiful one giving him a strange pain to look at.
“It will be my pleasure to attend you into dinner this evening, Miss Perkins.”
He knew the moment after he spoke that he had done something wrong. He just had no notion of what.
“Ah, brother,” George said, his tone laced with his signature good-natured humor, which made Malcolm reflexively glad that it was George and not Severn managing this exchange.
“You misheard me. Or perhaps I misspoke. This,” he said, gesturing toward the beauty, “is Miss Perkins,” and “this,” he said, gesturing toward the other, “is Miss Matilda.”
Once again, Malcolm was struggling to breathe.
His family expected him to hand into dinner and sit beside this woman all night? This absolute siren, from a daydream? No, not a daydream … from the kind of dream he had at night and tried to forget? Because she did look awfully like, he realized, the woman he rutted frantically in his dreams.
Christ.
“My apologies,” he managed to stammer, turning toward the real Miss Perkins, the far too beautiful one.
At that moment, the dinner bell sounded. For which his gratitude was immeasurable. At least, his humiliating botch of this introduction, which showed all of his unfitness for being in this society, had been cut short.
“I will find you in the drawing room after dinner,” George said with a friendly smile to the tolerable sister. Then, dropping his voice, he added, “Now, I must see to my duty.”
Malcolm knew George wished he could spend the evening beside his favorite. But as the male host, he had to attend Lady Fortenshire.
It was curious, really, Malcolm thought, as he took another glimpse at the real Miss Tilly. He had heard both George and Severn describe her as extraordinarily comely. And yet he saw nothing in her that was at all remarkable.
Whereas, he recollected now, his sister had described the beautiful woman in front of him as on the shelf, suggesting that she was seen as undesirable.
It made no sense to him. But he supposed fashions in London were different than in Somerset.
Among the Parkhorne stable hands and laborers, Miss Scarlett Perkins would be regarded as the kind of woman one went to lengths to secure as their wife.
Severn appeared by his side.
“Miss Matilda,” he said to the younger sister, “I have come to do what my brother wishes to but cannot.”
Tilly blushed rather deeply at that. Malcolm supposed she liked the compliment.
She stood and took Severn’s arm. “Thank you, Mr. Westmore.”
At his other side, Philip had appeared to escort in Mrs. Perkins.
There remained nothing to do but his own part.
He looked down at the stunning woman before him.
And, he was ashamed to admit it, he shut his eyes.
When he opened them again, he was sure she had seen him do it.
He knew this behavior must make him only appear stranger to her.
But he couldn’t bear to look at her for a moment longer.
It was like staring into the sun.
He offered his arm, in a fashion that he was sure was vulgar and ill-bred and all wrong, and said, with his eyes still closed, “May I attend you into dinner, Miss Perkins?”
She rose from the sofa. And was staring at him with stone-cold hatred in her light-brown eyes.
He tried not to glory in their rich color. But he found himself doing it anyway.
He had not realized that lady’s evening wear could be quite so … revealing.
He hadn’t realized that such a bosom as this one would be on full display.
Because Miss Scarlett Perkins’s breasts were—well, he didn’t understand how any other man in the room was able to look at anything else. Her bosom, large and ample, was so tempting that he found himself a bit weak in the knees.
He opened his mouth, feeling that he should have something else to say, but was unable to speak. Instead, he just stood there, completely poleaxed with desire and anxiety.
“If we must,” Miss Scarlett said roughly.
She put her gloved hand on his forearm. Her touch, which pinged through him with horrible intensity, nevertheless gave the impression that she was doing her utmost to keep her distance.
They took their place in the train, right ahead of Severn and Miss Tilly Perkins, as Mrs. Salisbury had instructed him.
Her words still lacerated him.
If we must.
She must have seen him instantly for what he was.
A bumbling country ogre unworthy of a lady such as her.
A beautiful, refined woman such as Miss Scarlett Perkins might not have even known before coming to Parkhorne Hall that such beasts as him existed.
Or, if she knew, given what London was and all she must see living there, she certainly had never expected that she would be handed into dinner by such a man.
Nevertheless, he must try to engage her in conversation. Mrs. Salisbury had made clear that it was expected of him.
“How do you find Parkhorne, Miss Perkins?”
Even though her touch on his arm was so tentative as to almost not be there, he could still tell that she stiffened at his question.
“It is a pretty piece of country,” she finally said. “Although not the finest I have seen.”
“The estate is certainly not large,” he said, without thinking, feeling defensive of the land to which he had given the better part of his life and labor.
“No. It is not.”
That was, evidently, all that she was going to say on the topic.
Indignation in his heart, he resolved to try once more. “How was your journey from London?”
“Ghastly,” she said, still not looking at him. “But that is to be expected when coming to such an out-of-the-way place.”
“Yes,” he said. “It certainly is not close to town.”
“Your brother’s future wife will need to be very fond of the country,” she observed, her tone as cold and unforgiving as one of the scythes he and his men used to cut the summer hay.
He was taken aback by this proclamation. He understood that all present understood what this house party really was, but he had believed that society women would not acknowledge such a thing so baldly.
They had begun to move towards the dining room.
“She will,” Malcolm observed. “My brother has little plan to live elsewhere.”
“And do you always reside at Parkhorne, too, Mr. Brown?”
“Yes,” he said, feeling every inch of her implication. “I have never lived anywhere else.”
“Surely you have traveled?” she sniped up at him.
They had arrived in the dining room. He pulled out her chair for her, just barely staving off the urge to do so abruptly.
She wanted to embarrass him. That was evident now.
“No. Never.”
“Never?”
“That is correct.”
She gave him a startled, frowning look.
And then sat herself in the chair that he had pulled out for her.
He had no choice but to follow, seating himself beside her.
He half turned toward her, unable to resist taking her in once more, despite the manifest unpleasantness of their conversation.
The auburn hair against the pale skin, the goddess’s physique, the slice of bosom that made him want to weep tears of lust—and the cold sneer of disgust upon her face.
So this was the London woman.
Well, at least he knew two things.
The first was cold comfort. He had been right to be wary of society people, of entry into this world.
He had found himself scoffed and jeered at within five minutes.
He had been right to refuse every invitation to London that Beatrice had offered, to pay no heed every time she had insisted he expand his horizons, come visit her, or consider taking a wife.
And the second thing was no comfort at all.
Miss Scarlett Perkins already despised him—and she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.
It was about to be a very long dinner, indeed.