Chapter Nine
THE NEXT DAY Francesca and Irene began their campaign to improve Gideon’s marriage prospects. There was, Lady Odelia had assured them, no time to waste. The prospective brides had been invited and were expected to arrive in a little over a week.
Irene and Francesca met in the dining room after breakfast was over.
Gideon, however, was late by almost thirty minutes.
Perhaps, Irene thought with some annoyance, the man had overslept this morning after his midnight tryst. The more she had thought about it, the more likely it seemed that Lord Radbourne had been sneaking away to meet a woman.
He was clearly a sensual man; she had felt the power of his kiss, after all.
And there would be a number of willing women around, she felt sure, given his looks, wealth and position.
It was only to be expected, she decided, and though of course it did not matter in any way to her, she could not help but feel irritated at this further example of typical male behavior.
Gideon was about to court a wife, yet at the same time he was carrying on an affair with a mistress.
Or perhaps not an affair with a mistress, just indulging in an even more meaningless encounter with some woman.
Irene knew, of course, that she was jumping to conclusions, but that fact did not prevent her from feeling annoyed.
She wondered who the woman was—the wife or daughter of one of the tenants?
It would have to be someone who lived close by.
Perhaps there was a willing widow in the vicinity, happy to ease her loneliness with the handsome lord…
or could it be one of the housemaids? Irene cast her mind over the ones she had met, wondering which of them might be pretty enough to catch Gideon’s eye.
She considered how she might find out where Gideon had gone and whether he had met someone, and then in the next moment realized how foolish her thoughts were.
What did it matter if he was meeting a woman?
It was no concern of hers. She would do much better to control her imagination and her curiosity, and concentrate on the task at hand: getting Gideon married.
Let his future wife worry about the rest of it.
Gideon arrived finally, looking rushed and irritated. Irene made a point of glancing at the clock on the mantel. He followed her gaze, and his lips twitched with obvious annoyance.
“Yes, I am late, Lady Irene,” he said grouchily. “I am afraid I allowed some trifling little business matters to interfere with my main duty in life—learning to pretend to be a gentleman.”
“You are forgiven,” Francesca returned placidly. “However, you have no need to pretend. You already are a gentleman by virtue of your birth.”
“Yes, you simply need to learn to act like one,” Irene added caustically.
“And I am to learn manners from you?” Radbourne asked, raising one straight black brow.
“Oh, Irene knows her manners,” Francesca replied before Irene could speak, casting a droll glance in her direction. “She simply does not always choose to apply them.” She paused, then added, “As, no doubt, you will choose, also.”
Gideon allowed a smile to creep in. “Lady Haughston, I would say that you have put us both in our place.”
Francesca nodded, giving her little smile, as of a secret shared, to remove any ill will from the situation.
Irene, for the first time in her life, felt a curious envy of Francesca’s winning manner.
She looked at Lord Radbourne, who had come into the room with such irritation and resistance and yet who now seemed relaxed, almost malleable.
He was smiling at Francesca, and Irene felt an unaccustomed twist of resentment inside her, a feeling so uncommon that it jolted her.
Surely she did not—No, this could not be jealousy.
She turned quickly away, taking refuge in the task before them. “If you would be so good as to take a seat here, Lord Radbourne?”
He moved over to where she stood beside the table and looked down. There, spread out before his chair, was an elaborate setting of glasses and eating utensils, grouped around a folded white damask linen napkin in the center.
“Ah, I see,” he said, with a derisive twist of his mouth. “The infamous cutlery.”
“’Tis easy enough to learn,” Irene began.
“Oh, my lady, I’m not so sure about that,” he commented, dropping into the chair in front of the table. “Some of us are intolerably slow learners.”
“I am sure that you are not,” she retorted flatly. “And your first lesson is this—You must not sit down at the table whilst ladies remain standing. A gentleman waits to sit until the ladies have been seated.”
“In fact, let us start before that,” Francesca told him. “When you go in to supper, you must offer your arm to a lady.”
“Any lady?”
“Oh, no. There is an order, of course. Yesterday evening was an informal setting, merely family and a few close friends. But at a more formal dinner, you would, as host, offer your arm to the highest-ranking female, which would in the case of last night’s group be your grandmother.
Both she and Lady Teresa are dowager countesses, of course, but by virtue of your grandmother’s age, she would be higher.
And, after all, Lady Pansy is the daughter of a duke.
” She shot a mischievous look at Irene as she went on.
“Which, as we all know, outranks the daughter of the second son of a baronet.”
Irene colored a little at Francesca’s reference to the evening before and stole a glance at Gideon. A smile twitched at his lips, and he looked at her, sketching a bow in her direction. She felt her blush deepen, but she could not keep from smiling back at him, and she was warmed by his look.
“Do not mention it to Lady Odelia, of course,” Francesca went on with a glint of amusement in her eyes, “but even though she, too, is the daughter of a duke, her married title is only baroness. So she is behind the others in precedence.”
“Strangely, her precedence would actually be higher if she had married below the rank of baron,” Irene put in. “For then she would retain the rank she is owed as daughter of a duke, which is right after the wife of the eldest son of the duke, but before the wives of the younger sons of the duke.”
Gideon looked at her, his brows drawing together. “Are you seriously suggesting that I remember such a thing?”
“It is not important at the moment,” Francesca added quickly. “And, of course, in the future it will be something that you can rely on your wife to remember.”
“Ah, yes,” he replied drily. “One of the many benefits of marrying an aristocrat.”
“Right now, let us proceed to the meal. You escort the lady in. Irene, you be the lady.” Francesca waved Gideon toward Irene. When the two of them stood stock still, gazing at her, Francesca nodded impatiently. “Go ahead, you must practice. Offer her your arm.”
Gideon turned and walked to Irene, holding out his arm, bent at the elbow.
“Very good. Nice form,” Francesca said encouragingly.
Irene put her hand on his arm, and the two of them walked over to the table.
“She will be seated in order of precedence, as well,” Francesca went on.
“But of course, at a formal dinner, there will be dinner cards, so there will be no confusion. Ordinarily she would sit here.” Francesca pointed to the spot in question.
“But as I have had the servants lay out the table settings here, for now just seat her next to you. Pull out her chair and then, as she sits, gently push it in a little.”
Francesca gave him a nod of encouragement, and suppressing a sigh, Gideon pulled out the chair.
Irene started to sit down, but Gideon slid the chair forward quickly, catching the backs of her knees, and she sat down with a graceless thump.
Irene twisted to look up at him scathingly, and he returned her glare with a bland look.
“You might try it a little less energetically,” Francesca offered.
“I am sorry, my lady,” Gideon told Francesca.
“I believe I am the one to whom you should apologize,” Irene reminded him, annoyed.
He smiled a little to himself as he sat down, saying, “Ah, but what would be the enjoyment in that?”
Irene arched one eyebrow, her eyes beginning to spark, and Francesca went on quickly. “Now, to the place setting…Irene, show him which utensils are which.”
Irene cast a recalcitrant glance at Francesca, but said, “Oh, very well.” She leaned closer to Gideon and reached in front of him to point out the different eating utensils.
“They are in the order in which one uses them, the outermost being used first. You see? The spoon for soup is on the far right of where they will set the plate. Next comes the fish knife, matched by the fish fork on the left side, then the meat knife and fork, the pudding spoon and fork, and finally the savory knife and fork. The spoons for the ices and for the fruit at the end will be brought out with the plates.”
As she talked, Irene was very aware of how close she was to him.
She could smell the faint scent of his cologne, warmed by his body heat, and when she looked up from the place setting to see if he had followed her words, she found her face only inches from his.
She moved involuntarily, startled, and had to put her hand briefly on his arm to steady herself.
He gazed back at her, and she knew that he had been watching her face, not the utensils to which she had been pointing.
“Are you paying attention?” she asked sharply.
“Of course. But which was this one?” He indicated the small rounded knife on the little plate to the left of the place setting.
“That is the butter spreader.” Irene straightened up, removing herself from such close proximity. “That is why it is put here across the bread plate.”
“And which of these glasses is for the liqueur?”