Chapter 3
Three
Jack arrived back in London only five days after his sister demanded he be there, which, given he’d been in a party of friends including Miss Sedgewick, he thought extremely commendable.
Besides, there was no point rushing over there the moment Min arrived. She’d be bewildered. Tired. She’d be—
How odd. Min here. In this very city.
He took his gloves off in his hall, smiling as he tossed them onto the side table along with his hat. He’d ridden home from Brighton—a long day of hard riding—and he was tired, dirty, and in need of his dinner. But once he’d put himself to rights…
Surprising them would be fun. He could step into Nell’s house with a word of silence to the butler, slip into the drawing room and—
“A message for you, my lord.”
His own butler stepped forward and handed him the note, along with some murmured welcome homes and a hopeful will you be dining here?
Jack lifted a finger for quiet, brow furrowing.
God dammit.
“Get me Gribson,” he ordered, naming his valet. “My room. Now. And thank you, Dalcher,” he shot over his shoulder, already halfway up the stairs. “It’s good to be back. But dinner will have to wait.”
Then he went to fling off his riding clothes and practically ran from the house.
Almack’s. Of all the places. Would he get there in time to avert disaster?
He hadn’t stepped foot in it since he’d been forced there by his mother on Nell’s debut. Now he paused before the front step, taking a readying breath that was strongly flavoured by animadversions of the existence of sisters, before striding up to the door at his usual brisk pace.
The porter welcomed him, greeting him by name, though Jack was sure he’d never seen him before in his life, but recognising every notable person was as much a part of the man’s job as the efficient way he helped Jack out of his overcoat.
“Has my sister arrived? Lady Ashburton?”
The man opened his mouth to reply, but, catching sight of a familiar elaborately plumed head through the inner vestibule doorway, Jack cut the man off with a polite, “Never mind, I spy the party myself.”
He entered and found his elder sister, exquisitely overdressed, his younger sister, only just managing to pull off a debatable effusion of salmon pink, and, next to her, an odd little thing all in brown.
He stared for a moment, then, “Good Lord, Min,” he exclaimed, rapidly advancing.
“Aren’t you supposed to have changed? Or at least grown a bit taller?
How do you still look exactly the same mad scamp you always did?
And what the deuce is this dress?” He cast a horrified look towards his sister.
“Are you mad, Nell? Brown? It should be cream!”
“Jack!” hissed Nell, with a fretful look around the crowded vestibule. “Keep your voice down!”
“Well! What have you gone and dressed her like an ageing widow for? Or a governess?”
“I look the part, though, don’t I, Jack?” said Nora, plucking at his elbow. “This dress—”
“Ought to be burnt, but I’m not sure I can think of a punishment fit for yours, Min.” He looked up from the offending item and smiled widely on encountering those silver-grey eyes, an odd little kick going through his chest. “Hello. Been a devilish long time, hasn’t it?”
He was, with the benefit of hindsight and Nell angrily bleating something or other in his ear—and Nora choking back an anguished sob—becoming aware that his opening sentiments might not have been the most tactful.
Devil take it, though, it was beyond strange!
Min, standing there, looking exactly like the remembered friend of his childhood.
Only being in company checked his urge to sweep her up into the tightest of hugs.
Perhaps he looked daft, grinning at her as he was.
He felt daft, suddenly a child again, beaming like a boy with a frog, but if there was anyone in the world he could be daft with, it was Min.
His smile deepened, anticipating the familiar horrible boy, said in her usual stout but quiet way.
Instead… Instead he found himself confronted with a slim, gloved hand, held coolly out to him.
“Lord Orton.” With chilling politeness, she gave him the smallest of curtsies. “How do you do?”
He stared, long habit prompting him to press her fingers and make a very correct bow over them.
And he kept staring as she withdrew her hand and turned to Nora, taking the tearful girl’s elbow and whispering what he assumed were consoling words into her ear.
They departed, arm in arm, for the ladies’ private room.
Yes. He felt daft alright. He felt a damn sight more than daft.
“Jack!” hissed Nell again, still seething. “What are you doing? I wanted you here to help launch Nora, not make us all a laughingstock.”
“No one’s laughing,” he replied irritably, glancing around the pillared vestibule to check whether this was actually true.
Lady Weeton was definitely staring but not laughing.
He smiled at her, perhaps more forcibly than he’d intended because she visibly started, then hurried away up the stairs to the main room.
His irritation deepened. “And this is all your fault anyway, Nell.”
“Mine! Why?”
“What were you thinking bringing them to Almack’s when they’ve only just arrived in London?
You don’t put a cold horse straight at the gallop.
They’ve got no town polish. They’re as green as…
as that extremely ghastly dress over there.
Good Lord, what is Mrs Pontham thinking?
” Blinking away the bilious vision, he turned back to his sister.
“Especially Min! Has she even been in society before? Nora’s had the benefit of frequent parties and visitors at home, and she’s visited you in London before.
But Min’s as countrified as…as a newborn lamb. In a field. Of, erm, grass.”
Nell blinked at this unprecedented linguistic feat, Jack not being known for his poetic turn, but her surprise disappeared beneath her usual scowl. “May I remind you that it’s your sister Nora who I’ve been tasked with bringing out? Who gives a fig about Lucy?”
“So that’s why you’ve dressed her in your housekeeper’s old castoffs, is it? I thought you said you were going to take her shopping? You wrote and told me—”
“I did! She chose that dress herself. Though it was hard enough to get her to do that much when she spent most of the time at the modiste’s staring out of the window.”
“Then maybe the shop across the street had clothing more to her taste.”
“It was an artist’s supply shop!”
“Oh,” he said, irritation forgotten as he smiled. “Is she still drawing? She always did have a sketchbook. Do you remember?”
“Drawing?” huffed Nell. “I wish that’s all she was doing.
No, nothing will do for Lucy than to beg that one of my attic rooms be turned over to a full artist’s studio.
You should’ve seen the luggage she arrived with!
Now the whole top floor smells of oil paints and turpentine.
Why she can’t stick to watercolours or something vaguely respectable, I don’t know.
But now the laundry maids are already up in arms about having to scrub oil paint from her clothes. ”
“Doesn’t she have an apron?”
“Oh, for goodness’ sake, Jack! Can we talk about more important things? Like your sister’s debut at Almack’s! Shh, here they come. Please do say something nice about Nora’s dress. Her looks are quite ruined if she cries.”
But it was Min’s looks he found himself studying as the two ladies walked back towards them.
Her eyes were turned towards the floor, but there was no hiding the freckles.
Not even the mass of unruly dark curls framing her face could do that.
Had she no maid to do her hair? Had Nell not lent her own?
The curls looked hardly tamed at all, even if there was a ribbon—also brown—tied almost invisibly round her head, camouflaged by the dark chestnut hair and half buried in the tangle.
But…even with the best care in the world, she’d never make a fashionable beauty. Not little Min.
Too short. Too messy. No matter what she was dressed in. Too…um…his eyes ran over her again…too much like some creature you’d find in a storybook wood, sweet and round as an apple.
So he bit his tongue rather than taking Nell to task once more for Min’s neglect and said some placatory and outrageously flattering untruths to Nora. She brightened immediately, hardly needing his efforts to restore her own good opinion of herself. It was as irrepressible as Min’s curls.
Then he turned to the silent Min, ready to do the same. But she anticipated him, saying with the briefest lift of her silver eyes, “You can hardly believe that I care, my lord.”
“Lord?” he repeated, indignation swamping his apologetic intentions. “What’s all this lord nonsense, Min? Calling me Lord Orton like I haven’t known you all my life, like I can’t remember the day you were born!”
“Can you?” she asked in her familiar serious manner.
“Well—no. I was three, devil take it. No one can remember anything from when they were three.”
“I can,” she said, very quietly. “Or at least from when I was five.”
“That’s hardly the point! The point is that you should call me Jack.”
“But should I? I’m not your sister.”
“You were never my sister. What the devil does that matter?”
Another quick flash of silver, and then she took to looking past him, as though she was counting every fluted line in the column by the wall. “Well…” She frowned. “We are not children anymore.”
“But you’re still Min, aren’t you?”
“I suppose I am,” she said quietly, fidgeting with her glove. “To you.”
“Well of course you are,” he exclaimed, glad to have got this exasperating point cleared up. It was very, very important that she was still Min. And that she never give him one of those stiff little curtsies again. “Who else would you be?”
She made no answer, not in the second that passed before he found himself saying, “Come on, Min, say you’re glad to see me.”
Her lips moved, but into what sound he’d never know.
“Enough of this farrago.” Nell’s voice was an urgent hiss.
She had stopped fussing with a wayward ostrich plume in her hair—they had a tendency to collapse under their own weight—waving away Nora’s unskilled assistance and turning back to Jack.
“If we don’t go in soon, Nora will have no time to fill her card before the dancing begins. ”
The girl gasped at this dire prophecy, turning pale.
“Give her your arm, Jack. And walk in with your heads up, smiling. No, naturally, Nora! Don’t go grinning like an idiot! We must make a good entrance. Come here, dear.” And she beckoned a dark shape from the corner, which turned out to be Lord Ashburton.
“Good Lord,” exclaimed Jack, blinking in surprise. “Ashburton. Didn’t see you there, old chap. Took you for a coat stand.”
“Good evening, Orton,” the man replied, entirely unperturbed. “Do you know…the very interesting thing is…that it’s not the first time someone has made that same error?”
“No?” breathed Jack. “You don’t say?”
“I just did say,” corrected Ashburton, confused, but amiable.
“So you did!”
“Oh, for the love of…” muttered Nell, taking her husband’s arm. “You go in front with Jack, Nora. And you go behind me, Lucy.”
Jack’s head snapped around. “What? Why behind? I’ve got two arms, haven’t I? Come here, Min.”
He took her stiff little arm and tucked it under his elbow. Then, with no more than a glance at her down-turned face and a fleeting frown, he walked the ladies up the stairs and into the ballroom.