Chapter Two
George and Tom were late.
Mother again wore her all-too-familiar expression of pitying sadness. “I do wish we had arranged for you to have a new dress. George spends the Season in Town and you must surely seem a dowd when compared with the very well-to-do young ladies he must know there.”
That was not a very comforting comparison. “Fortunately for me, George already knows our financial situation.” Heat stained her cheeks at just how aware he must have been of every aspect of their lives. “My thrice-mended sleeves and threadbare hem will come as no surprise to him.”
“I suppose not.” Mother fretted with the fringe on her shawl. “And it is not as though he has not seen you all of your life in outmoded dresses and such.”
Mother was not helping in the least. She made this betrothal sound like an act of charity.
“How did this marriage arrangement come about?” Caroline hadn’t yet had the courage to ask, not truly wanting to hear the answer. She felt, however, she would do best to know all she could before George arrived. “Did he ask Father or did Father make the proposition to him?”
“I don’t rightly know.” Mother ran her fingers over the keys of the pianoforte as she passed. “The entire thing was arranged in London. At their club, I believe.”
At their club? “Meaning, of course, they were likely drunk as wheelbarrows when the agreement was reached.” Wasn’t that terribly fitting?
“Do not use cant, Caroline,” Mother scolded.
“My apologies.”
Before the silence grew overly long, Mother spoke again. “Between the two of us, I must say I am convinced that much of the reason for your fortuitous match lies in George’s mother’s ambitions.”
Everyone knew of Mrs. Carlton’s aspirations. She had her not-so-subtle eye on more exalted rungs on the ladder of Society than she could ever hope to reach on her own.
“The Downys may not be wealthy,” Mother added, “but we have a fair bit of cachet.”
And even that was diminishing with each new generation.
Caroline’s great-grandfather had been a duke.
Caroline’s father was the youngest son of the duke’s youngest son, which made Caroline one step removed from being an absolute nobody.
Apparently, however, that one step meant something to the Carltons.
Boisterous male voices sounded in the corridor. Though the family maintained an income sufficient for both a butler and a footman, servants were never boisterous. The commotion, therefore, was likely the tardy gentlemen finally arriving.
The last time she’d seen George Carlton he had been her friend. Now he was her betrothed. Caroline didn’t care for the change one whit. She hadn’t the slightest idea how she was expected to behave.
“Caroline, you are woolgathering again.” Mother’s panicked whisper snapped her back to the present.
She watched the door, waiting for her future to step inside. She’d always liked George. Even when they were children, he had been good and kind. She sincerely hoped that had not changed.
The door opened and the butler stepped inside. “Mr. Downy and Mr. Carlton, ma’am.”
Mother rose and glided gracefully toward the door as Tom entered.
“My dear Thomas.” Mother greeted him with an embrace.
Caroline’s eyes remained glued to the doorway. She was happy to see her brother again, but he was not at all the most important arrival that day.
Oh, please let him not have fundamentally changed. If I must marry someone who doesn’t love me, I need him to at least be kind.
George stepped inside. The absence of a year hadn’t rendered more of an outward change in him than the difference between a twenty-one-year-old and a gentleman of twenty-two.
He boasted the same nearly black hair, brown eyes, and easy smile.
He held himself confidently but without arrogance.
He no doubt still pulled everyone’s eye when he entered a room.
That had been true of him for several years now, but had never been more apparent than it was just then.
Even seeing him grown, Caroline couldn’t quite clear her mind of the memory of him as a ten-year-old boy, all knees and elbows, running about Downy House with more energy than grace.
She had been all of eight years old and passing through a stage of clumsiness herself.
He had, by his mere presence, eased much of her self-consciousness.
If this boy, she’d reasoned, could appear so ill-equipped to occupy his own space and yet be so universally doted on, then she need not worry about her lack of elegance.
He approached her with his eyes narrowed in curiosity. “Dare I ask what has brought such an amused smile to your face?”
“I was remembering the first time you came to Downy House.”
His smile pulled broad. “I was such a gawky boy, and I was absolutely gleeful at the prospect of spending Christmas with someone other than my governess. I likely made a nuisance of myself.”
She had been well trained in the expected niceties of receiving a new arrival. “You were most welcome, as you are now.”
He offered the obligatory bow, which she returned as a curtsy.
“We are, indeed, very pleased to have you here with us again.” Mother had abandoned her “dear boy” to offer her salutations. “How fares your mother?”
“She is well, thank you.” George’s manners had grown quite impeccable over the past year. “You appear to be in good health, yourself.”
“I am, thank you.” Mother sat once more. With a quick widening of her eyes, she signaled for Caroline to do the same. The gentlemen could not, after all, be seated if the ladies were not. “Mr. Downy tells me your Shropshire estate is doing well.”
Mr. Downy. Mother never referred to Father so properly when only the family was about. Until this visit, George had been considered near enough to family to be included in that exception.
“Yes.” George flipped the tails of his jacket upward as he sat in the spindle-back chair. “The tenants are prospering. The neighbors seem pleased to have someone in residence.”
Mother nodded her approval. “An empty home can be a burden when a neighborhood has been accustomed to a full selection of company.”
“Indeed.” George punctuated the response with a quick incline of his head.
Behaving so formally with a gentleman with whom she’d once spent rainy afternoons splashing in mud puddles was a decidedly odd thing. She’d suspected interactions between them would be a bit awkward, especially at first, but this was worse than she had anticipated.
She folded her hands primly on her lap. “Why, Thomas, is this not the mildest weather you ever remember experiencing in November?”
Tom could always be counted on to join her for a lark. “Indeed, sister dearest. I shudder to think what lies in store come winter. I may need to invest in new woolens.”
“Why, Thomas. How scandalous of you to discuss such a thing.”
“I offer my most humble apologies, sister dearest.”
Mother’s eyes darted from George to the others and back again several times. “Behave,” she whispered harshly. “We have company.”
Tom, bless him, laughed out loud. “It’s only George, Mother.”
“He is your sister’s betrothed.” Mother’s eyes darted between them all. “If we misbehave so very much, he is likely to change his mind, and then where will we be?”
“Very well. I will postpone the eulogy until after he’s permanently shackled to her.”
Tom’s humor didn’t often fall short of its intended mark, but it did in that moment. Eulogy. Shackled to her. If Tom were to be believed, her goal of simply being content in her match was doomed to failure. George, who had once been her friend, would come to resent her.
“How pleased we are that you are to be part of our family, George.” Mother’s attempt to salvage the conversation was not terribly graceful.
“We knew Caroline would have to marry at some point, but I confess I had assumed she would make a far less pleasant match, someone older and not terribly picky.”
Being discussed as if she wasn’t present was always a wonderful experience.
“Then allow me to confess something as well,” George said. “I am yet in shock at my tremendously good fortune. Your daughter might have married any number of gentlemen with far more to recommend them.”
Mother seemed to find that declaration nothing short of inexplicable. She sputtered a moment. “Well, Mr. Farber was on her father’s list of gentlemen he meant to speak with on this matter, and Mr. Farber is both wealthy and significant in the eyes of the ton.”
“Don’t forget his legendary love of brandy,” Tom added with a laugh. “Besides, Mother, Farber is at least as old as Father. Surely Caro wasn’t so desperate as all that.”
Mother turned wide eyes to Tom. “Oh, but she was. Without a dowry, how else was she to secure an offer from someone better?”
Caroline stood, offering a benign smile. “I feel a bit of a headache coming on, and I mean to go lie down for a bit. Once the lot of you decide if I am to be declared fortunate or desperate, do send word with one of the maids, as I would very much like to hear the verdict.”
She held her head high as she made her way toward the door.
It was likely a more dramatic departure than she ought to have indulged in.
But, heaven help her, the past month of knowing she’d been handed off to the highest bidder had proven a difficult reality to embrace.
That weight only grew having George here speaking of her in much the same dismissive way, as though she really were a commodity to be traded and evaluated.
George, who had always treated her as a person worth knowing.
Who had never seemed to devalue her because she was female. Even he seemed to have changed.
In light of all that, she had earned a touch of drama.