Chapter 3 #2
“You cannot decide to be an ape leader,” Cynthia whispered. “That’s as bad as deciding to take the first churl who offers marriage, just because he asked.”
“Nottingvale will be the first to offer,” said Gertie. “If he asks.”
“Nottingvale is not a churl,” Cynthia said firmly. “He has all of the material things any woman in search of a secure future could possibly want, and...”
Gertie’s eyes widened. “And?”
And I like him.
It would not do.
“He’s clever,” Cynthia forced herself to continue. “I’ve heard him debate with other gentlemen. He’s honest to a fault. We all know why we’re here. He’s kind. He cares about all of his friends, even the local ones who’ve never stepped foot in Almack’s assembly rooms. He’s a dreadful singer.”
Gertie blinked. “That’s a good quality?”
“A wonderful quality. He doesn’t let it stop him from enjoying Christmas. Don’t let your shyness stop you.”
Gertie gazed doubtfully about the crowded room, then visibly straightened her spine.
“All right.” She drew in a deep, shaky breath. “I’ll take him.”
There.
Cynthia got what she wanted.
She should be over the moon.
Gertie’s mother had been Cynthia’s sponsor all those years ago. The countess had arranged invitation after invitation, year after year, her faith in Cynthia never flagging.
Although the effort hadn’t borne fruit, Cynthia would never forget what it had felt like to be believed in, fully and unconditionally.
The countess was the reason Cynthia had started to believe in herself, despite all evidence that no one else did.
The countess was the reason Cynthia wasn’t afraid anymore. The reason Cynthia was happy.
And the countess was no longer with them.
Gertie’s mother wasn’t here to work the same magic on her anxious daughter as she’d done for a shy and anxious Cynthia over a decade ago.
It was Cynthia’s turn now.
She’d steered Gertie’s older sisters into secure, happy marriages, and she would do the same for Gertie.
It was Cynthia’s only hope to pay back her aunt for not treating her orphan niece as an object to be pitied, but rather as though Cynthia had been her daughter, too.
Worthy of her time.
Worthy of being loved.
This was Cynthia’s chance to finally make the countess proud.
“Follow me, please!”
The Duchess of Nottingvale led the crowd past the gauntlet of footmen handing out hats and coats, and out into the snow-dazzled countryside like the Pied Piper of Yuletide Utopia.
Nottingvale adored his family. That was yet another mark in his favor.
Or another hurdle to cross.
“Why do I feel like she’ll be harder to impress than the duke?” Gertie whispered.
“Because you’re right,” Cynthia said dryly. “Go on. Make a good impression.”
Gertie bit her lip as she handed Max to Cynthia. “What do I do?”
“Be yourself. You’re wonderful just as you are.” Cynthia connected the leash to Max’s collar. “And perhaps a compliment or two wouldn’t go amiss.”
“You should’ve let me bring my breathing sack,” Gertie hissed, but she inched forward to blend with the debutantes.
By the fifth house, it was clear that every resident in Cressmouth had prepared vats of wassail to ladle out to carolers. Cynthia began to worry her cousin might make good on her threat to warble drunkenly into the night.
She tried to edge forward, but it was no use. Cynthia was stuck at the back of the crowd. Even her unusual height didn’t help her with all of the top hats and feathered bonnets blocking the view.
“You’re not singing,” came a low voice on her left side.
She rose on her toes. “I’m waiting for ‘A Spinster Goes A-Wenching.’”
A beat of silence.
“Isn’t it ‘A Soldier Goes A-Wenching?’”
“I changed the words. And the roles. What better buffet can there be for a self-respecting unwed wench than an entire squadron full of fit, handsomely uniformed—” Cynthia’s heels came back to earth as she swung her gaze to her side in dawning suspicion.
No. It couldn’t be.
Of course it was.
The Duke of Nottingvale smiled. “You were saying?”
“Dukes are fine, too?” she offered. “After one runs out of soldiers?”
“Flattering,” he murmured. “For the soldiers.”
The crowd began to move again.
Cynthia hung back and watched until she glimpsed Gertie up ahead with a remarkably sober gait and no signs of impending soprano solos.
Nottingvale hung back with her.
“Why aren’t you up front and in the center?” Cynthia demanded.
There was that quick, crooked smile again. “Have you heard my singing voice?”
Fair point.
His grin widened. “I rest my case.”
“It’s not the worst singing voice,” she hedged.
He hummed the first few bars of A Soldier Goes A-Wenching.
She clapped her mittens to the sides of her head. “My ears... Should they be bleeding like this?”
His dark eyes were curious. “You have a strange way of flirting.”
“I’m not flirting with you,” she said, aghast. “I’m an—” Ape leader. “—a chaperone. I want you to marry my cousin, the tremendously respectable Lady Gertrude.”
“Whilst you go wenching amongst the soldiers?”
“Yes. Exactly.”
He chuckled.
What was happening? None of this was right.
They were yards behind the rest of the group, who appeared to be singing merrily about Wenceslas, rather than wenching.
The duke’s eyes were on her, not his guests. “I didn’t send you that first invitation until my sister forced my hand.”
“Yes,” Cynthia said. “How thoughtful of you to point out my lack of welcome.”
“The oversight was foolish of me.” His lips twisted in self-deprecation. “You should write a ditty about that.”
“I’ve written plenty of inappropriate ditties about you,” she assured him, and immediately wished she hadn’t.
He was too close.
A few tendrils of wavy brown hair curled out from under his top hat. The faint stubble along his chiseled jaw was right there, the sharp folds of his cravat pointing straight at it, as if daring her to brush her thumb against his rough skin and feel his warmth for herself.
She kept her thumbs tucked safely inside her mittens.
A gust of cold air whipped through the evergreens. She turned her face toward it, allowing the wind to flutter her bonnet as a distraction.
“Here,” he said. “Let me help.”
“No,” she whispered, or would have whispered, if she had any power to make words at all.
The sound that escaped her throat sounded more like the whimper of a kitten.
He loosened the ribbon about her chin and set about retying it, his face an adorable mask of concentration as his knuckles grazed her cheek and neck.
He wasn’t really touching her. He was wearing gloves. Touching did not count unless it was skin-to-skin, like, say, kissing, which she was not fantasizing breathlessly about at all.
“There,” he said. “How is your dog doing?”
Dog? Cynthia didn’t have a…
“Max,” she gasped.
The puppy yipped and darted forward, pulling on the leash.
“I have to go,” she said. “I’m busy—”
“—caroling,” he supplied. “With the rest of us.”
“Yes. Very busy. You should marry my cousin. Come along, Max. Gertie needs us.”
Gertie was on a front step, accepting a fresh mug of steaming wassail from another happy Cressmouth resident.
Cynthia bowled through the crowd like a skittle-ball knocking down all ten pins at once.
“Wassail,” she said to the cobbler’s wife. “Please.”
Cynthia handed Gertie Max’s leash in order to wrap both mittens around the warm ceramic mug.
Gertie tilted her head. “Perhaps you’d make a better match with him than I would.”
“What? No! Why would you—” Cynthia took a long gulp of wassail, which was much hotter than she expected it to be, leading to noises not unlike a cat coughing up a hair ball.
Cynthia’s family were the only people who took her seriously.
They trusted her with Gertie, and Gertie’s future.
Cynthia could not let them down.
“Nottingvale and I do not suit,” she said firmly. “He’s looking for someone like you. You happen to be exactly like you. It’s a match made in heaven.”
“All of the other young ladies are just like me, too.”
“But they’re not you,” Cynthia pointed out. “That’s their fatal flaw.”
Gertie wrinkled her pert nose. “That’s something someone who loves me would say.”
Cynthia couldn’t think of an appropriate rebuttal to that logic.
“Make certain no one else is his match first,” Gertie said.
“What?”
“If you can promise me that the duke and I are objectively the best suited of everyone else here, then I...” Gertie picked up Max and cuddled him to her chest. “Then I’ll promise to do whatever you say to win him.”
Cynthia stared at her cousin. “What scale are we using? Imperial? Metric? How am I supposed to objectively ascertain the duke’s compatibility with two dozen other women?”
Gertie lifted a shoulder. “Help him try.”
Of all the…
“You want me to purposely attempt to matchmake the duke to everyone else at the party, in the hopes that I fail, leaving him no choice but to choose you?”
Gertie nodded. “You’re the best matchmaker in England. My sisters are very happy. You’ll only be able to matchmake him to the person who’s meant to be his bride.”
“It better be you,” Cynthia warned. “If he hasn’t made his selection by Twelfth Night, I’m tossing you straight into his lap. If we return home without your betrothal to Nottingvale, your father will force you to marry that dreadful crusty viscount.”
“You won’t let that happen,” Gertie said confidently. “You’ll eliminate all of the others before Twelfth Night, thereby proving to me, Nottingvale, and our respective parents that ours is a perfect match.”
Cynthia narrowed her eyes. “Is this an elaborate trick to stall for time, whilst you spend the next eleven days hiding in your bed with pots of hot chocolate and a burlap sack?”
“Yes.” Gertie nuzzled between Max’s ears. “No reneges.”
“‘No reneges’ was for card games!” Cynthia grasped her cousin’s arms. “You cannot renege, either. There’s no hiding in bed whilst I do this. You have to take part in the planned activities so that Nottingvale has an opportunity to fall in love with you. If you don’t...”
“I know.” The color drained from Gertie’s face and her breath grew uneven. “Father will trade me for a plot of land.”