Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
“Miss Parsons, what an unexpected pleasure.” Matthew’s voice echoed into the parlor from the hallway, propelling Evelyn out of her chair.
She wrenched open the door and skidded out into the hall, breathing hard though she had barely covered any distance at all.
It was a strange feeling, but she hated it when her lives met: her one and only friend being here in this house with the family who pretended she did not exist. The last thing she needed was Matthew getting any notions about pursuing Selina, for then Evelyn would lose her best friend too, as if her invisibility were some manner of disease that would could be caught by association with this family.
“Were you not just on your way out?” Evelyn said, rather brusquely.
Matthew cast her a curious look. “I was, but if Miss Parsons has come to have tea, I would not mind joining you.”
“I have not,” Selina said crisply. “I have just come to beg a word with your sister.”
Matthew seemed disappointed. “Then, I shall not keep you. Good day to you, Miss Parsons.”
“And to you,” Selina said, coming up the hall to meet Evelyn.
“I did not hear the bell,” Evelyn apologized.
Selina chuckled. “It is quite all right, Evie. I had just come up the steps when the door opened and there was your brother. I think I gave him rather a fright; you should have seen how wide his eyes became.”
“I have no doubt.” Taking her friend’s arm, Evelyn ushered her into the parlor and closed the door quickly behind them.
Her father had gone out for the morning, and Luke was in his study upstairs, so they would likely not be disturbed, but Evelyn was not going to take any chances. It was not often she was permitted to use the parlor for her own amusement, she just wished it had a lock on the door.
“Has the duke sent word this morning? Does he mean to call upon you? Has he mentioned where he might be taking you for your next excursion?” Evelyn asked without preamble, as she settled back into the spot on the settee that she had vacated in her rush to fend off Matthew.
A yawn stretched Selina’s mouth, though whether she was tired or she found talk of Hugo tedious, Evelyn could not tell.
“Actually, Sir Anthony sent word this morning,” Selina said, shuffling closer to Evelyn on the settee, while she drew a letter out of the pocket of her spencer jacket.
“I did not tell him about the auction, but it was like he knew. We are so… connected, Evie. Our minds, our hearts, our souls. I just have to wish for a letter from him, and one arrives.”
Evelyn tried to force a smile. “And what does he have to say for himself? Has he explained why it was simply impossible for him to call upon you when he was last in London?”
She had heard just last night, in fact, upon her return from the opera, that Sir Anthony was in the Capital again.
She had been walking past this very parlor when she had overheard Matthew and Luke discussing it, for Sir Anthony was known for putting on boxing bouts, and it appeared her brothers were keen to attend the next.
“Do not be like that, Evie,” Selina said, frowning. “Can you not just be happy for me? He loves me, Evie, and I love him, and if you cannot be glad for me, then I shall just leave.”
“I do not want you to leave, but I do want you to see that you have been blinded by him,” Evelyn urged, wishing they did not always have to quarrel about that wretched man.
“From what I have read and what I have heard, this is what he does. He woos and deceives and toys with the hearts of young ladies who do not know any better, and when he has tired of you, you will be left ruined and heartbroken.”
“But I do know better,” Selina replied sharply.
“I know that he loves me. And certainly, I know a good deal more about courtships and romance than you. Perhaps he has had dalliances in the past, but he is not that man anymore. I am not a dalliance to him. He has told me how much he loves me. He does not stop telling me, in truth.”
Evelyn leaned forward and took her friend’s hand.
“And how many others have fallen for the same trick, Selina? Yes, I may not have experienced much, but I am versed enough in the scandals of society men.” She gave Selina’s hand a squeeze.
“You need stability. You need a man who will love you deeply and for the rest of your lives. You need a man who will provide you with wealth and security.”
“And be bored for eternity? Goodness, where is your sense of excitement? Where is your sense of romance? You forget, Evie, that I have spent two years out in society and I have been inundated by the same dull gentlemen. They might have different names and faces, but they are all the same, with the same earnest charm, the same ideas of what I should be, the same offers and promises, which have left me feeling so very hollow. The only gentleman who has sparked anything within me is Anthony.”
A strange pang caught Evelyn underneath the ribs.
She had not forgotten how inundated with interest her friend had been, for she had, more often than not, been standing beside Selina during those floods of attention.
Indeed, even without experiencing it herself, Evelyn could understand how something different might feel very exciting, might even feel like love.
Perhaps I am wrong.
“But… his reputation!” was all Evelyn could say.
“I do not care,” Selina shot back.
“Well, you should. He has no prospects, he has little fortune, and what he does have has been garnered in… less than respectable ways,” Evelyn urged. “You could be a duchess, Selina. Why would you settle for so little?”
Selina looked stung, recoiling slightly from her friend. “My father has made adequate provision for me. That is my security. As such, I may fall in love with whomever I please. He is respected among society, he is well connected, and I do not deem loving him as settling for less.”
“He is not respected, he is feared,” Evelyn pointed out. “Gentlemen tolerate him because he organizes the best boxing bouts, nothing more.”
“Boxing? What on earth are you talking about?”
“Ask him when you respond to his letter,” Evelyn said. “Ask him where he makes his fortune.”
“Well, I sh—”
The parlor door opened and Luke entered, his eyebrows rising in faint surprise at the sight of the two women on the settee.
“Apologies,” he said with a polite dip of the head. “I did not realize we had company. It is a pleasure to see you again, Miss Parsons.”
Selina smiled. “Your brother let me in.”
“Ah, I see.” Luke glanced at his sister. “You might have informed me that we had company, Evelyn. I would have greeted Miss Parsons properly, and I certainly would not have entered this room without knocking.”
There was a cold tone to his voice, likely imperceptible to Selina, but one that Evelyn had heard over and over throughout the two decades of her life: the note that said, You have done something terribly wrong again, Evelyn.
Goodness, can you never do anything right?
It was disappointment and frustration, blended together, sometimes with a hint of outright derision.
“Did you think I was talking to myself?” Evelyn said, even if it got her into more trouble. She was already in a fiery mood, and it seemed she could not douse it quick enough.
Luke’s eyes flickered with annoyance. “I did not hear any talking at all, though I daresay I do not know what it is you do with your days. Perhaps you do speak to yourself, for it certainly is a rarity to see you speaking to anyone else.”
It was, Evelyn suspected, the primary source of her family’s general impatience with her.
To the men of this household, a woman’s sole purpose in life was marriage, and the longer it took Evelyn to find a husband, the harsher they would treat her, as if that broad punishment of making her feel like a burden and a nuisance would somehow make her hurry up.
They did not seem to realize, however, that her lack of success was not caused by a lack of trying.
For the first two years, she had tried very hard indeed… and that had only seemed to make her circumstances worse. She had gone from at least one gentleman asking her to dance at a ball to no one asking her at all, or even deigning to notice her.
“I apologize,” Evelyn said stiffly.
Luke sniffed. “Yes, well, I was just looking for my book.” He surveyed the room. “Ah, there it is.”
He went to the writing desk on the far side of the parlor to collect the book, and bowed his head politely to Selina once more before he made to leave. Of course, he could not leave without making Evelyn feel just a little bit smaller.
“I need you to vacate this room by noon,” he said curtly. “I have gentlemen coming to discuss very important business.”
Evelyn sighed. “Of course, brother.”
“Actually, I should also be going,” Selina said, adding insult to injury. “I have an appointment at the modiste in half an hour. I just wanted to come by to tell you my news, and now that I have done so, I shall be out of your way.”
Luke hesitated. “Allow me to lead you to the door, Miss Parsons.”
Without another word, Selina rose from the settee and went directly to Luke, allowing him to offer her his arm. Their footsteps echoed down the hallway, soon followed by the sound of a courteous farewell, and the click of the door closing.
Another strange punishment, from Selina this time, for Evelyn’s lack of support in the face of what could only be a disastrous match. Not said in words but in action, to the feeling of, If you cannot be accommodating, then you can be alone.
“Not going out again tonight?” the amused voice drifted into Hugo’s sphere of consciousness, as he flipped absently through the pages of the day’s newspaper.
He glanced up to find his sister, Octavia, standing at the drawing room door, looking the very picture of mischief.
“No, no, this evening I have a most pressing engagement with Nemo, and I simply cannot postpone it again,” he replied with a grin as he set down his paper and patted the settee.
It took her a second to realize what he meant. “You have a pressing engagement with ‘no one’ or do you truly have a friend with such an unfortunate name?”
“The former, but now I rather wish I had a dog that I could call Nemo. If anyone asked what I was doing, I would tell them that I was taking a walk with Nemo, napping in the drawing room with Nemo, hunting pheasants with Nemo, and, if they knew their Latin, they might think me quite mad.” He chuckled at the amusing thought.
It would certainly give him a few extra excuses to use to get out of the next few excursions with Miss Parsons. But alas, he did not currently have the time to take care of a dog, much as he would have liked the companionship.
“Speaking of hounds, I hear that you and your temporary owner made quite the handsome couple at the opera last night,” Octavia said, coming to sit beside her brother.
Hugo nodded along. “Yes, Roger did a fine job of standing in for me. No one was any the wiser. Even I was surprised to learn how well they looked together.”
“It was not Roger!” Octavia laughed, smacking her brother playfully in the arm.
‘Roger’ was a creation that Hugo had fabricated since childhood to take the blame for anything he had done wrong, a mysterious friend who had not gotten Hugo out of nearly enough trouble as he had hoped for.
Still, tales of Roger had always amused Octavia, to the point where she had believed he was real until she was at least fifteen.
“What possessed you to do it, Hugo?” Octavia asked in a more serious voice. “I realize that Mama is pestering you to marry, but you are not quite so old or unpopular that you need to sell yourself.”
Hugo feigned a gasp. “Scoundrel. I shall have you know that I am extremely popular, or I would not have fetched the grand sum of three hundred pounds.”
“So you did it to be charitable?”
“To be charitable and so that Cousin Dominic would not box my ears for ruining his wife’s evening,” he replied. “Indeed, so that Frances herself would not box my ears. I rather like them unbruised.”
Octavia sat back. “Did you enjoy her company?”
“Frances’? Of course. I adore her.”
“Hugo!” Octavia half laughed, exasperation in her voice. “The lady who won the auction. Did you enjoy her company? I would have asked you sooner, but you have been particularly evasive today.”
Hugo twisted in his seat. “Evasive? Me? Never.”
“You are still being evasive,” she pointed out with a chuckle. “It cannot have been so awful.”
He exhaled a weary breath, for he was in no mood to discuss the events of last night…
and it was not even Miss Parsons that bothered him so much.
He still did not understand why she had bid on him, but that was secondary to the bold remarks and unwelcome advice of Lady Evelyn.
She had not left his mind for a moment since leaving the Opera House.
“It was… the opera,” he said with a shrug.
“When are you seeing her next?” Octavia asked, with a familiar note of hope in her voice; the kind he had heard so very often in his mother’s voice, closely followed by disappointment.
He pretended to yawn. “Tomorrow, I believe. A promenade through Hyde Park, where all and sundry will watch us intently. Truly, it is the most unoriginal idea for an excursion I have ever heard. A walk in Hyde Park? What an adventure.” Putting an arm around his sister, he pulled her into his side.
“Now, tell me about you. What have you done today?”
It was a sneaky trick, he knew that, but it never failed to work when he wished for Octavia to cease with a subject that he had no desire to discuss.
As she duly began to regale him with her tales of drama at the modiste and the worst cake she had ever eaten in her life afterwards at the tea rooms, Hugo’s mind drifted back to that disarming woman in the midnight blue dress.
The young lady who thought she could teach him how to win the affection of a woman.
I shall show her, and I shall do it my way.