by Lynn Messina
The thought of her supposed mourning brought her back to her senses, and she had enough wits about her to stop laughing. She didn’t halt it entirely in a moment, for to do so would be to imply that her laughter was something to be ashamed of. It was inappropriate, yes, but had she actually been mourning the death of a loved one, she knew she would have found relief in the outburst.
When she had herself sufficiently under control, she said, “I must thank Lord Hastings for his faith in me.”
Huntly, whose fingers on her shoulder had tightened during her laughing fit, said, “Hastings was not displaying faith in you but rather tweaking Mr. Irby, who, as a member of the British Horticultural Society, naturally finds the idea of a woman among our ranks repellent. Hastings belongs to the Society for the Advancement of Horticultural Knowledge, a rival organization, and would love to see our esteemed institution brought low by the inclusion of a female.” Sensing her rising anger at his frank speech, he hastened to add, “I seek only to clarify your understanding of the matter, Miss Harlow. I would loath for you to overestimate your importance in the matter.”
Although this attempt at clarification—or, rather, conciliation—only made the situation worse, Vinnie regarded him calmly, as if not in the least put out by the insults he’d dealt her. “Of course, my lord, I would never presume to consider myself anything but a pawn in the machinations of important men. I trust it’s all right if I thank Lord Hastings for choosing to use me in his maneuver rather than one of another dozen or so insignificant females? Or am I not allowed to be flattered by that either?” she asked mildly, fluttering her eyelashes in what she hoped was a fawning manner.
“You are cross with me for being so honest,” Huntly observed. “Perhaps I should have not used the word repellent, as your sensibility is too delicate for such a harsh word. I apologize for my immoderate speech and promise to conduct myself more appropriately in the future.”
Without question, Vinnie took exception to the word repellent in the context in which he’d used it—and she had something improper to say about brought low, as well—but she would never admit that to him. The overly solicitous nature of his response reminded her of their exchange at Hatchard’s, and she wondered if he was using her own tactic against her. It certainly felt as though she was being mocked.
Nevertheless, she smiled sweetly at him, determined to appear unruffled. “You are correct. Descriptions such as repugnant and revolting are much more suited to my sensibilities. I would add nauseating as well, but I’m afraid something about the word makes me squeamish. Then, of course, there’s the adjective disgusting, which has always struck me as so singularly unappealing as to be, well, disgusting. When one thinks of it, there are so many words you could have used to describe my possible admittance to the British Horticultural Society. I will, of course, be sure to thank Lord Hastings for opening me up to all of them with his thoughtful wager.”
To her surprise, he blanched, and rather than make the rallying response she anticipated, he said with sudden stiffness, “Miss Harlow, I must confess that it was not Lord Hastings who opened you up to various comments that one could interpret as insulting but rather myself.”
Vinnie, who found this revelation to be as extraordinary as the previous one, stared in amazement. “You, my lord?” she asked blankly, as if unable to digest the information. When her name had been chosen by a stranger seeking to maximize the effect of his childish prank, she had felt no injury, for her person had merely suited his aim. But discovering that the source was someone already known to her changed the complexion entirely, turning a random occurrence into an intentional slight. She knew their short acquaintance did not reflect well on her, and that was hardly surprising given its inauspicious beginning. If she lived to be one hundred years old, she would never fully live down the humiliation of soaking him with her exploding hose, but it was probably unfair of her to take out her discomfort on him with those comments at Hatchard’s, which, though pointed, had been made mostly in jest. She didn’t mean to do him any genuine harm, for, in truth, what harm could she possibly do him? He was an adventurer, a world explorer who had seen more amazing things in a single day than she would in her entire life, and she was an unmarried lady on the verge of becoming an old maid. She never imagined she could puncture his vanity.
But she must have punctured it quite badly for him to have retaliated like that. If so, she had done him yet another bad turn.
Mortified anew but determined to behave in the correct manner regardless of how uncomfortable it was, she said with quiet dignity, “I am sorry, my lord, for the wrongs I have done you. What I said about your articles at Hatchard’s was meant only to tease you, not to provoke a response that—”
“I must insist that you stop apologizing, Miss Harlow,” Huntly interrupted with surprising vigor, “for either by design or by chance, you are making me feel more wretched. As much as I would like to disavow all responsibility for this contretemps, it’s entirely my fault. Your comments at Hatchard’s certainly provoked me—and please let me express my admiration for your skill with the sugarcoated insult—but they in no way warranted such a large and public retribution. That was never my intention. I hope you believe that.”
He spoke so simply and with such sincerity, she had no choice but to nod. She was too disconcerted by the intensity in his strange aquamarine eyes to speak, so she waited for him to explain further. Out of the corner of her eye, she glimpsed the dowager duchess. She was chatting with Lady Bolingbroke by the edge of the dance floor. Her smile was as serene and composed as ever, and if she had heard about the scandalous wager, nothing in her manner revealed it. Vinnie, who was easily intimidated by Trent’s imposing mother, hoped with all her heart that the story hadn’t reached the woman’s august ears before she had a chance to explain. It was futile, of course, for even if she didn’t know about the appalling bet, she was fully cognizant of the shameful waltz, which would surely eclipse all else on the tips of wagging tongues.
I am sunk, she thought.
As if reading her thoughts, Huntly said, “All is not lost. I acted rashly, yes, and failed to properly consider the consequences, which was lamentably irresponsible of me. When I put your name up for membership, it never occurred to me that members of a rivalrous society would seek to humiliate us by—”
“Famously rivalrous,” she said.
“Excuse me?”
“I was observing that the rivalry between the two organizations is rather well known,” she explained, “and one needed but only a little imagination to conceive of the Society for the Advancement of Horticultural Knowledge members delighting in the prospect of the British Horticultural Society being—how did you so concisely describe it?—brought low by the admittance of a female.”
Huntly stiffened at her words, which were an indictment despite the fact they were said with a mildness that could be described as indifference. “You are right, of course, and if you would like to continue to complain about my behavior, I cannot protest. Recriminations, however, will get us nowhere.”
Vinnie smiled wryly. “Won’t get you anywhere, to be sure. Recriminations would allow me to vent my spleen, which would get me a good distance from frustrated and angry. But I will refrain because I’m curious to hear your plan for salvaging the situation.”
“We shall say that I proposed your application at the behest of Sir Windbourne,” he said.
At these words, Vinnie faltered. She had conducted the entire conversation, remarkable in so many respects, while twirling effortlessly around the ballroom, yet at the utterance of her dead fiancé’s name, she stumbled. Nobody would think it amiss—indeed, Huntly certainly did not as he steadied her with a sure hand—but she was appalled by the implied frailty. Even though she knew a display of weakness was to her benefit, she hated for anyone to think her grief was so deep, she could barely remain upright at the mention of her beloved.
Before Huntly could apologize or treat her with the marked concern one typically re
served for the elderly or the infirm, she said matter-of-factly, “You never met Sir Windbourne.”
Taking his cue from her, he said with equal pragmatism, “A minor detail that nobody will question, for what cause would they have to doubt my word? In actuality, however, I do believe I met him once at an embassy party. We did not have a private exchange, but we were introduced by our hostess, Lady Smithington. He seemed like a decent fellow. Lady Smithington said he was very good at whist.”
As Sir Windbourne was in reality atrocious at whist and at any other game in which one could possibly lose money, Vinnie assumed this was polite chatter on the part of either Lady Smithington or Lord Huntly. “He could not have made his behest to you because you were at sea for the entire length of our relationship,” she pointed out reasonably in hopes of dissuading him from his plan. Her dislike of Sir Windbourne was such that she couldn’t bear the thought of accepting help from him, however posthumously or unknowingly it was offered.
Huntly easily dismissed this concern with more invention. “After Lady Smithington so graciously made the introduction, we kept up a dedicated correspondence. Naturally, he wrote to me when he become engaged to the lovely Miss Lavinia Harlow, and being a devoted swain and in full admiration of your horticulture skills, asked if I could possibly help arrange membership for you. He realized it was unlikely, given the fraternal nature of the organization, but he could not refrain from asking when he knew how much it would mean to you.”
The gentleman he described, who bore no resemblance to her deceased fiancé, was exactly the sort of man she wished to wed. It would be beyond everything wonderful to marry a man who had so much faith in her talents and so much concern for her happiness that he would make such an outlandish request. Of course such a paragon did not exist, and awareness of that disappointing truth choked her throat and brought unexpected tears to her eyes.
Blasted, she thought.
Seeing her distress, Huntly was instantly contrite. “I’m a beast for forcing such an upsetting topic on you. As you have reminded me, you are only three days out of black gloves, and the wound must be quite fresh indeed. Please know that I would not intentionally hurt you for the world.”
All Vinnie could manage was a nod as she struggled to swallow back tears. She knew she was being completely absurd—only a ninnyhammer cried for something that could never be—but that knowledge merely made it worse.
“As unpleasant as the subject is,” Huntly continued, determined, it seemed, to plow through it all at once, “I am honor-bound to devise a scheme to save your reputation, since it is I who put it at risk. Therefore, we shall proceed with my plan. I will put it about that Sir Windbourne’s last request was that I propose your candidacy. The timing is not ideal, as you are only just out of deep mourning, but nobody save a complete stickler could quibble about my motives. I’m sure we will quickly win over the more sentimental ladies of our acquaintance and the rest will obligingly follow.”
While he spoke, Vinnie marveled at the marquess’s ability to always say the right thing—as in the conservatory when he stood there soaking wet, water dripping into his eyes, and assured her it was his fault for coming upon her unannounced. In this way, he was the perfect gentleman, calling forth the proper words for every occasion, even the most unlikely one. But, she realized now, that didn’t mean his behavior was equally circumspect, for how else to account for the two egregious disservices he had done her in rapid succession: putting her name up for membership and dragging her onto the dance floor. These injuries, she decided, were greater than her own, which happened in the privacy of the duke’s town house and not in the middle of a lavish event for anyone with eyes to gawk over. At this thought, she felt her mortification, which only a few minutes before she’d resigned herself to carrying to the grave, leave her.
Taking her silence as assent, Huntly said, “Once the story is widely accepted, you will inform your intimates that although you are flattered by the invitation, you can’t possibly accept.”
He spoke with such authoritarian confidence that Vinnie felt possessed of the same mischievous fiend as when she was at Hatchard’s, and rather than accept what she, too, knew to be the truth, she decided to compel him to provide a list of excuses. She expected it to be a long catalog as he enumerated reason after reason why a female was unsuitable for membership, and she prepared to memorize it so she could mock each one with Emma later. “Why, my lord?”
“Well, I don’t think it would be quite the thing for you to broach the subject with Lady Jersey,” he explained reasonably, “though we could all agree that would be the most efficient way to broadcast the information. It’s much more appropriate if you share your decision with your sister and sister-in-law and let them spread the word.”
Vinnie, who noted again how flawlessly he knew the proper customs of society and how poorly he himself followed them, shook her head. “No, I meant why can’t I possibly accept the invitation?”
He looked down at her with surprise. “I should think it’s obvious.”
She blinked back, all innocence and ignorance. “Not to me.”
“Well, we can’t have a woman in the British Horticultural Society. It’s simply not done,” he said.
Vinnie waited for him to elaborate—to mention, for example, how a woman’s presence would mar the congenial nature of the gatherings or how a woman’s interest in gardening was not as serious as a man’s—but he said nothing more. As far as the marquess was concerned, his brief answer was sufficient. The fact that she wasn’t worth the effort of summoning a tedious list of excuses made Vinnie annoyed all over again, and she felt herself seized by a contrarian devil. “Perhaps the only reason it’s not done is because it hasn’t been done,” she suggested.
“I beg your pardon?” he asked, his brow furrowed as if she had spoken in a foreign language or, at the very least, too quickly for coherence.
“I apologize for speaking obliquely, my lord. Let me be more clear,” Vinnie said with a wide grin. She could only imagine what the gawkers would make of that unrepentant expression. “I’m flattered by the invitation and delighted to accept.”
Huntly’s shock was almost visible. His gait remained smooth, but Vinnie thought for sure he’d almost stumbled. “You can’t mean it,” he said, his tone vaguely horrified.
“I can’t?” she asked with an eyebrow raised tauntingly.
The truth was, no, she didn’t mean it. Or, rather, she had not. But now that the words were out of her mouth, she realized she meant it with everything that she was. Six months of fake mourning, seven days of mortification, two hours of targeted gossip and one humiliating waltz stiffened her spine in a way she could not have imagined. As always, she had followed the rules. The practical Miss Lavinia Harlow, having had the misfortune to shoot her despised fiancé, had submitted to her fate without a single complaint. She had done everything society and the Countess de Boufflers prescribed to avoid even a hint of impropriety in Sir Windbourne’s death. And where had it gotten her? The subject of gossip and idle speculation. She knew everyone in the ballroom was talking about her. They’d been talking about her from the moment she had arrived, and as far as she was concerned, they could continue, for they would with or without her permission. If she was to be the topic of the day, she might as well get some enjoyment out of it.
That she would enjoy being a member of the British Horticultural Society wasn’t in doubt. She could think of few things more satisfying than being a part of a congenial group of similarly disposed individuals discussing a shared passion.
After several moments of startled silence, the marquess said, “You must see it’s impossible.”
“The way I see it,” she said calmly, “is either the invitation is legitimate, in which case the society, as an ethical institution, owes me the courtesy of allowing me to accept or decline, or the invitation is false, in which case I’ve been shockingly abused by an institution that’s as heartless as it is immoral. Which is it, my lord?”
&
nbsp; “The invitation is genuine,” he said stiffly, seemingly offended by the implication that the society might not have been square in all of its dealings. “It was delivered this morning, which is how word of it got out. The courier who was given the invitation thought it was highly amusing that it was going to a lady and mentioned it to several of his associates, one of whom is employed by the Society for the Advancement of Horticultural Knowledge.”
“In that case, I think I have no choice but to accept,” she said, her smile revealing deep dimples in both her cheeks. Her heart felt lighter than it had it months, which, she thought, proved just what a perverse creature she was. And for all these years, they’d assumed Emma was the only Harlow girl who didn’t know how to behave. “As it was my beloved’s last wish for me, how could I deny it? I owe it to him and his memory to try to fulfill his ambitions for me. To do anything less would be disrespectful.”
“Miss Harlow,” he said firmly, “I fear you don’t—”
“You must not worry,” she said, rudely interrupting him but doing so in a soothing tone, as if genuinely trying to relieve his concerns. “I will not make any public statements to that effect. I have a strong sense of propriety and will speak of it only to intimates. But I will be sure to repeat it several times to ensure that my sister and sister-in-law know exactly what to tell Lady Jersey.”
Huntly shook his head and took a deep breath, as if gathering his thoughts for another attack. Vinnie, who had found the lively discussion invigorating, hoped he would put genuine effort into making his case, for, she realized as she waited, all she really wanted was to be considered a worthy opponent. She did not want to be dismissed or overlooked or ignored as she had been that first day in Emma’s study.
