“Perfectly,” she said, joy flooding her soul. “You leave me no choice. I shall have to marry you.”
It took a moment for the import to strike him. “You’re accepting me?”
“I am.” Didn’t he know she cared nothing for flowery courtships? All she wanted was to be alone with him once more as they had been that night when she learned what it meant to love as a woman.
“Not because I, er, threatened you?”
Laughter bubbled from her lips, “I was thinking of hauling you off to Scotland myself. But it might appear odd to the children.”
With a shout of happiness, he gathered her in his arms.
The music was quite soft, and more than one set of ears in the ballroom heard Brynwood’s blissful cry. One such pair belonged to a spiteful, determined young countess. She would have the last word yet! A short time later, when Lady Mary silenced the orchestra and stepped onto the platform to make an announcement, Lady Darnet was ready.
“I am happy to tell you that both of my daughters are engaged to be married,” said the hostess, waiting while a collective gasp rose from her audience. “My elder daughter, Margaret, shall marry Lord Bryn, Marquis of Brynwood, and my younger daughter, Angela, is betrothed to Mr. Edward Cockerell.”
Before the crowd could recover from its shock, Lady Darnet raised her voice, her courage bolstered by repeated sips of sherry. “This is an outrage!”
Heads swiveled. Eyes blinked. An intensely interested silence rippled across the room.
“Meg Linley disguised herself as a governess and invaded Lord Bryn’s home, living with him in the most scandalous manner until he tossed her out!” the countess shouted, her voice cracking slightly on the last word.
No one moved.
It was Helen Cockerell who spoke next. “Nonsense! It’s true that Miss Linley visited Lord Bryn, but she was in the company of my cousin, Germaine Geraint, who I’m sure will attest to the propriety of their conduct.”
This countermove Cynthia had not foreseen. Blast! Well, there was still that odious Angela to cut down.
“As to the younger sister, I witnessed her sprawled on the floor with Sir Manfred in a state of undress,” she declared.
The murmur that greeted this sally was not entirely friendly. To the countess’s dismay, her cousin raised his voice above the others. “Stuff and nonsense! I merely walked into the room, slipped and knocked Miss Angela to the floor. My own clumsy fault. Cynthia, you’ve got yourself foxed on sherry.”
With this juicy disclosure of her alleged drunken habits hanging in the air, he stalked over and grasped Lady Darnet by the elbow. She found herself unceremoniously dragged from the room.
“How dare you treat me in this manner!” she scolded. She must return at once to demonstrate her sobriety.
“Had enough of this folderol,” muttered her cousin as he demanded their cloaks from a servant. “A man can bear only so much in one evening.”
Overcome by rage, the countess cursed him with phrases colourfully descriptive, and seldom heard in a respectable home. Too late, it occurred to her that just as she had caught Lord Bryn’s shout earlier, others might have registered hers.
Distraught, the countess allowed her cousin to propel her from the residence. As they rode home, and the evening’s events repeated themselves in her mind, she could not avoid the painful conclusion that many a door was likely to be closed to her for months to come.
It was her turn now to retreat to the country. Leaning back against the squabs of her carriage, Lady Darnet watched the streets of London roll past, and reflected how very much she was going to miss them.
While Lady Mary regretted the unfortunate interruption, nothing could dim her happiness. At supper, she saw Angela teasingly feed Edward a morsel of crab cake, and Meg rest her head against the marquis’s shoulder, both of their faces a study in contentment.
For a bit of fluff and a chit who couldn’t see, her daughters hadn’t done half badly, she mused, and treated herself to a celebratory glass of claret.
The End
A note about eyeglasses of the period
The use of polished crystals, glass lenses and water-filled globes to enhance reading dates to ancient times. By the Middle Ages, some accounts say the Chinese had devised spectacles; others credit the Venetians with inventing the magnifying glass. Around 1300, eyeglasses were in use in Italy, as depicted in artwork of the period. Many improvements date to the 1700s, including rigid sidepieces to fit around the ears. From the 1750s, a quizzing glass—a single lens held up to the eye—came into style and was worn as jewelry. These were especially popular with men. In the 1780s, Benjamin Franklin invented bifocals by cutting in half the lenses from two separate pairs of glasses and fitting them together. Beginning in the early 1800s, some fashionable folk employed lorgnettes, which were double lenses attached to a single handle and lifted to the eyes.
About the Author
A love for the books of Jane Austen drew Jacqueline Diamond to the world of the Regency-era romance, and her half-dozen novels in the genre have delighted readers for nearly thirty years. Jackie has gone on to sell some 90 novels ranging from mysteries and suspense to paranormal romances and romantic comedies. A former Associated Press reporter in Los Angeles, Jackie – who also writes as Jackie Diamond Hyman and Jacqueline Topaz -- has received a career achievement award from Romantic Times magazine and two finalist placements for the RITA Award. A full list of her books is available on her website, www.jacquelinediamond.com. You can keep up with her also on Facebook, at JacquelineDiamondAuthor, and on Twitter, as @jacquediamond.
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