“I wish Casriel would play the harp again,” Thorne said. “I wish he would laugh. I wish he’d go to London because a change of scene can be a pleasant diversion, not because he must parade himself before this Season’s crop of heiresses while ignoring the stink of sewers that flow like rivers. I wish he’d find a damned countess who could give him some babies to love and spoil and maybe even distract him from the purgatory that the earldom has become.”
For Thorne, that was a third-act monologue. “The Hall needs a countess,” Ash said. “Grey needs a wife.”
“And I need a drink.”
Drinking solved nothing. Ash had learned that lesson in a very hard school.
“Excuse me, Mr. Ash, Mr. Hawthorne.” Rawley, their butler, had come up from the floor below. “Vicar is paying a call. I’ve put him in the guest parlor.”
“Why on earth would you do that?” Thorne asked. “The damned man never stays less than an hour and can imitate a plague of locusts over the tea tray with convincing enthusiasm.”
“I do apologize, sir, but he heard your voices from the foyer. He knows you are on the premises, and we have turned him away twice in the past two weeks. I did escort him to the guest parlor with all due haste, but he has good hearing.”
Ash had been dodging Vicar in the churchyard for the past two Sundays. Grey was responsible for dealing with all matters relating to the local living, another duty the right countess could ease.
“I’ll pour him a cup of tea,” Ash said. “But, Rawley, you will tell the kitchen to send up half the usual tray, and in thirty minutes—not thirty-five, not forty-two—you will interrupt to inform me of pressing matters requiring my attention at the home farm.”
“I would not advise that, sir. As the earl himself has realized, the home farm is in the direction of the vicarage, and you will find yourself escorted thence by your guest. Better to have a pressing issue at the estate brewery. The vicar knows little about how beer and ale are made, and our brewery lies in the opposite direction of the village.”
“The brewery it is,” Ash said, “and then I’ll want to send an express to the earl in London.”
“Another express, sir?”
“Another express.”
Rawley withdrew, descending the steps at a decorous pace.
“Where are you going?” Thorne asked as Ash took off down the corridor.
“Even I know receiving a man of God with cobwebs in my hair isn’t done. I wish Grey had never gone to London.” And I wish I hadn’t had to leave.
“Not quite true,” Thorne said, falling in step beside him. “You wish he was back from London. We all do. When you write that express, tell him to snabble the first available heiress and hurry home.”
“I’ve already told him that. Twice.”
“Tell him again.”
The maid held up the latest creation from Madam Batiste, a soft green evening dress designed to show off slightly more of Sarah’s attributes than was proper for a woman in her first Season.
“I must try it on. Mama, get me out of this rag.”
“If the green requires alterations,” Mama said, rising from the sofa, “you can wear the blue. Bartles, you may be excused.”
The maid folded the dress back into its box, curtseyed, and withdrew. Now Mama would start with her scolds and lectures, unless Sarah took the floor first.
“I cannot wear the blue. I wore blue to Lady Brantmore’s do, and I wore blue to the most recent card party.”
Mama’s hands on Sarah’s hooks were slower than Bartles’s would have been. “Lord Casriel favors blue waistcoats, my dear. He might think blue dresses are a flattering attempt to complement his attire.”
“That is precisely why I must not wear blue. He should be complementing my choices, not the other way around. For the rest of our married life, I will be bound by vows to honor and obey him. In courtship at least, he ought to be honoring and obeying me.”
Mama paused in her unhooking. “Has he danced a supper waltz with you?”
“He’s a gentleman, and gentlemen must dance with both the plain and the pretty, or they aren’t allowed to dance at all. I’m pretty, and he danced with me, thus he was required to dance with less-attractive women at some point.”
Mama resumed her progress down to the middle of Sarah’s back, though holding still while Mama delivered her little sermon was excruciating.
“Has his lordship walked you home from services?”
“Why would a peer of the realm bother with an antiquated custom even the yeomen no longer put much stock in?”
Mama finally got to Sarah’s waist, about which Sarah was not merely proud, she was unapologetically vain. Bartles knew how to cinch in a corset, and the result of a small waist was a bosom that appeared more generous by comparison. Gentlemen did have their little aesthetic preoccupations, after all, and the Creator had neglected to fill Sarah’s bodice as well as she might have liked.
“You’ve been interviewing yeomen, to know their habits of late?” Mama asked. “Lord Casriel owns a good patch of Dorset, so when he walked Lady Antonia home from church, he might well have been indulging in an antiquated custom of some import to him.”
Sarah turned. “He walked Lady Antonia home?”
“Arm in arm, conversing as they strolled along and tarried in Grosvenor Square. You were too busy twirling your parasol at Lord Dentwhistle to notice. Casriel and Lady Antonia made a handsome couple.”
“You needn’t be nasty, Mama, or leap to unjustified conclusions. Perhaps Lady Antonia lives in the same direction as his lordship. Perhaps they share an interest in Italian opera. Help me get this dress off.”
“Lord Casriel hasn’t been seen at the opera yet this Season, that I know of.”
Sarah held still while her mother gathered up skirts and underskirts, carefully raising them over Sarah’s waist. This ritual—dressing and undressing—was vaguely annoying. Little children needed to be dressed and undressed. Why did fashion require that grown ladies also have assistance with any wardrobe worth wearing in public?
Though having a maid on hand to deal with pins and ribbons and to take away wrinkled clothing was ever so convenient.
“So Casriel doesn’t care for a lot of caterwauling from warbling sopranos and well-fed tenors,” Sarah said. “Neither do I.”
Mama lifted the dress over Sarah’s head. “His lordship might not care for you, Sarah Quinlan.”
Why must Mama make that suggestion when Sarah wore only her stays and shift, her meager endowments so clearly pushed up into a semblance of abundance?
“All the gentlemen like me. I’m an Incomparable. Lord Dentwhistle told me so.”
“Dentwhistle is a fortune hunter whose grandfather beggared the family with foolish investments. Are you losing weight?”
“Why do you ask? Do I look too skinny?” Sarah turned this way and that, considering her figure in the cheval mirror. The white of her underlinen washed out her complexion and made her dark hair look garish.
I look like a tall, pale, gawky girl. Not confident like Lady Antonia, who truly was tall and gawky. Not generously rounded like those blasted Arbuckles. Not confident, well rounded, and pleased with life, like Lady Canmore.
“You do look a little tired,” Mama said, holding up the green dress. “You’ll have time for a nap before we go out tonight.”
Children napped. Sarah obligingly ducked her head and held out her arms so Mama could get her into the green dress. The silk fabric felt deliciously cool and expensive, and the fit was exquisite.
“Tonight,” Sarah said, examining her reflection, “I shall cast a lure at Lord Casriel.”
Mama knelt to straighten the drape of the underskirt. “What an original approach. I’m sure no young lady has ever cast a lure at him. Perhaps instead of drawing and pianoforte, those expensive finishing schools should teach young ladies how to angle for trout.”
“Mama, I believe you are in need of a nap. Lord Casriel might not understand the language of the
fan or the glove. I will have to be subtle but clear.”
Mama rose. “Sarah, you must not convince yourself that Casriel will trot to your side because you crook your finger and wink. Lady Antonia enjoys a much higher station than you. The Arbuckles are from older wealth than you and are considered pretty. They can also aid each other should one of them attract his lordship’s notice. While you…”
Mama sighed, a sound of exasperation and disappointment.
Over the Arbuckles? The Arbuckles? “They are not prettier than I am. They are in their third Season.”
Mama tugged the dress’s bodice upward, which was futile when the waist was so snug. “But, Daughter, even the Arbuckles are more of Casriel’s ilk. Their mother’s father is a baronet. Do you truly want to spend most of your life in Dorset? You know little of managing a country house.”
Why must Mama ruin everything lately? Sarah’s joy in the new dress was melting away like the beeswax tapers in a ballroom chandelier.
“Do you think my situation is easy, Mama?” Sarah paced away from the mirror, loving how the silk swished about her ankles and punctuated an angry mood. “You have never endured a London Season. You have never had to stand still for fittings that take hours, never had to befriend women who would as soon knife you in the back as turn pages for you at the pianoforte. I want an earl, and I shall have an earl, and not just any earl. An earl who needs my money will be much easier to manage than one who condescends to offer for me out of a mere passing attraction.”
Mama’s gaze was on the empty mirror. “The money belongs to your father, and one does not embark upon marriage as if it’s a mercantile venture. Many aristocrats take that approach, and a sorrier, sadder lot of human beings you will not find on this earth. We who have had to work for our bread are more discerning than that sort, more genuine. Casriel seems like a decent man, but I’d rather you find a fellow whose motive isn’t simply to expand his selection of waistcoats.”
Members of the peerage were ruthless about marriage and wealth, which was wonderful. If they weren’t, Sarah would never have had a chance at a title.
“I like that some people can approach marriage pragmatically,” she said. “Sentimental foolishness fades, while a fortune and a title are permanent comforts. I have the fortune, Casriel has the title, and I like him well enough.”
He wasn’t too handsome, wasn’t too old, wasn’t too flirtatious. Casriel would be biddable and grateful, and he’d be polite to Sarah’s parents when necessary.
More than she was able to manage lately.
“Sometimes,” Mama said, picking up Sarah’s discarded day dress, “I don’t like you. Be careful, Sarah. You lack the stature to compromise a man like Casriel, and all your father’s money cannot rescue your reputation if you throw it away on a lure that misses its mark.”
Folding up the dress as any maid would, Mama looked old and weary, though she was barely forty.
“I hadn’t thought to compromise his lordship.” The notion was intriguing. To trap a famously well-mannered man by using social convention made all the sense in the world. Casriel would probably thank her for sparing him a lot of bother dancing with the wallflowers.
“If you misstep with Casriel, you will find yourself sewing samplers in Cheshire for at least the next five years, Sarah. Your father will not be made a laughingstock, no matter how generous he is with you otherwise.”
Mama’s mouth was in a pinchy line. Mauve shadows formed half circles beneath her eyes.
I will never look like her. Never, and this time next year, I won’t have to listen to her either.
“Mama, you worry for nothing. His lordship needs to marry money, and I am happy to become his countess. That’s how these things are done.”
“That is not how your father and I did it,” Mama said, moving toward the door, “and we manage well enough. I’ll send Bartles to help you out of your dress, lest you wrinkle your new frock prancing before the mirror.”
Mama closed the door softly, though she had as usual managed to have the last word.
For now.
“My priorities have changed,” Grey said. “Instead of looking for a lady with handsome settlements, I now search for a prospective countess who’s an expert on repairing roofs.”
In fact, since spending a long afternoon in Lady Canmore’s bed last week, Grey had been searching for his sanity, while dodging eligible young women. He’d found safety among the wallflowers, widows, and dowagers and avoided the near occasion of heiresses.
Then Ash’s letter had arrived.
“The hour is early,” Tresham said, pausing to sniff at a rose. “Have you been at the brandy, Casriel?”
“I cannot afford to be at the brandy. Dorning Hall, the edifice in which my family, forty inside servants, and another thirty outside servants shelter, has developed a serious leak in the roof of the east wing, which, naturally, is where the family quarters are.”
Tresham sauntered along the garden path, a mastiff trotting at his side. “I thought tenant cottages were famous for leaking roofs?”
“Infamous, and because tenants are forbidden to make improvements to structures on their leaseholds, landlords must perform the needed repairs. I was caught up—I was almost caught up—with the tenant cottage and pensioner cottage repairs.”
“You can’t simply patch a few holes and hope for dry weather?”
The dog paused to lift its leg on a bed of blooming daisies.
“This is England. Summer is as close as we get to dry weather, so the roofs must be repaired now, and no, a patch job seldom works. Dorning Hall will beggar me if the damage is as bad as Ash thinks.” Finish beggaring me.
“So close off that wing, dismantle it while you can salvage plenty of bricks for resale, and plant a few more trees on that side of the house. In a hundred years, nobody will notice that your façade lacks symmetry. It’s an ancestral pile. They’ll call it charming and unique.”
They’d call it an architectural failure courtesy of the present pathetic excuse for an earl. “Shall we lop off a wing of the Quimbey family seat, Tresham? Sell off the windows and hinges to the builders swarming around London? Is that any way to husband a heritage that’s centuries in the making?”
“Let’s sit. Caesar is in the mood to investigate today.”
Caesar being one of the Quimbey household’s canine behemoths. Tresham settled onto a bench, while Grey paced the garden walk.
“Then the vicar,” he said, “who well knows the Dorning family circumstances, reports that the church is also in need of a new roof. Not a mere repair either. A new roof. If the previous vicar had installed standing seam tin as Papa had advised, we would not have this problem. But no, a church must be beautiful, said the holy man who is supposed to counsel us against vanity. The church must have a slate roof, and not twenty years later, the damned thing is growing moss on the north side and leaking perilously near the fourth earl’s organ.”
Tresham was smiling at his dog.
“Not that sort of organ,” Grey muttered. “Married life has made you easily distracted.”
“I am not the poor fellow who is so beset by a lack of roofing slates that he cannot sit still on a beautiful spring day. You knew when you arrived in London that marrying a fortune was your objective. You knew your roofs would eventually leak. Your fields must eventually be marled. Your ditches and drains cleared, your daughter dowered.”
The day was beautiful only to those trapped in London. Here, a fair day meant a yellowish tinge to the sky for much of the morning and a pervasive hint of grit and smoke in the air. When the wind was wrong, the stink off the river made even the clearest of London days unbearably odoriferous. No wonder Londoners suffered so many lung ailments and chest colds.
“Despite the challenges you face,” Tresham went on, “at last week’s soiree, I saw you evade both the Arbuckles and Miss Quinlan. You didn’t even stand up with Lady Antonia, but instead danced with every wallflower ever to sprout in Mayfair. Theodosia is concer
ned for you.”
The dog sniffed at Grey’s boots, then wandered over to sit at Tresham’s knee.
“A gentleman dances with a variety of partners, if he dances at all.”
“You haven’t danced with Lady Canmore lately.”
Oh yes, Grey had. He’d danced with her in countless dreams. He’d conversed with her in more imaginary discussions than any ballroom could contain. He’d pleasured himself to memories of time spent in her bed, and he was counting the hours until the next half day.
Thirty-six, give or take a few, minutes. “Lady Canmore and I are friends.”
Tresham and the dog gave him the same pitying look. “You are smitten, and just when your resolve to marry an heiress is being tested, the roof threatens to cave in back home. If you need a loan, you have merely to tell me.”
Despair nearly felled Grey, for offers of loans were made only to friends in the direst circumstances. Tresham’s estimation of the Dorning fortunes had apparently eroded from not that bad to nearly hopeless.
“That offer is most kind of you, Tresham, also embarrassing as hell. If I accepted your loan, when my income and expenses barely balance, how would I repay you? I’d simply dig a hole for my son or heir to dump his prospects into.”
“Peers cannot be jailed for debt. You pay back what you can when you can.”
Grey took a seat on the hard bench, though he wanted, badly, to kick something—his own backside, for example.
“Peers cannot be jailed for much of anything, which is why a titled man’s honor must be sufficient to ensure that he commits as few injustices as possible. He may blunder and stumble, but to willfully exploit the privileges of his station is contemptible.”
Tresham pulled gently on the dog’s ears. Willow, the Dorning family expert on canines, claimed dogs liked that. When Addy tugged on Grey’s ears, it certainly inspired him to wagging his tail and panting.
A Truly Perfect Gentleman Page 19
