“You need a valet,” Pascoe said, wandering down the corridor from his study.
“I don’t need a valet to make glass or study the stars. Can I hire a temporary valet?” Theo asked.
“Most likely not. And my Merritt is not available. He’s invaluable as far more than a valet. He can even keep books. The problem with most servants is that they’re uneducated and only trained in one task.”
“Not a problem I’m inclined to tackle,” Theo acknowledged. “Iveston is filled to overflowing with untrained, uneducated Ives progeny. Maybe I should marry a schoolteacher and keep the brats home.”
“A schoolteacher who will train them to be stewards and valets?” Pascoe hooted. “Ives don’t make good servants.”
“Outlaws, pirates, and potentates,” Theo agreed in frustration. “We’re useless.”
“Leaders and men of science are always needed. We’re just worthless for domestic purposes. Have Lady Azenor find a match for me while you’re at it. One who can tell stories to the demanding fiends in the nursery.”
“I’d rather be an outlaw,” Theo growled. Realizing he was late, he hurried off without hunting for more starched linen.
Upon reaching the lady’s street, Theo swallowed a lump of panic. Three carriages were unloading a wave of women in enormous silk sleeves, bell-like skirts, and frippery from head to toe.
The lady had been busy. If he weren’t so terrified, he’d be impressed. His future could be in one of those carriages.
He hurried to assist the women emerging from the last vehicle. Enveloped in their silks, laces, and perfumes, Theo was too overwhelmed by femininity to notice if the occupants were fair or young. They chattered to him and each other as Lady Azenor’s surly footman held the door open.
Theo entered last and the footman winked at him. Taken aback, Theo absent-mindedly clung to his hat and followed the ladies into the colorful parlor.
Azenor was garbed in peacock blue today. Unlike the others, she wore reasonable sleeves and a simple skirt that didn’t require voluminous frills. Short, compared to her guests, she still stood out like a beacon of rationality and a star in the night sky. Theo wanted to grab her and carry her off and be done with it.
Which was utter nonsense and probably a product of panic. This marriage business required a good deal more . . . sensory stimulation . . . than his solitude-loving brain could handle all at once.
He remembered to bow politely at introductions but didn’t remember a single woman’s name while he watched the footman carry off his hat.
“Miss Jenkins,” Lady Azenor reminded him, catching Theo’s arm and turning him toward a voluptuous woman wrapped to the chin in lavender. “Lord Theo is an astronomer. He says I must find empirical evidence to prove my charts are accurate.”
“As an astronomer, you should be able to duplicate Lady Azenor’s charts mathematically,” Miss Jenkins said in a voice deeper than Theo’s own. “I have done so, although I cannot deduce more than when the planets are aligned with the sun.”
“You are a mathematician?” he asked, more aware of the interesting mop of copper curls at his side than the Juno he faced.
“I enjoy numbers and equations but find little use for them in dealing with my younger sisters. Do you find astronomy useful?”
“Miss Jenkins is raising her sisters after their mother’s death,” Lady Azenor whispered. “You might marry off all your younger brothers as they come of age.”
“That will happen when the moon is discovered to be made of green cheese,” Theo murmured in his hostess’s ear. The dainty Lady Aster pinched his arm in retaliation.
He forced a smile for Juno. “Perhaps Lady Azenor should teach a class in astrology so others could learn to do what she does.”
“An excellent idea,” the lady in lavender said. “Those of us of a mathematical persuasion could form a society.”
“We need the findings of the Astronomical Society to keep our charts updated,” his hostess said with an emphasis aimed at him.
“Teach your class to repeat your findings on their own and build a case for astrology as a science,” Theo suggested, more or less facetiously. Lady Azenor did not seem to require simpering blandishments, so he felt comfortable speaking to her as one of his brothers. “Are all the ladies here of a mathematical sort or are some familiar with agriculture or other pursuits?”
Lady Azenor smiled frostily at this reminder of his needs and squeezed his arm to steer him. “If you’ll excuse us, Miss Jenkins, I should introduce his lordship to the baroness.”
“A baroness in her own right? If it means she owns land, that sounds promising,” Theo said, studying the parlor filled with milling females and fighting an urge to flee for his life. There weren’t sufficient chairs for sitting, so the women sipped tea from dainty cups and circulated in eddies, much as leaves did in a stream. He couldn’t distinguish one from another any more than he could identify leaves.
“Could I really catch the attention of the Society if I taught others to duplicate my charts?” she asked in a low voice that mirrored her doubt.
“Only if they all read the same results into them as you do. If every one of them could have predicted the king’s death and Duncan’s accident, the Society would have to listen.” Theo doubted the Society would care, but then, he doubted her predictions could be duplicated any more than his mother’s vague prophecies could be proved.
Inductive reasoning, his foot and eye. Marriage must rot a man’s brain if Herschel’s new theory was any example.
“I would love to have the information and understanding of the planets’ movements that astronomers possess. Do you produce periodicals I can peruse?” She didn’t wait for an answer but brought him to a lady of average stature, whose nondescript coloring wasn’t enhanced by the swathes of beige draped over her less-than-prepossessing figure. Judging from the wrinkles in the corners of her eyes and the slight sag of her jaw, the lady was older than Theo. Not entirely a bad thing if it meant she had the experience he required.
Theo wondered if he could interview prospective wives in the same manner he would interview a steward. Not that he knew how to interview a steward either.
“Lady Wilkins, Lord Theophilus is the gentleman of whom I spoke. My lord, the baroness owns lands in the Lake District. She is familiar with sheep. I will leave you two to talk. I wish to see if there is any interest in an astrology class.”
Lady Azenor abandoned Theo to his own devices.
“You need help with sheep?” the baroness asked in a guttural accent that revealed her foreign origins.
“My brother does. His estate is extensive, and his managers aren’t doing the job they should.” Theo wasn’t good at fabricating, but Duncan wasn’t ready to reveal his blindness to the world. “We need a good steward,” he added.
“There are no good stewards,” the lady said harshly. “You must know your herd personally. I go out with the stock each spring and take note of all the lambs. It is the only way,” she insisted.
Theo damned well wasn’t counting sheep, even in his sleep, but if the lady wanted to . . . He had to keep an open mind. Perhaps Duncan would be interested in her.
Swallowing his pride and an entire humble pie, he circulated the room. Lady Azenor had provided a wide variety of females to choose from, he had to admit. Unfortunately, they all blurred together after a while, and he couldn’t remember if the one with buck teeth knew how to play chess or if the one with the mole on her upper lip was the one who kept ledgers.
The image of his lovely, serene ex-fiancée having a hysterical, weeping fit over his household’s ramshackle behavior stood out starkly in Theo’s memory. He didn’t wish to reduce any of these pleasant ladies to similar seizures or himself or his family to the ensuing unpleasantness.
He shuddered in memory of screaming hysterics requiring sal volatile, physicians, and the shame of racing for the neighbor ladies for aid. The scolding afterward had been endless. No more fainting ladies on his doorstep, he de
cided. If he must marry, he would be firm on this point.
He worked his way back to Azenor. He had been aware of her presence at every instant, even though almost everyone in the room was taller than she. The ladies seemed to circulate around her as planets did around the sun. Understandable, he supposed, since Azenor was brighter—or at least more colorful—than any of them.
“This won’t work,” he murmured for her ears alone. “I must introduce them to Iveston.”
Her eyes widened, as if in shock at his suggestion. Then she vehemently shook her bouncy curls. “No, no, and no.”
“Why not?” he asked, prepared to insist.
“That is a recipe for disaster,” she exclaimed in horror. “If my visit to your home discovered its usual condition, you would do better to marry and make Iveston a fait accompli.”
“I don’t want to have to chain a wife to a wall to keep her,” he argued. “She needs to know what she faces.”
“I’m a librarian, not a matchmaker,” she grumbled in return.
“You are a naysayer,” he said. “Every time I make a suggestion, your response is why?”
“And every time I tell you no, your response is why not?” she retorted. “I am not being unreasonable. These are busy women. Most don’t have time for jaunts into the country. And if my recollection of your home is correct, you aren’t prepared for house guests.”
“Perspicacious,” he muttered. But his relentless brain had found a new angle and hope surged. “Help me hire servants to prepare the house. Surrey is not far and the road is good. The ladies could attend the village fete and sit down to tea with us before returning to town.”
“Hire servants . . . I am not a lion tamer either!” she protested angrily. Then she narrowed her eyes as if a new thought had occurred to her.
Theo feared he ought to be wary, but he was too desperate. “Once we have a woman in the household, we can hire regular servants. I ought to present Iveston as it could be.”
“That will take planning,” she said, the wheels visibly turning behind her bright eyes. “I trust you’re not in a hurry.”
He wanted this done yesterday. He might be the selfish lout Celia had called him, but he’d learned his lesson. He couldn’t ask a wife to be a sacrificial lamb to his brother’s melancholia. Or his family’s anarchy. He bowed. “I must prepare a paper for the Society and hire a steward. That should give you time to find a few maids and footmen who can spruce the place up a little. The fete is two weeks from today.”
“You will provide me with the latest material from the Society so I may update my charts?” she demanded.
“I will find copies of every report the Society’s members have produced and the articles that have been written this past year,” he vowed.
“All right, then. Each to their own expertise. That seems fair,” she acknowledged with a dip of her copper curls.
Theo walked back to his uncle’s house with no memory of any of the women he’d just met but feeling lighter than air because he’d tricked the managing Lady Azenor into straightening out the madhouse he called home.
Seven
“Think on it, Emilia!” Aster insisted, pacing her parlor the day after Lord Theo’s visit. “The Marquess of Ashford—the nominal head of the Ives family. He has wealth and power to spare! You could build a laboratory on his property and never worry about funding again. He won’t require anything else of you except to give him an heir. We could hire all your mother’s displaced widows and Aunt Gwenna’s orphans!”
Even a day later, she was still a trifle shaken from Lord Theo’s masculine presence in her feminine household, so much so that she’d actually dared ask her cousin to visit again. Aster took deep breaths and tried to cleanse her mind, but the sensation of his lordship’s muscular arm beneath her hand wouldn’t go away. Nor did the way he leaned in to murmur outrageous comments in her ear. Why not, indeed. She shivered at just the memory.
She forced herself to focus on Aunt Gwenna’s plea for the maimed children. If Emilia married the blind marquess . . . The entire family would have access to his powerful connections. They could accomplish a great deal of good—
If she wasn’t bringing them into imminent danger. Her Libra mind danced back and forth between opportunities and caution.
“I won’t need a husband’s funds if I marry,” Emilia pointed out, piercing Azenor’s bubble of hope. “I’ll have my own. And it sounds as if he needs someone who can act as his secretary and helpmate. That isn’t I.”
Aster sighed and straightened the mask on the wall. She wished she knew if Lord Theo had been admiring her decor or laughing at it. She would like to believe he did not consider her completely laughable.
“You are so narrow-minded! Not in a bad way,” Aster added hastily. “I understand that you must focus on your projects. But you would have land for your herb gardens. You could expand your Pharmacopoeia, build your own hospital, carry out experiments . . .”
“Do you think your Lord Theophilus could help build a better microscope?” Emilia asked wistfully.
“I’m sure he could,” Azenor agreed, not having any idea how a microscope compared with a telescope, but determined to help both his lordship and Emilia. “But Lord Theo needs help with the estate that you can’t give, and the marquess’s chart is a better match for yours. If you were the marchioness, you could hire the secretaries he needed. And I could train orphans as servants in the household without becoming too involved with anyone. Iveston Hall could use an army of help!”
“It would be better if you could marry Lord Theo,” Emilia said. “Besides, you said the marquess isn’t looking for a wife.”
“Yet. He might be persuaded in time.” There was the other fly in her grandiose hopes. Aunt Daphne needed help for her widows immediately, as did Aunt Gwenna’s orphans. Could they wait until the marquess was ready to face Parliament again?
Perhaps she was getting ahead of herself. “All right, if we must concentrate on Lord Theo, we really should offer choices from our family first. I’m convinced we have the most to offer.” Except for that conjunction with Mars, she corrected mentally. It was just so unlikely for such distant families to affect one another that she thought surely she had read her charts wrong. “We need to organize his household so we might introduce him to our family.”
“We don’t have time to bring in any of our unmarried relations,” Emilia pointed out. “Only Briana and Deidre are in London right now, and Deirdre is already affianced.”
Their younger sisters had their own pursuits and weren’t any more inclined toward household duties than Emilia, Aster knew. Sometimes this planning business put her mind in a whirl. She changed direction again. “I’m not certain our sisters are safe going to Iveston, even if I didn’t go with them. And they know nothing of organizing households on their own.”
“They’re the only ones old enough and available. We don’t want any chance of matching an Ives to the younger girls! So I think that lets our family out of the equation.” Emilia set down her teacup firmly.
Aster sighed. “This sounded like a good idea at first. Iveston really could use a raft of your mother’s workhouse women and perhaps even some of Gwenna’s disabled children. And the chance to influence a powerful marquess is priceless.”
“I’m not averse to considering one of the younger brothers as a husband, even if it is not Lord Theo,” Emilia admitted. “But if you intend to hold a formal tea at Iveston for your friends, you will need help. Is it safe to take Bree and Dee with you?”
“If they’ll consent to help, I’ll try to stay out of their way as much as possible,” Aster reluctantly agreed, pondering how this might be done without her presence endangering her family. She was hoping the older girls knew to stay out of her way as much as she knew to stay away from them.
Could she actually prevent the danger she saw in her charts if she was at Iveston? It didn’t seem likely, but . . .
Normally, she wouldn’t even consider being in the same ho
use as her family. But so many things rested on taking this chance! She needed to marry off Emilia, find positions for her aunt’s impoverished women, somehow obtain Ashford’s help for Gwenna’s legislation, and obtain Lord Theo’s astronomical aid to improve her charts.
In addition, if she helped Lord Theo find a wife, that would enhance her reputation as an astrologer. Surely a matchmaker would be a valuable commodity? If only she could foresee what trouble she might cause in less than a fortnight!
“I suppose arranging a house party at the last minute does present complications,” Emilia said with a sigh. “This really is not one of your saner expeditions.”
“I would fare better if more of us were of an age or personality to be managing types, or at least available on short notice,” Aster admitted. “Still, Bree and Dee and you will give us a good chance of capturing Lord Theophilus’s interest. Or maybe . . . if we’re really good . . . Ashford’s.”
Emilia crinkled her nose. “I should think it would be too soon if he’s suffering from his fiancée’s rejection as well as his injuries. But I should like to have a look at his head. Phrenology has developed some wonderful insights into the human mind.”
“You would make a marvelous marchioness,” Aster insisted, burying her anxiety in favor of a positive outcome. “But if I am to do this, we need to organize. I have two footmen, two trained maids, and three almost-trained maids. If you’ll bring your housekeeper, we can call on your mother’s collection of untrained women, and possibly have nearly a dozen warm bodies at our disposal. If we’re only preparing for an afternoon tea, we don’t need to tackle the upper chambers, just the company rooms.”
“You cannot expect me to organize a housekeeping crew!” Emilia exclaimed. “I’ll send Mrs. Barnes, but you’re on your own until the day of the fete.”
“Emilia, I need a chaperone! Maids aren’t enough.” Aster tried not to shout her distress. “These are Ives! The object is to enhance my reputation, not lose it, and I most certainly don’t want to be trapped in a compromising situation requiring marriage. It would be disastrous.”
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