It was this sort of posturing that Trevor saw in Lady Wharton. For whatever reason, she had decided that in order to get what she wanted she would need to appear strong. This morning that façade had slipped and when he saw her hurrying toward him he’d seen tears in her eyes. It might, he told himself, have something to do with the dowager’s attempt to lure him to London. But he thought it must be more personal than that.
Swallowing his tea, he considered the wisdom of asking her outright, then dismissed the notion. She would not take kindly to his prying into her affairs. No more than he would if their situations were reversed. But he disliked the idea of Isabella being upset. He told himself it was because she was a guest in his home, but he knew deep down there was more to it than that. He did not dare to ask what that more might be.
For now, he would wait to see if she would confide in him.
Perhaps when he told her of his plans to take his sisters shopping in York she would tell him.
Then again, perhaps she would not.
One thing he’d learned about Lady Wharton was that she would do things when she was ready and not one moment before.
Rising from the table, he set off to find Eleanor and tell her of their proposed trip.
* * *
“My tree looks like a blob of green,” Belinda said glumly, daubing paint onto the paper with her brush.
Once she’d finished her letter to Perdita, Isabella had gone in search of the Carey sisters and proposed that they spend the morning painting in the garden. The threatening letter had left her with a pang of fear in her stomach, but there was little she could do about it now. Rather than stew about it, she would lose herself in a few hours of activity.
She had found the painting supplies in the girls’ mother’s sitting room and, since it was too soon for Perdita to have sent any prospective governesses their way, she had decided that she would take up the duties of the position for now and divert both herself and the young ladies for the rest of the morning.
“No, it doesn’t look like a blob,” she said automatically to Belinda, though her tree did rather resemble a green blob. “Here,” Isabella instructed. “Do not put so much paint on your brush. It might take a bit for you to get used to the brushstrokes, but you’ll get there.”
“Like this,” Eleanor demonstrated for her sister. “It’s not difficult once you get the knack of it.”
“That’s easy for you to say,” Belinda retorted. “You’ve done this hundreds of times.”
“I can’t help it if you chose to stay home every time I went to the Greens’ to paint with Mary and Susan,” Eleanor said with a shrug.
“You know I cannot abide Mary Green, Ellie.” Belinda leaned sideways to look at how her sister was holding her brush. “She puts on such airs.”
Before Eleanor could respond, they heard a call from the doors leading out into the garden. To Isabella’s amusement, it was the Green sisters.
“Lovely,” Belinda said with a roll of her eyes. “Just when I was beginning to enjoy painting.”
“Hush, Bel,” Eleanor said with a hiss. “They’ll hear you.”
But it was obvious to Isabella, at least, that Belinda could not possibly have cared less. She wondered if Perdita had ever felt so much annoyance over Isabella’s friends. Then chided herself. Of course she had. It was the lot of younger sisters everywhere.
Eleanor gave her sister a stern look before the Greens reached them.
“Darlings,” Mary Green said with a languid drawl that Isabella had to admit was rather affected. Mary was a pretty enough girl, but her bored expression, no doubt cultivated to give herself what she thought to be an air of sophistication, just made her look sleepy. “How lovely to see you out here enjoying the beauties of nature.”
She kissed the air on either side of Eleanor’s cheeks, and when she tried to do the same to Belinda the younger girl gave her a glower that would have done the dowager proud. Isabella would gauge Mary’s age to be somewhere around Eleanor’s. Mary’s sister appeared to be slightly older.
“Lady Wharton,” Mary said when Eleanor had presented the newcomers to Isabella, offering her a perfectly correct curtsy, “I have heard so much about you. What a delight it is to finally make your acquaintance.”
Isabella returned the greeting with absent cordiality as she helped Belinda with the grip of her paintbrush. She may not have remembered Perdita’s dislike of her own friends, but she remembered quite clearly what it had been like to have a younger sister hanging on her every words with them, so she tried to occupy Belinda in an effort to free Eleanor to speak to her friends in some degree of privacy.
Mary Green had no such desire for a comfortable coze, however. Instead, she addressed all of them. “I am so pleased to find you all here,” she said, her eyes alight with pleasure, “for just this morning I have heard from Mrs. Palmer that she, too, has a guest from London. And she is planning a ball in his honor!”
“A ball!” Susan Green echoed, clapping her hands together, for the first time since their arrival showing any sort of animation. “Can you possibly imagine?”
“And I feel sure you know the man, Lady Wharton,” Mary continued, as if she were an old and dear friend of Isabella’s rather than an acquaintance of approximately three minutes. “His name is Sir Lionel Thistleback and he says he was a close personal friend of your dear departed husband.”
Isabella had been prepared to hear that this august personage from London was someone with whom she had a passing acquaintance, but to learn that he was her husband’s most intimate crony was the outside of enough. Not only did she loathe Sir Lionel, but he in turn loathed her also. For him to spread tales of their previous acquaintance among the people of the village of Nettledean was despicable, mostly because it stemmed from not a pleasant nostalgia but a wish to ingratiate himself with the neighborhood at her expense. The idea that anyone would think she approved of a man like Thistleback was repugnant. And she was prevented by good manners from saying anything of the sort. He’d tied her hands, the toad.
To the girls, however, she said none of what she was thinking. “I do know him a little,” she said, inclining her head but revealing nothing more of the true relationship between them.
“Do you think my brother might be persuaded to allow me to attend the ball?” Eleanor asked, her eyes alight with excitement. She gripped Isabella’s arm and turned a pleading gaze on her. “He won’t listen to me, Lady Wharton,” she said quickly, “but he might be persuaded by you. He listens to you.”
Aware of Mary and Susan Green’s avid gazes on her, Isabella smiled at Eleanor. It was her fondest wish that Eleanor never make Thistleback’s acquaintance. But she supposed that a country ball where Eleanor’s brother was in attendance might be the safest location for such a meeting. Besides, Isabella had little doubt that Thistleback was in the process of seducing some local widow and would pay little enough attention to a girl of Eleanor’s age. “I do not know where you got the notion that your brother hears anything I have to say, Eleanor,” she said. “But I will try to persuade him. It is a country ball, after all. And I think the social niceties are not quite so rigid as they are in town.”
“I have heard that you have a great deal of influence over the duke, Lady Wharton.” Mary’s knowing little smile was coy. “He has spoken of nothing but you since your arrival at Nettlefield.”
“I hardly think that the duke spends his days jaunting about the countryside regaling anyone who will listen with tales of my wonder.” Isabella was torn between amusement at the girl’s exaggeration and a pang of longing. After all, if the duke were really so inclined to do whatever she wished he’d pack his bags today and head off to London to kneel at the feet of his grandmother. She knew, however, that this was not the case.
It was one of the rare occasions when she found herself wishing gossip were true.
But it was Belinda who punctured Mary’s tale. “You are just trying to make yourself sound important, Mary Green! If my brother is so
influenced by Lady Wharton, then why was he shouting at her last evening?”
Before Isabella could comment, Eleanor cut in, looking daggers at her sister, “Don’t be absurd, Bel. Trevor was simply arguing his point.”
“I fear the duke was a bit overset when he learned that I’d loaned one of my gowns to Eleanor,” Isabella said with a laugh, trying to dispel any suspicions the Green sisters might have about her interactions with him, argumentative or otherwise. “It was a tempest in a teapot. And Belinda, you should apologize to Mary for insulting her. That was not well done of you.”
Mary brushed off the apology, however. “I have known Belinda since she was in leading strings,” she said cheerfully, as if she were decades older than the girl. “Tell me about the gown, Eleanor. Was it from Madame Celeste’s?”
How the girl knew which modiste she used Isabella would never know. Clearly the gossip network in Nettlefield was more robust than she’d given it credit for.
“May I see it?” Mary continued, her sophisticated pose dropping for a moment in her excitement.
“Me, too,” Susan added, grasping Eleanor’s arm. “Is it as beautiful as Lady Wharton’s other gowns?”
“More,” Eleanor confirmed. Turning to Isabella, she asked, “Is it alright if I go show Mary and Susan my gown?”
Isabella was touched that the girl thought to ask her permission at all. She was not in any position of authority over her. But she nodded to her. “Don’t forget to show them the slippers as well. The gown doesn’t work without them.”
With an eager nod, Eleanor hurried with her friends to the house, Belinda and Isabella watching them as they went.
“I’m sorry for telling them about Trevor and the yelling,” Belinda said, turning back to her painting. “I was so annoyed with Mary for pretending that she knows what Trevor thinks about things. She just likes to talk about him because he’s a duke.”
Isabella looked at the younger girl and was pleased to see she’d done a better job with the tree on the opposite side from the green blob. “I’m afraid most people are that way,” she said, speaking of Mary. “Once it becomes known that your brother has agreed to take up his role as the duke, you’ll find all of you will become the subject of gossip.”
“I won’t need to bother with that,” Belinda said firmly, “because I don’t intend to ever leave Yorkshire. I will stay here and help Mr. Woods in the stables and ignore the silly ladies of the village.” Mr. Woods was Trevor’s very patient head groom, who let Belinda run tame in the stables.
“Even if your brother decides to go to London?” Isabella asked, loath to tell the girl that she would likely not be allowed to remain in Yorkshire. “I think he might wish for you to go with him. There are many things in London that I think you would enjoy.”
Belinda scoffed. “What could the city possibly offer that the country does not?”
So Isabella spent the next hour painting companionably with a thirteen-year-old, regaling her with stories of Astley’s Ampitheatre and Rotten Row and ices at Gunter’s. By the time they’d packed up their brushes and paints and directed a footman to retrieve their canvases and easels, Belinda was less suspicious of the city, but she was still not reconciled to life as a duke’s sister.
Unfortunately, Isabella thought, when the dowager got hold of the Carey sisters Belinda would have little choice in the matter.
Six
Trevor broached the subject of a trip to York at the luncheon table and was met with distracted enthusiasm. “What’s this?” he demanded of Eleanor, somewhat deflated. “I thought you would be pleased at the notion,”
“I believe your sisters are quite pleased.” Isabella gave both Eleanor and Belinda speaking looks. “But I’m afraid Miss Mary Green brought news that Mrs. Palmer is planning a ball, and that has quite eclipsed the glamour of a prospected trip to York. Though I believe Eleanor would be quite pleased to visit the dressmaker there.”
“A ball?” Trevor asked, puzzled. “Eleanor is too young to attend a ball.”
Now Isabella turned a speaking look on him. And he was not pleased to note it said, Quiet, you imbecile! He cleared his throat. “That is to say, I had not supposed Eleanor was interested in attending balls.”
Isabella’s expression said he was doing better but would still not be winning any Brother of the Year awards.
“I believe seventeen is an acceptable age for a young lady to attend a country ball,” Isabella said. “I was sixteen when I attended a harvest ball with my school friend Elizabeth Stride, now the Countess of Cleverdon. It was excellent practice for my come-out the next year.”
“Please, Trevor,” Eleanor said, her eyes at their most plaintive. “I do not know what I’ll do if you say no. Mary Green will make me feel like the veriest child if you say I mayn’t go. Please?”
Only Belinda was content to eat her luncheon without weighing in on the conversation. Though Trevor thought he noticed a judgmental tone in the way she consumed her peas. Was ever a man more outnumbered than he?
“I suppose if Lady Wharton, who knows far more than I do about young ladies, says that it would be all right—,” Trevor began, only to be cut off by cheers from Eleanor.
“Thank you, Trevor,” she said, throwing her arms around him. “You are the best brother in the world. And I would simply adore a trip to York! There are so many things I must get now to go with my gown. I simply must have a new pair of gloves and new slippers as well. When may we go?”
They settled on a day later in the week for the trip to York and then both Eleanor and Belinda—who had by this time finished her judgmental peas—left to make a list of the things Eleanor simply must have.
Which left Trevor alone at the table with Isabella.
She seemed to have moved past whatever bad news had brought her to tears at breakfast. Of course prospective balls and the like had a way of distracting one.
“That was well done of you,” she said, her blue eyes shining with wry amusement. “I’m sorry your proposed trip to York was overshadowed by the Palmer ball. On any other day, your suggestion would have been the belle of the ball. So to speak.”
“Palmer told me that his wife had a guest from London and was planning an entertainment. I should have anticipated a ball.” Trevor did not mention that Palmer had also mentioned the fact that Sir Lionel Thistleback had been a great friend of Lord Wharton. He wondered what her own reaction to the news had been. She showed no sign of disturbance, but then she was quite adept at hiding her feelings when she wished to.
He would like to know what had been in the letters she’d received that morning. Could one of them have mentioned Thistleback’s arrival? They were hardly on such comfortable terms that he could freely ask her. And the truth of it was that it was none of his affair.
“I believe it is customary for hostesses to celebrate their guests with large entertainments,” she said, making no mention of her connection to Thistleback. “And I do think your sister will benefit from the experience. It will certainly make her more comfortable when she makes her debut. If, that is, you intend to allow her to make her bows before society.”
“I am still considering it,” Trevor said, laying his fork down on his plate to signal he’d finished. “Though I will admit that before your arrival I was much more set against the idea than I am now. I wonder if you knew when you made this trip that you’d become an advocate for my sisters. Could it be that you are growing fond of them?”
If it were possible, she sat up straighter. “I am not a block of wood, Your Grace,” she said tersely. “I am quite capable of fondness. And I believe your sisters could do with a bit of guidance from a woman. I lost my mother at a young age, too, so I suppose I understand Eleanor’s position.”
“I did not suggest that you are without feeling, Isabella,” he said, using her Christian name but not caring if she was annoyed by it. “But simply that I believe your intended purpose for making this journey has been complicated by the presence of my sisters. I have no d
oubt that the dowager would tell you to use my sisters against me. I hope that your affection for them will prevent that from happening.”
“Like it or not, Your Grace,” Isabella said her expression carefully blank, “your sisters need their family. You have plenty of female relatives in London who would be more than happy to step in and assist you as I have done. I will not be here forever. And for their sakes I hope that you will bring them to London as soon as you are able. If that opinion means that I am using your sisters against you—as you put it—then so be it. I believe that you have done an admirable job of raising them on your own. I simply think that at their age, they need their female relatives.”
“Like the dowager?” Trevor demanded, unwilling to let Isabella dismiss the matter that easily. “It’s clear she forced you to come here against your will. Would you wish my sisters into the same position?”
That surprised her. He could see it in the wideness of her eyes.
“My reasons for coming here are my own,” Isabella said curtly. “I came at the behest of my godmother, who I will admit is a difficult woman to get along with. But your sisters would be around other female relatives in London as well.”
“Do you include yourself in their number, madam?” He knew he was being an ass but was unable to keep from arguing with her. He hadn’t much considered that his own reluctance to go up to London would have deleterious effects on his sisters, and Isabella’s words stung.
Her eyes flashed, and he was oddly pleased to see that she was riled into annoyance. “As I am only related to you by marriage, Your Grace,” she said, her dark brows furrowed in temper, “I do not include myself among their number. Perdita, my sister and your late cousin’s widow, would be more than happy to sponsor Eleanor and Belinda. I merely offer this advice as a friend, but I can see that you do not count me as such.”
Why Dukes Say I Do Page 9
