Diary of an Accidental Wallflower

by Jennifer McQuiston

  “True.” Lucy stirred her watercress with a dubious fork. “And at least they marched on foot, instead of riding their poor horses.”

  Clare pressed her lips together to keep from tossing her own opinion into the mix. She thought it was rather doubtful the sort of men who had marched from Kennington could even afford a horse, much less one used primarily for riding. After all, it was a cause for commoners, working men who wished to have a say in their own destiny in the form of voting rights and the ability to serve in Parliament. But while the crowd of a hundred thousand had certainly been impressive, it was also a little frightening, and the talk in London’s drawing rooms had been ringing with an undercurrent of anxiety ever since.

  Clare had hidden her instinctive sympathy behind a well-placed smile, even as Parliament had scrambled to find a way to silence them.

  “I think the new rules limiting public assembly are a load of horse piss. Why, those same rules could be presumed to apply to church, or even school.” Geoffrey brightened, punctuating the air with his fork. “In fact, maybe I should refuse to return to classes at Eton. It could be treasonous to assemble in such a fashion, after all.”

  The paper lowered again. Their father frowned. “You are aware, are you not, that your latest capers have earned you an expulsion? This is different than last November’s suspension. You won’t be returning, at least not to Eton, though God knows who will take you now. And horse piss is hardly a phrase appropriate for the breakfast table.”

  Geoffrey looked down at his plate. “I know what an expulsion is, Father,” he grumbled.

  Their father lifted the paper again. “Then perhaps you should have considered that before you irrevocably angered the headmaster with your latest escapade.”

  Though she secretly agreed, Clare felt Geoffrey’s acute discomfort. Lucy must have felt a similar solidarity for their beleaguered sibling, because she pushed her plate away and cleared her throat loudly. “Well, I, for one, know all about horse piss. And I am thinking of taking up a new cause. The way Londoners treat their animals is appalling. Did you know the average life of an omnibus horse is only four years?”

  Clare groaned. “Lucy, don’t you think your time would be better spent focusing on matters more pertinent to your immediate future?” Such as your hair? “You are coming out next year,” she continued, “but one would never know it to look at you. Don’t you want a Season? A husband? A life?”

  “Oh, yes, this grand scheming for a handsome, titled husband, as if that alone should be enough to fulfill my hopes and dreams.” Lucy’s blue eyes narrowed. “Do tell us about your adventures in attempted matrimony, dear sister. Did your twisted ankle hold up well enough to dance with Mr. Alban last night?”

  Clare made a shushing motion with her hand, but it was too late.

  “Mr. Alban?” This time her father laid the paper firmly down. “Isn’t this the same gentleman who came to call, the one we are keeping secret from your mother?”

  Clare winced as she met her father’s blue eyes through the lens of his spectacles. “You . . . ah . . . knew about Mr. Alban’s visit?”

  And more importantly, what did this knowledge mean?

  It was too soon to force Alban to a formal introduction with her family, of that she was sure. Until she sorted out how to mend the damage rendered by her ill-fated decision to sit in the wallflower line last night, she needed to be more careful than ever with her future duke.

  “Of course.” Father folded the Times calmly, then straightened his jacket. The gesture sent the faint scent of pipe tobacco and peppermint wafting across the table, a comforting smell Clare had always associated with her father. “Wilson would never admit a gentleman caller without informing me of the fact. Mr. Alban was recently declared Harrington’s heir, wasn’t he? To hear the talk, he is a respectable young man.”

  “Yes.” Clare leaned forward, her hands splayed against the table. “Please, oh please don’t tell Mother,” she begged. “She will devise some embarrassing scheme to throw me at him, much as she did with Mr. Meeks last year.” She still bore the mental scars from that encounter.

  No doubt Meeks felt similarly.

  “Given that I scarcely ever see your mother these days, I can’t imagine it will be a difficult confidence to keep.” Her father offered her a thin smile and handed the paper across the table to her. “Now, what is this about twisting your ankle?”

  Clare’s fingers clenched around the delicate edges of the newsprint. “’Tis nothing of consequence.” Nothing, that was, except four weeks of misery and a threat to her future.

  “Should I summon Dr. Bashings to have a look at you?”

  “No.” Clare choked on the word. Despite her near misstep last night, Dr. Bashings was dreadfully old and smelled of cabbage. She lived in abject fear of his affinity for leeches. “Mother has arranged for another doctor to come by and check on me this morning.” She felt a curious flare of anticipation at the thought. Why would she look forward to seeing a man she was quite sure she disliked? “We met Dr. Merial last night, at Lady Austerley’s ball. He’s the countess’s personal physician.” She tossed a glare at Lucy. “And no, I did not enjoy an opportunity to dance with Mr. Alban last night.”

  But Sophie certainly had, hadn’t she?

  “I am sorry,” Lucy offered, and seemed to mean it.

  Clare took a determined sip of her coffee, contemplating how to turn the conversation back around to Lucy’s peculiar ideas on animals and Geoffrey’s recent expulsion.

  Anything to deflect the attention from her own sad state of affairs.

  Her father, however, was finished. He rose, and with another tug on his waistcoat, announced, “Well, I suppose I’m off, then. Let me know how it goes with the new doctor. Dr. Bashings isn’t getting any younger, and we’ll probably need to consider a proper replacement soon.”

  Geoffrey and Lucy scrambled to their feet, eager to see Father to the door, according to family tradition. Clare, of course, was in no condition to scramble anywhere, much less see him off. Instead, she offered her cheek for a quick kiss, knowing that once Father left for his club, he would be gone for the entire day. Not that she blamed him for doing what he must to avoid a forced conversation with Mother.

  As the dining room fell quiet, she stared down at the mystery of her coffee, as bitter as the secrets of her parents’ marriage. The beverage, at least, would be improved with a hefty dose of sugar, but she was afraid that after her discovery last night, her parents’ near-estrangement might soon become an even more unpleasant thing to swallow.

  Clare reached for the sugar bowl, but hesitated at the point of dumping the contents into her cup. She had a dreadful sweet tooth and usually didn’t worry about such things, given that her figure fell more on the slight side. But she also had an entire wardrobe full of new gowns already made, awaiting their own debut this Season and carefully cut to her current measurements. In the thick of the Season, there would no time for further alterations.

  She thought back to last night’s conversation with Dr. Merial, and how he’d accused her of being too thin. Blasted man.

  What did he know?

  An image returned, of Sophie’s malicious smile just before she placed her hand in Mr. Alban’s. That was enough to make Clare shove the sugar bowl aside and place her napkin down over her half-eaten plate. She had four potential weeks of inactivity stretching before her, and she refused to emerge from this penance with a healed ankle but clothing that no longer fit.

  Even if her waistline wasn’t in jeopardy, her future clearly was.

  She had not achieved her stunning social success by being willing to smile while others grabbed at the treasure she wanted. She could afford to give her ankle one week to heal, two at the most. And then her foot was going back in a slipper, and she was going back on the dance floor.

  Chapter 8

  Daniel was directed to the drawing room by a stone-faced butler who had clearly been instructed to expect him. Aside from the orchestrated exc
hange of money, presumably to cover today’s visit and last night’s services, this felt far more like a social visit than an examination, and the sun-soaked room papered in gold and blue did little to dispel the notion.

  The faint smell of lemon oil niggled at his memory, reminding him of a time when he lived in a house where someone had cared enough to polish the furniture. But that was where the domestic association ended. This parlor was nothing like the small but well-kept cottage where he’d spent the first ten years of his life. Gilt-framed watercolors hung on the wall, and the thick carpet beneath his feet muffled even the most determined of footfalls. After the austerity of his rented rooms and the squalor of the Bow and Stratford omnibus, the comfort and opulence of Lord Cardwell’s drawing room felt a bit like someone had tossed sand in his eye.

  Much like Miss Westmore herself.

  This morning she was sitting on an overstuffed sofa, clad in a day dress of deep blue silk, her head bent over a bit of embroidery. Without the distraction of a flounced ball gown, she seemed even prettier than he remembered. Perhaps it was the way this particular shade of blue brightened her rich, chestnut-brown hair and made her skin glow like polished marble. Or perhaps that was merely the fanciful brightness of the sun, bouncing off the wallpaper and shimmering like a halo against her head.

  “Dr. Merial has arrived, Lady Clare,” the butler announced in a grand, stiff fashion.

  She looked up and frowned. “Thank you, Wilson.”

  As the butler departed, she looked down again, the needlework in her hand clearly a more interesting prospect than the coming appointment. Presumably she did not feel the same keen edge of anticipation that had consumed him the past half hour. Daniel tamped down his rising irritation—damnably inconvenient thing that it was—and forced himself to take more clinical stock of the situation. She had her right foot elevated on a stool.

  He wasn’t sure what he’d expected, but after her near-tantrum the night before, it hadn’t been this docile creature, sitting still as a church mouse.

  He looked around the room as he waited to be noticed. Behind the sofa, beneath the arch of a picture window, two young men were sitting cross-legged on the floor, their blond heads bent over a chessboard. Lady Cardwell, notably, was nowhere to be seen.

  Not that her presence last night had served as anything close to a proper chaperone.

  “Were you going to come in?” Miss Westmore’s voice sounded clipped. She still wasn’t looking at him, but it was a small improvement over being ignored.

  He obligingly stepped toward her, his leather satchel clasped in both hands. “I see you’ve chosen to heed my advice and keep off your ankle. Obedient little thing, aren’t you?”

  “Obedient?” Her head jerked up and the needlework slipped from her lap. “Bother it all!” She lifted an index finger to her mouth and glared up at him. “You’ve made me stab myself.”

  Daniel chuckled. “And here I was given to believe you were the graceful one.”

  Her frown deepened. “My mother should not have said that last night.” She cast an uneasy glance behind her, toward the two young men. They could only be family, sitting as they were on the floor, chins on their hands, staring at the board.

  Daniel set his bag down on a nearby table but didn’t open it. He’d brought a draught of laudanum, thinking that perhaps she would be in pain. He had further considered the drug might lull her into acquiescence if she’d decided to be unruly about it all, but it seemed she was resolved to be more level-headed than he’d imagined. “Well, I am sorry if I have startled you with my choice of words. I confess to being startled myself. After your exuberant arguments of last night, I’d expected calisthenics from your quarter,” he teased. “Or at the least, a petulant walk in Hyde Park.”

  Hazel eyes widened, a hair too innocently. “Why, however would I outrun the geese?” Daniel choked back a snort of laughter as she turned her head toward the figures on the floor. “Lucy, be a dear and go and fetch Mother,” she called out. “Dr. Merial is here.”

  One of those blond heads popped up from the chessboard. “But I’ve nearly got Geoffrey in checkmate, and I don’t trust him alone with the pieces,” a feminine voice protested. “And isn’t Mother still asleep? It’s scarcely ten o’clock.”

  Daniel blinked in surprise. This, then, was Lucy.

  The clumsy one who owned a pair of shoes that would make a Quaker proud.

  With her hair pulled back in a masculine queue and her shoulders hunched over, he’d made an incorrect presumption she’d been male. First impressions of gender aside, his second impression did little better to convince him of a familial connection to the delicately fashioned Miss Westmore. This girl’s bones were broad, her nose slightly upturned. Her hair was a pale blond, the color of sun-baked straw, whereas Miss Westmore’s rich brown tresses scattered the light. But despite those differences, something in the tilt of the girl’s chin reminded him very much of the woman who had sparred with him from the wallflower line last night.

  The second head came up to regard him curiously, a young man of perhaps twelve or thirteen, just growing into his skin. “You’re the new doctor?” He inclined his golden head. “Fecking handsome sod, aren’t you?”

  “Geoffrey!” exclaimed Miss Westmore, blushing furiously.

  Daniel regarded the young man with a raised brow. It wasn’t as if his appearance wasn’t already a bit of a lodestone around his neck, attracting constant female attention, no matter how poorly deserved. But he’d not come here today and sacrificed the shilling for omnibus fare to suffer such ribbing at the hands of Miss Westmore’s spot-faced brother.

  “Bit of a bully trap for you, I’d imagine, having a face like that.” The young man stood up, knocking over the chessboard and earning a cry of protest from his sister. “The prettier boys at Eton tend to get their mettle tested.” He grinned as he walked toward Daniel, a jaunty bounce to his step. “You sure don’t look like old Dr. Bashings.”

  “Er . . . thank you.” Daniel turned back to his patient, hoping to proceed with the more pertinent matters at hand, but Miss Westmore refused to meet his eye.

  In fact, she had buried her face in her hands.

  “I bet you know the proper names for all sorts of things,” young Geoffrey went on. He grabbed Daniel’s arm and pulled him to one side. “I’ve been hoping to probe the mind of a more educated man,” he whispered. “Not that I engage in such activities, but I am asking for a friend, you know.” He chanced a look behind them, no doubt checking for spies in their ranks. “Will you really go blind?”

  “Blind?” Daniel echoed.

  The boy’s ears were turning a bit pink now. “You know. For doing . . . that.”

  “Er . . . what is that, exactly?”

  Geoffrey squirmed. His voice lowered to a whisper probably meant only for Daniel’s ears but which still carried far too loudly “I know the common names for it, of course. Pulling the pudding. Tossing off. But maybe you’ve got something more polished? A phrase to impress my friends?”

  The unfortunate light dawned. Not that Daniel believed current medical opinions on the practice, which claimed such things led to a variety of volatile complaints, from stomach ills to cancerous humors. Speaking as a scientist, nothing untoward had ever happened to him as a result. But they were in mixed company, no matter how quietly the boy whispered.

  He fished about in his mind for a more acceptable alternative to the word “masturbation,” one the present company was unlikely to know. “Ah . . . perhaps onania would serve?”

  A strangled gasp came from Miss Westmore’s quarter. She clearly had better hearing—and a more impressive vocabulary—than he’d imagined.

  “Onania.” Geoffrey canted his head. “Carries a nice, phonetic ring, that does.”

  “Better still, it encompasses any range of delinquencies.” Daniel patted the young man on the shoulder. After all, he remembered what it was like to be such an age, and possessed of unwieldy urges and no common sense. “And for what
it’s worth, you may tell your friend that I believe the rumors of blindness are greatly overexaggerated.”

  Not that he should be encouraging the scamp to greater curiosity. He had a feeling a bit of knowledge could be a dangerous thing in this one’s hands.

  CLARE RAISED HER head, sorting through the flood of unwelcome emotions unleashed by Dr. Merial’s deft handling of the situation with her degenerate brother.

  Respect, embarrassment, and anger collided at the top of the list.

  “Geoffrey, I am sure Dr. Merial has more important things to worry about than your vocabulary,” she snapped.

  But now it was Lucy’s turn to elbow her way into the fray. “I understand you provided some assistance to my sister last night, Dr. Merial,” she exclaimed. “I told her she ought to see a physician yesterday at the park, but she insisted on going to the ball anyway. She’s quite stubborn when she sets her mind to something.”

  “I’d noticed.” The doctor grinned. “I’d wager she didn’t even thank you for the loan of your helpful shoe, did she?”

  Lucy’s cheeks reddened. “You saw my shoe?” Her fingers reached up, self-consciously pulling several strands of hair down from the old-fashioned queue. “I . . . ah . . . it was not my normal shoe, of course. I only wear those when I am tromping about in the stables.”

  Far from inspiring hope for her sister’s future, Lucy’s fumbling attempts to tame her hair and explain her choice of footwear made Clare’s patience snap clean in two.

  For heaven’s sake. He was only a doctor.

  “Lucy and Geoffrey, if you will loosen your hold on Dr. Merial for a moment, he’s come here for a different reason than to be pestered by either of you.” She glared at the man and pointed to her propped ankle. “Or is this delay part of your devious plan to charge by the hour, Doctor?”