The Misguided Matchmaker

by Nadine Miller

  Maddy frowned. “I thought you said she was in love with your brother. I’m a firm believer that any woman can find the courage she needs to fight for the man she loves. Now what must I do to meet this shy, retiring lady?”

  “She’ll be at Almack’s tonight. Her mama has dragged her there every Wednesday night since she’s been back on the marriage market.”

  Maddy groaned. “Then Almack’s it is, and for the good of the cause, I shall even do my best to be civil to the very uncivil Lady Jersey.”

  Almack’s was a shock. Maddy had expected this most exclusive social club in London to be elegant in the extreme. The large, overheated room into which Lady Ursula led Caro and her was, in fact, rather tacky with its swags of dingy velvet and sagging balconies supported by columns too ill proportioned to claim close kinship to their Greek ancestors.

  “Don’t make the mistake of eating or drinking anything,” Caro whispered behind her fan. “Almack’s is noted for its stale cake, salty ham, and warm lemonade.”

  “Then why is it considered such an honor to be invited to this ugly pace?” Maddy whispered back.

  “The seven patronesses are the most powerful hostesses in the ton. One word from them and a person will never again receive an invitation to any affair of importance.” Caro shrugged. “Actually, Emily Cowper and Lady Maria Sefton are quite nice, but the rest of them…well, you’ve met Lady Sally Jersey. The other four grandes dames are more of the same, except they don’t talk as much.

  Lady Ursula glanced nervously over her shoulder. “Shhhh, girls. Behave yourself. It is absolutely essential that Madelaine make a good impression on her first visit to Almack’s.”

  Behind her mother’s back, Caro made a moue and Maddy fought the urge to giggle. “Do you see Lady Sarah?” she asked Caro as they made their way through the crown of hopeful debutantes and their mothers gathered to see and be seen at London’s famous marriage mart.

  “She’s across the room, standing at the edge of the dance floor with her father and mother,” Carolyn answered. “I’ll waylay her and take her to the ladies’ retiring room. You can join us there.”

  Maddy glanced in the direction indicated. But her view of Lady Sarah was cut off by an exceedingly fat woman, dressed all in purple, who was bearing down on them. With a white ostrich feather topping her purple turban by a good two feet, she looked for all the world like a mammoth purple frigate in full sail. Trotting beside her was the redoubtable Lady Jersey.

  “Ah, Lady Ursula. We’ve not seen you in an age,” the purple frigate declared in a voice that carried the length and breadth of the vast room. She raised a lorgnette encrusted with amethysts and studied Maddy from head to toe. “So this is the chit Rand’s chosen to pull his fat from the fire.”

  Lady Ursula blanched. “May I present my son’s fiancée, Miss Madelaine Harcourt, Your Grace,” she said, one word tripping over another in her nervous agitation. “Madelaine, dear, make your curtsy to Her Grace, the Duchess of Sherbourne.”

  Maddy dropped into a graceful curtsy; though, in truth, she would as lief have cut the rude old woman dead, and her haughty companion with her.

  “Humpf! Too scrawny for my taste, but surprisingly good bone structure for a cit’s daughter.” The duchess lowered her lorgnette, but continued to study Maddy as if she were a filly at auction. “So, miss, we know who your father is, but what sort of woman was your mother? Never heard Harcourt was leg-shackled; now all at once he’s purporting to be a widower.

  “My mother was the daughter of le Compte de Navareil,” Maddy said, staring down her nose with true de Navareil hauteur at this impossible creature who dared impugn her lineage. “She did not find London to her liking and returned to my grandfather’s home in Lyon six years after her marriage.”

  “Impudent chit,” the duchess grumbled. “I suppose you think that with old Harcourt’s money behind you, you’ll make quite a splash in London society as the new Countess of Rand.”

  “The thought had not occurred to me, Your Grace,” Maddy said demurely. Raising her fan in the manner she’d been practicing since observing Tristan’s Austrian archduchess, she leaned forward and remarked sotto voce, “I am accustomed to my grandfather’s salon, which attracted the most brilliant political minds in Europe, you see. I believe I should find anything less stimulating to be utterly boring.”

  The duchess drew back as if she’d been stung by a wasp. For one instant, her already florid face turned as purple as the turban topping it. Then she threw back her head in a guffaw that had all eyes in the room riveted on her. “You’ve spirit, gel, I’ll say that for you. What say you, Lady Jersey, has your precious Almack’s seen the likes of this cheeky baggage before?”

  Lady Jersey made an indistinguishable sound and the duchess returned her basilisk gaze to Maddy. “Take my arm, gel,” she commanded. “We’ll promenade the room together and I’ll introduce you to a few people of consequence.”

  Reluctantly, Maddy slipped her hand through the old harridan’s plump arm. She had acted in a moment of pique; now she was trapped by her own reckless tongue into being introduced to people in whom she had no interest whatsoever—for the only person she really wanted to meet was Lady Sarah Summerhill.

  One face blurred into another as they slowly made their way around the perimeter of the dance floor to the accompaniment of a great deal of curtsying and bowing whenever the old lady stopped to chat with an acquaintance. Lady Ursula, Lady Jersey, and Carolyn trailed behind like the duchess’s retinue.

  “Ah, Viscount Tinsdale, and how are you and your lovely ladies tonight?” The duchess stopped before a small, somewhat portly middle-aged man whose face was frozen in an expression so haughty, it looked as if even a hint of a smile might crack it into a thousand pieces. He was flanked by two petite blondes—one young, one not so young.

  Maddy registered the look of distress on the face of the younger of the two and suddenly she knew why she had been singled out to go on the strut with the duchess. The old she-cat was undoubtedly taking great pleasure in the pain and embarrassment her cruel public introduction of the Earl of Rand’s fiancée was causing his former sweetheart.

  Caro, God bless her, left her mother’s side to embrace Lady Sarah warmly. “How wonderful to see you,” she exclaimed. “We are long overdue for a cozy chat.” Turning her back on the duchess, she wrapped an arm about Lady Sarah’s slender waist and hurried her toward a nearby door which Maddy assumed led to the ladies’ retiring room.

  “Well I never!” the duchess exclaimed. “Someone should teach that gel of yours a few manners, Lady Ursula.” She yanked her arm from Maddy’s grasp. “I’ve had enough of this ridiculous walking about. I suddenly find I am unbearably fatigued.”

  Maddy smiled benignly. “I imagine you are, Your Grace. It has been my observation that exhaustion often sets in once the sport is ended.”

  “Well, I never!” the duchess said again, and stalked off in an obvious huff.

  “Oh my dear, what have you done?” Lady Ursula withdrew a handkerchief from her reticule and mopped the beads of perspiration from her forehead. “You have been most foolish. And Carolyn as well. I feel you have both made a powerful enemy.”

  “Nonsense,” Lady Jersey said. “It’s time someone put the evil old besom in her place—and so cleverly too. Bravo, Miss Harcourt. It was exactly the sort of thing I’m famous for saying myself. For what it is worth, you have made a friend as well as an enemy, and I flatter myself I wield every bit as much power in the ton as the duchess.”

  She gave Maddy a hearty kiss on the cheek. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I cannot wait to spread the titillating on-dit of how a slip of a girl squelched the dreadful duchess.” She smiled engagingly. “Would you care to join me, Lady Tinsdale?”

  Utterly befuddled, Maddy stared after the two women, who left arm in arm. There was simply no understanding the English.

  Viscount Tinsdale remained where he was, looking more than ever as if he had spent the last ten minutes sucking a lemon
. He raised his quizzing glass to stare at Maddy. “Your defense of my daughter places me in your debt, Miss Harcourt. If ever I may be of service to you, please feel free to call upon me.”

  Maddy smiled sweetly at the little viscount. “Thank you, my lord,” she said with utmost gravity. “You may be certain I shall remember that in days to come.”

  She looked about her for Caro, but neither she nor Lady Sarah were anywhere in sight. She turned to ask Lady Ursula where she might find the ladies’ retiring room, but the older woman’s answer was lost in the confusion of a hoard of nattily dressed dandies descending on them. All demanded an introduction to Maddy and a good half of them scribbled their names on her dance card despite her protest she only knew two country dances.

  Luckily, the next set was the Sir Roger de Coverley, one of the two dances her instructor had taught her, and with an experienced partner, she survived the ordeal of her first public appearance on a ballroom floor quite nicely.

  Before her next partner could claim her, she slipped behind one of the columns, waited until the set began, then searched out the ladies retiring room. As she’d suspected, it was here that Caro and Lady Sarah were hiding out.

  “I’ve told Sarah everything I know,” Caro whispered, to keep from being overheard by the only other occupants of the room—a woman and her daughter repairing the damage the girl had sustained to her hemline in the last dance set. “You were right about women in love,” she continued with a smile. “Sarah said she will do anything you ask her to if it means there’s the slightest chance Garth and she can marry.”

  Lady Sarah gave Maddy a shy smile, so like that of the earl. Maddy liked her instantly. She returned Lady Sarah’s smile with one of her own, then held her finger to her lips to caution the two young women gazing at her so hopefully to keep silent until the woman and her daughter completed their repairs and left the room.

  “I’ve thought long and hard about what we should do, and I’ve come up with an idea,” she said once the three of them were alone. “It’s a wee bit daring, but my father is a stubborn man. Nothing short of Draconian measures will convince him to relinquish his plan to make me a countess.”

  Maddy studied the pale, taut faces of her co-conspirators. “Are you game, ladies?”

  Without a moment’s hesitation, two blonde heads nodded their agreement.

  “Very well. Then here is what we must do first…”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Carolyn’s brief note addressed to Garth was delivered to Winterhaven by one of the grooms from the Ramsdens’ London townhouse. It arrived just as Tristan and he sat down to an early dinner on a rainy Friday evening the week after the rest of the family had decamped from the country estates. Garth broke the seal and read it aloud.

  My dearest Garth:

  Mama has been persuaded to give a prenuptial dinner honoring Maddy and you, Friday week at eight o’clock and has asked me to write you requesting your presence at the affair. Also, please make certain to bring Tristan with you. The success of the endeavor depends, to a great extent, on both of you attending. It is terribly important that you do not fail us in this.

  Your loving sister

  Caro

  Garth folded the letter neatly and slipped it beneath the rim of his plate. “Now what the devil do you make of that?” he asked. “It sounds more like a summons to a council of war than an invitation to dinner.”

  He frowned thoughtfully. “And who could have persuaded Mama to host yet another dinner celebrating my wedding? I distinctly remember forbidding her to commit to any social events except those absolutely mandatory to preserve the proprieties. Doesn’t the woman realize she is pushing me beyond my limits?”

  “Harcourt is probably the instigator,” Tristan said bitterly. “He is bound and determined to make the wedding the most extravagant social event of the Season.”

  Absentmindedly, Garth toyed with his fork, his fair brows drawn together in a frown. “I suppose we have no choice but to do as Caro requests.”

  “So it would appear,” Tristan said, though it boggled his mind to contemplate attending the miserable event. With the utmost effort, he managed to hide his lacerated feelings beneath a reassuring smile; Garth had enough to contend with without listening to his problems as well.

  He pushed aside his plate of braised lamb shanks and new potatoes, one of Mrs. Peterman’s specialties, to which he’d been looking forward just half an hour earlier. Now the very thought of choking down a morsel of food gagged him. “You will have to return to the city soon anyway to be fitted for your wedding clothes,” he reminded Garth. “I suppose Friday is as good a day as any to do so.”

  His brother nodded his agreement. “You are right, of course.” He speared a piece of meat with his fork, only to return it to his plates uneaten. “And you must be fitted as well. It would never do to have my best man making a shabby appearance at the most elegant wedding of the Season.”

  Until this moment, Tristan had managed to keep too busy with the renovation of Winterhaven to dwell on the prospect of his part in the coming nuptials. Now all at once he was faced with the reality of standing before the altar of St. George’s and watching the woman he loved become his brother’s wife.

  “Very well,” he said grimly. “We will go to London and let Weston and his fellows outfit the both of us. But, on second thought, I believe I shall forgo Lady Ursula’s dinner and devote the evening to quizzing the lads at Whitehall on the latest news of the Corsican.”

  “But Caro made it very clear in her note that it is urgent both of us attend,” Garth said, sounding near to panic. “Do so for my sake, if nothing else. Please, Tris, I need your support. I cannot face this blasted dinner or any of the other pre-wedding celebrations alone.”

  It was too much. Something inside Tristan snapped. The emotions he had held in check all the long, frustrating weeks he’d spent with Maddy, overflowed like a swollen creek flooding its banks at spring runoff. “Devil take it, Garth, you ask more of me than I have to give. Do you think you are the only man who has ever known the pain of heartbreak?”

  Shock. Disbelief. Stunned realization. In rapid succession the feelings spawned by Tristan’s impassioned words played across Garth’s ashen features. “Dear God,” he moaned. “How could I have been so blind? All this time, I have been wallowing in my own self-pity you have been suffering as well. Why didn’t you tell me you were in love with Miss Harcourt?”

  Tristan opened his mouth to protest that his affections were not attached, but closed it again instantly. He could see from the look on Garth’s face that it was too late to deny the truth he had inadvertently blurted out.

  “What would I have accomplished with such a confession?” he asked, cringing at the anguish in his brother’s eyes. “What have I accomplished now with my stupid outburst, except add to your misery?”

  Garth rested his forearms on the table and pinned Tristan with a look that demanded nothing short of the complete, unexpurgated truth. “Does Miss Harcourt know how you feel about her?” he asked quietly.

  “Yes.”

  “And does she feel the same about you?”

  Tristan slumped in his chair and stared morosely at the food congealing on his plate, unable to meet his brother’s penetrating gaze. “I have reason to believe she does.”

  “I’m sure you do. How I missed it, I cannot imagine. Now that I think about it, every word she’d uttered since our first meeting has pertained in some way to you.”

  Garth pounded his fist on the table. “The cit and his threats be damned. I will cancel my engagement to Miss Harcourt and find some other way to put my affairs in order. Nothing could induce me to save my own skin at the expense of my brother’s happiness.”

  Tristan bolted upright. “You will do no such thing. Your magnanimous gesture would be for naught. Harcourt would never agree to his daughter marrying a nameless bastard, much less and impecunious one. I have resigned myself to the fact that Maddy can never be mine; I am only grateful th
at in marrying you, she will be spared the cruelty and abuse suffered by most women who are married solely for their dowry.”

  Grimly, he folded his serviette and placed it on the table before his plate. “Her courageous spirit has survived the tyranny of her grandfather and the foolish scheming of her father. I could not bear to see it trampled beneath the heels of a blatant opportunist who saw in her nothing more than the means of getting his hands on a fortune.”

  The sudden flush suffusing Garth’s cheeks reminded Tristan he has just verbalize the very reason why his brother had agreed to the marriage in the first place. “You know what I mean,” he finished lamely.

  “And you know full well no woman will ever experience anything but kindness and respect from me. But I doubt that will make Miss Harcourt any happier to become my bride.” Garth searched Tristan’s face with troubled eyes. “Nor, I think, will it ease your loss sufficiently to make you wish to spend the rest of your life watching her be wife to your brother. I know I could not stand to see Sarah once she wed another.”

  “Lord Castlereagh has asked me to represent him in either Vienna or Paris once Bonaparte is put to rout. I have agreed,” Tristan said simply.

  “As I thought.” Bitterness sharpened Garth’s voice. “In gaining the solution to my financial problems, I shall lose the two people I love most in the world—Sarah and you. I am beginning to think the price of being the Earl of Rand is too dear to pay.”

  “But one you will pay, nevertheless, because the alternative is even more unthinkable.” Tristan rose from his chair and clapped a hand to Garth’s shoulder. “Be of stout heart, my brother. I am told time heals all—even broken hearts. In the meantime, we can but take it one day at a time.”

  He managed a halfhearted smile. “What say we ride up to the city tomorrow morning instead of waiting ‘til Friday? We can dispense with the tedious business at Weston’s, then take rooms at the Clarendon and live the life of carefree bachelors for the balance of the remaining days—and nights. It has been years since we have enjoyed the pleasures of London together.”