‘Yes. It is, even now, waiting at the foot of your front steps,’ said Edmund with a slight emphasis on the word waiting.
Which was enough of a hint to spur Stepmama into action.
‘Yes, run along upstairs, girls, and get your coats and bonnets on, do,’ she said, making a shooing motion with her hands. ‘His lordship does not like to be kept waiting.’
‘Are you not coming with us, Mama?’
‘No, my dear,’ she answered Sukey with a complaisant smile. ‘I am sure I have no need to chaperon you when you will be escorted by none other than his lordship.’ She shot him a sickly smile. ‘And each other,’ she added, sternly. Although she had her sights set on a title for Sukey, she had no wish for her daughter to go off alone with anyone, no matter how high ranking they might be, and acquire a reputation for being fast. It would be fatal to her chances of marrying well.
Georgiana and Sukey rose to their feet, dropped dutiful curtsies and made their way to the door at a decorous pace to prove they were young ladies of good breeding, rather than obeying the order literally.
Edmund bowed, then went to take a seat on a chair opposite Stepmama.
‘While we are alone,’ he said, as the girls were shutting the door gently behind them, ‘I feel I ought to drop a word of warning in your ear. Concerning Lord Freckleton.’
Sukey and Georgiana froze.
And then pressed their ears to the door.
‘What about him?’ came the slightly muffled response.
‘It is merely that I do not think you should place too much significance in any attentions he may pay either of your charges.’
‘Oh?’ In spite of the door, Georgiana could clearly hear the affront in Stepmama’s reply.
‘It is not the fault of your girls,’ put in Edmund soothingly. ‘The fault is entirely his.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘Just that he is not the type to ever, willingly, make an offer of marriage to any female. His preferences lie in another direction entirely.’
‘Really?’
At the very same moment Stepmama let out the shocked response, Sukey clapped her hand over her mouth to stifle a giggle. And then she began to back away, towards the stairs that led up to their bedrooms, her eyes alight with mirth.
‘What is so funny?’ Mystified, Georgiana followed Sukey up the stairs. But Sukey only shook her head, refusing to say a word until they’d reached their dressing room and closed the door behind them.
‘Well! Can you believe it?’
‘Believe what?’
‘That Lord Freckleton isn’t the marrying kind,’ said Sukey, twirling Georgiana round so that she could unhook her gown. ‘Thank goodness Lord Ashenden dropped Mama a hint about his preferences,’ she said, presenting her own back to Georgiana so she could return the favour. ‘At least that saves me the exertion of attempting to fix his interest. I was wondering why I wasn’t getting anywhere,’ she said, then succumbed to a full fit of the giggles.
More confused than ever, Georgiana plucked her highly impractical pale pink cambric carriage dress from the peg on which it hung and stepped into it, while Sukey did the same with hers.
‘When you say not the marrying kind, Sukey, what do you mean, exactly? Is there some special significance to that phrase?’
‘You goose, Georgie,’ said Sukey, taking a moment to swat her on the shoulder in between hooking up the back of the dress she’d never expected to actually get an airing. ‘How can you not know? It means...’ she leaned in close and whispered, though there was nobody in the room but the two of them ‘...that he prefers men. To women. In a romantic sense,’ she finished, when Georgie turned to gaze at her, perplexed.
‘What?’ Oh, heavens. No wonder Edmund had been so angry when she’d used that phrase when speaking to him about marriage.
She fumbled her arms into the loose sleeves of the pelisse which went with her carriage dress in a stew of guilt.
‘I have sometimes wondered if your Lord Ashenden isn’t one of those,’ said Sukey, making her start. It was as if she’d somehow followed her train of thought.
‘Of course he isn’t!’
‘Oh, I know that really,’ said Sukey with a sympathetic smile. ‘You have no need to defend his manly honour. His mistresses do that for him,’ she said, reaching for her bonnet.
‘Well, then,’ grumbled Georgie, jamming her own bonnet down over her curls.
‘Yes, but honestly, if he doesn’t want people to think he’s that kind of man,’ said Sukey as she adjusted the set of her bonnet with the help of the mirror, ‘he really ought not to go driving about Town in a vehicle more suited to the needs of an elderly lady.’
‘Ed—I mean, Lord Ashenden, does not care what people think of him,’ she retorted, yanking her ribbons into some kind of bow.
‘Obviously,’ said Sukey and went off into another fit of giggles. ‘Oh, heavens, Georgie, you are going to have to...to slap me or something, else I shall be giggling all the way to the museum.’
‘I have no need to do anything so vile. You only need to consider what your mama would say if she catches you giggling in Lord Ashenden’s presence.’
‘Lord, yes, she would demand an explanation for my extraordinary conduct, then I would find myself confessing that we were eavesdropping.’
And so it was that Edmund conducted two very sober young ladies to his mother’s barouche a few minutes later.
Sukey’s face brightened when a footman in black and gold livery sprang down from his seat to open the door and hand them into the low-slung vehicle. Probably because the door he opened for them had a crest painted on it. The vehicle might not be in the slightest bit dashing, but at least now her stepsister would feel she was even with Dotty and Lotty, who were always boasting about the times their titled cousin came to take them for a drive in such a vehicle.
‘Well,’ said Sukey, darting Edmund one of her most winning smiles. ‘I am sure I have never sat upon more comfortable seats.’
‘My mother is excessively dedicated to her own comforts,’ he said with a slight edge to his voice as he took the seat opposite her and Sukey. It made Georgiana wonder what his mother could possibly have done to set his back up to the extent he would make a comment that could be interpreted as a criticism.
‘As you note, the hood can be drawn up so that she need never miss an opportunity to go shopping, or visiting, no matter how inclement the weather,’ Edmund added with a definite hint of disapproval.
‘Unless,’ Georgiana pointed out mischievously, ‘you purloin her means of transport.’
He dipped his head in acknowledgment of her riposte and, though his expression remained grave, there was a glint of something like appreciation in his eyes.
‘I have purchased tickets for you both, for Bullock’s Museum,’ he said. ‘So that we need not waste time gaining admittance.’
So he hadn’t just been passing and thought they might like to visit the museum. He’d planned it all very carefully. Well, of course he had. He didn’t have a spontaneous bone in his body.
‘I am sure,’ he continued, ‘you must both be very eager to get inside and view one of the most remarkable collections of its kind in existence.’
‘Are you?’ She raised her eyebrows, wondering exactly what he was playing at.
His eyes flickered towards Sukey, briefly, telegraphing his intention to explain his motives. ‘Of course,’ he said, with a perfectly straight face. ‘It will be a most educational experience for you. Bullock is a member of the Linnean Society, you see, and has arranged his collection according to their principles. I shall now endeavour to explain them to you both, so that you will be able to truly appreciate the specimens we are about to view.’
Sukey’s appreciation of her carriage ride faded in almost inverse proportion to her
own amusement as his exposition of those principles grew increasingly detailed. By the time they arrived at the imposing entrance to the museum, Sukey looked as though she was on the verge of doing something desperate. Like leaping out and running, screaming, for home.
‘You will note,’ Edmund was saying in his driest tone, as the footman handed them out of the barouche, ‘the sloping pilasters, which have been ornamented with hieroglyphics in an attempt to replicate a temple in the Egyptian style. Hence, the cognomen of The Egyptian Hall.’
Sukey shot her a look of despair behind his back, as he turned to extend his arm for Georgie to take. She had to bite down very hard to stifle a giggle.
‘You will find more touches of the East adorning the inner rooms,’ he continued as if he was completely unaware of the effect he was having on both girls, ‘although the collection itself has been gathered largely from the South Seas and the Americas.
‘I shall procure a programme for you, as a souvenir of this visit,’ he declared with a beneficent smile for Sukey, which made her alter her facial expression into one of gratitude so quickly that Georgie had to put her hand to her mouth and pretend she was stifling a fit of coughing.
‘Do you need a glass of water?’ He eyed her with apparent concern.
‘No, no,’ she said when she could master her voice sufficiently to speak. ‘I shall be fine, presently.’
‘Then let us proceed,’ he said, drawing them into the next room.
‘Oh, look,’ cried Sukey, brightening considerably, though not because she’d seen an interesting specimen in any of the glass cases arranged round the walls. ‘There’s Dotty and Lotty over there.’ She waved frantically, in a way that Stepmama would have deplored had she been there to see it. ‘Oh, Georgie,’ she gasped, ‘whoever do you think those gentlemen can be who are escorting them?’ Each girl was leaning on the arm of a rather dashing-looking young man in naval uniform, while a rather disgruntled-looking civilian was trailing along behind them. ‘Oh, do pray excuse me, while I go and find out,’ she said, bouncing on her toes in her eagerness to escape.
‘And that, I fancy,’ observed Edmund with satisfaction as Sukey practically sprinted across the room to the other party, ‘will be the last we see of her until it is time to leave.’
‘Which was your intention all along,’ she said, rapping him over the forearm with her rolled-up programme. ‘Honestly, Linnean principles indeed.’
‘It is completely true,’ he replied with feigned affront. And then added, with an almost boyish grin, ‘As is your own deduction. I was determined to find a way to have a conversation with you in private and, when I happened to hear that the Pargetter girls intended bringing their latest victims here, I could not think of a better opportunity to do so. Therefore, I seized it.’
‘And your mother’s barouche.’
‘That, too,’ he admitted. ‘Are you angry with me? For tormenting your stepsister in order to be rid of her?’
She probably ought to be. But his performance had been so funny. And she hadn’t had anything to laugh about for such a long time.
‘That depends,’ she eventually said.
‘Upon?’
‘Your motives.’
‘I have already told you. I wish to have a...serious conversation with you.’ He paused in front of a case containing a variety of nasty-looking weapons, as though weighing his words.
‘If you are thinking of asking me,’ she said, when the silence had dragged on to the point where it was becoming uncomfortable, ‘about the list you suggested I make, then I have to tell you, it has done me no good.’
‘Oh, you actually made one, did you?’
‘Yes. No. That is, I haven’t actually written anything down, but I have been keeping a sort of tally in my head of the...um...potential I can see in any of the gentlemen who have paid me any marked attention, in the hopes of counterbalancing my reluctance to...er...proceed any further with any of them.’
His brows rose. ‘Have there been very many such men?’
‘There is no need to sound so surprised. You were the one who told me, after all, that I was bound to attract more men than just Major Gowan if I was patient.’
‘But, in the space of a week? I mean...’ He checked himself. ‘Of course you have acquired a court. A beautiful girl like you—it was bound to happen.’
Beautiful? He thought she was beautiful? Her cheeks heated and her stomach did a funny little squeeze.
‘N-not a court, exactly,’ she explained. ‘Though there are now two more men who are being rather obvious about their interest in me. According to Stepmama,’ she added, in case he thought she was boasting.
‘Tell me about them,’ he said sternly.
‘Well, my favourite...’ she wrinkled her nose. ‘Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say, my least unfavourite—’
‘Though less grammatical,’ he put in.
‘Yes, well. His name is Mr Armitage.’
‘Armitage?’ He looked at her sharply. ‘Never heard of him.’
‘I don’t suppose you have. He hails from the North Country where he has a lot of mills and such like. He is, according to Stepmama, obscenely wealthy.’
‘And that makes him an acceptable suitor, does it?’
‘I have already told you that is not the case, or I wouldn’t have been seriously considering Major Gowan.’
‘Point taken,’ he said, with a slight nod. ‘Pray, do enlighten me as to what is so tempting about this obscenely wealthy northerner.’
She bit back an objection to the scathing tone of his voice because she had an answer that was an absolute leveller.
‘The thing I like most about him is that he prefers me to Sukey. He has come to Town to find a wife from the Quality, as he calls it, so that he can start a dynasty that nobody will be able to call vulgar. But he dislikes what he calls niminy-piminy females.’
‘Niminy-piminy? He actually used that term? In your hearing?’
‘No. He told Stepmama,’ she said, with a smile at the memory of Stepmama’s outrage at having her darling so described. ‘He then went on,’ she admitted in a voice that shook with suppressed laughter, ‘to say that a strapping great wench like me was a much better bargain, to his way of looking at it.’
‘He thinks he will get more to the pound, is that it? And for this, you will accept his suit?’
‘I did not say I meant to accept his suit,’ she retorted. ‘It is just that I cannot help feeling, well, flattered that he prefers me to Sukey. Without betraying the slightest trace of sentimentality.’ She would definitely not be able to hurt him, even though she was bound to disappoint him.
Edmund looked at her as though she’d lost her mind. ‘Of course he is setting his sights on you, Georgie. You are of much better birth than your stepsister. I dare say he discovered that your mother came from a lesser branch of an aristocratic family, while your father was landed gentry during this interview he seems to have had with your stepmother.’
‘Oh. Well, yes, he did, as it happens.’ She eyed Edmund with resentment. ‘You have just disposed of the one point Mr Armitage had in his favour. I really thought he was taken with me. But he isn’t at all. It is my background he finds so appealing.’
‘Very well, let us forget about Mr Armitage. Tell me of your other suitors.’
‘Well, there is one I am sure you do know. Mr Eastman. Percy Eastman.’
‘Eastman? Good God.’
‘There is no need to say it like that. He is exactly the kind of man Papa always said I should marry, you know. A Corinthian. A connoisseur of horseflesh, with plenty of address. And yet...’
‘Indeed. With Percy Eastman, there is always that qualifying and yet.’
‘I don’t know why that should be. He is always perfectly charming. And he is comfortably off, moves in the b
est circles and is very handsome.’
‘And yet...’ Edmund quoted her.
She nodded. And Edmund shepherded her to the next display case while she gathered her thoughts about Mr Eastman.
‘It is something about his eyes, I think,’ she said. ‘There is no kindness in them. In fact, he always has this slightly mocking air, as though he regards everyone else as innately inferior and rather amusing. Though, to be fair, he is wealthier, and better connected, and better looking and more intelligent than most people I’ve met in London.’ She sighed. ‘And this is exactly what I mean about your idea of writing a list being so...useless.’
‘In what way?’
‘Well, on paper Mr Eastman would have much to recommend him. Yet whenever he bows over my hand and looks up at me from under those hooded lids...’
‘Yes, quite. In Eastman’s case I think you should definitely trust your instincts.’
‘But then, when Mr Armitage smacks his lips and rubs his hands together as though he’s just spotted a bargain, or Major Gowan spills his drink down his coat because he cannot tear his gaze from my...from the front of my gown, it puts me in mind of what they will expect of me in the marriage bed. And I just...’ She shuddered.
‘There is no need to get into such a taking,’ he said soothingly, patting her hand.
Which incensed her so much she forgot herself.
‘It’s all very well for you to say that. You are not the one who has to smile politely while some horrid man practically thrusts his nose down...’ She glanced down at herself, making an exasperated gesture at the mounds straining at the fabric of her pelisse. And wished, not for the first time, that she’d never grown the beastly objects.
Chapter Twelve
Edmund winced.
She wasn’t surprised. She must have really shocked him, saying that.
And now he was removing his spectacles and polishing them on his handkerchief.
Today, however, the knowledge that she’d shocked him into a spectacle-polishing silence gave her no satisfaction whatever. She’d shocked herself by referring to things that ought never to be spoken of between a man and a woman.
The Debutante's Daring Proposal Page 14
