She blinked at his crisp refusal to continue their discussion, but she seemed to take no obvious offense. In his experience, women bristled when a topic of conversation was dismissed. Henrietta Maclellan gazed at him in just as friendly a manner as ever. But then she looked over his shoulder.
“Oh dear, I see Mrs. Cable approaching. We are organizing the church bazaar, sir, and have much to discuss. And I must not monopolize your company.” She gave him that utterly beautiful smile, the one that lit up her eyes. And then she turned away to greet Mrs. Cable.
Dismissed, he had no choice but to rise and walk away.
Young ladies in London would have come near to fainting if he had bestowed a compliment on them. There, everyone knew that he considered symmetry in nature to be the greatest gift.
It isn’t a question of vanity, he told himself. Just misplaced attraction on his part.
The stout matron who had claimed friendship with Lady Panton appeared at his elbow. “Mr. Darby!” she thrilled. “I have been longing to introduce you to my own dear, dear niece, Miss Aiken.” She took his elbow and then led him away, saying in a whisper, “My sister married for love, sir, for love.”
Obviously Mrs. Barret-Ducrorq’s sister had married beneath her.
“My dear sister passed away only last year, and so the happy burden of presenting her daughter to society has fallen to my shoulders,” she continued in a piercing undertone. “She is the sweetest, most biddable girl; you simply can’t imagine. And her father”—she lowered her voice—“well, he was in trade, although he now leaves business matters to his partners. But he is worth near a million of floating disposable assets.”
Darby bowed in front of the young woman. She had fair skin, dotted with pale little spots that might have been freckles before they were attacked by assiduous applications of lemon juice. Her rusty-colored hair was made up into fat sausage rolls that advertised their origins in a curling iron. In all, she looked like a person doing her best to make herself a marketable piece of goods.
She looked at him with a properly coy glance. But from behind her fan and her fluttering eyelashes he quite clearly glimpsed a calculating female assessment of his worth and his goods.
“My niece just loves children,” Mrs. Barret-Ducrorq was saying. “She absolutely adores them, don’t you, Lucy?”
“I’m quite fond of them,” Miss Aiken agreed.
That response annoyed Mrs. Barret-Ducrorq, who obviously wanted a gushing response to the beautiful fish she had snared for her niece. She gave Miss Aiken a fierce glance, and added, “And she just adores dancing.”
MissAiken was still gazing at him from behind her fan. Unless he was very much mistaken, the heiress of a million floating assets was tempted by thoughts of making a purchase.
“Lucy’s seat on a horse—”
But the advertisement was interrupted. “I am quite certain that Mr. Darby has no interest in my equestrian skills, dear aunt,” the heiress said, throwing Darby a rather feverish smile. She had pointed little shiny teeth. “I understand that you have, most lamentably, become the guardian of your wee sisters. How adorable they must be! You must, simply must, introduce them to me. I do adore children.”
“I would be enchanted to do so,” Darby said. A pleasant vision of Anabel vomiting down the front of Miss Aiken’s peach satin and chewing on her half wreath of roses popped into his mind.
“I think you’ll find that my niece has some wonderful advice regarding your young sisters,” Mrs. Barret-Ducrorq put in.
“I should be delighted to discuss them. I am certainly in need of advice. Would you care to adjourn to the salon and allow me to bring you some refreshments, Miss Aiken?”
It was clear before they progressed more than ten steps into the salon that this particular heiress was ready to trade her assets on the open marketplace. She fluttered her sandy eyelashes in a way that indicated her physical and material goods were his for the asking.
Darby knew he had to marry. Everyone said so. He said so. How could he possibly raise two small girls without female guidance? He cast a glance at Miss Aiken and was met by a burning look of admiration.
There were no open tables in the salon. His aunt looked up with a smile, and would clearly have welcomed him at her table, but he perversely made his way back to Lady Henrietta, who had been joined by two middle-aged ladies chattering like a pair of nutcrackers. Presumably they were talking of the church bazaar.
Lucy Aiken, thankfully, did not seem adverse to joining Lady Henrietta. She dropped into a chair and joined the conversation about the bazaar. Darby headed gloomily to the other side of the room to collect some food. He gathered up two plates. Lady Henrietta had nothing in front of her but a glass of wine, and she needed fattening up.
Miss Aiken greeted his return with glittering eyes that reminded him of an exulting fox spying a succulent pullet.
Lady Henrietta accepted his plate of partridge with a surprised, “Thank you!” and one of those smiles of hers, and returned to a lively discussion of the advisability of running an apple-bobbing stand at the bazaar.
Darby listened for a while, and then decided to find out more about his possible wife. After all, if he was going to spend the rest of his life with the chit, he needed to know what she did when not giggling. “How does one amuse oneself in the country, Miss Aiken?”
She fluttered her fan so violently that a strand of Henrietta’s hair rose in the air and fell against her cheek. It was a delicious color, like honey warmed in the sun.
“Just—just with everything, Mr. Darby! I truly am a cheerful type of soul, at least that’s what all my friends say! Why, I am perfectly happy sitting about in the conservatory plucking petals off roses—the wilted ones, you understand.”
“Salutary,” Darby murmured.
“But you, sir, what of you? I know, of course, that you are a London gentleman, and you do whatever it is”—she tittered madly—“that gentlemen do in London.”
Could she be suggesting some sort of lascivious activities? Surely not.
“Do you box?” she asked breathlessly.
“No, I don’t,” Darby replied. “I’m afraid I never took to the art of pummeling my fellow creatures.”
“Oh.” She was visibly disappointed but rebounded quickly. “I have read about gentlemen boxing with Gentleman Jackson himself, but I expect you spend your time in an equally diverting fashion.”
“Not really,” he said dampeningly.
Just then Lady Henrietta’s two companions bustled off. Miss Aiken immediately turned to Henrietta and included her in their conversation. She did seem to have impeccable manners. In particular, she didn’t show an ounce of the jealous possessiveness that most young women would exhibit in the presence of someone as beautiful as Henrietta Maclellan.
“You must be very excited by your debut, Lucy,” Henrietta said. It was rather pleasing to note that he was not the only one affected by Henrietta’s smile. Miss Aiken instantly perked up and looked like a young girl at her birthday party.
“If you can imagine, Lady Henrietta, my presentation frock is all sewn with gems. And I’m to wear three white plumes. Imagine that: three.”
Darby moodily drank some Madeira.
“We move to the city on the first of February. Will you be in London for the opening of the season?” Miss Aiken asked him.
“Almost certainly,” he said. He drank some more Madeira.
Her eyes sharpened. She had beady black eyes, and her hair was definitely reddish. Precisely like a fox, Darby thought to himself.
“Aren’t you excited about the season, sir?”
“Truthfully, no.”
“Goodness, why not? It sounds like the most pleasant thing in the world to me!” Her hands were clasped in an ecstasy of anticipation. “Dancing at Almack’s, riding in the park, Her Royal Majesty’s Drawing Room!”
“I dislike pushing women around the room to a tuneless orchestra. And the only men who ride in the park are man-milliners,” he dra
wled.
“The season is not a new experience for Mr. Darby as it is for you, Lucy dear,” Henrietta said, jumping into the rather awkward silence that ensued.
Miss Aiken was clearly rethinking her initial buyer’s lust. “Goodness me,” she trilled. “I must find my dear aunt. She’ll be wondering whatever became of me!” And she tripped away, but not before casting a glance over her shoulder at Darby that made it quite clear that if he wished to trot after her, like a little pony on a string, she wouldn’t be averse to keeping him. She would, in fact, overlook his exhibition of churlishness and lack of enthusiasm for the season.
He stayed where he was.
“Now that was foolish,” Henrietta Maclellan said in a clear voice.
“What?”
“Blowing Lucy Aiken down the wind,” she said promptly. “Lucy is a remarkably sweet girl who would be quite a good mother to your sisters. She has a passion for London, and will be easily satisfied by living there and riding in the Row a few times a week. You couldn’t do better than marry her.”
He blinked. Didn’t she know that young ladies did not discuss other ladies’ marriageable prospects in polite company? In other words, in the presence of a man?
Before he thought it through, he said, “I believe I am not quite used to the idea of assessing women as marriageable commodities.” That made him sound insufferably conceited, so he added: “Of course, the assessment occurs on both sides.”
“Perhaps your dismay is due to your gender. We women are, by necessity, quite familiar with the concept of the marriage market. I suspect that the problem is not that you didn’t see yourself as part of that market previously. It’s that you are used to being an object of great worth, and now your aunt’s happy condition has made you slightly—but only slightly, Mr. Darby—more affordable.”
There was nothing mocking in her eyes, actually. And it made sense that she thought he needed to marry an heiress.
“I suppose that’s it,” he said. He finished his Madeira. “You are remarkably frank, Lady Henrietta.” He could never remember being labeled affordable in the past.
“I’m afraid it’s a fault of mine,” she agreed, looking utterly unrepentant. “Perhaps it’s a facet of small-town life. One needn’t obfuscate quite as much.”
“Never having spent any time in the country,” Darby said, “I can hardly disagree with you. I gather you heard the rumor that I have made this particular visit in order to wait out my aunt’s confinement and determine whether I am my uncle’s heir?”
“Is it true?”
Darby jiggled his wineglass, watching the last few drops of ruby liquid chase about the bottom. “I believe you would find my answer truly shocking, Lady Henrietta.”
“I doubt it,” she said tranquilly. “A small village contains just as much greed as a large city.”
He looked up, a faint smile curling the edge of his mouth. “Now I am both affordable and greedy?”
“I did not say that. And I didn’t mean it either.” Something about her eyes looked trustworthy.
“I did visit my aunt to determine whether she was, in fact, carrying my uncle’s child,” he said, looking away. “ ’Twas an ugly thought.”
“Yes,” she agreed.
“I was quite wrong. I believed my uncle and aunt to be estranged, but it seems I was wrong.” He didn’t understand his uncle’s marriage, but there was no denying it had been a real one.
His companion said nothing, probably shocked to the bottom of her little country soul.
“Marriage is a strange business,” Darby muttered. “Are you drinking champagne?”
“Yes, I am.”
Darby signaled to a footman. “Would you like another?”
“No, thank you. I rarely drink more than one glass. I enjoy the bubbles, but not the effect.”
As someone who had taken the unusual (for him) step of drinking himself under the table at least four times since inheriting small children, Darby did understand. Understood and didn’t agree.
“Please bring me another Madeira,” he told the footman, “and Lady Henrietta another glass of champagne. One more glass of champagne won’t affect you in the slightest,” he told her. “I shall use it for Dutch courage, myself, and perhaps even take your advice and approach Miss Aiken again.” He didn’t mean it for a moment.
“I think that if you approached Lucy again, you would find her quite pleased to talk to you,” Henrietta replied. “She doesn’t really see you as a commodity, Mr. Darby. Lucy is merely young. But I think she was quite taken with your symmetry.”
He looked at her sharply, and there was just a trace of laughter in her eyes.
The wine was set down before him and he took a sip, rolled it like potent fire on his tongue. Since she was bold in her speech, she presumably would not be shocked by the same bluntness.
“So why are you not on the market, Lady Henrietta Maclellan?” he asked deliberately. “I have watched you talk to old ladies, and young ladies, but no gentlemen.”
“Not so!” she protested. “Lord Durgiss and I had a long conversation about his hedges, and—”
“Is that Lord Durgiss?” He nodded toward a stout peer dressed in a florid satin waistcoat. “The man wearing a violet waistcoat?”
“No, that is Lord Durgiss’s son, Frederick. Frederick does have dreadful taste in waistcoats, does he not? You see, he fancies himself the next Lord Byron. He’s been writing perfectly appalling verse to my sister Imogen for the last month or so.”
“And why isn’t he writing verse to you? You are far more symmetrical than is Lucy Aiken, for all her thousands.” He leaned just a trifle closer and held her eyes for a moment before she dropped them. “You are quite exquisite. Your hair is truly out of the ordinary, and yet here you are, in a rural backwater.”
Deliberately he reached out and picked up her hand. It was tiny, dwarfed by his own. In the back of his mind he realized that his heart was pounding, a ridiculous response to nothing more than a beautiful face and a fringe of black lashes.
She swallowed. Her throat rippled. God, she even had a lovely throat.
“Because I am not symmetrical,” she said finally. She took a drink from her glass of champagne, looking at the bubbles rather than at him.
“What do you mean?”
“I cannot have children.” She raised her head and looked at him. Her eyes were a navy blue color and perfectly set apart. She was like the most gorgeous mathematical theorem he had ever seen: devastatingly simple on the outside and fascinatingly complicated on the inside.
He hadn’t really listened to what she said. “You can’t—what?”
“Have children,” she said painstakingly, just as if this was the kind of conversation that one often had with a person one has just met.
What the devil was he supposed to say to that? He had never heard a gentlewoman discuss her plumbing in company.
Her eyes were still on his face, and they had that slightly mocking edge in them again. She drew her hand away. “I apologize if I horrified you by my bluntness, Mr. Darby. I’m afraid that everyone is aware that you have to marry an heiress in order to support those lovely sisters of yours. As it happens, I am an heiress but, under the circumstances, I am not active in the marketplace.”
He literally had no idea what she meant.
She finished her champagne and put it down with a little click. Her smile was kind. “I would not wish you to labor under the misapprehension that I might join the fray and purchase you myself.”
He didn’t even laugh until some time after she walked away.
10
Henrietta At Home,
After Leaving Esme’s At-Home
It was unusual for Henrietta to feel restless once she retired to her bedchamber. Usually she tossed her braid over her shoulder, said her prayers, and went peacefully to sleep. Oh, there were nights when her hip hurt. And occasional nights when the idea of a childless, husbandless life seemed too much to bear, and she wept into her pillow.
>
But she had friends, and she felt valued, and most of the time she liked her life tremendously. Over the years, Henrietta had quietly taken over many of her stepmother’s duties, to their mutual satisfaction. She spent her days visiting the ill and making certain that new families were adequately housed, meeting with the vicar when needed, and planning the various celebrations that marked a country year.
Except for the moments when some foolish person got their back up because she, Henrietta, had spoken rather more frankly than was advisable, she was quite happy. It didn’t bother her tremendously that she had never had a season. What would have been the point?
But tonight she couldn’t seem to relax. She drifted about her room picking up this or that book of poetry and putting it down again.
She’d seen etchings of Greek statues in The Ladies Journal, and he resembled a god only in profile. From the front he was far too intelligent. His cheekbones were purely English, as were his eyes.
It was a shame that she had to tell him about her hip, although if he kept paying her so much attention, someone undoubtedly would have dropped a hint in his ear. She could see as well as anyone that there was a speculative light in his eye when she offered to help him find a nursemaid, and he could easily have discovered that she was an heiress. How nice for him: an heiress and a mother, all in one package. Of course she was right to disabuse him. She didn’t want to start gossip.
His attentions were quite marked. She couldn’t help grinning at the delicious memory of how he turned and walked straight to her table. And the way he returned with Lucy Aiken in tow. The way he brought her a plate of pheasant. The way he held her hand.
She had watched women and men flirt for years. But she had never realized how pleasurable it was to meet a man’s eyes across the room and know that he desired you. Especially when he was the first London gentleman to appear in Wiltshire for over a year, since Lord Fastlebinder stayed for a month and seduced Mrs. Pidcock’s downstairs maid. Fastlebinder was overly plump and not attractive, to her mind. But Darby cast all the local men into the shade.