Sarah didn’t even bother to turn in her direction. “Please don’t.”
“No, it will be great fun,” Harriet insisted. “A special little tidbit just for the three of us.”
“There are four of us,” Elizabeth said.
“Oh, right. Sorry, I think I was forgetting Sarah, actually.”
Sarah deemed this unworthy of comment, but she did curl her lip.
“My point,” Harriet continued, “is that we will always remember that we were right here together when we thought of it.”
“You could make her look like me,” Frances said hopefully.
“No, no,” Harriet said, waving her off. “It’s too late to change now. I’ve already got it fixed in my head. The new character must look like Sarah. Let me see . . .” She started scribbling madly. “Thick, dark hair with just the slightest tendency to curl.”
“Dark, bottomless eyes,” Frances put in breathlessly. “They must be bottomless.”
“With a hint of madness,” Elizabeth said.
Sarah whipped around to face her.
“I’m just doing my part,” Elizabeth demurred. “And I certainly see that hint of madness now.”
“I should think so,” Sarah retorted.
“Not too tall, not too short,” Harriet said, still writing.
Elizabeth grinned and joined in the singsong. “Not too thin, not too fat.”
“Oh oh oh, I have one!” Frances exclaimed, practically bouncing along the sofa. “Not too pink, not too green.”
That stopped the conversation cold. “I beg your pardon?” Sarah finally managed.
“You don’t embarrass easily,” Frances explained, “so you very rarely blush. And I’ve only ever seen you cast up your accounts once, and that was when we all had that bad fish in Brighton.”
“Hence the green,” Harriet said approvingly. “Well done, Frances. That’s very clever. People really do turn greenish when they are queasy. I wonder why that is.”
“Bile,” Elizabeth said.
“Must we have this conversation?” Sarah wondered.
“I don’t see why you’re in such a bad mood,” Harriet said.
“I’m not in a bad mood.”
“You’re not in a good mood.”
Sarah did not bother to contradict.
“If I were you,” Harriet said, “I would be walking on air. You get to walk down the aisle.”
“I know.” Sarah flopped back onto the sofa, the wail of her final syllable apparently too strong for her to remain upright.
Frances stood and came over to her side, peering down over the sofa back. “Don’t you want to walk down the aisle?” She looked a bit like a concerned little sparrow, her head tilting to one side and then the other with sharp little birdlike movements.
“Not particularly,” Sarah replied. At least, not unless it was at her own wedding. But it was difficult to talk to her sisters about this; there was such a gap in their ages, and there were some things one could not share with an eleven-year-old.
Their mother had lost three babies between Sarah and Harriet—two as miscarriages and one when Sarah’s younger brother, the only boy to have been born to Lord and Lady Pleinsworth, died in his cradle before he was three months old. Sarah was sure that her parents were disappointed not to have a living son, but to their credit, they never complained. When they mentioned the title going to Sarah’s cousin William, they did not grumble. They just seemed to accept it as the way it was. There had been some talk of Sarah marrying William, to keep things “neat and tidy and all in the family” (as her mother had put it), but William was three years younger than Sarah. At eighteen, he’d only just started at Oxford, and he surely wasn’t going to marry within the next five years.
And there was not a chance that Sarah was going to wait five years. Not an inch of a chance. Not a fraction of a fraction of an inch of a—
“Sarah!”
She looked up. And just in time. Elizabeth appeared to be aiming a volume of poetry in her direction.
“Don’t,” Sarah warned.
Elizabeth gave a little frown of disappointment and lowered the book. “I was asking,” she (apparently) repeated, “if you knew if all of the guests had arrived.”
“I think so,” Sarah replied, although truthfully she had no idea. “I really couldn’t say about the ones who are staying in the village.” Their cousin Honoria Smythe-Smith was marrying the Earl of Chatteris the following morning. The ceremony was to be held here at Fensmore, the ancestral Chatteris home in northern Cambridgeshire. But even Lord Chatteris’s grand home could not hold all of the guests who were coming up from London; quite a few had been forced to take rooms at the local inns.
As family, the Pleinsworths had been the first to be allotted rooms at Fensmore, and they had arrived nearly a week ahead of time to help with the preparations. Or perhaps more accurately, their mother was helping with the preparations. Sarah had been tasked with the job of keeping her sisters out of trouble.
Which wasn’t easy.
Normally, the girls would have been watched over by their governess, allowing Sarah to attend to her duties as Honoria’s maid of honor, but as it happened, their (now former) governess was getting married the next fortnight.
To Honoria’s brother.
Which meant that once the Chatteris-Smythe-Smith nuptials were completed, Sarah (along with half of London, it seemed) would take to the roads and travel from Fensmore down to Whipple Hill, in Berkshire, to attend the wedding of Daniel Smythe-Smith and Miss Anne Wynter. As Daniel was also an earl, it was going to be a huge affair.
Much as Honoria’s wedding was going to be a huge affair.
Two huge affairs. Two grand opportunities for Sarah to dance and frolic and be made painfully aware that she was not one of the brides.
She just wanted to get married. Was that so pathetic?
No, she thought, straightening her spine (but not so much that she had to actually sit up), it wasn’t. Finding a husband and being a wife was all she’d been trained to do, aside from playing the pianoforte in the infamous Smythe-Smith Quartet.
Which, come to think of it, was part of the reason she was so desperate to be married.
Every year, like clockwork, the four eldest unmarried Smythe-Smith cousins were forced to gather their nonexistent musical talents and play together in a quartet.
And perform.
In front of actual people. Who were not deaf.
It was hell. Sarah couldn’t think of a better word to describe it. She was fairly certain the appropriate word had not yet been invented.
The noise that came forth from the Smythe-Smith instruments could also be described only by words yet to be invented. But for some reason, all of the Smythe-Smith mothers (including Sarah’s, who had been born a Smythe-Smith, even if she was now a Pleinsworth) sat in the front row with beatific smiles on their faces, secure in their mad knowledge that their daughters were musical prodigies. And the rest of the audience . . .
That was the mystery.
Why was there a “rest of the audience”? Sarah never could figure that out. Surely one had to attend only once to realize that nothing good could ever come of a Smythe-Smith musicale. But Sarah had examined the guest lists; there were people who came every single year. What were they thinking? They had to know that they were subjecting themselves to what could only be termed auditory torture.
Apparently there had been a word invented for that.
The only way for a Smythe-Smith cousin to be released from the Smythe-Smith Quartet was marriage. Well, that and feigning a desperate illness, but Sarah had already done that once, and she didn’t think it would work a second time.
Or one could have been born a boy. They didn’t have to learn to play instruments and sacrifice their dignity upon an altar of public humiliation.
It was really quite unfair.
But back to marriage. Her three seasons in London had not been complete failures. Just this past summer, two gentlemen had asked f
or her hand in marriage. And even though she’d known she was probably consigning herself to another year at the sacrificial pianoforte, she’d refused them both.
She didn’t need a mad, bad passion. She was far too practical to believe that everyone found her true love—or even that everyone had a true love. But a lady of one-and-twenty shouldn’t have to marry a man of sixty-three.
As for the other proposal . . . Sarah sighed. The gentleman had been an uncommonly affable fellow, but every time he counted to twenty (and he seemed to do so with strange frequency), he skipped the number twelve.
Sarah didn’t need to wed a genius, but was it really too much to hope for a husband who could count?
“Marriage,” she said to herself.
“What was that?” Frances asked, still peering at her from above the back of the sofa. Harriet and Elizabeth were busy with their own pursuits, which was just as well, because Sarah didn’t really need an audience beyond an eleven-year-old when she announced:
“I have got to get married this year. If I don’t, I do believe I will simply die.”
Hugh Prentice paused briefly at the doorway to the drawing room, then shook his head and moved on. Sarah Pleinsworth, if his ears were correct, and they usually were.
Yet another reason he hadn’t wanted to attend this wedding.
Hugh had always been a solitary soul, and there were very few people whose company he deliberately sought. But at the same time, there weren’t many people he avoided, either.
His father, of course.
Convicted murderers.
And Lady Sarah Pleinsworth.
Even if their first meeting hadn’t been a mind-numbingly mad disaster, they would never have been friends. Sarah Pleinsworth was one of those dramatic females given to hyperbole and grand announcements. Hugh did not normally study the speech patterns of others, but when Lady Sarah spoke, it was difficult to ignore her.
She used far too many adverbs. And exclamation points.
Plus, she despised him. This was not conjecture on his part. He had heard her utter the words. Not that this bothered him; he didn’t much care for her, either. He just wished she’d learn to be quiet.
Like right now. She was going to die if she did not get married this year. Really.
Hugh gave his head a little shake. At least he would not have to attend that wedding.
He’d almost got out of this one, too. But Daniel Smythe-Smith had insisted, and when Hugh had pointed out that this wasn’t even his wedding, Daniel had leaned back in his chair and said that this was his sister’s wedding, and if they were to convince the rest of society that they had put their differences behind them, Hugh had better bloody well show up with a smile on his face.
It hadn’t been the most gracious of invitations, but Hugh didn’t care. He much preferred when people said what they meant and left it at that. But Daniel was right about one thing. In this case, appearances were important.
It had been a scandal of unimaginable proportions when the two men had dueled three and a half years earlier. Daniel had been forced to flee the country, and Hugh had spent a full year learning to walk again. Then there was another year of Hugh’s trying to convince his father to leave Daniel alone, and then another of trying to actually find Daniel once Hugh had finally figured out how to get his father to call off his spies and assassins and leave bloody well alone.
Spies and assassins. Had his existence truly descended that far into melodrama? That he could ponder the words spies and assassins and actually find them relevant?
Hugh let out a long sigh. He had subdued his father, and he had located Daniel Smythe-Smith and brought him back to Britain. Now Daniel was getting married and would live happily ever after, and all would be just as it should have been.
For everyone except Hugh.
He looked down at his leg. It was only fair. He’d been the one to start it all. He should be the one with the permanent repercussions.
But damn, it hurt today. He’d spent eleven hours in a coach the day prior, and he was still feeling the aftereffects.
He really did not understand why he needed to put in an appearance at this wedding. Surely his attendance at Daniel’s nuptials later in the month would be enough to convince society that the battle between Hugh and Daniel was old news.
Hugh was not too proud to admit that in this case, at least, he cared what society thought. It had not bothered him when people labeled him an eccentric, with more aptitude at cards than he had with people. Nor had he minded when he’d overheard one society matron say to another that she found him very strange, and she would not allow her daughter to consider him as a potential suitor—if her daughter were to become interested, which, the matron said emphatically, she never would.
Hugh had not minded that, but he did remember it. Word for word.
What did bother him, however, was being thought a villain. That someone might think he’d wanted to kill Daniel Smythe-Smith, or that he’d rejoiced when he’d been forced to leave the country . . . This, Hugh could not bear. And if the only way to redeem his reputation was to make sure that society knew that Daniel had forgiven him, then Hugh would attend this wedding, and whatever else Daniel deemed appropriate.
“Oh, Lord Hugh!”
Hugh paused at the sound of a familiar feminine voice. It was the bride herself, Lady Honoria Smythe-Smith, soon to be Lady Chatteris. In twenty-three hours, actually, if the ceremony began on time, which Hugh had little confidence it would. He was surprised she was out and about. Weren’t brides meant to be surrounded by their female friends and relatives, fussing about last-minute details?
“Lady Honoria,” he said, shifting his grip on his cane so that he could offer her a bow of greeting.
“I am so glad you are able to attend the wedding,” she said.
Hugh stared into her light blue eyes for a moment longer than other people might have thought necessary. He was fairly certain she was being truthful.
“Thank you,” he said. Then he lied. “I am delighted to be here.”
She smiled broadly, and it lit up her face in the way only true happiness could. Hugh did not delude himself that he was responsible for her joy. All he had done was utter a nicety and thus avoid doing anything to take away from her current wedding-induced bliss.
Simple maths.
“Did you enjoy your breakfast?” she asked.
He had a feeling she had not flagged him down to inquire about his morning meal, but as it must have been obvious that he had just partaken, he replied, “Very much so. I commend Lord Chatteris on his kitchens.”
“Thank you very much. This is quite the largest event to be held at Fensmore for decades; the servants are quite frantic with apprehension. And delight.” Honoria pressed her lips together sheepishly. “But mostly apprehension.”
He did not have anything to add to that, so he waited for her to continue.
She did not disappoint. “I was hoping I might ask you a favor.”
Hugh could not imagine what, but she was the bride, and if she wanted to ask him to stand on his head, it was his understanding that he was obligated to try.
“My cousin Arthur has taken ill,” she said, “and he was to sit at the head table at the wedding breakfast.”
Oh, no. No, she wasn’t asking—
“We need another gentleman, and—”
Apparently she was.
“—I was hoping it could be you. It would go a long way toward making everything, well . . .” She swallowed and her eyes flicked toward the ceiling for a moment as she tried to find the correct words. “Toward making everything right. Or at least appear to be right.”
He stared at her for a moment. It wasn’t that his heart was sinking; hearts didn’t sink so much as they did a tight panicky squeeze, and the truth was, his did neither. There was no reason to fear being forced to sit at the head table, but there was every reason to dread it.
“Not that’s it not right,” she said hastily. “As far as I am concerned—an
d my mother, too, I can say quite reliably—we hold you in great esteem. We know . . . That is to say, Daniel told us what you did.”
He stared at her intently. What, exactly, had Daniel told her?
“I know that he would not be here in England if you had not sought him out, and I am most grateful.”
Hugh thought it uncommonly gracious that she did not point out that he was the reason her brother had had to leave England in the first place.
She smiled serenely. “A very wise person once told me that it is not the mistakes we make that reveal our character but what we do to rectify them.”
“A very wise person?” he murmured.
“Very well, it was my mother,” she said with a sheepish smile, “and I will have you know that she said it to Daniel far more than to me, but I’ve come to realize—and I hope he has, too—that it is true.”
“I believe he has,” Hugh said softly.
“Well, then,” Honoria said, briskly changing both subject and mood, “what do you say? Will you join me at the main table? You will be doing me a tremendous favor.”
“I would be honored to take your cousin’s place,” he said, and he supposed it was the truth. He’d rather go swimming in snow than sit up on a dais in front of all the wedding guests, but it was an honor.
Her face lit up again, her happiness practically a beacon. Was this what weddings did to people?
“Thank you so much,” she said, with obvious relief. “If you had refused, I would have had to ask my other cousin, Rupert, and—”
“You have another cousin? One you’re passing over in favor of me?” Hugh might not have cared overmuch for the myriad rules and regulations that bound their society, but that did not mean he didn’t know what they were.
“He’s awful,” she said in a loud whisper. “Honestly, he’s just terrible, and he eats far too many onions.”
“Well, if that’s the case,” Hugh murmured.
“And,” Honoria continued, “he and Sarah do not get on.”
Hugh always considered his words before he spoke, but even he wasn’t able to stop himself from blurting half of “I don’t get on with Lady Sarah” before clamping his mouth firmly shut.