Miss Dashing, page 2
“Can you dance?” she asked, eyeing him critically.
“Not well. I’ve seen the country dances enough times to stumble through them, but the fancier ballroom dances haven’t made it to the local assembly in Crosspatch.”
“You’ll need a dancing master, then. I can recommend several. Can you ride?”
“Passably.” He rode quite well, but he hadn’t the knack of turning a mounted outing into a fashion exhibition.
“Do you read the Times?”
“The financial pages. The rest is tripe.”
She gave him a sharp look. “No, it is not. You will add La Belle Assemblée to your reading list, and I will quiz you on the contents. Read the political articles, don’t just sneer at the patterns and fashion plates. Can you read French?”
“Competently. My pronunciation is atrocious, because I’ve never heard the language spoken except by our local liveryman. Dabney hails from the Caribbean, and his French is mostly profanity.”
“No profanity, my lord, not in the company of the ladies, anyway. Gentlemen consider colorful languages something of an art, one I am unqualified to teach.”
If so, profanity was the only aspect of polite society’s curriculum Miss Hecate Brompton avoided. She prattled on, about tailors (Bond Street), boots (Hoby), handkerchiefs (always carry two, one for show, one for necessity), cravat pins (gold for every day, discreet jewels for evening), gentlemen’s clubs (the grand equivalent of the snug at the Crosspatch Arms, having the sanctity of the confessional and the comfort of unlimited libation), and horseflesh (always know the bloodlines before you purchase, as if Phillip gave a donkey’s fart for bloodlines when a beast’s conformation and gaits were obvious to the eye).
All the while she interrogated and lectured, Phillip pondered his own list of questions. Did Hecate Brompton ever laugh? She had a rare, pretty smile. He’d seen it once, when she’d caught him studying her at the only formal dinner he’d so far endured.
The array of cutlery and glasses had baffled him. One did not use any old fork to eat lobster. One used the smallest implement on offer, because that made no sense whatsoever. One did not partake of every dish and vintage the footmen brought around, lest one be comatose by the end of the meal.
Phillip had survived the ordeal only by closely watching what Miss Brompton did, and when the ladies had withdrawn, he’d been assigned to escort her to the parlor. Ladies, for reasons unknown to mortal man, were incapable of navigating a half-dozen yards of carpeted corridor without a gent to show them the way.
At the parlor door, Miss Brompton had smiled at him, thanked him, and swanned off. Tavistock had seen the exchange and for once kept his big, handsome, insufferably competent mouth shut.
“And a ladybird,” Miss Brompton said, “may be driven in the park during the carriage parade—you acknowledge only gentlemen when she’s at your side—any day except Sundays.”
“Because?”
“Because it’s the Sabbath.”
“And thou shalt not take the air with thy mistress on Sundays? I missed that one.”
“It’s not done, my lord, and if you think to thwart convention in this regard, you can find somebody else to explain the mysteries of Mayfair to you.”
She wanted to pace. How Phillip knew this, he could not have said, but the martial light in Miss Brompton’s lovely eyes told him so.
“Somebody flaunted his mistress before you.”
The martial light died, not without a fight. Miss Brompton sipped her tea, which had to be tepid, and topped up her cup with a fresh splash from the pot.
“My lord, I grasp that you are perceptive, astute even, but one does not blurt out one’s every insight. One exercises discretion and kindness. If you suspect that I was slighted in the manner you describe, the gentlemanly choice would be to ignore the possibility. Such an occasion would have been an insult to me, had it taken place, and would have spoken poorly of the fellow at the ribbons.”
The tea cup when she replaced it on the saucer settled without a sound. Her heart had apparently been broken with nobody the wiser either.
“Did some lady snatch the bachelor you’d chosen to be your own?” Phillip asked. “You mustn’t tell Tavistock, but his marchioness was at one time the object of my fondest fancies.” Not particularly erotic fancies, but fond all the same. “Amaryllis DeWitt was the perfect wife for me. Sensible, kind, well bred without being high in the instep. Tall enough that I would not look ridiculous partnering her if I ever did learn the wretched dance steps.”
Doubtless a gentleman kept such maunderings to himself, but did Hecate Brompton truly believe she was the only person to stumble on life’s dance floor?
“Does she know?” Miss Brompton asked. “Does Miss DeWitt—does her ladyship know you harbored a tendresse for her?”
“No, and she never will. I’ve lately concluded that if I was so keen to marry her, I should have proposed. That’s how brilliantly astute I am. Our estates march, she was of age and then some, and she needed a husband.”
“But you let the moment pass?”
He’d let the years pass, always finding another excuse. Amaryllis’s family was in mourning. Her family had just emerged from mourning. Her family was back in mourning. Her family needed her. She deserved to take her place in London Society.
All valid considerations, not a one of them insurmountable to a devoted swain.
“One wants to marry for something more lasting than expedience,” he said. “Amaryllis and I would have rubbed along tolerably well. We were and are friends, but that friendship would have been a casualty of matrimony. I have so few friends. To reduce their numbers by even one would be a shame.”
Miss Brompton studied him. “Was that the real reason you did not offer?”
Phillip had given the matter considerable thought, and Miss Brompton could be trusted with the truth—the rest of the truth—perhaps even comforted by it.
“Amaryllis would have married me for good reasons—to ensure her family’s wellbeing, to ensure my wellbeing, to silence the unkind talk about spinsterhood and antidotes. We aren’t fancy in the shires. We understand and respect pragmatism, but if a fellow truly cares for a lady, he wants more for her than practical solutions. He wants her dreams coming true. Tavistock can do that for his marchioness, while I could not. Ergo, all is as it should be, and I am pleased for her.”
Miss Brompton’s scrutiny became specific. Her gaze drifted from his brow, to his nose, to his lips and chin. He had the sense she was seeing him for the first time, and though he loathed visual inspections of any kind, he bore up without flinching.
“You are a gentleman,” she said. “The dancing and cutlery and handkerchiefs are trappings of the role, but the reality is in here.” She tapped her sternum with her index finger. “All the deportment instruction and dancing masters in Mayfair can’t make a true gentleman out of a selfish bore. They can only provide him a handsome and expensive disguise.”
“A costume,” Phillip said, “and ‘the apparel oft proclaims the man.’”
He’d hoped to lighten the moment, but Miss Brompton’s gaze narrowed. “You’ve read Shakespeare?”
“I’m familiar with the plays and sonnets.” How else was a country lad to endure English winters? “The Bard was paraphrasing Erasmus, vestis virum facit, who was doubtless paraphrasing the ancients. I had an adequate basic education, Miss Brompton, though classical literature never interested me half so much as farming.”
“Farming is good,” she said. “Gentlemen who take care of their acres are well received, but don’t prose on about it.”
They were back on safer footing, which disappointed Phillip inordinately, though his call had been, on the whole, successful.
“I should be going, shouldn’t I? I’ve had my polite two cups plus one, and I must not overstay my welcome.” He rose rather than put her through the effort of a polite demurral.
“Offer me your hand,” she said, gazing up at him. “Assist me to rise.”
Phillip stuck out his paw. “You are marvelously vital, fit, lithe, in the very pink, and capable of standing without assistance, and yet, I have been remiss…”
She took his hand and stood and shifted her grip to lace her arm through his. “Some women do need assistance. Their apparel is confining, they are weary, their high-heeled slippers render their balance questionable. A gentleman offers.”
“You mean they’ve been laced too tightly. Foolishness, that. Gratuitous torment. If a lady enjoys robust dimensions, then let her dress for her own comfort and to blazes with La Belly Ass Whatever.”
He’d barely recognized the French words when Miss Brompton had uttered them earlier, and he’d defaulted to his own pronunciation. Close enough.
Miss Brompton dropped his arm. She stared at his boots, which were the work of old George Deevers, not to be confused with his parent, Grandpa Deevers.
Her shoulders twitched, and Phillip feared the tea might have disagreed with her. His worry was relieved when a peal of laughter rang out over the music room, followed by a hoot and more laughter.
“Repeat after me,” Miss Brompton said when her merriment had subsided. “La Belle Assemblée. Never that other thing. The whole French language is cowering in terror at your pronunciation.”
Phillip composed his features into his best imitation of the marquess about to hold forth in damnably flawless French. “La Belle Assemblée.”
“You’re a good mimic. That will come in handy.” She tried for a return to her usual starch and decorum, but the citadel had been breached, and Phillip had peered over the walls.
Hecate Brompton was beautiful when she was on her dignity, but she was captivating when her tiara slipped. Phillip resolved to compensate his new finishing governess for the Sisyphean labor of turning him into a lordling by giving that tiara the occasional friendly nudge.
Or maybe frequent nudges. The least he could do for her, being a gentleman at heart and all.
Chapter Two
“Mrs. Charles Brompton to see you, Miss Hecate.” Selwyn held out the silver card tray. “I put her in the family parlor.”
Blast and bother. “Is Mrs. Brompton composed?” Eglantine usually showed up on Hecate’s doorstep bearing problems.
Selwyn was too good at his job to grimace. “Happily agitated, I’d say. I’ve asked the kitchen to send up a fresh tray.”
“Thank you. Some sandwiches would be appreciated as well. I’ll just be a moment.”
Hecate put aside the list she’d been making—dancing masters, French instructors, tailors— tucked it into the escritoire and locked the drawer, then slipped the key into her pocket. Nobody thought to snoop in the music room, but Hecate had become cautious of necessity.
She stopped before a pier glass and rummaged up a polite smile. The effort looked tired, as all of Hecate looked tired. The social season did that—wore a woman out, even a woman firmly on the shelf.
“Eglantine, welcome,” Hecate said as her guest squeezed her hands, beamed, and squeezed her hands again. “Sweet of you to call.”
“Oh, I just had to, Hecate. I had to, had to.”
Eglantine did everything in triplicate. Well, almost everything. Only two children so far, both of them boys. Given Charles’s nature, another child was bound to come along soon.
“You are in good spirits.” Which often boded ill for Hecate. “Shall we sit?”
“Yes, we shall. A cup of tea will settle my nerves if anything can. I am so excited.”
Eglantine was so young. Barely twenty-five, the mother of two, and married to an earl’s heir. That Cousin Charles would one day be a peer was proof the Fates occasionally took to tippling.
Hecate led her guest to the tufted sofa and situated herself in the wing chair across from her. The tea service arrived, sandwiches doubtless to follow, and Hecate resigned herself to having her ear talked off.
“Charlie has had the best idea,” Eglantine said, stirring her tea vigorously and tapping her spoon on the saucer. “My Charlie is so clever. Nobody gives him enough credit.”
Rather the opposite. Everybody extended credit to Charles Brompton on the basis of his expectations, despite the fact that Great-Uncle Nunn was in excellent health.
“Have some cakes,” Hecate said, holding out the plate. “They go down so well with good China black.”
“No sandwiches?” Eglantine made a face and put three cakes on her plate. “Cakes will have to do, but with supper so far off, you’d think the kitchen…”
A footman paused at the door, nodded, and deposited a tray heaped with sandwiches on the low table. “Anything else, miss?”
“No, thank you, Timmens, and my compliments to Cook for her prompt work.”
Timmens bowed without so much as glancing at Eglantine and withdrew.
Eglantine added a pair of sandwiches to her haul of cakes. “You will die, Hecate, simply expire of envy when you hear Charlie’s idea. I am so proud of him.”
Eglantine, bless her loyal heart, was a good wife. She’d been all of seventeen and in anticipation of a scandalous event when Charles had offered for her. Her settlements had gone a long way toward rewarding Charles’s supposed gallantry. Their firstborn child was no relation to Charles, a complication Charles had been willing to overlook before he’d become Great-Uncle Nunn’s heir.
Let it be said, Charles was not mean. He’d made his bed, feathered with the last wealth Eglantine’s family had had to offer, and he’d lain in that bed more or less contently ever since—albeit with myriad opera dancers, widows, and light-skirts.
“What wonderful idea has Charles come up with now?” Charles’s wonderful ideas invariably involved spending money.
A racing stud—as if those were not thick on the ground, and every one of them bleeding coin.
A charitable orphanage—always profitable, if well run, in Charles’s vast and deep experience. When Hecate pointed out that charities should not be profitable, Charles had grumbled about details.
A finishing school for illegitimate young ladies with wealthy, titled fathers, and—of course!—Hecate could be its founding patroness.
Even Eglantine had winced at that notion.
“Charlie says we must have a house party,” Eglantine pronounced around a mouthful of cake, “and Mama-in-Law supports the notion. Technically, she’d be the hostess, and nominally, Great-Uncle Nunn would be the host. London is so unbearable in the summer, and Nunnsuch will be Wharton’s home one day. He and Winston should be spending time there.”
Wharton was Eglantine’s eldest, Winston his toddling younger brother. They were delightful children, thus far, having their parents’ cheerful dispositions and an innocent sense of fun. Hecate gave it about five years before public school and the insidious Brompton talent for mischief ruined them both.
And now the boys were to have their first, nursery-eye view of a house party?
Hecate sipped her tea and mentally counted backward from twenty in Latin. The Brompton family had two main branches. Papa was a cousin at a remove from Great-Uncle Nunn, while Charles had the great good fortune to sprout from the titled side of the tree. Papa resented his titled relations, resented Hecate, and would probably resent a pot of gold if it had the temerity to land on his foot.
The titled Bromptons, by contrast, were a frivolous lot, frequently pockets to let and wits gone begging, and their numbers were legion. They were always scheming, always looking for a way to turn deviousness into coin, usually with disastrous results. Great-Uncle Nunn, the Earl of Nunn, cast a dim and disapproving eye on his dodgy relations and mostly ignored them.
He’d likely show up for the final day or two of this bacchanal, harrumph down the room with the highest-ranking female guest, and declare the whole thing absurd. Of all her Brompton relatives, Great-Uncle was the one whom Hecate respected.
“It’s rather late to be planning a house party, Eglantine. Most of Society has already decamped for the shires.”
“But grouse season is still weeks and weeks away—weeks, I tell you—and Nunnsuch is a lovely property. If we invite a combination of friends and family, with a few neighbors thrown in, we’ll have plenty of guests, but here is the best part…”
She popped another tea cake into her mouth and chewed vigorously while Hecate steeled herself for disaster. What fool had decreed that ladies did not use profanity?
“We shall invite,”—Eglantine’s eyes took on a gleam of triumph—“Lord… Phillip… Vincent!” She clapped her hands like a small child. “It’s brilliant, Hecate. My Charles is brilliant, positively brilliant. Nobody has invited Lord Phillip much of anywhere, and we shall be the first. The matchmakers will be eaten up with envy. A marquess’s brother, his heir for the nonce. We will be the talk of Mayfair.”
The Bromptons were frequently the talk of Mayfair, and for all the wrong reasons. “I wasn’t aware Charles and Lord Phillip were connected.”
“Yes, you were. Don’t be coy, Hecate. Charles still feels badly about Miss DeWitt’s early experiences in Society. A regrettable misunderstanding. She would agree, I’m sure, but no harm done—she married the Marquess of Tavistock, didn’t she? Now pour me a second cup, there’s a dear. These sandwiches look a bit dry.”
Hecate poured the requisite second cup and passed it over. Perhaps a lady was permitted slightly colorful language in French? A few quiet curses?
“Charles abused Miss DeWitt’s trust, Eglantine. Don’t distort the facts. You feel guilty because he offered for you instead of for her, and that was strictly a matter of your settlements being larger than hers.”
In one of his many drunken moments, Charles had confessed to taking liberties with Miss DeWitt. In Hecate’s opinion, Miss DeWitt had had a narrow escape, despite the drubbing Charles’s defection had delivered to the lady’s standing.
Charles opined that he’d had no choice in the matter, given the state of his mother’s finances.
