Page 58 of The Last Debutante
“Then you have surely seen Hyde Park. My guess is it is half the size of the park.”
“As large as that, then.” He turned his attention back to his line, slowly reeling it in, then casting it again.
Daria walked down the little footpath and squatted down to pick some late spring flowers. “Why were you in London, since you have no love for the English?”
“Aye, the direct result of having spent two years in Mayfair salons among fops and dandies.” He winked at her.
“If you feel that way, then why were you there for two whole years?” she pressed him.
“After I completed my schooling at Oxford, my father thought I should live in London and learn the ways of the English.”
She grinned. “A painful lesson, no doubt.”
He laughed. “It was no’ entirely painful. The women are bonny, I’ll grant you. But my purpose there was to learn to guard myself—no’ ingratiate myself.”
Daria frowned lightly. “I don’t think we’re as bad as all that.”
“No? If years of history between our nations doesna convince you, then perhaps you might expound on the virtues of the English for me. Begin with your suitors, if you please, those gentlemen with limp wrists and preening speech that make your heart flutter.”
Was he mocking her? She bristled. “I have suitors, if that’s what you mean.”
Jamie’s brows arched with surprise as he cast his line again. “I would never doubt it.” His gaze flicked curiously over her. “It would seem I’ve touched a tender spot.”
“You haven’t.”
“What is it, Daria? What makes you blush at the mention of suitors? Were you bitten by a scandal that has kept you from an offer?”
“Of course not! My behavior is always above reproach.”
“Ah, abovereproach.” Now he was teasing her. “Perhapsthatis what keeps you from an offer.”
It was too tender a subject for Daria to jest about.
When she didn’t speak, Jamie smiled. “There now, lass. I meant no harm. I am well acquainted with debutantes, and gaining an offer from a suitable purse is their one goal in life, aye? Donna deny it.”
“I won’t deny it.” She wouldn’t try, because it was true. “What else is there for an unmarried woman?”
“Daria, you are bonny. And clever. I’d expect you would have any number of offers for your hand. If you haven’t, then the English are even barmier than I’d imagined.”
“I’ve not hadanyoffers,” she admitted and tossed the wildflowers into the river. “I’ll tell you a secret: I am the last debutante in all of Hadley Green.”
“The last?” he asked as he began to wade back to the shore.
“Yes, thelast,” she said. “Everyone else is married but me. There is no one left to offer.”
He paused below her in the river, the water rushing around his calves. “Why did no one offer for you?”
She would not confess her deeper, darker fears. The ones that whispered she wasn’t comely, or interesting, or was offensive to men in ways she couldn’t understand.
“My friend Charity says I haven’t the right connections,” she said. “It’s all about that, you know—where you are seen and in whose company.” She couldn’t look him in the eye, as if he could see the real reason painted on her shirt. Or worse—he might point out another, even graver reason why. “Unfortunately, my parents are not willing to enter the fray of a London Season.”
“No?”
“It’s the botany,” she said, although she really didn’t believe that. She had tried to understand their reluctance to see her properly turned out, and had failed time and again. She’d had her debut, but even then, her Season in London had been cut painfully short by some emergency at home. “I think they are very pleased with their simple existence and they believe that I should be, too. But I can’t be pleased with it. I can’t live my whole life...”
She let her voice trail away, unwilling to say out loud that she could not be a spinster her whole life with nothing more than her parents’ interest in orchids to divert her. No children! No family, no society.
“It’s why I came to Scotland. I thought I would perish if I were forced to endure one more summer going from this tea to that ball and smiling for all the eligible men with the hope that one of them would offer. It made me feel useful to come and see about Mamie. It made me feel as if I had a purpose. As if my life had some meaning to someone.”
