Page 8 of Counting on a Countess
Three weeks in London searching for a man she might consider marrying had revealed that, while there were a good deal of attractive men, very few of them possessed lean, athletic bodies, and almost none had a sense of purpose or keen intellects.
However, she didn’t need or want a husband to be observant. Or attentive. The more distracted and heedless the better.
It didn’t matter what she wanted for herself, that she had once dreamed of a marriage as devoted as her parents’. Such hopes were merely fancies, never to come to pass.
Yet as she moved through the figures of the dance, she found herself asking Mr. Carroll, “Who was that gentleman?”
Mr. Carroll seemed to know exactly to whom she referred. “Lord Blakemere.” He gave a puzzled frown when she only looked at him blankly. “You reallyarea country gel if you don’t know him either by face or name.”
She couldn’t feel embarrassed about her Cornish origins. Some London girls had a pale, pinched look and probably couldn’t walk over the moors without calling for a carriage.
But she couldn’t snap a tart reply to Mr. Carroll—not without seriously damaging her marital prospects—so she merely smiled. “We hear so little about the sophisticated city in Cornwall.”
“Can’t be faulted for being born in a backwater, I suppose.” Mr. Carroll sniffed.
She had considered Mr. Carroll moderately handsome, in a rather watery, overbred way, but her opinion of him took a sharp plummet. It would be bad form to simply walk away and leave him alone on the dance floor, so she kept moving through the figures of La Gaillarde.
“Tell me more about Lord Blakemere,” she said with as much sweetness as she could muster.
“Third son of the Marquess of Brownlowe,” Mr. Carroll said dismissively.
“But he’sLordBlakemere,” she pointed out. She fell silent as she walked through the steps, pulling her away from her dance partner.
“He bought a commission, the way third sons do,” Mr. Carroll explained when they came back together. “Went off to war. Must’ve shown off over there like a trained lion because he came back and they gave him an earldom. But it didn’t come with any money,” he added quickly, clearly seeing her interest. “He’s strapped. Barely has a groat.”
Tamsyn’s heart sank. So much for Lord Blakemere. The second part of her objective in coming to London was finding herself a rich husband. If she was going to buy Chei Owr from her uncle and keep the smuggling operation alive, she needed a spouse with considerable wealth.
“You didn’t tell her the best part,” the man dancing next to Mr. Carroll added. Before Mr. Carroll could object to the interruption, the other man continued, “Blakemere’s gotone weekto find himself a bride.”
“What happens in a week?” she asked, trying to listen and concentrate on the steps at the same time.
“He loses his chance to inherit a fortune,” Mr. Carroll snapped. “No wife, no money. That’s the end of it.”
Inherit a fortune.The words reverberated in Tamsyn’s head as she fell into distracted silence.
It was certainly something to contemplate.
At the end of the dance, she curtsied to Mr. Carroll. “Thank you, sir.”
“Might I get you some refreshment?” he offered.
“That’s kind of you, but I believe I see my sponsor, Lady Daleford, standing alone. I must keep her company. Do excuse me.”
He looked annoyed by her dismissal as Tamsyn backed away from him, but his expression of irritation lifted when the same talkative gentleman from the dance whispered in his ear. Mr. Carroll glanced at Tamsyn with the look of a man who had narrowly escaped a ravenous ghoul.
She suppressed a sigh and turned away. Doubtless her lack of dowry was the topic under discussion. In the weeks she had been searching for a potential groom, all the men who had shown promise eventually disappeared when they learned of her impecunious circumstances.
Lady Daleford looked at her with sympathy as she approached. “My dear, you mustn’t let the chatterers deter you,” the older woman declared. She fanned herself slowly. “Your dear papa, God rest him, did you no favors by leaving this world intestate.”
The heaviness in Tamsyn’s chest pressed down. “I suppose he believed he could attend to that matter later.” His brother, Jory, hadn’t seen fit to make any provisions for her, and it was only through Lady Daleford’s largesse that Tamsyn had any fashionable clothes to wear during her brief, disastrous Season.
“We, all of us, think we have more time than we do,” Lady Daleford agreed.
Seeking a change in topic, Tamsyn said, “It cannot be factual that Lord Blakemere has only one week to find himself a wife.”
The older woman’s brows rose. “Heard the gossip, have you?”
So it was true, incredible as it might seem. “Why isn’t he swarming with debutantes?”
