Page 89 of Not Quite a Lady
‘Did your business prosper this afternoon?’ she enquired, sounding to her own ears just like her prosiest cousin, Frederica.
‘Thank you, yes. And I called at your agent’s office to return that item you had forgotten.’
‘I am grateful, I hope it was not out of your way.’
What was the matter with her? After the silliness of trying to make themselves respectable in the hackney carriage hadsubsided, a pall of stultifying shyness seemed to have fallen on her. Lily kept her gaze on her clasped hands, and after a moment picked up a journal and began to flick through it.
No such constraint had fallen on Caroline. ‘Lily and I think we should be finding you a wife Jack,’ she remarked chattily.
Lily dropped the journal and scrabbled for it on the floor while she tried to cover her confusion.
‘Did you indeed? How very kind of you both.’
Lily did not have to raise her eyes from desperately smoothing out crumpled pages to know exactly how Jack was looking. One dark eyebrow would be raised and he would be managing to do that while looking down his nose at the same time.
‘Yes,’ Caroline said complacently.
‘No.’ Lily interjected, looking up at last to meet a very sardonic gaze.
‘Yes you did, Lily, you said that Jack would make an excellent father and we both agreed that we should find him a charming bride. Don’t you remember? When we were getting out of the carriage when we arrived home?’
In the face of this convincing detail Lily could hardly deny it. ‘I might have said something like that,’ she agreed feebly, waiting for the explosion.
But Jack was unnaturally calm about it. ‘Do tell me Caro – have you anyone particular in mind. A shortlist perhaps?’
‘Of course,’ his sister said, with an expression of smug complacency. ‘Miss Willoughby – George’s elder sister if you recall.’
‘Dull.’
‘But very worthy and industrious, which I am sure is what is needed. Or there is Louisa Carfax.’
‘Is that the one with the giggle? Certainly not.’
‘Lady Georgiana Foster? Now she does not giggle and she is a most handsome girl.’
‘She has the brains of a peahen.’
‘But, Jack, we are all agreed you need a wife, and here I am doing my best and you are not being at all helpful. If you are going to be so fussy about our local ladies, then you had better do as we suggested the other evening and go back to London to find a rich wife.’
‘Caroline,’ Jack’s snapped warning came too late to stop the tide of colour flooding into Lily’s face.
How could Caroline be so tactless? But perhaps she had no idea how wealthy Lily was. She felt ready to sink, and had to force herself to speak.
‘Perhaps Lord Allerton has scruples about marrying someone simply because of their wealth,’ she managed between stiff lips. ‘No doubt he is waiting to find someone for whom he can feel regard and affection.’
‘I do not see how being wealthy excludes a woman from being those things to him,’ Caroline persisted, apparently completely insensitive to her friend’s anguish beside her and her own glowering brother. ‘Jack could very well find a rich lady to fall in love with and in that case he would have to be a complete blockhead to let her money stand in his way.’
‘Caroline–’ It was a warning growl this time.
Then Jack got to his feet as his mother and younger sisters came in, and Lily found she was dragging air into her lungs as though she had been holding her breath for an hour.
‘Mama, what a very dashing confection you are wearing. You are going to reduce all the local ladies to blatant envy when we next entertain.’
‘I think it is not so bad,’ Lady Allerton agreed, patting her curls with a touch of complacency.
Jack sat again, not in his previous chair, but beside Lily, who found her fingers were clenched on the journal.
‘I shall strangle my sister,’ he remarked, low-voiced.
