Page 22 of Miss Dignified
“Will was a soldier. He can look after himself. Seems to me Bowen has come up in the world since Will cut him loose.”
“Will didn’t cut him loose, Porter. Will disappeared like a thief in the night. Like a man with something to hide, and then Bowen was beat to flinders for no apparent reason. If I did not know Will Brook to be an honorable fellow, I’d think he deserted his family.”
Hughie extracted a chunk of what looked like dark amber from his pocket and rubbed it along the bow hairs. “Will is honorable, and he’s not stupid. If I see him, I’ll tell him Bowen’s asking after him, but, Captain, heed me. Standing up for the men was how you earned our loyalty in Spain, and we loved you for it. We’re not in Spain anymore.”
“And I promised Will Brook I’d see him settled. If he’s come to harm, I want to know about it, and I want to know why.”
Hughie put his fiddle to his chin and laid his bow on the strings. “But nobody has to follow your orders anymore, do they, Captain? A body might almost think the war was finally over.” He smiled and launched into Niel Gow’s “Lament for the Death of His Second Wife.”
A sadder and more beautiful fiddle tune had not been written. The strains followed Dylan as he made his way to Jeanette’s door and was admitted by the lady herself. The encounter with Hughie Porter had been unsettling. The hug Jeanette bestowed on Dylan threw him off-balance in an entirely different direction.
“Cousin, you are a naughty, naughty man,” Jeanette said, squeezing him hard. “You play least in sight as if I’ll try to marry you off now that Orion and Alasdhair have found women to put up with them. You forget that, of all people, I am the last who would force anybody to the altar.”
Jeanette bore the scent of flowers, she hugged fiercely, and she didn’t merely squeeze and let go. For a progression of instants, Dylan washeld, unable to politely escape and bewildered about how to respond.
She stepped back and plucked Dylan’s hat from his head and his walking stick from his hand. Jeanette had been all angles and elbows as a girl. As a woman, she’d become terrifyingly self-possessed, rather like Lydia Lovelace, oddly.
“You are not as peaked and wan as usual,” Jeanette said, casting a critical eye over Dylan. “Mrs. Lovelace must be feeding you adequately.”
“You and my housekeeper are acquainted?” Why did that unnerve him?
“You tasked her with putting Alasdhair’s house to rights before he and Dorcas married. My path crossed with Mrs. Lovelace’s then, and I was favorably impressed. I dare hope she was as well. Come sit with me. Sycamore has abandoned me to meet with the head gardener at our Richmond property. They get to talking about mulch and trellises and compost, and I feel an irresistible compulsion to nap.”
She linked her arm with Dylan’s and escorted him—she did not quite march him—to a parlor overlooking the thoroughfare. The Coventry Club sat across the street, its façade as staid and respectable as the buildings on either side of it.
“How fares the club?” Dylan asked, for want of a wittier conversational gambit.
“The Coventry is thriving. Orion and Ann manage the day-to-day activities, Sycamore keeps a hand in, and I am available to assist with the ledgers, inventories, and whatnot. You did not deign to call on me to discuss the club, Dylan.”
Jeanette sat with all the grace of a monarch and gestured for Dylan to take the wing chair next to hers. The parlor was comfortable. Framed drawings of pretty plants hung on the walls. Enormous ferns held pride of place before the windows.
The parlor was also unique to Jeanette and her spouse. A cork target hung between the framed prints, the center heavily pitted. A pair of throwing knives, one larger than the other, lay on the low table atop a bound volume of what appeared to be risque prints.
Dylan was abruptly aware that he hardly knew his lady cousin. Jeanette had married a much older man when she’d been barely out of the schoolroom. By the time Dylan had come home from war and sorted his affairs out, Jeanette had been a retiring widow. Now she was married to Dorning, and apparently finally happy.
“I called on you because…”Because we are both grown up now, and soon we will be grown old?He could not say that. “How are you, Jeanette?”
“I am thriving. Sycamore spoils me without limit, and that… You have no idea, Dylan, what a relief it is to have somebody to love.”
“Surely you…” She could not possibly have loved the strutting martinet she’d been matched with in her first marriage. “Dorning loves you, too, I take it?”
“Madly. He exasperates and delights me, but mostly, he listens to me. Sycamore is affectionate and honest—appallingly so, sometimes—and he talks to me. To have another’s trust is a heady responsibility, but I flatter myself that Sycamore feels equally honored to have mine. Finding husbands for your sisters will not be easy, not if we’re to make a proper job of it.”
“About my sisters…” A soft rap on the door bought Dylan a few moments to marvel at what had already passed between him and his cousin. Jeanette had been a shy, determined girl often overshadowed by a boisterous older brother.
Nobody overshadowed her now. She had become blunt, charming, confident, and somehow radiant. Dylan suspected the same could be said of her spouse. Ofallthe spouses—Orion and Ann, Alasdhair and Dorcas, Jeanette and Sycamore.
For the first time, being the odd cousin out was not a status to be treasured and guarded, but rather, cause for consternation. Dylan had assumed that once he was finally back in Wales, he’d find a suitable wife. She’d be cheerful, organized, well liked by the neighbors and staff, and affectionate toward her husband under appropriate circumstances.
Dylan would esteem her and see that she wanted for nothing—and nobody would be radiant or exasperated or doting. To think of Lydia Lovelace consigned for life to the arms of some cheerful, industrious cousin whom her aunties had chosen for her was an intolerable notion.
When had a pragmatic union of lukewarm mutual esteem become not only tolerable for Dylan, but an assumed eventuality?
Chapter Six
“You are opposed to a match between me and Lydia.”
Wesley offered Caroline a smile with that statement, and his smile, as always, gave her a moment of confusion. John had had just that same winsome expression, as if he and Caroline shared a secret joke about life.
