Page 15 of Miss Dashing
“Why are you stretched on the rack of the overtaxed hostess? You are a guest, as I am, and I doubt I will be pulled in even three different directions. You’ve traveled farther than I have to get here. Your journey was as fatiguing as mine, and yet, you face a forced march. Why?”
Because Edna sprang this wretched house party on me with too little time to prepare. Because the nominal hostess lingered in Town buying out the shops with Eglantine, using her own house party as an excuse to refurbish an already lavish wardrobe.
“House parties require thorough planning, done right. Cousin Edna, our hostess of record, has deputed me to assist her.”
“Why you? Does Cousin Edna have no daughters? No daughters-in-law? No goddaughters?”
Why me?Hecate had asked that question so many times during her first Season, it ought to have become her personal motto. “I am experienced at planning and managing social gatherings.”
They passed into the short portion of the path that cut through the woods proper, a blessedly cool, shadowed hundred yards where both house and stables were obscured from sight by towering oaks and a thick understory of encroaching maples along with a precocious birch or two.
“Your tone tells me I should drop my line of inquiry, Miss Brompton, but my motive is concern rather than curiosity. You look knackered, in need of a respite. I certainly am, and I merely spent a few hours on horseback, which I’m likely to do any given day. Shall we sit?”
They’d come to the bench somebody had carved from the trunk of an oak claimed by the royal navy in the third earl’s day. He’d cut the tree down, burned the stump, and sworn that lightning—rather than the need for wainscoting in the foyer—had claimed the tree.
The Brompton propensity for scheming had a lengthy provenance.
“I can’t tarry long,” Hecate said, though the prospect of getting off her feet was pathetically welcome. “Do I need to tell you that one doesn’t remark critically on a lady’s appearance?”
“One isn’t critical. One is compassionate.” Lord Phillip handed her onto the bench and took the place beside her. Not touching, but not half a yard away either. “You put me in mind of Amaryllis DeWitt, lately the Marchioness of Marital Bliss. You will have heard that her brother, Gavin, scion of the house, left his womenfolk to make shift while he indulged his thespian talents. He thought he’d arranged sufficient provision for them, but alas…”
“Avaricious solicitors, misfortune, miscommunication. I am familiar with the tale.”
“Amaryllis became the unpaid house steward, land steward, manager of the home farm, accountant, leader of hymns, finder of misplaced spectacles, designer of altered bonnets, and head gardener. We neighbors did what we could, but beyond a certain point, the ladies were on their own. You strike me as very much on your own.”
“I like being on my own.” Why had a firm statement of the obvious come out sounding plaintive?
Lord Phillip patted Hecate’s hand. Because she’d been arranging the centerpiece for the evening’s buffet when the butler had informed her of Lord Phillip’s arrival, she wore no gloves. Lord Phillip had likely removed his riding gloves out of habit, and thus the brush of his fingers over her knuckles was real, human contact.
“You pay dearly for it, don’t you?” he said, craning his neck to look straight up into the canopy. “Whatever rebellion or misstep your mother might have taken, or did not take but could have taken, you are made to pay for it.”
This again. Hecate had tried to put his casual, foolish question aside, but he apparently recalled the moment, contrary to every dictate of good manners.
“One doesn’t… That is, I have no idea to what you’re referring, my lord, and I must be getting back to the house.”
He caught her hand before she could rise. “Miss Brompton… Hecate. My mother was blamed for my backwardness, for my dark hair, for my slowness of speech. Clearly, she’d disrespected her vows, or her lineage had harbored undisclosed defective tendencies, else I would have been born with my father’s blond hair and excel at drawling bon mots in French.”
His grip was warm and firm, and yet, Hecate could easily have broken free. “You were treated unfairly, and so was your mother. I’m sorry.”
“True, and so are you treated unfairly. Between thee and me, you need not dissemble. I am troubled that your family imposes on you, and I trust you have your reasons for allowing it. Even so, I am not in the habit of ignoring ill usage when it’s right under my nose. Provincial of me, I’m sure, but there you have it. Would civilization truly cease to function if you took an hour’s nap?”
She needed a nap. Craved a nap. Longed for a nap. Had barely slept for all the preparations requiring attention. The journey out from Town earlier in the week had been stifling and interminable.
“We should be discussing the weather.”
Lord Phillip rose and drew Hecate to her feet. “For years, for all of my life until Tavistock came along, I was forbidden to leave Crosspatch Corners on pain of losing the only thing I valued. Now I am allowed to roam the earth at will, to see, and do, and investigate any activity that catches my eye. I am not wasting the next twenty minutes discussing the weather with you, when you should be dreaming of the perfect waltz. Away with you, mademoiselle. I will manage until supper.”
He kissed her knuckles, truly kissed them, which was terribly forward and truly not done and also lovely of him.
“Come, I’ll walk with you back to the house,” he said, tucking her hand over his arm. “I’ve been working on my French, but I regret to report that my quadrille is hopeless.”
“I promised you a house party free of quadrilles.” She let him escort her to the park and through the garden, but his words would not leave her. “You were truly captive in Crosspatch Corners?”
“Closer to a prisoner on parole. Within the confines of the neighborhood, I had unlimited freedom. I could venture into Reading or Windsor if I pleased to, but when I should have been learning to venture, I was instead learning birdcalls and how to beat Vicar at chess. London terrifies me, if you must know. The noise, the crowds, the incessant activity. Drives me barmy.”
“As it did me, at first. Now Town is a familiar purgatory. You mustn’t tell anybody I said that.” They climbed the terrace steps, and with each one, Hecate felt more keenly the bow wave of fatigue she’d been pushing before her.
“Your secrets, Miss Brompton, will always be safe with me.”
