Page 16 of Miss Dashing
From him, those assurances were not simply a playful cliché. “We still should have discussed the weather.” Hecate glanced up at Nunnsuch’s façade, which even when viewed from the garden was imposing. “I do not want to go back into that house.”
She hadn’t meant to say that aloud. The look his lordship gave her said he knew as much.
“At supper, we will discuss the weather,” Hecate muttered, preceding his lordship into the house. “You violate that dictum at peril of being sentenced to partner me in a Mayfair quadrille.”
“I am a-tremble with dread, Miss Brompton.” He bowed to her at the foot of the curved staircase. “May your dreams be of gentle showers, joyous rainbows, and breezes fragrant with honeysuckle.”
She ascended the steps with as much dignity as she could muster, though somehow, even Lord Phillip’s meteorological references tossed her off-balance. When she glanced behind her, he was still at the foot of the steps, looking dusty and devilish.
Hecate slept for three straight hours, and her dreams were of thunderstorms and talking horses.
ChapterFour
“Miss Brompton rattled off a lot of begats and resides-ats,” Phillip said, “but I cannot put names to faces. For example, who is that woman impersonating a drunken ostrich?”
Phillip was again delaying the inevitable, lurking at the French doors of Gavin DeWitt’s sitting room. On the terrace below, a loose crowd gathered, the noise increasing by the moment.
DeWitt held out a bony wrist. “Do me up, would you? The lady with the plumes is our hostess, Edna Brompton. A Houghton by birth, said to have been well dowered. Mother to the current heir. A previous contender for the succession died of consumption. Thanks.”
DeWitt examined his reflection in the cheval mirror and fluffed his cravat, then began warbling random syllables like an Italian baritone preparing for a revival ofDon Giovanni. A slight improvement over soliloquies from murderous princelings.
Hecate moved about below in a gown of medium brown trimmed with black, a cream lace shawl draped about her arms. The neckline was suitable for a Puritan governess. The governess’s spinster auntie would have approved of the plain bun passing as a coiffeur. She was a wren among parakeets, kingfishers, and bullfinches.
“The tittering fellow is Charles Brompton?” Phillip asked.
DeWitt ceased his noise and rejoined Phillip at the French doors. “I see an embarrassment of tittering fellows. The one with the quizzing glass is Charles. Amaryllis ordered me to avoid him.”
“So of course you will lurk in corners glowering until he wets himself.”
“No, alas for my sense of family pride. Lissa says he has a wife and two children dependent upon him. I am to be a gracious exponent of wealthy bachelordom, overshadowed by your titled self, of course.”
“Charles Brompton is stupid,” Phillip translated, “and it’s not worth the bother to chastise him for his dishonorable conduct. I remain unconvinced. If a lowly bullock can be taught not to kick at the traces, an English fribble can learn to keep his falls buttoned.”
“Ah, but a bullock has been relieved of his testicles. Brompton doubtless treasures his. Should we go down?”
Phillip would rather have crawled back to Berkshire, but crawling was not his forte. Never had been.
Miss Brompton conferred with a footman for the third time in twelve minutes. This one handed her a glass of punch. She sipped and nodded, and the fellow looked relieved. Edna the Ostrich, meanwhile, barnacled herself onto the arm of some dashing blade who affected, of all things, a monocle. Another female, younger, mere pheasant feathers sticking up from her head, looked up like a startled hare when an old fellow strutted onto the terrace.
“Nunn,” DeWitt said. “Earl of. He’ll put in an appearance at any formal dinners, but we won’t see much of him otherwise. Tory, of course, and conscientious toward his tenants. Family seems to be a matter of indifference to him. Charles is the heir, which ought to give all good souls a pang of worry for the British aristocracy.”
Hecate greeted the earl with a respectful curtsey. He nodded to her without speaking, took a glass from the tray of a passing footman, and strolled off in the direction of his heir.
“Let’s go down,” Phillip said, stepping back as the gaiety below became noisier still.
Gavin touched his sleeve. “It’s Miss Brompton’s money that makes the whole charade possible. You can’t expect an aging martinet to like her for that.”
Liking was a matter of personal taste, but civility to a benefactress shouldn’t have been too great an imposition. “How do you know the family’s financial situation?”
“All of London knows. If a fellow marries into the Brompton horde, he negotiates more or less with Miss Hecate regarding settlements. If a daughter of the house becomes engaged, Miss Hecate’s solicitors negotiate on her behalf, though I understand Miss Hecate has recently changed firms. She inherited from her mother’s side of the family and has turned a nest egg into a thriving henhouse of investments. A whole poultry farm, to hear some tell it.”
And for that, she was nearly offered the cut direct by the head of the family?
“You will show Miss Hecate Brompton marked attention,” Phillip said. “Charm her, DeWitt, or I will tell the ostrich woman that you are in search of a wife from a titled family.”
DeWitt flashed his signature charming-lad smile. “No call for dirty tactics. Amaryllis likes Miss Brompton. Says she has backbone and a fine sense of humor. I am looking forward to making the lady’s acquaintance. Lay on, Macduff…”
“Not the tragedies, please. A farce or a comedy, but no fights to the death and no madness.”
