Page 18 of Miss Dashing
If Lord Nunn was in residence at Nunnsuch, Hecate bided in London rather than presume on his hospitality. In recent years, he’d kept increasingly to Nunnsuch rather than Town, where impecunious relations lurked behind every potted palm.
“My lord,” Hecate murmured when Nunn’s audience, Mrs. Rose Roberts, smiled at Hecate in greeting. “If you have a moment, I’d like to introduce two more guests to you.”
Nunn brushed a glance over her, then arched an eyebrow at Mr. DeWitt and Lord Phillip. DeWitt smiled genially. Lord Phillip looked bored.
“Proceed,” Nunn said. He had the looks to be a convivial old raconteur—snowy white hair, blue eyes, lean save for a bit of a paunch, but he instead attempted relentless majesty. Hecate used to contemplate dashing a serving of punch in his face, but punch cost money. Then too, by the time she was Nunn’s age, the Bromptons might well have put her in a permanent ill humor too.
She stepped through the ritual, and Nunn bestirred himself to exhibit his manners. He was a peer, true, but in terms of family standing, a marquessate outranked an earldom. Mr. DeWitt ingratiated himself with Mrs. Roberts and inveigled her into showing him the wonders of the herbaceous borders, while Lord Phillip remained at Hecate’s elbow.
“Hail from Berkshire, do you?” Nunn asked. “I thought the Tavistock marquessate had its seat in Surrey.”
As opening salvos went, that one should have landed sizzling with menace at Lord Phillip’s feet. Hecate doubted his lordship had clapped eyes on that family seat, his banishment to Berkshire a blatant indicator of paternal rejection.
“As it happens, I prefer Lark’s Nest,” Lord Phillip replied mildly. “My estate is not only profitable, but lovely. Tavistock deeded it to me outright, and I do so admire generosity, especially in those with many demands upon their resources. Don’t you agree?”
His tone was pleasant, but heads had turned. Charles sent Hecate a do-something look. Edna’s plumes were for once still, and over by the punchbowl, Cousin Portia was whispering furiously into Cousin Flavia’s ear.
“Decent thing for the marquess to do,” Nunn harrumphed. “One cannot fault his intentions.”
“Tavistock is the best of brothers,” Phillip replied. “When he learned that he had family in my humble person, he dropped the Town whirl flat and presented himself on my doorstep in Berkshire. He’s been biding there more or less ever since, and we hope he and the marchioness will make a permanent home in the surrounds. Family is as family does, after all.”
In the distance, an owl hooted, the sound dying away into the shadows of the home wood and leaving a vast silence in its wake. Then somebody commenced a coughing fit, while Portia snickered, and Flavia rapped her sister on the arm with a folded-up fan.
“Perhaps you’d like a glass of punch, my lord?” Hecate said, gesturing with her empty glass. “I could certainly use more. The earl has many other guests to greet, and I’d like to introduce you to more of my cousins.”
Lord Phillip offered his arm. “A glass of punch would suit.”
Hecate wrapped her fingers around his elbow and all but dragged him past the punchbowl and into the relative shadows of the conservatory.
“What on earth were you doing?” she hissed when she’d hauled him among the potted lemons.
“Greeting my host. I thought it went rather well. The old bore must be lonely, racketing about this enormous place with nothing to do but fill in his oubliette and wait for his next quarterly allowance. One pities him.”
“Does one really?” Hecate felt a great lecture welling up, about decorum and civility and the duties of a guest and first impressions… and the list went on from there. A long, worthy, sanctimonious list, intended to prevent further disasters of the kind Lord Phillip had just visited upon himself.
“You are distressed,” Phillip said. “I do apologize, but somebody had to remind the old fellow of a host’s obligations. I don’t mind that he was uppish with me, but he had no excuse for his rudeness to you.”
Oh, that.“He’s rude to everybody. Gruff, rather, by nature.”
“Then the lesson was overdue. He has all this family—cousins and nephews and nieces—and he can’t spare a drop of gratitude for that abundance, much less for the coin you part with to keep him in gardeners and embroidered dressing gowns. I’d half a mind to deliver him a true tongue-lashing.”
Hecate’s imagination was seized by the image of Lord Phillip, fist on hip, shaking an admonitory finger at Nunn as the earl stood, shame-faced, in one of his many richly adorned silk dressing gowns.
“Does my lord have earls thick on the ground in Crosspatch Corners that he feels qualified to comment on Nunn’s deportment?”
“Oh, now I’ve done it. You are my-lording me. I will tell you this: In Crosspatch Corners, we have common decency by the hectare. The crop flourishes when all are dedicated to its care.”
“Don’t turn up Farmer Phillip on me when you’ve insulted your host. I will be blamed for your rudeness.”
“I wasn’t rude,” Phillip said gently. “I was polite. If Nunn chose to hear insults, then he did the damage to himself. You cannot continue to cosset these buffoons, Hecate Brompton. They forget to whom they owe the punch they drink and the pretty frocks they wear.”
He was lecturing her, and his reproach was all the more devasting for being brief and kindly.
“They are all I have.” She’d not put that into words before, though what pathetic, inadequate words they were.
Phillip peered down at her. “In their present condition, they are not worth having. Besides, you have me. Please recall that I treasure my friends, even if they are a bit misguided on topics such as loyalty, generosity, and self-respect. Are you hungry? I’m famished. At what point is it permissible to plunder the buffet? And might I fetch you another glass of punch? Haranguing me is thirsty work, and I can see you’re winding up for a grand peroration.”
Hecate’s grand peroration slipped from her grasp. “A glass of punch would be much appreciated. We’re a quarter hour away from the buffet opening.”
