Page 21 of Miss Dashing
“Portia and Flavia know polite society’s underbrush, birdcalls, and wildflowers the same way you know the countryside. They are at home lurking near punchbowls. They pore over Debrett’s as you’d read tracks on the muddy banks of the Twid. Underestimate them at your peril, my lord.”
Hecate delivered not a lecture, but rather, a serious warning, and Phillip took it as such. “If compromising is on the list of acceptable wilderness tactics here at Nunnsuch, why are you permitted to be private with me?”
Hecate gestured to a cushioned seat.
“I beg your pardon.” Phillip dutifully held her chair for her before taking the one next to it. “Sorry. They flustered me. One doesn’t expect an interrogation from a pair of giggling ninnyhammers.”
Hecate took up a table napkin and spread it on her lap, which reminded Phillip to do likewise.
“I am on the shelf,” Hecate said. “Firmly, completely, irreversibly. You could spend the night under my bed, and my family would not take it amiss. Spinsterhood was the bargain I struck with my father. The family’s first tactic was to try to marry me—and my fortune—off to a cousin or in-law. Keep the moneywhere it will do the most good.”
Phillip held the plate of sandwiches out to her. “You don’t blame them for this conniving?”
“My fortune is all the money they have, so no, I don’t blame them, but no suitably obliging fellow over the age of sixteen stepped forward. Next, they tried to marry me to greater wealth, but again, no candidates volunteered. The last strategy was to put me on offer to gentlemen of exceedingly great age, with the understanding that I’d come into my widow’s portion in short order, but again, candidates were few and a bit too vigorous.”
She chose a single sandwich of butter and cress.
Phillip added two of roast beef and Stilton to her plate. The sandwiches were about the size of pocket watches, for pity’s sake. “You warned all these bachelors off.”
“After the first few, overt warnings weren’t necessary, but I hadn’t realized that my own solicitors—my former solicitors—were abetting my spinsterhood. I’ll have a raspberry tart, please.”
Phillip put three on her plate and bit into his own sandwich. “Thus you struck a bargain with your father. He agreed to stop leading you about Mayfair like a brindle heifer available to join a new herd, and you agreed to use your fortune for the family’s greater good.”
Hecate finished her first sandwich. “Your agrarian analogies want some polish, my lord.” She picked up a second sandwich.
“How old were you when you negotiated this cease-fire?”
“One and twenty, and I’d come into control of the first portion of my wealth. The whole of it is under my direction now, and I cannot tell you what a relief that is.”
“Probably about like gaining title to Lark’s Nest is for me. That place is my home, not simply the property where I dwell and sweat and snore.Mine.If Tavistock goes down in history as the worst brother ever to bear the label, I will still love and revere him for that single instance of generosity.”
Hecate took up her glass of punch, and Phillip considered she’d soon be off to avert various disasters on the terrace, in the kitchen, or in the garden shadows. He had a question or two yet to put to her.
“Tell me, Miss Brompton, did you love your cousin Johnny, or did you commend him to the Canadian wilderness with a sense of relief?”
She put her glass down slowly, the punch untasted. “Fast work, even for Flavia and Portia.”
Phillip waited, because her answer mattered.
“To be honest,” Hecate said. “A bit of both.”
ChapterFive
What had Flavia and Portia been about, regaling Lord Phillip with ancient family history? Their schemes ranged from outlandish to devious and both at the same time, and they werealwaysscheming.
Edna doted on them shamelessly, which helped not one bit.
“Johnny is the one Brompton of whom the family is justifiably proud,” Hecate said, starting a second sandwich and surprised to find meat and cheese where she’d been expecting a dab of butter and some greens. “He talked the solicitors into allowing him a lieutenant’s commission and managed to get posted to Canada as hostilities on the Peninsula heated up. He even took a wayward younger brother with him.”
“For whom you were also expected to buy a commission?”
“I pay for everything. You needn’t carp on the fact. In any case, off they sailed, and in Canada they have remained. Johnny loves the out of doors, while Emeril is good with figures. Emeril attached himself to quartermastering in the eastern provinces, while Johnny went west. He eventually sold his commission and took to trapping and guiding. He’s apparently happy doing what he excels at. Emeril bides in the east, employed by some trading outfit, though I think they see each other every couple of years or so.”
How must it feel to have the vast, wild, whole of Canada to wander freely?
“And you are proud of them,” Lord Phillip said. “Do they write?”
“They write to Great-Uncle Nunn once or twice a year, and he deigns to share the letters. What of you? Any far-flung relations waiting for letters from you?”
