Page 20 of The Damsel
“Dinner … tonight with the Fletcher’s. You promised to escort me, remember?”
He stifled a groan and fought to keep his annoyance from showing. After all, hehadpromised to accompany her to the neighbor’s residence for the evening, as his father was no longer able to leave his bed for long stretches of time without growing weak. However, he remained well aware that this entire affair was nothing more than a matchmaking scheme cooked up by his mother and Lady Fletcher, whose youngest daughter Lucy was unwed with a massive dowry. Never mind that Briarwell made more than enough income to keep them comfortable and a dowry wasn’t needed; his mother obviously thought an heiress would prove the cure to his heartsickness over Daphne.
“Of course,” he said, rather than tell her he’d rather suffer through having his teeth extracted one by one. “I cleared my evening of any plans at your request.”
She smiled and nodded, using a damp cloth to mop at the baron’s forehead. His father didn’t seem to need any such attention, but bore it in placid silence.
“Very good. I cannot wait for you to become more acquainted with Miss Fletcher. She’s such a lovely girl, and quite accomplished, I understand. Her mother says she sings, plays the pianoforte, and is quite adept with water colors.”
So was every other English chit fresh from the schoolroom. One couldn’t throw a stone around these parts without hitting a debutante with a mother standing by ready to titter on and on about how ‘accomplished’ her daughter was.
But, he couldn’t tell his mother that such women did not hold his interest. Not without her pointing out that his pursuit of a more unconventional woman had ended with him being tossed over for another man. Such women were fickle, she would insist, and to pursue a safer option such as Miss Fletcher would be in his best interest.
“I look forward to meeting her.”
SEVERAL HOURS LATER,Robert found himself wishing he had found some way to back out of his obligation. He might have faked a cough, throwing his mother into a fit of panic as she shooed him off to bed and sent for a physician to ensure he didn’t have croup. He might have thrown himself down the stairs and broken his ankle, so his mother could not coerce him into going anywhere for several months.
Or, he might have told his mother to sod off altogether before striding out of the house, throwing himself onto the back of his horse and racing off to someplace where she couldn’t follow and try to drag him back—like a gaming hell or an or a brothel, or an opium den.
That last one might have been a bit dramatic and unnecessary. But, after suffering the company of the insipid Fletcher family and their bland daughter, he’d begun to wish he had done anything other than act the dutiful son.
Now, there was nothing for it but to get through the evening without succumbing to the urge to bash his head against the Fletchers' drawing room wall.
They had arrived early on his mother’s insistence—an entire hour before dinner. Lady Fletcher, a woman who proved a match for his mother in age, stature, and overbearingness, had been thrilled at the chance to put her daughter on display. After settling them into a drawing room and offering him a brandy and his mother a cordial, she’d bustled off in search of Miss Lucy Fletcher, whom they’d been assured was almost finished dressing for dinner.
Robert had taken half his brandy in one swallow, determined to begin dulling his senses as early in the evening as possible. After ten minutes of waiting while his mother remarked upon and criticized every element of the drawing room’s decor she found to be in bad taste, Lady Fletcher appeared with her daughter.
He tried not to judge anyone based on appearance alone, after all there were many who often took one look at him and thought him shallow and empty-headed as if the Almighty could not have blessed him with a brain to go along with his pretty face.
Miss Lucy Fletcher was not unattractive, but neither was she a stunning beauty. That might not have mattered if not for the vacancy he found when he peered into her eyes—as if she were nothing more than a doll being propped up and moved about by her mother. She even spoke with her mother's voice, a low near-whisper he had to strain to hear. He supposed the girl had been taught that it was demure and ladylike, but he found it a trial to hang on to a single word she said when he could hardly hear them.
After the introductions were made, Lady Fletcher had taken to guiding the conversation, doing everything she could to highlight her daughter’s attributes. The baroness had acted as the consummate accomplice.
“Robert, isn’t Miss Fletcher’s gown the most lovely shade of white?”
All the debutantes wore white, and white looked the same to him no matter who was wearing it. Still, he had nodded and smiled, telling Lucy she looked fetching, not mentioning that the sheer number of ruffles on the frock made her look as if she ought to be adorning a table as an ornament.
“Lucy, dear, tell Mr. Stanley about the watercolor landscape you’ve been working on,” Lady Fletcher had prodded.
The girl had flushed and then began explaining to him, in her whisper of a voice, every aspect of her countryside painting with painstaking detail—right down to the technique she’d used on the sheep.
“They’re difficult to paint realistically, you see, for sheep are known for being white, while in truth they aren’t entirely white at all. They appear rather gray at times … dirty, you know. Well, I didn’t want my sheep to appeardirty, but not pure white either. So it took me hours to find the right combination of paints to get it just right.”
Dear God, if ever you thought to strike me dead for some transgression or another, now might be a marvelous time to do so.
His prayer had gone unheeded, and he’d had to suffer through several more minutes of watercolor talk. Such conversation shifted to horses when Lord Fletcher and his son entered the room, a topic that Robert held a marginal interest in. But, right as they’d begun discussing the latest offerings to become available at Tattersall’s, Lady Fletcher had coaxed her daughter to the piano, insisting they ought to enjoy some music before dinner. And yet again, Lucy was thrust back into the spotlight.
She played well enough, but Robert yet again noticed the emptiness in her eyes as she stared off at some point across the room, her chin tilted at an angle just so. The move seemed practiced—as if her mother had shown her how to flaunt her profile to its advantage.
Insipid, the both of them.
Cassandra’s confused muddle of blue-gray eyes flashed through his mind, turbulent and filled with a thousand secrets. No one who had looked into those eyes for more than a few seconds could call her bland. No one who had studied the contours of her face, searching and not just seeing, could call her forgettable.
Tightening his hand around his tumbler, he’d knocked back what was left of his brandy and did his best to tear his thoughts away from her. It would not do to work himself into a state of unquenchable arousal in the company of others. Best to save it for when he could be alone and revel in it, taking his cock in hand and stroking himself off to thoughts of Cassandra on top of him, mastering him, bringing him to life.
Dinner had bored him to tears, with the food proving to be more interesting than the company. He’d done his best to be a good guest, forcing smiles at the right moments and answering any questions that were thrown his way—all while wishing he could devote his entire attention to the veal on his plate.
It was truly good veal.
