Page 20 of Lady Mary's May Day Mischief
Chapter 6
After dinner, Mary shot from her chair and headed down the hall to the main salon where Lady Courtland had invited the guests to adjourn. At dinner Blake had been placed between Grace and Millicent Weaver. Grace had monopolized conversation with him offering wide smiles and demure blushes. Jealousy, new and ugly, meant Mary had picked at her meal.
She stood on the threshold scanning the room only to find Blake talking with Ivy. The feel of his lips on her own lingered even now and she required another taste to assure herself his need of her was not a delusion. Her desire warred with her envy and she turned fidgety and restless. So much so that throughout supper, she’d not paid proper courteous attention to the men to each side of her. Lord Marleigh and Lord Greyson had done their best to provide conversation, but she’d not been a good listener.
Meanwhile, to add frustration to her battlefield, Fifi and Charlton, who’d sat next to each other at table, continued to spar. That man’s attentions to her friend meant Fifi had little time to engage the gentleman on her other side, let alone find a suitor, real or imagined.
Well! Mary had a plan for that. If she couldn’t enjoy Blake’s company, she’d help her friend. Mary’s cousin Winston, the Earl of Dalworthy, would be a perfect choice for Fifi. Handsome and witty, a scholar of Greek and Latin writers, he had been working in London recently with the Secretary of War’s office. After Napoleon was sent off to St. Helena, Winston had retired home to Dalworthy Manor.
She spotted Winston excusing himself from a brief conversation with another gentleman, Lord Collingswood. Mary hurried to put herself in her cousin’s path.
“I’m glad to see you here, Mary. How are you?”
“I’m well. Thank you.” They had not seen each other since she had last been in London in the autumn. Always cordial to her, Winston had been especially kind after her father died two years ago. That had been soon after her mother’s demise and she was not herself. As the seventh earl of Dalworthy, Winston was solicitous of her feelings about his assumption of her home and her father’s place in the world. He’d generously offered her the ability to remain in Dalworthy Manor until she deemed herself ready to move permanently to the house in Bath. He had resided in London, diligently employed round the clock with winning the war. “I’m pleased to see you here, too. You’ve worked very hard to aid the war effort and deserve a rest.”
“Time to do what I should with the estate. I’ve examined the books and surveyed the land and it is,” he said with frankness in his grey eyes, “a daunting task.”
“I’m sure Mister Hawthorn is an asset to you.” Hawthorn had been her father’s estate manager for more than a decade, as had Hawthorn’s father before him for three times that many years.
“He’s ill, Mary. Very ill. His breathing becomes more difficult.”
“No! That’s terrible to hear. I shall write to him. Send him a new wool shawl. He favors a special lamb’s wool from the Highlands.”
“Kind of you. His son takes good care of him and learns the estate in the meantime. He means to take over for his father when it becomes necessary.”
“You have no problems with that, I assume? The Hawthorns are a fixture on the Dalworthy estate.”
“No problems at all. I think both men well suited to their job.”
“And how is your mother?” Mrs. Ralston Finch was Mary’s second cousin by marriage on her father’s side. Tall, with hair the color of snow, she was jovial but very much like Lady Courtland in that she could push her offspring often and in public, too. “I wondered if she would come to this party this year.”
“Past her seventieth birthday now, she declares she’ll take prerogatives of age. She cannot sit for long periods so she prefers not to travel too far. But the truth is, she minds coming into such rarified society. It makes her nervous and she makesfaux pas. She knows it and dislikes her impetuosity to do so.”
Mary let a smile escape at his frankness. “Does she still demand you eat more vegetables?”
He grinned. “She does. Only now she has a new goal for me.”
“Oh?” His mother often talked of her great marital ambitions for her only child, especially now that he was an earl.
He took a glass of brandy from a passing footman. “I’m sure you know what it is.”
Refusing the servant’s offer of sherry, she beamed at her hope they might discuss a topic she liked. “Marriage?”
“Precisely.”
“Any candidates?”
“Not any in London.” His gaze strayed around the room.
“Here?” This conversation did march her way.
“I confess I tire of Mama’s incessant harping on the matter. Then too, I am aware that my father died at thirty-six.”
“Very young.”
“Disturbingly so.” He frowned.
She sought to lift his spirits. “You look quite healthy to me, Winston.”
