Perry took refuge in his glass. “An ugly girl! Questionable family, or a Long Meg. We’ll know you won’t make an offer, but his lordship won’t.”
Rutherford looked down his nose at the other man. “Or perhaps Darien would prefer to pursue connections that will restore dignity to the name of Bales, which, if you will allow me to point out the obvious, I share.”
The words came too close to his father’s chastisement. Darien advanced, and Rutherford drew back, no doubt recalling the earlier promise of a facer.
“I’ve had my father rattle me off already,” Darien said. “Now come here.”
He yanked Rufie’s neckcloth out of its knot and rearranged it with a few elegant tucks. “Stop fussing and it will last the night.”
Rutherford looked surprised. “I didn’t know?—”
“That I could dress myself?” Darien smiled without humor. “I’d be ruined if I let my man have the dressing of me. He’s a poor lad from my estate who wanted to try his luck in the city, but he can’t get a post without a character, and he can’t establish character without having a post.”
Rutherford met his cousin’s eyes but said nothing. The two men had never been close, and not just due to their difference in age. Rutherford resembled Lucien, tall, rangy, with oil-black hair and the same noble, well-shaped features. Horatia, Horace’s surviving daughter, had the same striking coloring.
But Rufie’s shoulders bore a noticeable stoop, the Bales blue eyes were disguised behind eyeglasses, and he had none of Lucien’s deadpan humor or ready, contagious laugh. Really, a man could put up with only so much from a cousin born of a second son, and one who had gone into the priesthood to boot.
Darien picked up the decanter. “Wish me well. I’m off to prostrate myself before the Queen and beg for redemption.”
“St. James!” Perry exclaimed. “That bad?”
“My father thinks so.” Darien drained the second glass—or was it his third? “If I’m banished, where should we go this time? Rome again? Greece? The fighting is over in Turkey.”
Perry’s eyes slid away, and Darien sensed that, for the first time, his friend would not merrily go to hell in a handbasket with him, though Perry had been, since Lucien had left, the instigator for most of their madcap schemes. Perhaps Perry, like the marquess, felt that in blundering about shackled in misery, Darien was sinking everyone else with him.
“Very well.” Darien put down the glass. “I hope that miserable valet of mine can find my court costume.”
“Would it be so bad, Darien? Taking over Bellamy?” Rufie asked. “You’ve been a good steward for The Revels, but that’s a tiny farm in comparison. It would ease your father’s mind to know you can oversee the marquessate when the time comes.”
“Bellamy is not mine to administer,” Darien snapped. “Langford and the marquessate will go to Lucien, and I will not take a pebble that is his. Whatever my faults—and I’m aware there are many—I do not steal from my kin.”
He downed the last of the liquid in his glass. “Now, to our more pressing matter. Anyone want to lay odds that the Queen will call for my head?”
CHAPTER THREE
Henrietta paused too long. Aunt Althea, no doubt thinking her niece right behind her, disappeared into a clump of visitors entering St. James Palace.
Her entire family was here to see her presented, and Henrietta had no idea where to go.
For a wild moment, she contemplated telling the coachman to drive on. She could circle St. James Park until the levee was over, sparing herself an afternoon of agony.
But such a desertion would humiliate her family. Clarinda was so pleased with her husband’s elevation and Henrietta’s entrance into society. Aunt Althea would never forgive her, and Sir Pelton would look a fool. Whatever Henrietta Wardley-Hines might lack in grace or delicacy, she did not lack in mettle. Taking a deep breath, she flung open the coach door and pushed through, headdress, hoops, and all.
She ducked far enough that she managed not to dislodge her wig, but her attention toward the upper extremities neglected the lower. As she descended the steps, she planted a foot on her enormous train and alighted on the paving stones to the distinct sound of rending fabric. Henrietta Wardley-Hines, gentleman’sdaughter, uttered an exclamation that ought never be voiced in polite company, and never, ever before the palace of the King.
“That, if I am not mistaken, is the sentiment of a lady in distress,” a deep, very amused, very masculine voice said.
Henrietta looked up from the wreckage of her gown to the splendid figure of a man with lean hips and broad shoulders, then up further still to prominent cheekbones, a wide jaw, and insolent, wickedly blue eyes. He was the most elegantly attired, arrestingly handsome man she had ever seen, and he was quite clearly trying not to laugh at her.
“Someone will have to tell Aunt Davinia that my presentation gown never made it to my presentation.” Henrietta sighed at the sight of her poor abused train.
There was no escape. The broad avenue before the palace was crammed with all manner of chairs, vehicles, horses, and pedestrians. She could flee down St. James Street, or duck into a shop on Pall Mall, but any number of people she knew might see her with a gaping hole in her hem. But to go inside and be seen in such a state by everyone coming to attend the Queen—it was not to be thought of.
Her last hope of refuge rolled away, the coachman obliged to remove the carriage by the threatening shouts of those behind in the queue. Her one hope of deliverance was for the street to open and swallow her.
Which it did not.
Her only recourse was to brave her way into the palace. Henrietta regarded the red-brick façade with its octagonal towers and massive one-handed clock.
