“Miss Penelope Ashford.”
There was a beat—just long enough for him to begin regretting the phrasing—and then she barked a laugh.
“Misswho?”
He did not answer. She did not wait for him to.
“That is not a name,” she scoffed. “That is an excuse. A falsehood meant to put me off. Say it again—I daresay you have already forgot it.”
He did.
She stared, as if he had just recited something obscene in French. “I have never heard of such a person. If she were anyone worth hearing of, I would have heard. Where on earth did you find her? A milliner’s luncheon?”
“Her father is Thomas Ashford of St. James Square.”
“And I suppose that is meant to reassure me? Square footage is not pedigree. Has the girl even been presented?”
He let the insult pass.
But she did not. “This is absurd. You are announcing an engagement to a girl no one knows, a girl you met—what, a fortnight ago?”
“Three weeks.”
“Well, that changes everything,” she snapped. “And what of Anne?”
“What of her.”
“You know very well what. It has always been understood that you would marry her.”
“Understood byyou,” he retorted.
“Understood by your mother! Your father!”
Darcy’s expression did not change.
She seized on it. “Yes. Your mother, who trusted me. Who named Anne as your equal in every regard—”
“She is not.”
Lady Catherine recoiled. “You dare—”
“I dare nothing. I state a fact. Anne is not my equal. Nor my choice. Nor my bride.”
The door opened without ceremony—just a creak, a firm tread, and the unmistakable rustle of superiority. The dowagercountess swept in like she owned the house, which, in most practical respects, she might as well have.
“Gracious,” the dowager countess said, brushing a fleck of lint from her shoulder. “I leave you two alone for ten minutes and somehow we are staging a bloodless coup.”
Lady Catherine turned, already mid-protest. She paled. “Mother—”
“Do not ‘Mother’ me,” the dowager snapped, pausing just inside the room. “You are nearly sixty and still clinging to the same arrangement your sister-in-law mentioned once in passing while drunk on ratafia.”
Lady Catherine stiffened, but the fight in her posture deflated by degrees. It was not that she feared her mother. No one feared the dowager. They simply did not survive disagreeing with her.
The dowager moved into the room with all the authority of a duchess and none of the title. “Anne was never promised. The match was never formalized. You may stop invoking the dead as your chaperone.”
“I am only trying to preserve the dignity of our family,” Lady Catherine said tightly.
“A noble aim. Start by leaving off the melodrama.” She settled into the chair by the hearth with a crisp rustle. “And for heaven’s sake, stop glaring like a governess caught stealing the port.”
