“A romantic soldier,” Smith said nodding.
Harry contemplated his future. He’d gone through season after season with no urge to ask anybody anything. Now he would ask Lady Isabel about the rest of her life. She just must say yes.
*
Isabel did notget much sleep after Lord Ryland’s ball and mystery supper. If her head and her heart had been at odds before last evening, they were now wrestling for dominance.
Oh, how she wished she could give in to her feelings! She had even gone so far, sometime in the middle of the night, to consider Mr. Vance’s points.
The story of Lord Welburton had been confirmed. That gentleman had every credential—the eldest son of a powerful duke, heir to a large estate. The lady who married him must have gone into it with full confidence that she had made a sensible choice. The most sensible choice possible, really.
And now look what had happened to the lady! Her husband was being sought in a murder and her husband’s family had thrown her off.
Mr. Vance had said character was a more reliable predictor of the future. Had he been right?
Isabel could not help but reflect on her own father. A more sensible man would have made something of the land he’d been given.
She had very vague early memories of when her mother had lived and the house had been different. There had been servants of all sorts and she thought she remembered a fine carriage. She did not recall going to bed hungry.
Isabel supposed her father had just taken what he was given and then spent it without bothering to try to produce more.
She was fond of him, in her own way. But she often found herself frustrated regarding his lack of industry.
What of Lord Lymington? Did he have the character to provide an unruffled future? That gentleman could be reliably counted upon to not kill anybody, but might there be another sort of trouble he might fall into?
Still, in the end, her rational mind would charge in. Melburton wasoneduke’s son gone astray. That did not prove that seeking a high position and the protection it afforded was the incorrect way to proceed. If she were to be privy to all the examples in the world, she was certain that far more had gone wrong for ladies who’d married on shaky ground than the one lady who’d married a duke’s son who brought disaster.
When she’d arisen in the morning, Betsy had taken one look at her tired features and red eyes and promptly put a cloth soaked in cool water over her eyes and lectured her on the necessity of sleep.
She’d since got up and dressed and felt more like herself. Her resolve, which had been so shaken, began to firm up again.
Now, the duchess came into the drawing room and sat down in front of the tea tray that had just arrived via Carlson.
“What do we think about the Tredwells’ ball on the morrow, Carlson?” the duchess asked. “Are our costumes to become dampened and limp by inclement weather?”
Carlson, who at these moments generally looked like he was staring down the barrel of a gun, said, “I do not believe so, Your Grace. Though, it is the season when we have dolphins on one side and whales on the other, both getting up to all sorts of mischief, so naturally we must be prepared for any eventuality.”
“Dolphins and whales,” the duchess said dismissively. “Those creatures are very irritating, and I do not see why they believe themselves so important as to meddle with my weather.”
Isabel stopped herself from laughing, as the duchess certainly regardedherselfimportant enough to claim the weather as her own.
Carlson retreated under this genial assessment of where things lay. The duchess said, “My dear Lady Isabel, you do not wear the ring so handily snatched from the claws of Lady Featherstone last evening.”
“Indeed, I do not,” Isabel said. “It is safe in its box above stairs.”
“Just as well,” the duchess said, nodding. “On no account allow Lady Featherstone to get it from you.”
“Would she try?” Isabel asked in some surprise.
“She might,” the duchess said. “Her devastation last evening was embarrassing to behold. Apparently, she thought another housekeeper nearby was the murderer. What other housekeeper? Where did she come from?”
Isabel of course did not know.
“She proclaimed loudly,” the duchess went on, “for all her neighboring tables to hear, that she was convinced of it because it is a well-known fact that housekeepers become jealous of one another and could even be driven to murder.”
“But if that were the case, why would not the other housekeeper have murdered Mrs. Roberts’ housekeeper, rather than the lady herself and her suitor?”
“Why, indeed. Do not attempt to follow Anne’s logic, it will only lead to madness,” the duchess said.
