All eyes turned to Beatrice. In truth, she did not know what to say. It felt as if the world was very much upside down just now.
Tattleton opened the drawing room doors. “Lord Van Doren,” he announced.
Van Doren came in as he always did and looked as he always looked. Yet, somehow different.
“Van Doren,” the earl said jovially, “we were all just singing your praises.”
Van Doren looked entirely skeptical to hear it. “Really. All of you?” he asked, eyeing Juliet in particular.
“Papa pointed out you were not so bad as a neighbor,” Juliet said, shrugging at the improbability of it.
“I admitted you could be worse,” Rosalind said.
“And I said, our neighbor might be Mr. Graydell, which would be worse,” Juliet said.
“Or Miss Fairweather,” Cordelia said.
“I could write some odes aboutthem,” Juliet said.
“But then, Papa reminded us that Miss Fairweather suffers from the rheumatism, though no excuse was posited for Mr. Graydell. He is just daft,” Rosalind said.
“Then, we were waiting to see what Bea would say,” Cordelia said.
Again, all eyes turned to Beatrice, with the addition of Van Doren’s eyes.
“I must agree with the consensus, I suppose—it might be worse,” Beatrice said.
It was just the type of comment Van Doren would expect from her. The sort she’d said a thousand times before. Somehow, though, she could not be quite satisfied with it.
“I have often thought just the same,” Van Doren said.
This seemed to strike the sisters quite hard. It struck Beatrice fairly hard. She was certain that it had never occurred to any of them, including herself, that he would consider them asmight be worse.
Though he scolded all the time, Beatrice had assumed they were all held in very high regard. They were the Benningtons after all. And he was, well, he was Van Doren.
Had Van Doren really looked upon them and thought, well, it might be worse?
It was an uncomfortable idea.
Chapter Twelve
Matthew could notbe certain what he’d walked into when he’d arrived at the Benningtons’ drawing room.
Apparently, he’d been the subject of some discussion, concluding that they might have had a worse neighbor than he.
Another gentleman might have taken umbrage to such an assessment, but it was the highest praise he could recall receiving from the five sisters in recent years.
He’d been further surprised by how taken aback they’d all looked when he’d mentioned he’d often thought they could be worse too. They’d appeared to not have the faintest inkling of what trouble they all were. Only the earl and Darden had not seemed surprised to hear that opinion.
The dinner had been odd, to say the least. There had been no faces made at him from across the table, no jabs thrown, no insulting odes recited. Juliet had even asked him a very civil question about his favored horse.
What was happening?
They all seemed more sensible or reasonable or…not like themselves.
It began to dawn on Matthew that since he’d reined in his scolding, they had improved.
It was positively diabolical. His scolding was meant to prod them toward improvement, and yet they only improved when he stopped?
