As they had fallen asleep, they awoke one by one as Lynette brushed out her hair.
“Oh, Bea, we could not bear to wait until morning,” Juliet said, yawning. Her youngest sister was the last to wake and had struggled up in Beatrice’s bed. “Did your tortured gentleman make himself known?”
“He did not,” Beatrice said.
Just then, Miss Mayton poked her head in the door. “I thought I heard talking. I ought to scold you all off to bed, but of course I will not. You could not help it.”
“We did not even stay up too late, Aunt,” Cordelia said, “we just slept in here so we could find out right away. But, it seems the mysterious gentleman is still mysterious.”
“So he is,” Miss Mayton said, bustling into the room. “I am beginning to wonder what he waits for.”
“As am I,” Beatrice said. “Just this evening, I thought, well if he were very brave he would have come forward and if he is not very brave, could he really be my one true love?”
“Indeed, you did think of Henry the Fifth’s bravery as a requirement. Well, it is a very fine muddle we find ourselves in,” Miss Mayton said. “Goodness, what an evening! I suppose you told the girls all about Lord Van Doren?”
“Van Doren?” Rosalind asked. “Has he been making himself popular again? It seems so unlikely.”
“He remains popular, particularly to two ladies who seem to wish for his company very much,” Miss Mayton said. “But that is nothing compared to what he did.”
The sisters all leaned forward. “What?” Viola whispered.
“The duke, Conbatten you understand,” Miss Mayton said in a lowered voice, “was so good as to retrieve Beatrice’s card at the beginning of the evening. Just at the moment he approached with it, Lord Van Doren ripped it right out of his hands.”
“No,” Rosalind said.
“He never did,” Juliet said.
“He did,” Beatrice said.
“Why?” Viola asked.
“Nobody knows,” Miss Mayton said.
“Has he gone mad, do you think?” Juliet asked, her tone a little hopeful that it might be the case.
“I do not know what has happened to him,” Beatrice said. “On the way home, we came upon boys throwing stones at a dog. Van Doren chased them off, but for one who was too small to get away. He’s taken the boyandthe dog home.”
“No,” Viola said, perfectly expressing all the sisters’ disbelief.
Beatrice nodded. “He did, we saw it.”
“Do you suppose,” Rosalind said, “that there is something in the London air that is affecting him?”
“That might be it,” Viola said. “If one were to examine the facts, Van Doren was one way in the country and now he is going entirely another way.”
Beatrice agreed with that wholeheartedly. She was a little relieved that it was not just her imagination in thinking it. Everybody saw it—Van Doren was suddenly…different.
“He ought to be careful with this new way of going on,” Rosalind said. “He is probably lucky that the duke did not demand satisfaction for the insult.”
“Conbatten promised me he would not go so far,” Beatrice said. She did not say, however, why Conbatten would not challenge Van Doren. Though, his words still rang in her ears.Far be it for me to kill a fellow for being hopelessly blinded by love. And blind to his own intentions, I suspect.
No, she would never repeat that. Not to anybody. She also did not tell her sisters that Van Doren had guessed at Darden’s scheme and knew the YBC gentlemen’s attentions were only meant to draw out another gentleman.
Beatrice sighed. At least Van Doren did not seem to know which gentleman, any more than she did herself.
“Van Doren used to be so predictable,” Rosalind said.
“Now, one wonders what he will do next,” Cordelia said.
