After he’d silently condemned Lady Mary’s behavior, there was his own to reflect on. He’d lectured a fellow who he’d assumed was Conbatten but was not. He’d been so determined to inform the duke that the match was ill-favored that he’d rushed to the first tall man he’d seen. Then, once he’d spoken the words it seemed…inappropriate to say the least.
What if ithadbeen Conbatten and he’d been successful in driving him off? Would Beatrice thank him for it? What had he been thinking, presuming he knew what was best for her? Or what she preferred? He’d been very highhanded and poking his nose in where it did not belong.
Beatrice was to make her own decisions and create her own life with no management from him. It felt as if…as if she were slipping from his grasp. A grasp he had no right to in the first place.
Still, she should not marry Conbatten. Beatrice was too good for him, duke though he might be. She deserved someone who would be very careful of her, not some careless duke.
On the first day of nothing to do, he had answered a letter from his steward and various other correspondences and had read all evening. Now it was the second day, and he began to feel restless.
He crossed the street to the Benningtons, as perhaps there would be some entertainment there, even if it were as ludicrous as hearing of the deranged one-eyed duke and his rather bizarre lady love. Did that governess really imagine she could cure madness? If she could, she would do well to share that information with the world.
Tattleton led him into the drawing room. “Lord Van Doren,” he intoned.
Matthew looked about the room, but he did not see Beatrice. Only her sisters and Miss Mayton. Oddly, Miss Mayton was once more dressed in her widow’s weeds, only missing the absurd black veil.
“Lord Van Doren,” Miss Mayton said.
“I thought you were going round as a pigeon these days,” Rosalind said, laughing at her own supposed wit.
“Because he thought Papa would actually go as a squid,” Juliet said with a snort.
“Very funny,” Matthew said, taking a seat. “Miss Mayton, I am surprised to see you still dressed in black. Were you intending to carry on so indefinitely?”
“I do not see why not, Lord Van Doren. I have suffered as any widow has.”
“Terribly suffered. As you well know,” Cordelia said.
Matthew decided there was no point in pursuing why the lady who never married was to dress herself as a widow forevermore. “Where is Beatrice? I mean, Lady Beatrice?”
“She is under the weather with a headache,” Miss Mayton said. “I told her she had better rest, as her ball is the day after tomorrow.”
“Did she invite you to the ball, Van Doren?” Viola said, keeping her expression grave.
“Of course I received an invitation.”
“Now my dear,” Miss Mayton said to Viola, “do not forget your father’s hint about Lord Van Doren.”
“That our neighbor could have been worse,” Cordelia said with a shrug.
“We are all agreed on that point, Aunt,” Juliet said. “But he is still Van Doren.”
“Is it really true that you have grown very popular and that two ladies are chasing you round the town?” Rosalind asked.
“What nonsense,” Matthew said.
“That’s whatwethought, how could it be?” Juliet said.
“But Beatrice and our aunt both say it is true,” Viola said.
“Miss Mayton,” Matthew said, “I would thank you not to put about such fables.”
Miss Mayton smiled and said, “Come now, Lord Van Doren. A widow may speak plainly. If you mean to deny that Lady Mary hunts you like a king after a stag while Lady Clara hangs back just a little to appear more modest, then, well really.”
“First,” Matthew said, “a widow is under the same conversational constraints as anybody else. Second, I do not think my interactions out in society have any place being discussed in this drawing room.”
“Then why did you come?” Juliet asked. “You know perfectly well that we discuss everything between us.”
Matthew rose. He could not answer the question; he did not know why he’d come.
