“Lord Baderston was just saying he would be destroyed if he’d missed the opportunity to take your first,” his mother plowed on.
What was she doing?
“As it happens,” Lady Clara said, “I have just arrived.” She held her card out.
He was entirely boxed in. Poor Lady Clara could not know that his mother was inventing words out of the air.
Roland reluctantly took her card and penciled his name in for the first. There was simply nothing else he could do.
“I do hope you enjoyed your visit to our humble estate over the summer,” the dowager said.
“I would hardly style it as humble, Countess,” Lady Clara said.
“Well, perhaps not,” the dowager conceded. “Though the size of the place did not awe you—you seemed quite at home.”
Lady Clara blushed at the heavy hint. Roland seethed.
Seeing he had nothing to say to that comment, Lady Clara curtsied and moved on.
Quietly, he said, “Do not ever do that again. You are leading Lady Clara down a starry path that will go nowhere and she will not thank you for it. As for Lady Viola, I will make your excuses to her by claiming you have been unwell. Now, either go home or go to the card room. I have been shamed and will not be so again.”
Watching the thoughts run through his mother’s mind as they crossed her features reminded him of a caged animal calculating a way out.
Roland thought if feelings could take substance, hers this moment would burst her hair into flames.
She turned and swept from the ballroom, leaving him to plan out exactly how to repair this first ghastly meeting between Lady Viola and his mother.
And how to gently hint to Lady Clara that there was nothing between them.
*
The earl, MissMayton, and Lady Viola had been waved off as they departed for Almack’s and now Tattleton stood by the drawing room doors, pretending that nothing at all was amiss. It was a butler’s duty to always appear as if things were just as they should be.
Even when they most decidedly were not.
Just now, the noise in the room was deafening. It was one thing for Lady Cordelia to act out Desdemona’s death scene fromOthelloin her usual energetic fashion. He’d become accustomed to it, though he was not certain that any Desdemona on a real stage did so much running to and fro and shouting, or setting things on fire with knocked-over candles.
Now, however, the bird must add in his own dramatic comments. The wretched creature was pacing its perch and doing everything in its power to mimic Lady Cordelia’s words.
“Murder! Farewell!” it screeched.
He would consider himself lucky indeed if a shouting lady and screeching parrot were all he had to worry about.
That was not all, though.
Lady Viola had come to Town already entirely fixed on who she must marry.
It made no sense! She had only encountered the fellow very briefly last year, and now he was to be held above all others?
And for what reasons, exactly? He had red hair and liked ham?
Though Tattleton, himself, had never been married, he could not think that was enough!
It was so likely to go wrong, and then what? Was Lady Viola to set out looking for another red-haired gentleman with a penchant for ham?
How many other redhaired eligible gentlemen could there be?
He was very afraid that there would not be many. Or any.
