“If you can, which I highly doubt, then I would know it,” Roland said resolutely.
“It’s none of your business,” the dowager said curtly.
“I am going to the stables to have a look at Tempest’s foreleg.”
“We have not finished this conversation. Barnard tells me you have no engagements this evening. We will dine together and discuss these distressing matters further.”
“Barnard does not know everything,” Roland said. “I will be out.”
It was perfectly true; he would be out. He would not, however, inform his mother that he was set to attend Lady Rawley’s theatrical evening solely because Viola Bennington would be there.
He also did not care about what talk went round about Lady Beatrice or Lady Rosalind or Miss Mayton. They were not Viola Bennington. Viola Bennington was a charming lady who would never cause talk. She could not be measured by anybody else’s yardstick.
“I see,” the dowager said. “I had been willing to forgo my own plans to attend you, but as that is not to be, then I will be out too. However, Baderston, you cannot be ‘out’ forever. We will discuss this further.”
The dowager swept out of the room and Roland thought he’d better have a quiet word with Barnard. If the dowager asked his butler again for his calendar, he was always to be out.
Roland sighed. He would like to make his mother happy, as anybody would. The problem was, she was never happy. Even when she claimed a thing would make her happy, she never seemed very happy to get it.
He was well aware that she was so set on Lady Clara because she viewed the lady as being very pliant. The dowager always wished to dominate, and certainly that was what she wished for in a relationship with a daughter-in-law. Lady Clara had deferred to her on all matters when she had visited the house.
This was a problem he would have to solve himself. He would not allow a lady, whoever she turned out to be, to become the mistress of his estate, only to find herself browbeaten by the elder woman in the dower house.
Roland had hopes that the lady who would eventually come to his estate might be Viola Bennington. He had not stopped thinking about her since he’d met with her at Almack’s. Really, he had not stopped thinking about her since he met her last year in the park. He could not imagine there would ever be another like her.
It was funny, really. Until he’d met Lady Viola last season, he’d convinced himself that he was in no hurry to marry. Would not thirty, which was some years off, be the right time?
He’d looked at the whole thing as a chore and a duty. Heirs must be had.
Now, he felt as if his future happiness hung in the balance. Roland realized that he’d used his parents’ marriage as the example of the wedded state. It had not looked like something to run to, but rather just a thing that must be done, like patching the roof or auditing the wine cellar.
Everything was different now. Viola Bennington had changed everything.
If things were to proceed as they had so far…well, he would not countenance an unpleasant situation made so by the dowager.
Roland shook himself from his reverie. His mother could be managed, one way or another. In the meantime, he would see Lady Viola this very night.
Chapter Six
Viola and MissMayton had set off very early, on account of Lady Rawley sending an urgent note earlier in the afternoon.
It seemed that Lady Marie, who was to be part of Lady Rawley’s theatrical, had been suddenly called away by an old aunt’s grave illness in Kent. Lady Rawley recalled how helpful Miss Mayton had been last season, when Lady Agatha had been struck down with a stomach complaint—might she condescend to step into the breach again?
Lady Rawley wrote that there was only one line to be memorized and she dearly hoped Miss Mayton would take pity on her.
Very naturally, Viola’s aunt had written back with alacrity—it was no sooner asked than it was accepted. It would be her honor to provide whatever little service was needed.
They would arrive early to fit the costume and review the line before the other guests arrived.
“Goodness,” Miss Mayton said, gripping the invitation in her hand as the carriage rumbled along, “this is all very exciting.”
“Cordelia was beside herself,” Viola said. “How she would have wished to be called upon for such a duty.”
Miss Mayton nodded. “I was able to soothe her by pointing out that I will have done two favors for Lady Rawley now and we are very muchinwith that lady. Next year, when it is Cordelia’s time to come out, I have high hopes for the theatrical. Just think, if I am called on again, I can accept and then at the last-minute claim I have twisted my ankle and cannot proceed.”
“But Cordelia could,” Viola said, marveling at her aunt’s cleverness.
“Naturally, as she would have helped me to practice.”
