“And who is this, Miss?” the housekeeper said, looking askance at Percival.
As Miss Bretherton was helped down, she apprised the staff of Lady Hightower’s fatigue and how other arrangements had been made. She was escorted by Lord Harveston, and it had all been very respectable.
The expressions on their faces were priceless. One sniffed, another was wide-eyed, a maid clutched at her fichu. One would have thought Lady Hightower had sent the girl accompanied by a dozen rakes on a ship to the Americas.
They then promptly surrounded Miss Bretherton and escorted her into the house. One of the footmen looked over his shoulder at him as if he might chase after them and murder them all.
He turned Pericles and urged him to a trot. He noticed he did not have to do much urging and supposed his horse was just as befuddled as he was himself.
What a household.
What a difference from the Bennington household.
Had he escorted Lady Cordelia, he might well have found the duke chasing after a goat again, as the earl looked on and cheered.
Sensing his sudden thoughtfulness, Pericles slowed to a walk.
Why had he been so determined to escort Lady Cordelia home anyway?
Her family was odd, to say the least. But then, they had something he’d never had. They were warm. Even the duke had not seemed so ducal in their midst.
For all his mother’s talk of family and how they must support one another, he’d not seen much of that in his household.
Lady Cordelia herself was so different!
He was ashamed that he’d initially taken on a condescending opinion of her intellectual abilities. In her letter, Lady Hightower had mentioned that there were more types of intelligence than he was aware of. He and Makepeace could not quite work it out and had settled on instincts.
Perhaps they had been wrong though. Perhaps Lady Cordelia’s intelligence was of a harder to define sort. It was not anything pulled from a book or based on a fact. It was not analytical. It was something else. It was as if she could see into a person’s thoughts, though they had not spoken them.
He ought to stop thinking of the lady so much. He ought to stick to what he had planned—he would wed a highly educated lady and they would go on to have lively intellectual debates.
Though, he could not ignore that the idea of sitting across a breakfast table from Miss Bretherton, discussing Fordyce’s advice to young gentlemen, made him feel a little sick. It also made him a bit queasy to think of Lady Cordelia’s future.
She would end merry with Lord Darling, or even perhaps Jeffries.
Stupid men.
*
Lady Rawley hadbeen determined that she would once more take Cordelia and her aunt in her own carriage to Lord Harveston’s literary salon.
They would arrive on the early side of things, but Lady Rawley assured them that his nephew would not mind it. In any case, Lady Agatha and Mrs. Robinson would already be there to assist the bachelor in his preparations.
Now, as they stopped in front of the house, they found both of those ladies pacing in front of it.
They hurried to Lady Rawley’s carriage. Lady Agatha said, “We did as you asked and have been here for a full half hour.”
“But my dear Lady Agatha,” Lady Rawley said, “What do you do on the pavement? Hadn’t you have been better served to be inside to examine Lord Harveston’s arrangements?”
“We have been barred from the house,” Lady Agatha said.
“Positively barred,” Mrs. Robinson said. “I was here. I heard it myself.”
“It was that butler,” Lady Agatha said, huffing with the outrage of it. “He said Lord Harveston told him to not open the doors until eight precisely and he was just following his orders.”
“Well,” Lady Rawley said, being helped down from the carriage, “it all sounds like a misunderstanding. My nephew probably forgot you were arriving to help. After all, he has struggled on as a bachelor for the past few years. And Makepeace, he can be difficult at times.”
Cordelia was not so certain that Lord Harvestonhadforgotten that Lady Agatha and Mrs. Robinson would turn up early.
