“If the four of you are in such dire need of vigorous exercise, I suggest you all take some together this afternoon.” That came from Lady Frinton, whose expression let the young ladies concerned know that she thought them all pathetic. “My nephew has already missed out on too much of his own birthday celebrations and cannot be spared to accompany you. Besides…” The old lady shot him a pointed look over her teacup. “He has promised to be my bowls partner, isn’t that right, Guy?”
As Lady Wennington’s head swiveled his way, incredulous, he looked from the debutantes to his aunt and back again, like a man who couldn’t decide which activity he found the least horrifying. “Er… yes. I did, aunt.” Then when Lady Frinton continued to glare at him, added, “Unless my mother wants me to be her partner, of course, as she should get first dibs.”
“Really?” He might as well have just offered her the moon, Lady Wennington was so overjoyed. “You would partner with me?”
He nodded with all the enthusiasm of a man headed to the gallows.
“Then that’s settled.” Lady Frinton’s smug smile suggested that theold dragon was up to something, although Lottie did not know what. “In this afternoon’s league, mother and son will form one team. Travers and I the second.” The slight tic in Guy’s jaw was his only outward acknowledgment that he wasn’t happy about Lottie playing. Or even being here when she was supposed to be keeping out of his sight. “But which two teams are brave enough to take us on in a best of three?”
Lady Lynette shot out of her seat like an eager firework. “Well, obviously my dear mama and I will make up the third. We are both excellent bowls players. Some might say the best in Mayfair.” Because of course they were—especially if the arrogant Lady Lynette said so. “It’s all in the wrists.” She leaned over to waft one of hers in front of his face. Either to show him how superior her wrists were to all the other wrists present, or to attempt to entice him with her perfume.
Another young lady was on the cusp of volunteering, too, when Miss Maybury pipped her to the post, and who likely would have whacked all her potential rivals with a post too if she’d had one handy. “Count us Mayburys in. We need a second team from the Kent contingent, don’t we?” She placed a possessive hand over Guy’s sleeve again. “While I am sure Mayfair produces some excellent players, I suspect those from Kent have the edge. What say you, my lord?”
“Er…” Guy looked ready to bolt and likely would have if his breakfast hadn’t arrived and given him the excuse to free his arm from her grip. “I suppose so.”
“Will you be accompanying us to Rochester Castle this morning, my lord, or do you have better things to do?” The youngest but richest deb of the bunch, Miss Beatrice Yates, managed to ask her question with enough casual disinterest, as she toyed with her eggs, to sound as though she wasn’t the least bit bothered about snaring herself a viscount.
It would have been impressive if she hadn’t been the daughter of one of England’s most successful canal builders. An ambitious man who had dragged himself up from nothing but his bootstraps. One who now only needed to inject some blue blood into his family to render his new money more palatable to the old-monied aristocratic ranks he aspired to complete acceptance in.
“He will,” said Lady Frinton with a glower at her nephew. “Won’t you, Guy?”
“Yes,” he replied with an overbright smile and abject fear in eyes that were locked suspiciously on his wily old aunt’s. “I am looking forward to it.”
For reasons best known to herself, Lady Frinton personally organized all the assorted and amassed carriages headed to Rochester. It made no difference who owned the conveyance; if it had been commandeered for the trip, then she decided who sat in it. Obviously, her well-sprung, purple coach went first and had the most space in it as the only people allowed to sit inside were her, her sister, and her nephew. That also meant that all the other stuffed coaches had to sit impatiently on the drive while she allocated the seating from the front to the back.
If the old battle-axe had a plan, it only made sense to Lady Frinton and she didn’t share it. That was why Lottie and the long-suffering Longbottom were made to direct all the accompanying parents to the last six carriages and all the debutantes were squeezed into the rest. There seemed to be some sort of ranking to those debutantes too, with the most annoying or most eligible all shoved in together in the second carriage, no doubt for Lady Frinton’s own sport, and the most amiable or those who faded into the background grouped accordingly behind.
“Is that everyone?” A stupid question when the carriages were all now full and the driveway deserted.
“Yes, my lady. Apart from you, of course.”
“And you.” Her employer jabbed her with a finger. “We need to squeeze you in somewhere, Travers.” Lady Frinton stared at her own conveyance as if considering putting Lottie in there. A prospect that horrified her because Guy had made it quite plain he wanted nothing whatsoever to do with her. Just as thirty minutes of taut silence and betrayed, accusatory looks loomed before her, the battle-axe shook her head. “Your legs are almost as long as my nephew’s so you absolutely cannot ride with us. Being cramped flares my arthritis.”
Lottie’s inward sigh of relief was short lived, however, as she was presented with a fate worse than death.
“You can sit with that dreadful Connaughlty chit and her equally awful flirty nemesis Miss Maybury in the second carriage.”
“But there are already five young ladies in that carriage, my lady, and I am not convinced I should even go.” It was a long shot, but by Jove, she was going to do her best to wriggle out of this hell if she could. “You hardly need a companion today when you have your family and friends around you and I am not sure that it is appropriate that I—a servant—should attend his lordship’s birthday festivities. Like Longbottom…” She grabbed the butler’s sleeve like a drowning man would a piece of floating driftwood. “I am only here to serve you, after all, and I have plenty of chores I can be getting on with while you are gone.”
“Plenty of chores,” agreed Longbottom in solidarity.
Lady Frinton stared at them as if they’d gone mad. “When I hired you, Travers, I bestowed upon you just two solemn duties. The first was catering to my every whim and the second was snuffling out gossip. How, pray tell, do you propose to fulfill the latter, gal, if you are not immersed in the vipers’ pit? That carriage”—she jerked a thumb back at the one where Lady Lynette’s smug face was smiling at the window seat she had procured in the most unladylike fashion—“and with those appalling girls, is where all today’s best gossip will be snaffled. Therefore, I am tasking you with the unenviable job of being their shadow for the duration of the trip instead.”
As Lottie would rather swim in stagnant swamp water than spend hours in the company of those dreadful debutantes, she allowed her face to show that. “But my lady…” Honestly, she would beg on bended knee if necessary. “I am notone of themand my presence will not be welcomed. I also sincerely doubt any of them would dare let anything slip in front of a servant who they would see as a spy, so—” Lady Frinton held up a palm in front of her face.
“Most of them do not possess a modicum of subtlety and they are all bursting at the seams with one-upmanship, so I suspect you will find thatthey will be staggeringly loose-lipped. Especially if you behave as a good servant is supposed to and mutely blend into the wallpaper.”
“I stand at five feet and eleven inches, so blending in is—”
“Oh, do stop whining, Travers, and accept your fate with some stoically servile dignity, there’s a good gal. You are being paid to do my bidding, after all, and handsomely too, so accept that you are my well-compensated eyes and my ears and eavesdrop with impunity. I shall certainly be all ears when you report all their shenanigans and nonsense back to me later.” The old lady cackled with delight. “Because mark my words, there will be shenanigans and nonsense aplenty now that Guy has deigned to join us. Those stupid fools will likely stop at nothing today to impress him while sabotaging their competition, and that means we are all in for some fine entertainment!” She cackled some more, then skewered Lottie with her glare. “Now get in the coach, gal, and stop trying my limited patience!”
“Ours is not to reason why, ours is but to do…,” whispered Longbottom as soon as Lady Frinton was out of earshot. They watched as her nephew solicitously alighted the carriage to help his aged relative into it. His big body obviously tensed as he braced himself for the ordeal to come and his gaze resolutely averted so that he could not possibly glance toward Lottie even though he must have known she was there. “Although I don’t envy you your traveling companions today.” They shifted their focus toward the second carriage in time to watch the shameless Miss Maybury—who had also wrestled herself into the window seat opposite her know-it-all rival—squint into a tiny mirror as she rearranged the tight curls artfully poking out of her ludicrously large but fashionable bonnet. “I fear there will be shenanigans aplenty and most of them either impertinent or improper. I pity you, of course, but I pity his lordship more.”
So did she. He might have just given her the cut direct, but she understood why. “Poor Guy.”
She hadn’t realized that she had said that aloud until Longbottom grinned. “Oh!Guy,is it now? Are you two courting now as well as kissing?”
“Don’t be ridiculous!” Her cheeks felt so hot, you could probably fryan egg on one of them and a slice of bacon on the other. Because Longbottom wasn’t daft and had plainly seen how passionate that kiss had been. “You witnessed an odd moment, that is all. One that will not be repeated.” More was the pity.
