Page 23 of A Sham Engagement

Her eyes twinkled again, the hunted look dispelled. “I think perhaps that would please Mama. She would see it as a ‘good sign’.” She paused, drawing in her lower lip over her teeth as though in deep thought. “And,” she ventured, “if you are to call me by my name, might I also call you by yours? It’s Jack, isn’t it? A delightful name, I think, redolent of the countryside and bucolic idylls. I love the countryside far better than London.”

He laughed. “You have some novel ideas. I had no idea my name held such connotations. Please call me by it… Elenora.” Her name flowed off his tongue like water burbling in a little waterfall.

Wait. What was he thinking? This smacked of romantic thoughts. No, he had to stop this. He couldn’t possibly be cherishing those sort of thoughts about her, despite the loveliness of her name and her blonde beauty. She was not at all the sort of young lady who should promote those sort of feelings in him. No, he preferred women of experience who liked to play the game of love with him, and who didn’t come with the threat of marriage. Although, he had to admit Elenora didn’t come with that threat either, despite what her family thought.

She nodded. They were climbing the three steps to the terrace by now. “Jack. I shall definitely call you Jack as I like the name so much. Although… it does occur to me, now I think of it, that it would be an excellent name for a dog.”

They were at the door. Through the glass Jack could see the drawing room now held Lady Wetherby and her sister-in-law, although etiquette had kept them from pressing their noses to the window. Thank goodness. He burst out laughing. “And now I think you are mocking me.”

She stopped, raising her eyes to his for a moment. He could see the effort it cost her. “Why, Jack, I would never mock you.” She kept her face straight, but her eyes were laughing as she reached for the doors.

The sudden realization that this season was going to be quite fun washed over Jack as she opened the door and they stepped back into the drawing room. Still laughing.

Once Jack had taken his leave, Elenora, much to the annoyance of Mama, who seemed inordinately pleased to have caught the engaged couple laughing together, repaired to the late Sir George Dandridge’s library. This was where Mama had decreed the book she’d borrowed from Jack should be kept. If Mama had her way, it would have rested unopened and inviolate on the large desk under the tall sash window as some kind of symbol of their engagement. However, Elenora was not about to waste the chance to read it by sitting sewing with the other ladies in the family. Not when a fascinating book about the antiquities of Athens was available.

It was there that her two brothers found her some two hours later, when they called to dine with the family.

Matthew, ever the more boisterous of the two, flung the library door open and fairly catapulted into the room, his gangly limbs reminiscent of Bluebell’s latest foal at home in Penworthy. “What’s this I hear, Sis?” He flung himself into one of the high-backed leather chairs by the blazing fire and set his booted feet on the fire surround. “Papa tells me you’re hitching yourself to an earl.”

Jolyon, the elder by two years, strolled in with more decorum, as befitted Papa’s heir.

“Not an earl, you nincompoop. Do you never listen? The heir of an earl.”

“Makes no difference.” Matthew gave a derisive snort. “An earl one day, that’s for sure. And our little sis to be a countess, no less. That’s a few steps up on a mere baronet, Joly.”

Jolyon sat down on the window seat, stretching his not-so-long legs out in front of him. Both young men stood a head shorter than their tall father, having inherited their stature and rather sallow looks from Mama. Elenora was herself only an inch shorter than Matthew, the shorter of the two. Jolyon tapped his nose at his brother. “It’s not so much that she’s betrothed to an earl’s heir, you numbskull. More which earl’s heir she’s to marry.”

Matthew’s dark brows rose but he didn’t stir himself from his seat in front of the fire.

Oh dear. Elenora had an inkling where this was going. Both her brothers suffered from the totally unnecessary desire to protect her. It had been the same all her life. For some reason they saw themselves as her champions. This had been a nuisance to her on numerous occasions, such as when she’d been teaching herself to swim in the lake at Penworthy and they’d thought she was drowning and dived in to save her.

“It matters nothing to which earl’s son I am engaged,” she snapped, closing her book with a thud. Now her brothers were here, she was unlikely to get the peace required to read it again. And besides which, she should be going upstairs to change for dinner soon. Perhaps she could escape their attentions that way.

“Which earl’s son is it, then?” Matthew asked.

Jolyon sighed. “As I said, you never listen, do you? Papa told us not ten minutes since when you were staring out into the garden like a sap, probably thinking about that actress of yours in Oxford. It’s Lord Broxbourne she’s engaged to. The Earl of Amberley’s heir.”

Realization dawned on Matthew’s plain face, as well as a self-conscious flush. He was not the brightest spoon in the drawer, that was certain. “Oh. That earl’s heir.”

Annoyance washed through Elenora. Why were her family picking holes in her engagement? The fact that it wasn’t real was forgotten. She needed to defend Jack. “And what is wrong with being engaged to Jack Deveril?” she snapped. “He’s very eligible and Mama is overjoyed.”

“Thought you weren’t going to marry anyone?” Matthew, who was only a year older than her, so her closest sibling, asked. “Last summer, before I went off to Oxford, you swore to me you were going to stay a spinster and turn into a mad maiden aunt to all our children. When we have them, that is.” He colored a little, perhaps at the thought of what he’d have to do in order to obtain these hypothetical children.

She scowled at him. “A girl can change her mind.”

Jolyon crossed his legs at the ankles. His boots, unlike Jack’s were lacking in shine. “And Mama said you had to marry someone rich in order to pay off Papa’s debts, which Broxbourne surely is. Lucky fellow. I wish someone would pay mine off. Do you think your beau might do that for me, too?”

Irritated, Elenora shook her head with vehemence. “If Papa were not so addicted to gambling, I would not have to be marrying anyone. If I were you, Joly, I would give up the gambling as it will only serve to turn young ladies and their mamas against you. And no, I will not ask Jack to bail you out. It’s bad enough that he’s bailing out Papa.”

She shuddered. “I find it quite mortifying that my engagement is purely a financial agreement.” Did she? Well, she wasn’t about to admit to anything else. Certainly not to finding Jack Deveril interesting. Although thinking him interesting didn’t mean he was someone she might break her vow for. And anyway, he had such an air of supercilious entitlement about him, she couldn’t possibly ever like him in that way. No, she could never think of any man at all as anything other than a friend.

“Jack, is it?” Matthew said. “I see you have it badly, Sis.”

Fury rose. “I do not as you so crudely say ‘have it badly.’ Ours is a marriage of convenience only.” And now she was defending the fact she’d just bemoaned. So confusing. “If I have to marry, then I would prefer it to be to someone who can help our family.”

Goodness, her story was getting deeper and more complicated. Who’d have thought that the simple idea she and Jack had concocted last night would require so much elaboration? And the likelihood of it growing more tangled loomed ahead of her. Had she done the right thing in agreeing to this? At least Papa was no longer being dunned for what he owed, though. That was one achievement. In fact, as it was the achievement her engagement had been meant to bring about, she must surely now be absolved of further sacrifice. And she had no intention whatsoever of self-immolation on the bonfire of Joly’s debts. The fact that he’d not learned from Papa’s mistakes and Mama’s unhappiness rankled.

Her brothers exchanged wary glances, as though they might be sheltering a secret neither wanted to share with her.