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Fanny and Fenton both glanced at their palatial surroundings, just as Lord Quamby put his head round the door. Upon seeing his wife, he smiled. “Ah, Antoinette, I’m told your sapphire necklace has been mended so you shall wear it with your gown for tonight’s ball, after all.”
“Darling Quamby!” Antoinette clapped her hands. “You are so good to me!”
“No, you’ve never been motivated by avarice, Antoinette,” Fanny murmured with mock earnestness, smiling as the ageing earl made his noisy progress across the large expanse of Aubusson carpet to join them, his sticks clattering and his breathing laboured. Antoinette’s greeting of her husband was genuinely warm. At least Quamby had known exactly the contract he was signing when he had married Antoinette—his nephew’s child in his future wife’s belly, and a spoiled and lively life partner.
Yet their union seemed to work for them both, and despite their separate love interests, there was a genuine mutual affection.
Fanny darted another quick look down at the scene below and observed Miss Amelia heading up the stairs to the house while Mr McAlister had turned in the opposite direction and was now heading towards the rose garden.
Despite Antoinette’s cavalier attitude towards the two handsome fortune hunters now in their midst, Fanny feared that trouble was, indeed, brewing.
Chapter 9
Lizzy had hoped to cut a rather romantic, tragic figure, standing by the water’s edge and staring soulfully out towards the island. A few minutes before, she’d spied Mr McAlister in the far distance, greeting some new arrivals to Quamby House. Her heart rate had quickened a little when she had seen him turn and begin to stroll down the hill in her general direction.
Turning her back to look out across the water but making sure she was right in his line of vision, she pretended she hadn’t noticed him.
“And who is this beautiful maiden I’ve verily stumbled upon?”
Thrilled that Mr McAlister had obviously sought her out, Lizzy turned with a smile that faltered as she said, “Why, Mr Dalgleish, it’s…you?”
For a moment she couldn’t think of a word to add which was strange, for she’d composed reams of possible conversation fillers as she’d prepared for the much-anticipated Yuletide house party at Quamby House. Despite her words to Mrs Hodge a little earlier, she really had been taken by Mr Dalgleish’s boyish good looks and the particular attention he’d paid to her when they’d first met.
Right now, in the afternoon sunshine, his eyes were fine and dark, and his fashionably coiffed hair and thin side-burns belonged to a man who liked to adhere to the latest styles.
Lizzy liked good style, too.
But, looking at Mr Dalgleish more closely, she decided she liked Mr McAlister’s sense of style better.
“And who else would offer you such a pretty greeting?” Mr Dalgleish inquired with a quirk of his eyebrow.
It took a moment for Lizzie to respond to this, but she made a quick recovery. “Only someone very gallant for the cold has turned my nose quite pink.”
“A most charming shade of pink, however. A good thing the weather is not colder for then it might have matched your shawl.”
Lizzy twisted her blue shawl around her wrist. “That would not be attractive, I agree,” she said before a sudden wave of self-consciousness made her turn the topic to the first one she could think of. “When did you arrive, Mr Dalgleish?”
“About five minutes before I started to look for you.”
Lizzy became so unexpectedly tongue-tied at this that he laughed. “You know very well that we are here to better our acquaintance, and I must tell you that I find you vastly entertaining when you are released from the clutches of your…warden.”
Lizzy giggled. “I hadn’t thought to use that word before, but it is…apt. Although of course I was never Mrs Hodge’s ward, but her late husband’s.”
“But he entrusted your care to her. And so you must dance to her tune.”
“Until a husband makes me dance to his.”
“Which means you must make very sure you choose the right husband.”
Lizzy tilted up her chin and sent him a look that combined defiance with flirtation. She wasn’t sure if she were excited or terrified, but her insides were churning with something that made her feel a great deal more alive than she ever did under Mrs Hodge’s roof. “If I am in a marrying frame of mind, after all,” she said lightly, thinking that maybe Mr Dalgleish really had the potential to rise in her esteem.
He regarded her with a small smile. “I think a few more days under the same roof as Mrs Hodge will direct you back to a marrying frame of mind.”
Theodore was halfway down the slope when he raised his head and immediately spied Lizzy in discussion near the willow tree by the lake with a gentleman whose back was facing him.
He stopped, trying to place the fellow who now bowed, removing
his hat briefly before taking leave of his companion and walking in a desultory fashion towards the house, as if he were very much pleased with himself.
