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“Ralph is known as the tenderhearted one of us all.” Lord Ludbridge appeared bashful as he said this.
“Surely not as tenderhearted as you, my lord.” She was about to expand upon this theme when she had a flash of inspiration. With a sigh, she added, “I’m so sorry he’s forced to work for that wicked Lord Debenham, about whom all those terrible rumors are swirling. I noticed that your brother was at the recital with Miss Hazlett. I do wish he’d warn Miss Hazlett about his employer.”
“Miss Hazlett?” Lord Ludbridge looked confused. “I cannot imagine why some imagine the young lady resembles you. I’ve never met one to rival your beauty.”
Araminta smiled coyly. “You are too kind, Lord Ludbridge. But I’m worried that your brother is showing perhaps undesirable interest in Miss Hazlett. I saw her spying on Lord Debenham at Vauxhall Gardens the other night.”
“Spying on him? What can you mean?”
Araminta adopted a look of uncertainty. “I...I’m not sure. At first, I assumed she must have been spying. She was quite alone, peeping through the window of the supper house he was occupying. Of course, I didn’t know it was him until I was returning with my cousin and sister, and saw Miss Hazlett running down the path. I was afraid for her and about to go to her assistance, when I saw Lord Debenham appear in the doorway. He watched her go and then went inside again.”
Araminta shook her head as if the thought distressed her. “I wasn’t sure what I should do or if I should even say something, but you are such a kind, sensible, reasonable man, Lord Ludbridge, perhaps you could have a word with your brother.”
Lord Ludbridge was clearly shocked. “Surely you were mistaken, Miss Partington.”
“Indeed I was not. I greatly fear that Miss Hazlett has an unhealthy fascination for Lord Debenham. After all, she was alone and completely without a chaperone. I’d hate to think she’d set her sights on someone so unsuitable. And clearly your brother is...fond of her.”
***
Araminta was congratulating herself on her inspiration when she arrived home midafternoon and waltzed into her bedchamber. Jane, who was laying out her clothes for later that afternoon, glanced up to ask her if the pale white and jonquil sarsnet evening gown would be to her satisfaction, but Araminta ignored her to close the door, loudly.
“I do wish the smell of dinner was not so overwhelming in this house. It never used to be,” she complained. “Oh, and you’ll never guess what happened at Lady Milton’s. I fainted quite away and Lord Ludbridge played the knight errant. I hadn’t planned it at all but it could not have worked better.”
“You fainted, miss? Why, you’ve never fainted in your life before.”
Araminta lowered herself onto the stool at her dressing table and untied her bonnet. “No, I haven’t, have I? Well, it didn’t matter. It was quite fortuitous, for Lord Ludbridge was most concerned and has made his interest plain. I shall want a new trimming on my white silk for Lady Amelia Sedgewick’s ball the day after tomorrow. Do brush my hair for me, Jane. I feel a little odd and I need some soothing. My stomach
is not behaving and I think it’s because of all this excitement.”
Obediently, Jane ceased her current task of tidying the bottles on her mistress’s dressing table to attend to Araminta. She picked up the boar-bristle brush and looked at its figured silver back thoughtfully. “I used to soothe my dear mama with long, even brush strokes when she was not herself. Mama had such lovely hair. Fair and fine. She were strong and robust like you, miss, and not one for having fainting spells, or feeling bilious either except...”
After removing the last of Araminta’s hair pins, she began to draw the brush through her mistress’s long, loosened hair.
Araminta, who was feeling unaccountably tired, rested her chin on her hands and closed her eyes. “I do hate the way you don’t finish your sentences, Jane. It’s as if you think I have the energy or inclination to finish them for you. It’s quite rude.”
“I beg your pardon, Miss.”
“Well, finish your story, then. What was your mama’s malady? Perhaps mine is the same and I may learn from it, for I must say, I’ve not been feeling myself the past few days.”
“Just that mama only fainted and threw up into the chamber pot when she was breeding, miss. I thought I shouldn’t say some’at that would sound coarse, Miss, though breedin’s the most natural thing in the world when a pair gets married and starts to ’ave bairns. I should know, bein’ the eldest and bringing up a dozen, for mama would keep havin’ em.”
“Yes, that was coarse, Jane, and I wish you hadn’t said it,” Araminta replied, although not as crossly as she might have, as Jane dutifully continued to brush out her tresses.
Breeding? She nibbled her bottom lip as she considered Jane’s words. Breeding only occurred to married people or those beyond the pale, like Larissa’s mother. It didn’t happen to well-intentioned, virtuous young ladies like herself.
“Turn your head, miss. Why, you are awful pale!”
Jane’s anxious tone broke into Araminta’s growing fear. No, it couldn’t have happened to her. Those hideous few seconds when Araminta had thrown herself upon Sir Aubrey, thinking he was about to ask her to marry him, could not have resulted in her worst nightmare.
It could not be happening to her.
Araminta’s encounter had been so very brief and so very unromantic, followed by a humiliation of such proportions she’d had to exorcise the memory of that night from her brain as best she could.
But as a waft of cooking aroma filtered in through the door and her stomach protested to such an extent she had to leap up from her chair and make her way to the chamber pot to be ill once again, she could not discount the possibility.
In fact, the more she thought about the very tiny changes in her body, and the realization that her courses were more than a week late, she had to contemplate the possibility that she, Miss Araminta Partington, was indeed breeding.
And that for the first time in her life she was not equipped with a cunning plan. No, she had not the first idea how she was going to extricate herself from this profoundly horrifying situation.
