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“Formidable woman,” Lord Farleigh murmured.
Louisa bit her lip.
“Very,” Mama agreed. “I almost wish I had encouraged Anthony to stay at Cambridge rather than join us here for the Season. It would have kept him safe from her scheming.”
“What about Alex, Mama?” Louisa said. “Are you not equally concerned about his marital well-being?”
“Lady Putnam is formidable, I’ll grant you,” Papa said, “but she is no match for Halford. Miss Putnam and her younger sisters will have to look elsewhere for husbands. Now then, shall we make our way to the gallery and view Lord Melton’s art before it is time to make the announcement?”
Speaking of looking for husbands, Louisa belatedly remembered that she and Lord Kerridge had originally planned to attend the assembly together. She frantically glanced about her, hoping he’d had the sense and decency to stay home this evening.
The gallery was a long, narrow room that ran parallel to the public rooms the Meltons used for entertaining. Louisa wandered from painting to sculpture to painting with Lord Farleigh at her side, his hands clasped behind his back. Lord Melton was an avid collector of English works of art, she discovered, but he also had an interest in antiquities, which accounted for the occasional Greek statue or broken bit of Egyptian pottery that sat in pride of place amongst the landscape paintings and portraits. Normally, Louisa would have found such artifacts interesting, but she was having great difficulty concentrating on anything but the man next to her—the quiet man who spoke very little and still wore a mask of inscrutability on his face.
“Which is your favorite, Lord Farleigh?” she asked, unable to bear his silence any further.
“Favorite?” he asked.
His one word reply only served to increase her prickling sense of anxiety and irritation. “You know—your favorite piece of art from Lord Melton’s collection. We’ve just spent the last half hour gazing at art and antiquities, Lord Farleigh, so it ought to be obvious what I’m asking about. If I were looking at a roomful of art, which I am, I would certainly have formed an opinion about them and would undoubtedly have chosen a favorite or two.” Oh, dear. Her agitation had loosened her tongue once again. Additionally, she sounded shrewish, which was not an attractive look—not that her intent was to appear attractive to him; they may be planning to wed in the near future, but she wasn’t about to encourage the man whose presence had altered her life forever.
“Very well.” Lord Farleigh’s gaze turned toward a particular landscape of a stream bordered by a copse of trees, with a small stone cottage nestled beneath it. “That one,” he said, gesturing discreetly.
“Why?” she asked.
“I suppose it reminds me of Scotland,” he said. He lowered his head. “Perhaps it might be a good time for you to begin calling me William. May I call you Louisa?” he murmured in her ear.
Hearing her name on his lips, spoken in such quiet tones, was startlingly intimate. Her thoughts immediately flew back to their last few moments in the carriage when he had kissed her. Now you look like a woman who is newly betrothed.
She drew in a breath and let it out. “Certainly . . . William.” It rolled off her tongue smoothly, like rich custard.
“It is time,” Papa said behind her, interrupting them and, thankfully, breaking the spell Louisa had found herself in. Mama and Lord Melton were with him.
“Louisa?” William said, looking intently at her. “Are you ready?” His face was still frustratingly impassive, but his eyes searched hers with an intensity that hadn’t been there before.
She nodded her consent.
* * *
They all returned to the room where Lord and Lady Melton had received their guests. The assembly was a crush, the Melton’s spacious London home full to overflowing with the cream of Society, and if not for Lord Melton, who led the way, parting the crowd like Moses had the Red Sea, they should have had great difficulty making their way through the house.
Both of Louisa’s brothers were there when they arrived, looking more like they’d prefer to escort William into the mews behind the house and thrash him soundly than stand here and listen to the announcement yet to come.
“You don’t have to do this,” Louisa’s eldest brother, Lord Halford, whispered to her just loudly enough for William to overhear. “You do not owe your entire future to our grandfather’s folly.”
“How can you say this to me now?” Louisa whispered back to him, her eyes wide with a hurt William didn’t wish to see or acknowledge.
“Because it is never too late until you say the vows,” he said.
Louisa didn’t immediately respond; William tensed and held his breath.
“What if your name were the one on the vowel?” she asked Halford.
“It’s not the same thing, and you know it; I am a gentleman, and Tony is a gentleman,” he answered her. “You, on the other hand, are not.”
William began breathing again. Halford had miscalculated; he’d said the absolute worst thing possible if he were to convince Louisa not to marry him. William knew Louisa well enough by now to know that she felt the family honor as keenly as her brothers did.
“Oh, Alex, you don’t understand anything at all,” she said, shaking her head—and proving William correct.
“We’re with you, whatever you choose to do,” Lord Anthony said, squeezing her hand. “You know that, Weezy. But Alex is right—do think about it, right now, before it becomes public knowledge.”
