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Chapter 4
Afew days later, Colin reposed in the drawing room in a wingback chair, going through a few wrinkled newssheet clippings.
“Let me see if I have this correctly…you’ve dug up old newssheets searching for mentions of my family and made some sort of…” Colin considered a headline that spoke about a secret duel involving his youngest brother, Richard. If they ever knew it had been Lizzy. “A book dedicated solely to our scandals.”
“Pray do not think I mean to offend you. Aunt Imogen has an insatiable appetite for gossip and so does our cook. I was quite lucky to find these.”
“None taken.” Colin almost admired the scandal sheets’ sheer dedication to his family and their supposed scandals. “There are twenty-one clippings here.”
“And those are the ones I could find from the only newssheets my Aunt Imogen has kept. Surely we missed some.”
Colin stared at her. “How will this help my family?”
“Your instructions were to make your family presentable to the ton. From a mere meeting with you I thought that would be a most difficult order. That was further reaffirmed when you said all of your sisters and brothers are as charming and good-natured as yourself.”
“It was?”
She seemed to warm to her topic as evidence by the glint in her eyes. “Oh, yes; I was immediately alarmed.”
“It was meant to put you at ease,” he said drily.
“I cannot imagine why you would think that.”
Colin did not like whenever she used that prim, corrective tone; something warm teased low in his belly. Bloody hell. She was right. He was a damn scoundrel to be thinking amorous thoughts about her. She had arrived this morning wearing a dark gray bombazine gown that fitted her trim figure well and polished new boots. Her hair had been tightly pinned into a bun at her nape that accented the graceful line of the shape of her neck, and Colin wondered if the stern schoolmarm appearance was for his benefit. He had thought her ensemble an armor of sorts, but if she thought it diminished her loveliness, without the lack of frills to distract an observer, one could not ignore how pretty she truly was.
“The scandal sheets would work as a sort of guide for me in that they mention the failing…” she frowned, tapping at her chin.
A habit he was already becoming used to. “The scandal sheets show our failings,” he said blandly.
She wrinkled her nose. “I do not like the word failing; hence why I paused to consider another phrase.”
“What is wrong with it?”
She aimed a pointed bird-like stare at him. “Well…these reports might not be your failings but society’s own. Have you ever thought these rules of conduct we are expected to conform to have their own failings?”
We.How interesting. Did the lady simply not believe wholeheartedly in these pretenses of propriety as the old dragon did…nd that woman lived and breathed it. If any one of his siblings or Colin himself dared step a line out of what was considered proper, the old biddy was fit to faint. He had once considered that all of high society held to the same exacting, ridiculous standards. Of course, he had learned to reassess that viewpoint quickly. The ladies and gentlemen of society only owned to those standards in public.
He had drunk and gambled with a few of these gentlemen who were considered highly respected peers. They did not hold themselves to the expected standards of conduct unless they were around ladies. More than one lady of the ton…respectable, well-bred married ladies…had stroked their fingers discreetly over his jacket and down to the front fall of his trousers, while whispering lascivious offers into his ears.
For some, if not all, propriety was an act. They wanted to dance to their own tunes just like his siblings. They had simply learned the delicate art of putting on and removing the mask so no one noticed.
Colin had witnessed with his own eyes one of those very ladies who had offered to tup him into bliss scolding a debutante for being too forward and brash for lifting her skirt above her ankle and revealing a glimpse of a stocking-clad leg. The girl’s stammered reply that she was trying to save her dress from the muddy puddle had been met with upturned noses. Colin had been astonished that the young lady’s action had warranted a censure. His sisters who had been promenading with him and the old dragon in Hyde Park to be seen by the list of who’s who in the ton had exchanged startled and commiserating glances. Of course, in lending her support to the mortified young lady, Lizzy had tugged her dress to her shin and jumped over the same puddle and here it was in the clipping.
Those very bad F are at it again! One of the newly minted Earl of C’s sisters, shockingly lifted her dress above her ankles in public. This author has the on dit—
Unable to readany more of this ridiculousness, he tossed the clippings onto the sofa.
“Well?” she asked softly.
He thought about her previous assessment that society rules might be the failure. “I have thought it sometimes,” he finally replied. “I never expected you to suggest such, or that you would voice such an idea given your profession.”
She smiled and lifted an elegant shoulder. “I only want honesty in our relationship.”
“How do you define it?”
“Our relationship?”
“Yes.”
