The Bolingbroke Chit: A Regency Romance (6 page)

This sentiment, entirely unexpected from a woman who had stridently objected to Vinnie’s candidacy to the British Horticultural Society, was as affecting as it was surprising, but before Vinnie could voice her gratitude, the dowager forestalled her with a raised hand.

“No, my dear, don’t be flattered or touched,” the dowager said, her tone cool. “Your happiness, while not entirely inconsequential to me, is not as important as my consequence. A fine arbiter of taste and fashion I would be if I could not carry off one slightly scandalous marriage.” She turned to her daughter as Tupper carried in the tea tray. “You have always been a high-strung child, for which I accept full responsibility. I did not take care to make sure you got enough mutton when you were in leading strings.”

Louisa did not know what to make of this charge of meat deficiency, for she did not believe there was a connection between temperament and lamb consumption. Moreover, she did not think her mother believed it either. The woman was simply being frivolous again. For some reason, she found it amusing to support Miss Harlow’s wedding and would not listen to a single word against it. The dowager’s recalcitrance was another alarming development, and Louisa wondered how to address it without running the risk of having her disposition described as overly sensitive.

Luckily for the dowager, Louisa was denied the opportunity to respond by the arrival of the twins’ sister-in-law. Mrs. Sarah Harlow was a tall woman with a slim build and calm brown eyes that sparkled when she was amused. Her posture was excellent, her temper was even, and she had a refined manner befitting the daughter of a viscount. For years, she had been responsible for squiring Emma and Vinnie around town, a duty she had performed with mixed results, as some of the Harlow Hoyden’s most outlandish exploits had occurred under her aegis, most notably a neck-or-nothing race from London to Newmarket to break Sir Leopold’s three-year-old record. That escapade, which beat the standing time by two minutes and seven seconds, had been carried out with the full blessing of the twins’ brother, Roger, but the gossips still laid the sin at Sarah’s feet. Men could not be relied upon to act sensibly, especially where curricle races were concerned.

She had fared far better with Vinnie, whose willful streak did not emerge until after she had moved into the Duke of Trent’s town house. Although she was genuinely happy for Vinnie that she had achieved her goal of being accepted into the horticultural society, Sarah was at a loss to understand why she would want to.

Looking at her former charges now, comfortably ensconced in the duke’s elegant drawing room like a pair of gracious young ladies, she wondered how two such harmless-looking girls could have caused her so much anxiety.

“Good afternoon,” Sarah said with an amiable smile. “I got here as fast as I could, but I fear I may be too late.”

“I can not confirm or deny that supposition,” the duke said, striding over to greet his new guest, “until I know for what you are here.”

“The demonstration, of course,” she explained.

Vinnie sighed loudly and glanced at her sister with exasperated chagrin. “You invited Sarah?”

“And Roger and Philip and Mr. Berry from the horticultural society,” Emma noted calmly. “In order for an audience to be large, it must contain a large number of people. I don’t know what happened to Philip, but Mr. Berry sends his regrets and assures you he looks forward to your demonstration at the society.”

As Vinnie hadn’t originally planned to do one presentation, the news that she would now have to do two was not entirely welcome. It wasn’t Sarah’s fault, however, that her twin was pathologically supportive, and she quickly assured her sister-in-law that she hadn’t missed a thing. “The demonstration will take place shortly. Please have some tea in the meanwhile.”

“Yes,” Louisa said, the light of triumph in her eyes as she sensed an ally in their midst. Mrs. Harlow was a sensible woman of good breeding. Surely, she would immediately grasp the untenability of a hasty marriage. “Please do join us for tea. We were just discussing Mr. Holyroodhouse’s most recent work.”

With a moue of disgust, Sarah sat down on the settee and accepted a cup of tea from the dowager. “Has that dreadful man struck again?”

“He has,” Louisa said, presenting the offending illustration to Sarah with an eager flourish, and was duly rewarded for her zeal when the other woman cried out, “Oh, no. How wretched!” Then she reached out and grasped Vinnie’s hand in a comforting squeeze.

Gratified by the response, Louisa said, “I’m relieved to see that
someone
in this family understands the ramifications of such catastrophic prescience. Please explain to them, Mrs. Harlow, why they can’t possibly get married now.”

The request was so puzzling to Sarah that her brow immediately furrowed as she looked from Vinnie to Emma to Huntly to Trent, trying to figure out what Louisa meant. She knew of no impending marriage, but when she looked at Vinnie again, she saw the bright eyes and giddy smile and squealed in delight. Then she enveloped her former charge in an enthusiastic hug and congratulated Huntly on his very good sense in selecting Vinnie for his wife.

“You are perfectly suited and I’m sure you will be very happy together,” she said. “I know your brother, Roger, will feel the same way when he hears the news. Oh, this is the best possible development.”

For Louisa, Mrs. Harlow’s enthusiastic support of the match was the worst possible development, as it proved conclusively that she was the only reasonable person in the room. Everyone else was either mad or a victim of willful ignorance. Even if Vinnie were not just out of black gloves, the cutting insight of Mr. Holyroodhouse served as a sufficient deterrent to matrimony. How could any member of the British Horticultural Society marry the new female member when it had been so recently ridiculed as an annex of the marriage mart? She would have assumed Huntly’s pride could not bear the insult.

And yet the future bridegroom seemed not the least bit perturbed by the mockery, and Louisa, conceding defeat, announced her intention to leave. Emma, however, was unwilling to surrender a single member of her large audience and insisted she stay for the demonstration, which was once again delayed as the duchess rounded up a crowd of spectators appropriate to the occasion.

Finally, Vinnie was given the signal to proceed and rather than reprise her speech from earlier, she merely turned on the hose and watched with giddy pride as her device worked exactly as it was supposed to. Cautiously, she increased the water pressure and grinned with delight as the contraption held—no tears, no bursts, no unfortunate soakings of innocent bystanders.

Her audience, perceiving the importance of the moment if not the significance of the accomplishment, clapped enthusiastically, while the Marquess of Huntly took very great advantage of his new position and kissed his fiancée imprudently on the mouth while the entire household staff looked on.

“Now,
that
is what I call a demonstration,” Emma said approvingly.

Chapter Three

To say that Jonah Hamilton,
Viscount Addleson, was unimpressed by
Agastache rupestris
would be to understate the case significantly. It would be more accurate to declare with unequivocal certainty that he found the flower—commonly known as sunset hyssop—to be the least interesting cultivar he’d ever had the displeasure of examining through a magnifying glass.

“Its ability to withstand high temperatures and arid soil makes it particularly well suited to the desert regions and mountain ranges of the American West,” Mr. Caleb Petrie explained as he directed Addleson’s attention to the plant’s spidery roots and spoke for five minutes on the benefits of a shallow root system for maximizing water absorption.

Previous lecture subjects had included the flower’s startlingly vibrant orange petals, reminiscent of a sunset, of course, which was how the plant got its name, and its usefulness in attracting bees.

Why anyone would want to attract a horde of insects that stung its quarry with random ferocity the viscount could not fathom. Nor could he comprehend why anyone would fret about the amount of water a plant absorbed during a three-month period in a climate of moderate dryness.

And yet Mr. Petrie continued to discuss these subjects at length with barely contained enthusiasm, his pale blue eyes glowing with excitement as he focused his magnifying glass on a spindly brown root. He was an unusually tall gentleman with a graying beard, and after fifty-two years of looking down on his fellow enthusiasts, he had started to consider them beneath his notice. This predilection explained why he failed to see the glassy-eyed boredom in his lone audience member’s gaze. “You see, it’s exactly as I said,” he observed eagerly.

Like any titled gentleman of impeccable breeding, the viscount did not mind being bored to flinders. Indeed, he considered it one of his chief obligations as a member of the peerage. Dinner hostesses, business associates, simpering misses, ignorant cawkers, swells of the first stare—they all conspired to keep him in a semipermanent state of ennui. Addleson wasn’t an impatient man, merely a quick-thinking one, and few people or things presented sufficient stimulation to maintain his interest. To his late father’s irritation, he had the deplorable ability to immediately identify a problem and present a solution, a skill that assured his estates ran with unprecedented efficiency but left him with few challenges. Vingt-un had been a consuming occupation for a while—before he realized he could keep track of all the cards in play and was no longer surprised by the revelation of a hand.

As tolerant as he was of boredom, however, Addleson was willing to shoulder only his fair share of it, and the fact that he was Mr. Petrie’s sole victim bothered him hugely. If the lecture had been addressed to the entire room, which was, to be sure, stocked to the ceiling with plant devotees, he would not cavil. But it was directed exclusively at him and there was no good reason why he alone should be singled out for the honor. His interest in flowers extended only to the presenting of them to Incognitas and courtesans and even then he performed such courtesies infrequently. A man of his ilk—cultured and tailored to within an inch of his life—had no business knowing the word
cultivar,
let alone how to use it correctly in a sentence.

Indifferent to the viscount’s shame or, perhaps, even oblivious to it, the thoughtless Mr. Petrie had foisted that knowledge on him as he had other information, a development Addleson deeply resented. There were few experiences more unpleasant to an Englishman than to be educated against his will.

Of course, attending the soiree had been a mistake. A gathering to welcome an unknown naturalist from the wilds of North America was hardly Viscount Addleson’s natural milieu. A gathering to welcome a well-known one was no more his scene, but that at least carried the cachet of meeting a celebrated figure. In this case, however, he had been unable to resist the enthusiasms of his cousin, who had sworn up and down that the evening would be the most thrilling affair of the season. The viscount, being almost thirty years of age and suspicious of all superlatives, doubted very much that the event would rise to the level of entertainment vehemently professed, but his sense of humor was such that it compelled him to witness firsthand exactly how
un
thrilling it was. For his perversity, he’d earned a private audience with the evening’s guest of honor, whose success among other unknown naturalists from the wilds of North America was mentioned several times by the visitor himself.

The viscount found it difficult to believe there were any other American naturalists, let alone additional unknown ones, but he held his tongue and waited out his punishment. He knew it was pointless to try to interrupt a man who traveled with his own magnifying glass. Had Petrie produced a monocle or even a loupe like a jeweler, Addleson would not have hesitated to change the subject, for the reticent nature of those devices implied an openness to new ideas. But Petrie’s magnifying glass, with its mother-of-pearl handle that freed its user from all physical constraints, indicated a dominant mind unwilling to be swayed.

“No, no, no,” Petrie said suddenly and vigorously, as if confirming the viscount’s thoughts, which would have been an impressive feat, for the speaker seemed entirely unaware that his lordship had any. “You must not ask me about the soil quality of the Atlantic coastline, for my assistant, Mr. Clemmons, is not here and he knows all the precise details of my research, which is, as of yet, incomplete. You are right to point out the several articles I’ve published on
Ammophila breviligulata,
as they caused quite a stir in my home state. I look forward to working further with those subjects when I return to New York. I suppose I could have declined this trip to pursue my study, but an invitation to speak at the British Horticultural Society is too great an honor to turn down. If only my assistant were here. He had been all ready to board the ship with me when he was suddenly and inexplicably overcome by a hideous stomach ailment. But that is neither here nor there, for your interest is only in the suppositions that I hope to confirm as soon as I return to New York, which has several promising islands in the immediate environs of the port. However, since you asked, I will discuss the tolerance of
Ammophila breviligulata
to intense heat, excessive sunlight and drying winds.”

The truth was, of course, that Addleson had not asked about the soil quality of the Atlantic coastline, and he strongly doubted the American would have heard the question if he had. Like all bores, he preferred his own thoughts and opinions to the exclusion of others and had changed the subject from
Agastache rupestris
to
Ammophila breviligulata
without any prompting from his victim. Addleson’s father had been the same way, pontificating at length on topics of interest to him, but the late viscount had the additional debility of limited intelligence, which made him suspicious of everyone, including his son.