The Husband List (2 page)

Jack’s black frock coat sat well across his broad shoulders, and the white of his starched shirt and collar set off the sun-darkened color of his skin and deep brown hair. She liked that he was clean-shaven, too. Eddie’s attempt at a moustache seemed a little scant, though she’d never say so to her brother.

“Six minutes to spare,” Eddie said before kissing Mama on the cheek. “You were counting, weren’t you?”

“I was doing no such thing,” she said, but bright flags of pink on her face let Eddie know he had caught her.

Mama’s gaze drifted past Eddie and on to Jack. While she didn’t permit her disapproval to show in her expression, she still managed to convey it by stiffening her posture. Even Pomeroy, the little mop of a lapdog Mama had acquired so she could feel a bit like Queen Victoria, seemed to tighten up.

“Good evening, Mrs. Maxwell,” Jack said, giving a slight bow.

“We were late getting back from Jack’s new business concern. I hope you don’t mind if he joins us for dinner,” Eddie added.

“No, really, I need to be on my way,” Jack said. “I just wanted to say hello to the family.”

His smile briefly settled on Amelia and Helen, who wore matching yellow satin dresses in appropriately girlish styles. And because Mama believed in playing the asset of their twinhood to the fullest, their wavy auburn hair had been upswept in identical fashions, too. They smiled prettily and inclined their heads to Jack, but never met his eyes.

His attention moved on to Caroline, who had no qualms about meeting Jack Culhane head-on.

“Hello, Caroline. Are the social rounds treating you well?” he asked, a devilish light shining in his blue eyes.

How her girlfriends could not find him handsome was beyond Caroline. They used phrases like “too earthy” when they spoke of him. She thought the men they found attractive looked half-starved.

Jack was perfect.

Her heart beat faster at the sight of the two dimples that always appeared when he teased her. He knew how she felt about the endless gatherings that Mama insisted she attend. And Jack felt the same way, too. He might slip into a party, but he was always quickly gone.

“Very well,” she said. “I’ve been having a wonderful time.”

“Really, wonderful?”

“Bordering on delirious.”

His smile became a full-out grin. “I’ll bet.”

“Stay for dinner,” Eddie said to Jack. “Tell my father about the new brewery and your plans for expansion.”

Caroline waited for his answer. She’d make a devil’s bargain of her own and trade away tonight’s final slice of cake if he would stay.

“Another brewery?” her father asked Jack in a tone that was disapproving and yet curious, too.

“Yes, sir,” Jack replied.

“Don’t you already have one in Pennsylvania?”

“And one in Boston, as well.”

Papa frowned. “Then why buy any more?”

“For the same reasons your grandfather bought those regional railroads, sir. Consolidation of power and resources.”

Papa flicked his hand as though shooing away a gnat. “Breweries aren’t the same thing at all.”

Caroline settled in to eavesdrop. She felt sheer joy at hearing a conversation of more import than whether it was appropriate to have the lettering on one’s calling card embossed.

“With all due respect, sir, you’re wrong,” Jack said.

Papa rose from the ornate carved chair Mama claimed was Imperial Chinese. He joined Jack and Eddie in front of the cavernous fireplace, stepping on one of the two tiger skins on the floor while on his way. Caroline tried to avoid looking at the tigers. She’d been thirteen when Papa had brought them home from a hunting trip, and she’d cried well into the night upon seeing them.

Caroline focused on the gentlemen. They looked so civilized in their black evening suits, though Papa’s was cut to accommodate his girth. He ate with the same robust passion he gave the rest of life.

“I’m wrong, am I?” he asked Jack, clearly warming to the debate.

Caroline’s mother must have known that her window of opportunity for a dinner without Jack Culhane had closed.

“O’Brien, see that there’s room at the table for Mister Culhane,” she said.

The butler, who was an expert at appearing and disappearing with ghostly skill, left only to appear an impossibly short time later and announce that dinner was served.

They entered the dining room, which had been known to seat three hundred when Mama was having one of her larger parties. Their footsteps echoed all the way to the ceiling, with its frescoes of fat little cherubs, platters of fruit, and women who’d always looked to Caroline to be in some form of distress.

Jack was ushered to a spot just to Caroline’s right. She glanced at her mother to see if a mistake had been made. Jack should have been seated far closer to Papa so that they could continue to converse. Apparently not, since her mother wore a content smile, probably at the thought of having quashed business talk. O’Brien looked pleased with himself, too. Caroline would never understand how the butler managed to read Mama’s mind, but he was a master at it.

The family settled in, and wine was poured. Mama and the twins talked of the tea they’d attended in the afternoon while most everyone else attempted to appear interested. Caroline, however, was too occupied by trying not to be so conscious of Jack.

Warmth seemed to roll from him. She caught a hint of wood smoke that must have traveled with him from his afternoon’s adventures. She glanced his way and found that he’d been looking at her, so she pretended great interest in the silver of her place setting.

The first course was served: a little quail that had been stuffed with something or another. After a tiny bite, Caroline set her fork on the plate’s edge. Good thing, too, because she was under extra scrutiny after this morning’s fitting.

“We must improve Rosemeade’s grounds and refurnish it immediately. It’s entirely lacking in elegance. If we didn’t need to be in residence no later than July first, I’d say to raze the whole thing and start over. But with both Bremerton and the season upon us, I shouldn’t get carried away,” Mama said to Papa after being sure Caroline had left her quail to languish.

“Do whatever you wish,” Caroline’s father replied. That was his stock answer for anything regarding the family’s residences, which he left wholly to his wife.

Caroline wasn’t feeling quite so calm. Their Newport summer cottage was her favorite. While it was hardly small at forty rooms, its Tudor-style stone-and-timber exterior gave it a sense of simplicity that this house lacked. Rosemeade also held memories of the many summer days when she’d chased after Eddie and Jack. Her heart would break if those were wiped away.

“Why would Rosemeade need improvement? It’s perfect just as it is,” she said.

“Perfect? Perfect to entertain a duke?” Mama asked.

Caroline could feel her hard-fought control evaporating.

“What duke?” she asked. “Bremerton’s not a duke unless both his father and grandfather conveniently die.”

Her mother couldn’t have looked more shocked if frogs had sprung from Caroline’s mouth.

“Caroline, really!”

“It’s true, Mama. That’s the one fact you have. What you don’t know is what sort of man he is … if he’s kind or smart or has a good smile,” she said, thinking of Jack’s smile. “And—”

“Caroline, be quiet!” her mother commanded.

But Caroline’s words might as well have been those frogs because she couldn’t stop them. “And for once, could we have something that isn’t made to look like something other than what it is?”

She waved her hand at the room’s rosewood moldings that her mother had ordered covered in gold-leaf. “Could we have wood and not make it look like gold?”

She pointed a finger at the marble fireplace that had been detailed to look like burled oak. “And stone that isn’t painted like wood?”

She settled one hand against the half-high bodice of her silk-and-chiffon dinner dress, which, as far as she was concerned, was too fussy to be tolerated.

“And me? What about me, Mama? Couldn’t we just agree that my hair is as straight as a pin and stop torturing it into curls? Couldn’t we stop dressing me as though I’m royalty when I’m just me … plain, unremarkable me?”

Caroline’s words caught up with her, and her anger passed as quickly as it had come. She’d never been able to hang on to it, which she supposed was a decent trait. A handier one would have been keeping her frustration to herself.

Her mother and father were staring at her, aghast. Amelia and Helen looked as though they were about to burst into tears. And poor Eddie was gazing raptly into his wine goblet as though the secrets to life rested there.

Caroline didn’t dare look at Jack. If she did, her humiliation would be complete. She pushed back her chair and rose.

“I … I think I’m feeling unwell,” she said into the silence that hung over the table. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ll just…”

But because she had no idea what she planned to do, she simply turned and left. Her new shoes skidded on the hard floor, making her steps as wobbly as she felt inside.

She passed Annie in the hallway, but didn’t stop to ask her what in heaven’s name she was doing by the dining room. And instead of heading upstairs as she, too, should have done, Caroline rushed to the conservatory.

Once inside, she closed the glass and wrought-iron door that kept the room’s warmth and humidity neatly trapped. She paused at the finch cage and shook her head.

“I know just how you feel,” she said to the birds.

At least the birds couldn’t see through the room’s foliage to know that their kind flitted freely outside. Caroline had to watch Eddie being given full rein, while she and the twins were groomed to be Mama’s idea of perfect wives.

But that was not going to change.

The best she could do was work well within the cage that surrounded her, too. Caroline touched the tip of one finger to the pinkish edge of a delicate orchid blossom and watched it quiver. At least it was a very pretty cage, if over-furnished.

“I knew I’d find you here,” said a male voice.

TWO

Caroline looked away from the flower. Jack stood between the tall potted palms that framed the room’s entry.

“It’s just where I’d find you at Rosemeade, too. Would you mind some company?” he asked.

In his right hand was a plate bearing a thick slice of chocolate cake. Even though her appetite had fled with her outburst in the dining room, Caroline revised her prior assessment. Jack Culhane was not just perfect, he was gloriously so.

Caroline couldn’t recall the last time she’d been alone with a male who wasn’t a family member. Mama had deemed it unacceptable under any circumstance once Caroline had turned twelve. But here she was, alone with Jack. She couldn’t think of a better man with whom to break a few rules.

“Of course I don’t mind company, especially when it arrives with chocolate cake,” Caroline said to him. “But why aren’t you still in the dining room?”

“Amelia and Helen started sniffling, and I got the sense the dam was about to burst. Since I believe in self-preservation, I did what I had to do.” He extended the cake. “Are you going to take this, or should I give it back to the red-headed maid who came running after me with it?”

So Annie was behind the miracle of the cake. She might prove to be a wonderful ally if she wasn’t fired first. Caroline eyed the treat. Perhaps her appetite hadn’t fled as far as she’d thought.

“I’d hate to send you out of your way over mere dessert,” she said, reaching for the plate and fork. She speared a fat chunk of cake and sighed when its rich flavor met her mouth.

Jack grinned. “I take it the cake’s more to your taste than quail?”

“That’s me,” Caroline said after she’d swallowed. “Plain, old me.”

Jack followed her as she walked down the mossy green tile pathway between the benches of plants and on to a small wrought-iron table on which sat an open-mouthed blue-and-white jar holding a white water lily.

“Not plain, not old … and in no way unremarkable,” he said.

She glanced over her shoulder at him. He appeared to be sincere.

Caroline sat, taking care not to snag her dress on the metal chair. She didn’t usually believe compliments from gentlemen, because she had millions of reasons in the bank to doubt the giver’s sincerity. Jack was rich, though.

“Thank you,” she said.

“You’re welcome.” He was looking at her much as Eddie had been at that wine goblet. “You look different tonight.”

“My temper must have brought some color to my face,” she said.

He seemed to shake off the moment as he took the seat opposite her. “That’s probably it.” He paused and then added, “So, are you going to offer me some of that cake?”

Caroline froze. “From the same plate? And with the same fork?”

He laughed. “A lightning bolt won’t strike us. I’ve been in parts of the world where everyone shares from the same pot, no utensils at all, and to the best of my knowledge, God hasn’t turned on them yet.”

Jack
had
brought her the cake and missed dinner, too. Caroline glanced toward the conservatory door. If her drama at dinner had stunned her mother, this would give her fits. But no one was watching, not even the ghostly O’Brien. She handed Jack the fork and felt a tingle of rebellious glee.

“Tell me about your almost duke,” Jack said after he’d had a bite of cake. “From the stories I’ve heard about your visit to London last year, I’d have thought all Englishmen would be cowering on their side of the Atlantic.”

“Exaggerations, mostly,” she said.

“Mostly?” He leaned back in his chair and smiled at her. “Care to share?”

“I share cake, not tales,” she said. “But as a point of information, the almost duke isn’t mine. And I don’t want him to be, either.”

“That’s not a very welcoming attitude. Almost un-American,” Jack commented with a smile.

“I’m American enough that I don’t see the benefit to the Maxwell name if I snare an English title.”

“Point taken, again,” he said. “But cheer up. You might even like the almost duke once you meet him.”

Caroline couldn’t sort out which part of Jack’s statement she liked least: that he wanted her to welcome this latest marriage candidate or that he thought marriage must be orchestrated.