The Marriage Wager (10 page)

Nan helped her into the new dress, and she was just finishing buttoning it up the back when there was a knock on the door and Francesca bustled in, followed by her maid.

“Oh, Constance!” Francesca drew a breath of admiration. “It is lovely. Madamoiselle Plessis did a beautiful job. How pretty you look. Now sit down and let Maisie do your hair.”

Constance did as she was bade, and Maisie began to work her usual magic with her hair, pinning and twisting until it fell in a profusion of curls about Constance’s face. While Maisie worked, Francesca pulled up a chair and watched, talking all the while.

“There will be more interesting company this evening,” she promised Constance, then paused for a moment before letting out a little sneeze. “Goodness. Excuse me. Cyril Willoughby—you remember him—you danced with him at Lady Simmington’s ball—is here. And Alfred Penrose. Lord Dunborough.”

Constance listened with only half an ear as Francesca rattled on, detailing all their visitors, especially the eligible males, and describing their looks and personalities. Constance’s thoughts were on the evening ahead and, especially, on seeing Lord Leighton again. Excitement bubbled inside her, combined with a nervous uncertainty. This party seemed to her a time set apart, a special moment in which she could live a different sort of life—not the unmarried niece with whom her aunt and uncle were burdened, striving to please and to help them out of gratitude for their charity, but an attractive woman enjoying the sort of life she had been born to, the life she would have had, had her father not fallen ill when she was eighteen.

Yet she could not keep from her mind a certain degree of worry. What if she was being an embarrassment, as her aunt had said? What if the others looked at her and thought that she should not be here, or that she was too old to be acting and dressing like a young woman?

“There!” Francesca exclaimed, beaming at her. “You look beautiful. Absolutely perfect. Just look at yourself.”

Constance did as Francesca told her, going to the cheval glass standing in the corner of the room. She could not keep from smiling as she looked at her reflection, for the woman who gazed back at her was not only pretty, but sophisticated looking, as well. No one, she thought, would mistake her for a chaperone.

Francesca came to stand beside her, looping her arm about Constance’s waist. “Ready?”

Constance nodded. “Yes. I think I am.”

“Good. Then let’s go downstairs and capture some hearts.”

E
VERYONE HAD GATHERED IN
what Francesca told Constance was the anteroom to the formal dining room. It was a smaller room than the drawing room, in which the family had sat earlier, but it was empty of furniture, except for a few chairs around the edges of the room. The anteroom was full of people, conversation rising in a buzz. Constance halted at the doorway, startled by the number of guests. The room seemed a blur of unknown faces.

“Don’t worry. It won’t be long before you know everyone,” Francesca assured her. “Come. We must first introduce you to the Dowager Duchess of Chudleigh. She is the eldest lady here and my mother’s godmama. She cannot hear a thing, so she will just look at you disdainfully and nod, like this.” Francesca demonstrated, raising her chin to look down her nose at Constance and then lower her head fractionally. “She does it to everyone, so you must not take offense.”

The Duchess was seated beside Lady Selbrooke against the far wall, surveying the people before her with a sour expression on her face. Her hair was iron gray and swept up in a high, old-fashioned style, though not powdered. Her black dress, too, seemed to be from another era, boned and hooped in a way that had not been fashionable in fifteen years or more. Her reaction when Francesca curtsied to her and introduced Constance was so much what Francesca had predicted that it was all Constance could do not to laugh.

Then Francesca swept Constance away on a tour of the room, introducing her to everyone. It was dizzying, and Constance feared she would not remember half the names she was told. It was a relief to see Cyril Willoughby, whom she remembered from the dance, and there were two more men whom she had danced with at the Simmington ball, though she did not remember who they were and was grateful when Francesca greeted them by name. There were several young women who seemed far pleasanter than Muriel Rutherford, for which Constance was also grateful. With luck, she thought, she might be able to avoid spending much time in the company of Miss Rutherford or her mother.

As they made their way around the room, she saw Lord Leighton enter and, as she and Francesca had done, go to his mother and her companion, the Duchess, to pay his respects. She turned away, not wishing to be caught staring, but a few moments later she glanced up and found Leighton’s gaze on her. He smiled at her before turning back to the man beside him and murmuring something to him, then breaking away from him.

Leighton’s journey was slow and meandering, with many a pause to greet this guest or that, but Constance was sure that he was making his way to where she stood. Though she continued to talk to Francesca and a rather languid young man named Lord Dunborough, she was aware every moment of where Leighton was, and she had a great deal of trouble keeping her mind on Lord Dunborough’s account of his journey from London.

She felt Leighton’s presence beside her an instant before he spoke. “Dunborough. Ladies.”

“Leighton!” Francesca turned to greet her brother with an expression of relief.

Lord Dunborough nodded. “Hallo, Leighton. Didn’t expect to see you here. Lady Rutherford told me this morning you were coming, but I said I was sure you were not. ‘Saw him Saturday a week ago,’ I said to her, ‘when I took a toddle down to White’s, and I’m certain he said he would not be here.’ She would have none of it and insisted that she had it from Lady Selbrooke herself, who should, of course, know, as it’s her house and you’re her son.”

“Quite,” Leighton broke into the other man’s story with the expertise of long practice. “It happens that I changed my mind.”

“One does,” the other man agreed. “I did so this morning. Thought I would wear my blue jacket down here, told my man to lay it out, and so he did. But then, this morning when I got up, I thought, no, it should be the brown. Better for traveling, don’t you see?”

“Of course it is,” Leighton agreed quickly. “Just what I would have done. Have you spoken to Mr. Carruthers yet? He is interested in a pair of grays for his carriage, and I know you looked at that pair Winthorpe’s trying to sell.”

“Really?” Lord Dunborough’s eyes lit with interest. “Wouldn’t advise him doing it. No, not at all.” He glanced around. “I should speak to him.”

“No doubt you should,” Francesca agreed.

It took him several more sentences to excuse himself from their presence, but at last he started across the room toward Mr. Carruthers.

Francesca let out an enormous sigh. “Thank you, Dom, you are our savior.”

“Was Dunny entertaining you with the tale of his broken wheel?” Leighton asked, his eyes dancing in amusement.

“Yes, though we had scarce reached the actual breaking point,” Constance told him.

“Quite true,” Francesca agreed. “We spent ten minutes on loading the carriage. If his journey was as dull as his recounting of it, it is a wonder he did not expire on the way.”

“What possessed you to inflict him on Miss Woodley?” Leighton asked.

“I have avoided him for so long I had forgotten how horridly longwinded he is,” Francesca admitted. “Please forgive me, Constance. We shall cross him off the list.” She looked toward the door and said, “Ah, there are your aunt and uncle. I should make introductions. Keep Miss Woodley company, will you, Dom?”

“It will be my pleasure,” Leighton assured her.

Francesca left them, and Lord Leighton turned to Constance. “List? What list are you and Francesca keeping?”

Constance blushed a little under his regard. “’Tis nothing. Lady Haughston has taken me on as her newest project. She is determined to find me a husband.”

“And are you seeking a husband?” he asked quizzically, raising one brow.

Constance shook her head. “No. You need not worry that I have been added to your bevy of pursuers. I have no interest in achieving the married state.”

“You prefer not to marry, then?”

“It is not that. But I prefer not to marry where I do not choose. And a woman with little dowry has equally little choice.” She gave a shrug and a smile to take the sting from her words.

“Ah, then we are compatriots, Miss Woodley,” he said with a smile. “Fellow fugitives from the marriage mart.”

“Yes. Though I do not have to hide from my pursuers,” she countered teasingly.

“I can scarce believe that. Are there so few men of discernment among us?”

“Perhaps, like you, they have no interest in marriage,” she pointed out. “And interest of any other kind is dangerous for a woman.”

She was enjoying their repartee, the light feint and thrust of social discourse, but she glanced away at that moment and encountered the icy gaze of Miss Rutherford. The woman’s antagonism deflated some of the buoyant feeling. What was it about her that the woman so disliked? She could not help but think that it had something to do with Lord Leighton, and she wondered if there was some sort of attachment between him and Miss Rutherford.

Constance glanced back up into Leighton’s face. He was watching her, and his face showed nothing but the same lighthearted enjoyment in their conversation that she felt. Surely this was not the look of a man attached to another woman. Nor did his joking comments about escaping from the marriage mart give any indication that he was engaged or even close to that state. She must be wrong about the reason for Muriel Rutherford’s dislike of her, or else Muriel was this disagreeable about possible competition for any man she happened to favor. Whatever the reason, Constance made the firm resolve to ignore the woman in the future.

Leighton started to speak again, but at that moment supper was announced, and he had to excuse himself to escort his mother in to dinner. Lord Selbrooke was leading the way to the double pocket doors at the far end of the room, now slid back into the wall to reveal the large dining room beyond. The Dowager Duchess of Chudleigh tottered along on his arm. After them came Lord Leighton and Lady Selbrooke, and the rest of the company fell in behind them.

Sir Lucien, whom Constance had not seen until this moment, appeared beside her to offer his arm, and she smiled at him gratefully. Without Francesca around, she felt a bit lost among all the strangers. She was seated near the end of the table, at some distance from either Francesca or Lord Leighton, who were seated near the other end. Fortunately, however, she was between Sir Lucien and Cyril Willoughby, a pleasant man in his thirties with intelligent brown eyes. She had been a little worried about making conversation at dinner, but Sir Lucien, she knew, was capable of making enough entertaining conversation for both of them, and she had spoken with Mr. Willoughby before, and found him both well-spoken and kind.

The meal, therefore, a protracted affair with so many courses and choices that it lasted well over an hour, was pleasantly spent. Sir Lucien supplied her with a murmured social history of everyone at the table, and during the gaps when he turned to entertain Miss Norton on his other side, Constance and Mr. Willoughby discussed one of her father’s favorite periods of history, the long and tangled War of the Roses.

Mr. Willoughby, she found, was an admirer of Edward IV and, like her father, an avid student of history. He owned a small manor house in Sussex, he told her, describing with obvious affection the sleepy village of Lower Boxbury near which it was located. Constance enjoyed her talk with him, and she could easily see why Francesca had included him as a potential suitor. Intelligent, well-read and refined, he was a man of substance—the sort, Constance thought, that any woman should be pleased to marry.

The problem, of course, was that she felt not the slightest speck of attraction to him. She could see that his features were without exception, his form and dress just as they should be. His manner was polite and polished, and if he was not possessed of the sort of biting wit that characterized, say, Sir Lucien, he was, at least, not without some sense of humor—and his comments were far kinder than those of Sir Lucien. But the realization of all these attributes did not give rise in her to even a fraction of the sort of sizzle and excitement that pulsed through her whenever Lord Leighton approached.

Of course, she expected nothing of Lord Leighton, and she had no intention of making the mistake of falling in love with him; for she was well aware of how forlorn any hope of marrying him was. But she could not conceive of marrying a man for whom she did not feel any sort of passion. Her friend Jane was fond of saying that love required nurturing and care, but Constance felt that there must be something there in the first place in order to nurture it. Likeable though Mr. Willoughby was, Constance could not see herself spending her life with him.

And though she had not spent much time with any of them, she suspected that the same would prove true of all the men whom Francesca had invited to this house party. Alfred Penrose was another whom she remembered from Lady Simmington’s ball, and though he was an excellent dancer, most of his conversation had been about horses, hounds and hunting. And Lord Dunborough! Well, she had not been able to bear ten minutes in that gentleman’s company, let alone a lifetime. There were three other men, of course, whom she had met tonight; two whose names she could not remember at the moment. Perhaps she would feel a spark of something for one of them if she got to know them better, but knowing herself as well as she did, she had the lowering suspicion that she would not. She sincerely hoped that Francesca would not be too disappointed when Constance did not become engaged.

She had warned her, after all. Constance knew that she was considered to be insufferably particular when it came to men, a quality that was difficult enough in a marriageable woman but almost impossible to overcome when one was a portionless spinster. Her cousins were apt to wax enthusiastic over nearly every man they met, overlooking such trifles as a lack of conversation or a predilection for port. However, what Constance had come to think was not that she was so unreasonable about what she wanted in a man—she would admit, after all, that Mr. Willoughby would make a good husband—but that she simply was not one who fell in love easily. Or, when she was feeling especially low, she thought perhaps that she might not be one who could fall in love at all.

She had been in love once. It had been after her father’s illness had overtaken him, and they had removed to Bath for a few months in the hopes that the waters there might banish, or at least mitigate, his illness. While they were there, she had met Gareth Hamilton. There had been a few bright weeks of happiness as he courted her, and for a time she had been filled with eagerness and hope. But that had foundered upon the shoals of reality. He had asked her to marry him, and she had had to say no, not while her father still lived. Her duty was to him, and she could not leave him while he was so ill. And so they had parted.

Jane liked to say, with a romantic sigh, that Constance had been pining for her lost love ever since. Constance did not really think so. She did not still yearn for Gareth, did not, in fact, ever think of him in the normal course of things. But she did wonder if perhaps the experience had wounded her in some way, cutting her off from the ability to love.

After dinner, while the gentlemen retired to the smoking room for port and cigars, the women moved into the music room. Lady Selbrooke suggested that Miss Rutherford entertain them on the piano, and the dark-haired girl obliged, going to the piano and searching through the sheet music, then sitting down to play.

Muriel Rutherford was an accomplished player, Constance had to acknowledge. But her playing, while technically perfect, was without passion, and the piece she chose was dark and slow. Given the music and the heavy meal they had all just consumed, Constance found herself battling to keep her eyelids open. The Duchess, she saw, had lost the battle already; her eyes were closed and her head nodding. The two dyed plumes the Dowager Duchess wore in her hair bobbed with the motion of her head, and periodically she jerked awake, her head flying up, and stared wildly about her for an instant before closing her eyes again and returning to slumber.

Beside Constance, Francesca sighed, wafting her fan gently. She raised her fan to cover the lower half of her face and murmured, “Mother keeps early hours. I think she likes to encourage her guests to do the same, and so she has Muriel play.”