Wallflower (Old Maids' Club, Book 1) (13 page)

This was swiftly becoming farcical,
all of it: from Lord Leith dancing with her, to Lord Oglethorpe
asking her to dance, to Lord Devonport practically insisting she
dance with him instead. She didn’t particularly care to dance with
anyone. But hopefully it would be enough to get Father to leave her
alone for a bit.

She’d had all she wanted of their
blustering and displays of virility.

Tabitha separated herself from the
gentlemen on either side and placed her hand on Oglethorpe’s
proffered arm. As he led her to the dance floor, she said a silent
prayer that it would all end soon.

~ * ~

“
What just happened?” Miss
Faulkner asked, casting an accusing look back and forth between
Noah and Leith. Her hands were planted on her hips, and her deep
blue eyes flashed with shrouded fury. “Why in God’s name is she
dancing with Oglethorpe? Uncle Drake ordered her to dance, but he
certainly did not order her to dance with
that
opportunist.”

“
I wish I knew,” Noah
murmured. By gad, he’d handled that badly.

“
Well?” Miss Faulkner
demanded. “What are you going to do about it?”

At least her rage was not directed
solely in his direction but was shared in equal measure with
Leith.

“
Come,” Leith said,
holding his hand out to Miss Faulkner. “Dance with me. We’ll
position ourselves on either side of them. That should give her
some defense.”

She narrowed her eyes in Noah’s
direction. “Who will you dance with?”

He didn’t want to dance with anyone
but Lady Tabitha. Dancing with another lady—any other lady—directly
next to her, would be pure agony.

Since the dance would already be
torturous, he might as well punish himself fully. “Lady Cressica,”
he said. He hoped he would not live to regret it.

Chapter Seven

Tabitha wanted never to get out of bed
again.

After all the dancing of
last night, her ankle had been left throbbing and swollen like it
hadn’t since she was ten years old and fell down a ravine (a feat
which, mercifully, she had never repeated—why had she thought Jo’s
idea so brilliant again?). And after the spat she’d had with her
father, followed by the ridiculous debate with Lord Devonport over
whether she
had
or had
not
agreed to grant him a dance, her head had been throbbing and
swollen to match. Her temples had pounded at the very
least.

The concentration of the throbs had
only been intensified when both Lords Leith and Devonport had
brought their partners to dance on either side of Tabitha and Lord
Oglethorpe. This final act had also drawn out Tabitha’s ire at
their interference.

When the set had ended, Tabitha headed
straight for her father and begged to have the carriage called so
she could go home. Her ankle could simply not handle another moment
of dancing, or she would have to beg for amputation.

Sleep had provided no balm for either
ailment. The incessant knocking at her door was having a decidedly
provoking effect upon those same afflictions. “What in God’s name
do you want at this hour?” she groused.

Tabitha’s lady’s maid, Hester, stepped
inside. “You’ve received a bouquet of flowers, my lady. What would
you have me do with them?” She came over to Tabitha’s four-poster
bed and pulled back the curtain. Her face was alight with pure joy.
“They’re really quite lovely.”

In her state of joint pain and
half-sleep, Tabitha was certain she’d misheard the girl. She placed
a hand over her eyes, blocking the sun from blinding her. “Flowers?
Surely not.”

No one had sent her
flowers since Lord Pargeter had finally given up his pursuit. She’d
been one-and-twenty at the time. Tabitha had assumed other
gentlemen who might have had an interest in her had taken notice of
the manner in which Lord Pargeter had sought solace in the arms of
an impoverished viscount’s daughter. He then proceeded to marry the
girl—thereby proving himself
not
to be the fortune hunter she’d accused him of
being as she chased him out of the house, throwing his bouquet of
roses at his retreating backside. Or perhaps they had simply deemed
her a shrew.

Either way, no one had sent her
flowers in nearly eight years. Not even James Marshall. Her ears
must have deceived her.

“
Yes, my lady,” the girl
said with no small amount of delight in her voice. “A lovely
bouquet of daisies. Yellow and white. Would you like to come down
to the drawing room to see them?”

Tabitha had no intention of moving.
“No. Leave them there.”

“
Yes, ma’am. Shall I have
them put in a vase?”

Waving the hand that had been covering
her eyes dismissively, Tabitha said, “Do whatever you’d like with
them, Hester. You could take them to your quarters, if you
wish.”

“
Oh, no, ma’am. I’ll just
have them put in a vase and then set them in the drawing room,” the
maid said, bobbing a curtsey. She started to back out of the room,
but kept talking, almost as though to herself. “Though it is such a
monumental bouquet, we might need to split the flowers into two or
three vases.”

“
Yes,” Tabitha said.
“Fine.”

Hester stopped just before going
through the door. “Oh, Lady Tabitha? I placed the card that came
with them on your escritoire.”

But Tabitha placed her hand over her
eyes once more, and merely managed a grunt in response. She lay
there for quite some time, attempting to sleep without success,
until the next knock sounded at her chamber door.

When she failed to
respond, the door opened anyway and Hester stepped jauntily inside,
grinning from ear to ear. “You’ve received more flowers, my lady.
Daffodils! You simply
must
come and see them. They’re lovely.”

“
Perhaps later.” Tabitha,
however, had no intention of following through with that comment.
“Please have a tray sent up for my breakfast. I do not wish to go
down just yet.” For that matter, she didn’t particularly wish to go
down ever. That might be difficult to manage, though.

Hester hurried over to Tabitha’s
escritoire again to leave the card from the daffodils, then ducked
out of the room.

When the next knock sounded, Tabitha
had roused herself enough to put on her wrapper and was perched by
the window. She expected it to be a maid with her tray. It was. But
Hester had returned yet again.

“
No more flowers,” Tabitha
grumbled.

Hester clucked her tongue. “I’ve never
known a lady who would not be delighted to receive flowers. Indeed,
if you were to see them, I doubt you could be in such an unfriendly
mood. Perhaps I ought to have them brought up to you. They might
just break through your fit of the blue devils.” The maid crossed
her arms over her chest, doing her best imitation of Tabitha’s
mother.

Tabitha shook her head, laughing.
“Please don’t. I promise I shall endeavor to behave myself the rest
of the day.”

A curt nod was her response. “Now,
break your fast and be sprightly about it. We have to get you
dressed. You have a gentleman caller.”

Tabitha’s head jerked up and she
bumped her hand into the cup of chocolate she’d been reaching for,
knocking it over. Hester righted the cup and sopped up the mess
with a rag she had pulled from thin air before Tabitha could even
cry out in shock.

“
A gentleman caller?”
Tabitha repeated.
Impossible
. That was another thing
that hadn’t happened since the days of Lord Pargeter’s pursuit.
Indeed, he’d been her only gentleman caller ever in her entire
life.

One half of Hester’s thin-set mouth
turned down in a frown. “Yes. Livingston’s shown him into the
drawing room, so I suppose you can see your flowers when you go
down to meet him.”

Surely the butler wouldn’t have
breached protocol in such a way. “But why has Livingston already
shown him in? What if I don’t want to see him? I’ll have Father
reprimand him for that. He knows better.”

Hester nudged the plate of sausages
and eggs closer to Tabitha on the tray. “Eat. And I sincerely doubt
your father will reprimand Livingston for doing precisely what he
ordered the man to do.” The maid slipped from the chamber into
Tabitha’s dressing room, humming to herself as she went.

Oh, lud. This was maddening. Tabitha
forced herself to chew and swallow. She couldn’t very well face
this day without something in her stomach. Not with the way it was
shaping up.

When she finished with her meal,
Hester came back in. “Will it be the rose or the jonquil?” she
asked, holding aloft two afternoon dresses. She shook the jonquil
dress a bit. “I think the jonquil. It will look lovely with your
daisies and daffodils.”

Tabitha didn’t care at all which dress
to wear. “Fine. And who is the caller?”

“
No idea,” Hester said.
She untied Tabitha’s wrapper and pulled it off her shoulders.
“Livingston ushered him in and requested that I to get you
ready.”

And another knock sounded at the door.
“What now?” Tabitha asked in dismay.

“
Good morning to you,
too,” Jo said as she let herself inside. She squinted at the sun
through the window. “Or afternoon, whichever the case may be.
Livingston sent me to hurry you along. You now have two gentlemen
callers waiting.”

Good God. Had they reached the end
days and no one saw fit to inform her?

“
Well,” Jo said with a
wave toward Hester, “keep going. We cannot keep the gentlemen
waiting all day.” She sat down before the tray that Tabitha had
abandoned and helped herself to a sausage. “Not the pink,” she said
to Hester with a wrinkle of her nose.

Tabitha sighed as her maid lifted the
nightrail over her head and set to work dressing her for the day.
“Did Livingston happen to tell you who the gentlemen
were?”

“
No. But I imagine they
would be the same gentlemen who sent you flowers. He mentioned that
you’d received two bouquets.”

“
The cards are on the
escritoire,” Hester called out from beneath a heap of
fabric.

Jo reached across and snatched them
up. “Excellent. This first one, the one on bottom, came from Lord
Oglethorpe.” She pinched her lips together into a frown.

“
That would be the
daisies, my lady.”

Blast. She hadn’t wanted to encourage
him. Not at all. But the thought of allowing Lord Devonport to
dictate her dance partners had seemed far more brackish at the
time. Why had she been so impetuous? Now it was all coming back to
haunt her in more ways than she’d ever imagined. “And the
other?”

Jo looked up at her with a crafty
smile. “Lord Devonport.” She seemed to linger over his name,
drawing it out so that it would hang in the air between
them.

“
The daffodils.” Hester
had moved on from dressing Tabitha and was now tackling her hair,
trying to sort it into some sense of order. “Which, by the way, are
simply magnificent.”

“
And copious,” Jo cut in.
“I passed no fewer than six footmen carrying arrangements of them
into the drawing room.”

Lovely. Based on the interaction
between the two gentlemen the previous evening, Tabitha expected
the atmosphere downstairs to be as relaxed as a pent-up feral cat.
Precisely how she wanted to spend her day.

Another knock. “Come,” Jo called
out.

A maid stepped in and curtsied. “Miss
Faulkner, Livingston asked me to inform you that Lord Leith is also
in the drawing room, hoping to call upon you. He went to your
father’s home first, but was informed that you would be here,
ma’am.”

“
Thank you. Lady Tabitha
and I shall be down momentarily.”

Hester finished tugging at Tabitha’s
hair and stood back to get a good look. “I think that will do. Do
you agree, Miss Faulkner?”

At Jo’s nod, Hester excused herself
and went back into Tabitha’s dressing room.

“
Come along,” Jo said,
linking her arm through Tabitha’s. “We shouldn’t keep them waiting
any longer.”

Tabitha narrowed her eyes at her
cousin. “Wait just a moment. Why is Lord Leith calling on you?
You’ve been cordial with him forever, but he hasn’t entertained the
notion of courting you in a very long time. What is going on
there?”

“
I haven’t the faintest.
But he knows nothing can ever come of it.”

“
I never thought you’d be
one to lead any man on a merry chase,” Tabitha said. “It is not
your normal style.”

Jo looked out the window wistfully.
“Lord Leith is a grown man, Tabby. If he is determined to end up
with a broken heart again, I can’t stop him. Come on. Let’s get
this over with. I don’t fancy wounding a gentleman’s tender
sensibilities any more than you do.”

~ * ~

“
Is Lady Tabitha still
feeling unwell?” Oglethorpe asked Raynesford. “I’d hoped she would
be better today, after a night’s sleep.” The Lothario sat there and
seemed almost to preen himself, checking to be sure his dandified
attire was flawless at every moment.