Please look out for Freddie until Papa returns from America, she had pleaded earlier today at Lady Hargrave’s afternoon-at-home.My brother is so filled with high spirits, and Papa’s had him on such a tight leash since he was sent down from Oxford. He’s longing for the entertainments of the season, and Mama and I are finding it impossible to manage him. With Papa away and no steadying masculine influence, I fear he will fall into bad ways.
Max had been tempted to point out that it was impossible for the lad to fall into bad ways since he’d never fallen out of them. But faced with Helen’s tear-filled green eyes, he hadn’t had the heart to voice such an unfavorable opinion of her dearly loved twin brother and had remained tactfully silent. Moments later, however, when she had murmured something about how handsome Olaf looked that afternoon in his princely regalia, Max had imagined his own courtship slipping decidedly into second place and had agreed to her request without further demur. A decision, he appreciated now, that showed his jaded words about courtship earlier in the day to be nothing but empty rhetoric.
Worse, his promise to Helen meant that he was now stuck, possibly for the entire season, playing nursery governess to a spoiled brat.
Max lifted his gaze from his drink to the face of Helen’s brother, one that, despite its strong resemblance to that of his lovely twin, wasn’t nearly as good looking, for it was already pudgy with alcoholic excess and marked by lines of dissipation. Studying the younger man across the table, Max feared it was far too late for any of his “steadying influence,” if indeed he possessed such a thing.
Making matters even more nauseating, Helen hadn’t told him he’d be required to watch over not only her insufferable sibling, but his best friends, too. Herding cats into pens, Max reflected as he returned his gaze to the chilled amber depths of his drink, would have been easier.
The Banforth brothers, born only ten months apart, weren’t really bad lads—or they wouldn’t be, he amended, in other circumstances. But in Freddie Maybridge’s company, the pair became hellions, as the dons at Oxford had already discovered, and a single afternoon of keeping this trio out of trouble had already worn Max to a nub. An entire season of it would surely do him in.
“We need some more of these, Frank,” Freddie called out, his voice, slurred and far too loud, impelling Max to take another hefty swallow of his drink, and giving him cause to reconsider the goal of making Helen his duchess.
But only a moment of pondering the subject banished his doubts.
Helen, like her mythological namesake, was a breathtaking beauty—graceful, accomplished, and refined, with a melodic voice, lustrous auburn hair, and a face fully capable of launching a thousand ships. Her beauty was of such renown, in fact, that it had brought Prince Olaf to London from his remote Balkan realm, and had, if rumors were true, made her the recipient of six marriage proposals since her debut the previous year. The daughter of England’s wealthiest marquess, Helen was the perfect choice of bride for a duke. She, unlike the previous Duchess of Westbourne, understood the responsibilities that came with high positions and knew they could not be discarded like last season’s hat.
Thinking of Rebecca no longer brought him pain. Eight years had passed since her defection and death. Nowhe could look back on the entire debacle with little more than a sense of bewilderment at how he could have made such an awful mistake, and a determination not to make it again. He would never feel about Helen the way he had felt about Rebecca, and what a blessing that was.
Helen would never abandon her duty and run away. She would never shame his family, appall his friends, or cause a scandal. And she would never, ever break his heart.
“Frank, are you deaf?” Freddie shouted, breaking into Max’s musings about the past and reminding him that Helen’s brother had none of her intelligence, charm, or regard for duty. Freddie Maybridge was a scandal in the making. As if to prove it, the young man’s voice rang out again, even louder than before. “We need another round!”
Max took a breath, downed the last swallow of his drink, and told himself for the tenth time today that he would be marrying Helen, not her family.
“Careful, Freddie,” he said, working to inject a good-natured heartiness into his voice as he set his glass back down. “Best to moderate your voice a bit, or Frank will toss us out.”
“A duke and a marquess’s son?” Freddie laughed. “He wouldn’t dare.”
That, Max thought sadly, was probably true.
“Deuce take it, Westbourne, I never thought you could be such a stickler for the proprieties,” the younger man went on, proving Max’s attempt to sound like a well-meaning friend, instead of a scold, had fallen flat.
“Indeed,” Thomas Banforth added. “He sounds almost as prim and disapproving as Little Miss Bookshop. Did you see how she glared at me for knocking over her books? I felt as if I were back in the nursery with my nanny.”
Max thought back to his own nanny, and he couldn’t say that he saw any resemblance there to Miss Harlow. His nanny had been built like a rugby player, as ugly as a mud fence with the savage temperament of a badger. The willow-slim Miss Harlow, prim though she might be, was a cream puff by comparison.
An image of her face came into his mind, a thin, gamine face of hazel eyes and straight dark brows, with a determined jaw, a pointed chin, and a turned-up nose spattered with freckles. It wasn’t a pretty face, he supposed, at least not by the conventions of the day. But it was an arresting face, with a quirky, unexpectedly charming smile. What a pity that smile only chose to show itself for a cad who’d been too busy gobbling up her sandwiches to notice it.
No, as far as looks went, the only defects Max could recall were the overly pale hue of her skin that told of too little time outside in the fresh air and the dark circles under those fine hazel eyes. She was, he appreciated, just as Delia had described her—a girl who worked too hard and worried too much.
A shame, for Miss Harlow was clearly an intelligent young woman, with a quick wit and a saucy tongue, far too good for the young swain who’d held her captivated this afternoon.
Why, he wondered, not for the first time, was love so damnably blind? Couldn’t she see that the young man she’d set her sights on was a worthless waste of space and air? And a blatant hypocrite to boot, droning on and on about a political party for workers. Worker? Him? Not bloody likely. Given his obvious aversion to employment and the blatant way he took advantage of Miss Harlow’s hospitality, Max suspected that work of any kind held little appeal for him. And all his talk of women’s rights? What a humthatwas.
Women are the most important workers of all.
No surprise he’d view women in that light—after all, how could he sponge off women, eating their food and taking advantage of them, if they didn’t work?
“Who’s she to be putting on airs, I ask you?” Freddie said, forcing Max to put aside his speculations about Miss Harlow’s taste in men. “Lording it over us, ordering us about that shop like some sort of army general. Who’s she think she is?”
“The owner?” Max countered, tact impelling him to phrase his point as a mere suggestion rather than an inconvenient statement of fact.
Freddie gave a snort, clearly not impressed. “Being the proprietress of a second-rate bookshop is hardly notable enough to justify rudeness toward those of a superior class. Maybe if she were pretty, she might get by with it. But the girl’s plain as a currant bun. What chap would accede to her demands?”
Max opened his mouth to reply, but he was given no chance.
“Did you observe her appearance?” Timothy Banforth gave a laugh. “Tea stains on her shirtfront, and ink stains on her cuff. Wisps of hair falling out of that bun on top of her head. And that necktie. Ugh. Perhaps she’s one of those suffragists. She looks like one.”
