“I’m not being snobbish,” he shot back, appreciating that was exactly how he’d sounded and how Evie had once thought of him, and he knew he was now decidedly on the defensive. “I’m not.”
“No? If not snobbery, then the only possible explanation is that your judgment is so badly skewed from your own tragic experience that you can’t see beyond it!”
“That has nothing to do with this,” he said, and it crossed his mind that if a man’s place in hell was determined by the number of lies he told in a day, he had surely been condemned to Dante’s seventh circle by now. “Answer my question. Do you really think Evie would be happy as the wife of a peer? You said yourself,” he went on before she could answer, “the girl wouldn’t be able to hold her own with Escoffier over the plans for a dinner party.”
“If young men of the aristocracy eliminated from consideration all the young ladies who could not communicate effectively with Escoffier, a third of those young men would never marry, and they’d be hypocrites, to boot. Quite a few people we know speak abysmal French, including you!”
That lame argument justifiably shredded, Max tried another one, the one that mattered, the one he ought to have offered in the first place: “Either way, you’re missing the vital point.”
“Which is?”
“Evie wouldn’t welcome your notions to elevate her. She’s completely unimpressed with the aristocracy. She wants no part of it.”
“How do you know that?”
“She told me so herself. She said straight out she has no interest in marrying a peer.”
“Only because she’s never met any! Well, except for you, and given your recent behavior, you’re hardly a shining example.”
That, he reflected with a grimace, was undeniably true, and in waysDelia could hardly imagine.
“Just who,” she went on, since he said nothing, “did you intend me to introduce to her, then, if not members of the peerage?”
“Men of her own sphere, of course. Bankers, solicitors, sons of miliary officers—men like Ronald Anstruther, for instance.”
“Ronald Anstruther?”
That scornful retort had Max wishing he could jaunt off to Rome and leave Delia with this mess, since she was the one who had gotten him into it by sending him to Harlow’s Bookshop in the first place. “Ronald Anstruther is a gentleman, and a thoroughly nice chap. The perfect sort of fellow for the step-niece of a baron.”
“Except that he’s dense as packed sand! He’d drive a brainy girl like Evie mad in less than a week.”
“She seemed to like him well enough at the opera the other night.”
“They met at the opera?”
“I introduced them at intermission. They got on quite well at supper afterward, from what I gather. His mother was very pleased about it. She sent me a note afterward, singing the girl’s praises.”
“I daresay, since a colonel’s wife would find Evie’s friendship with a duke’s family a very agreeable connection.”
“Not because Evie’s a delightful girl in her own right?” he countered in an effort to get a bit of his own back.
“Sheisa delightful girl, one who could do better than the likes of Ronald Anstruther, if she ever received some useful help.”
That stung. “And you think it’s helpful to attempt to elevate her to a place she isn’t prepared for and doesn’t want?”
Delia retrieved her hat and put it on. “Not all men share your bitter and cynical view about marrying out of one’s class. First thing tomorrow,” she went on before he could remind her again of Evie’s preferences, “I shall write to your sisterIdina.”
“Idina?” he echoed, diverted by the alarming introduction of his most meddlesome sister. “Whatever for? Delia?” he added, following her as shestarted for the door. “What are you scheming?”
“Idina always plans the Whitsuntide house party, doesn’t she?”
“Not this year, since she won’t be there. She’ll be in Paris with her husband. Some diplomatic conference he’s attending. Nan’s helping me with the house party this year. And I’ve already invited Evie to come, if that’s what you’re thinking. There are several young bucks in the county I thought might suit her.”
“Indeed?” She pulled open the door and paused, glancing at him over her shoulder. “Well, I shall be asking Nan to add a few very handsome, charming, eligiblepeersto the guest list as well.”
The door slammed in his face before he had any chance to reply, leaving him with no choice but to consider how his cousin’s plan would play out.
It wasn’t hard to imagine. He could see it all—Evie close and untouchable, Delia and his sisters shoving peer after peer at her, himself playing the genial host to it all—and he realized a man didn’t have to be dead to enter Dante’s Inferno. He was headed there in less than a fortnight.
