This was something of a relief, though in truth he’d already started spinning out ideas for how he might lure them out a window in the middle of the night. Tiny kittens armed with tinier spears, perhaps. Éclairs in the shape of épées.
Tagore seemed to be shaking his head. “I am going to pretend that I did not hear that, Stanhope.”
“Nothing to hear,” Peter said, and he strolled back toward his teacup from where he’d been standing at the window. “Cookie?”
“Perhaps one for the road,” Tagore said, and shortly thereafter they took their leave of the Ravenscrofts. Peter caught himself whistling again and tried to tamp down the sudden emotion that had blossomed inside him at Rowland House: relief and cautious hope and bright amber eyes.
Chapter 4
… I had a letter from Selina just last week that mentioned Stanhope as well. I am almost afraid to inquire: Whose new project is he? Selina’s or yours?
—from Will Ravenscroft to his brother, Nicholas, posted from Brussels
The morning after the Duke of Stanhope’s fascinating interview at Rowland House, Selina sat again in the drawing room.
This time she was in her stocking feet, her legs curled up beneath her on the cream-colored divan, chewing on her lower lip and waiting for her best friend, Lydia Hope-Wallace, to arrive.
She’d dropped by the Hope-Wallace residence—just half a street away from Rowland House—the previous day, but Lydia had been out with her mother, doubtless being tormented at a modiste or a milliner. And why Mrs. Hope-Wallace could not leave Lydia well enough alone, Selina would never understand. They were richer than Croesus. Like Selina herself, Lydia certainly did nothaveto marry, and torturing her by thrusting her into thepublic eye at every single engagement to which they were invited had not, thus far, produced results that Lydia or her mother were happy with.
With her four older brothers and even with the Ravenscrofts, Lydia was a gem. She was far and away the cleverest woman Selina had ever met, with an encyclopedic knowledge of parliamentary politics and a head for gossip that rivaled any dowager.
But at balls and dinners—anywhere she was expected to make conversation among large groups of people—Lydia was too terror-stricken to speak.
The Marriage Mart had not been pleasant for Lydia. The 1815 Season was her fourth—she, like Selina, was three-and-twenty—and her mother, rather than resigning herself to Lydia’s lack of popularity, seemed bent on redoubling her efforts. Lydia had more gowns and hats than a member of the royal family. “As if a peacock feather on my head,” she’d said briskly to Selina in an undervoice at a recent dinner, “might distract a gentleman from my inability to unlock my jaw in his presence.”
Selina had left a card for Lydia at the Hope-Wallace residence, and Lydia had dashed off a note in response that said she would call this morning. So Selina was back in the drawing room, demolishing a scone and tapping a quill pen against a sheet of foolscap while she waited for her friend to arrive.
When their butler finally announced Lydia, Selina had crumbled the scone into pieces and made two dozen tiny black dots on the paper.
“All right,” said Lydia without preamble. “I’m here for all the chatter and idle talk you have for me. What’s the scandal of the day?”
Selina winced. “No scandal. In fact, I would like to discuss the opposite of scandal.”
Lydia raised her brows consideringly and settled her lush figure into the divan beside Selina. Today her orange-red hair was caught in a low knot beneath a pert straw bonnet that Selina quite liked. For all Mrs. Hope-Wallace was a meddlesome devil, she had excellent taste in hats.
“What in the world is the opposite of scandal?” Lydia asked. “Or must I guess?”
“Marriage,” said Selina. “Marriage is the opposite of scandal.”
Lydia took this in but then shook her head. “Marriage might be the solution to a scandal, I’ll grant you that. But I can think of a good half a dozen marriages that caused more scandal than they eliminated. And by the by, whose marriage are we talking about here?”
She gave Selina a long look through coppery lashes, and Selina felt herself start to blush.Again.Twice in two days. It was offensive.
“Not mine,” she said quickly. “Definitely not mine. Lyddie, believe me, if I ever consider accepting a proposal, you’ll be the first to know.”
“I was wondering if I was about to be,” Lydia said.
“No,” said Selina. “No, certainly not.”
Since 1812, when they’d both made their bows, Lydia and Selina had each turned down several offers. The majority had been in their first Season. Lydia had been disgusted. “Beaumont,” she’d said, rolling her eyes. “I have danced with the man a single time. I have spoken a grand total of four words to him. Good evening. And then later: Good evening.”
That first Season, every single male member of thetonwith substantial debt and a total lack of interest in the personality of his future wife had proposed to Lydia. She’d rejected them all.
If Lydia could just bring herself tospeakto men, Selina feltcertain she’d have made an excellent match in a heartbeat. But Lydia didn’t—or couldn’t—and after the first two years, the proposals had slowed to a trickle.
Selina had had offers too, from fortune-hunters and men who wanted a closer connection to the dukedom and even occasionally a nice gentleman who seemed legitimately interested in her company.
But 1812 had been something of an education. It had started with ribbons.
