He unfolded it.
Matrimonial Candidates,it read.Miss Iris Duggleby. Miss Lydia Hope-Wallace. Lady Georgiana Cleeve.
Peter wasn’t entirely certain how he had progressed from thinking they were maybe, possibly, potentially affianced to accepting a list of women she’d hand-selected for him to woo and win.
“Surely,” he said, “you did not need to write down a list of three names. I am confident I can recall all three without a textual aid.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said crisply.
He couldn’t stop himself from grinning at her. “I’ve been told from time to time that it’s my defining feature.”
She tucked the wayward curl behind her ear. “If you don’t need the list, then you may simply”—she waved a hand—“toss it away. Do you know any of these women?”
He glanced back down at the paper in his hand.
“Ha!” she said. “Youdoneed the list.”
Well, point to her for that one.
“I certainly remember your friend Miss Hope-Wallace,” he said.
He looked up in time to catch the expression of glee on her face, which she hastily smoothed away into something more restrained. “Do you?” she said. “That’s wonderful. Lydia is incomparable. I’d be so delighted for you to marry her.”
Perhaps it was all the imaginary nudity or the brief whisper of time in which he’d thought she was asking for his hand, but somehow Peter felt mildly insulted by the sheer enthusiasm of her desire to see him married to someone else.
“I shall, er, certainly consider it,” he said.
He hadn’t actually ever spoken to Lydia Hope-Wallace beyond a cursory good evening—in fact, he didn’t think he’d heard her speak at all, ever—but he wasn’t opposed to getting to know her. He figured she probably had a good reason for vomiting in a potted palm.
Though what, he wondered, would be abadreason for vomiting in a plant? A pointed dislike of indoor foliage?
“Lady Georgiana you are likely to have met this Season,” Selina said, returning to the list. “She’s just been brought out this year. The daughter of Alistair Cleeve, Earl of Alverthorpe—and for all the man is widely disliked, his daughter is popular indeed.”
The name didn’t call anyone in particular to mind, though there were plenty of fresh-faced debutantes to go around. “I have to say, the idea of a bride closer in age to Lucinda than to myself is somewhat unsettling.”
She gave him a forced-looking smile. “I suggest you hold off on making a judgment until you meet Lady Georgiana.”
Hmm. Perhaps Selina meant to imply that Lady Georgiana was an older-than-average eligible daughter.
“Nor do I know Miss Duggleby,” he said.
Selina winced. “You have probably seen her about. At balls. She’s not precisely the most popular girl of our set.” Her brows—dark, like her lashes, in startling contrast with her blond hair—drew together as she looked at him. “But Iris is exceptional, even if most men of thetonare too foolish to realize it.”
Peter felt chastened for some reason. “I look forward to meeting her as well.”
Selina picked up the gloves in her lap and put them decisively back on. “Marvelous.”
He supposed the donning of her garments meant their tête-à-tête was finished. He wasn’t sure if the meeting had gone about as well as he’d expected—Selina did, after all, have a fresh thought on how he might secure his siblings—or if it had veered quite off course.
Certainly he was feeling rather less optimistic than when she had been taking her clothesoff.
Mother of God, he needed to get hold of himself. Removing her gloves to pour tea could not, under any reasonable definition, be termed taking her clothes off.
“Would you like to walk with me in the Park on Sunday?” Selina asked as they both rose.
“To… plan out my marital campaign?” he inquired cautiously.
And there went that look of delight again. “Precisely. Yes.Campaignis just the word for it, don’t you think?”
