None of her other siblings had married advantageously. They’d married well, to be sure, just not well enough to do anything other than advance their own means.
“You are in agreement with my offering you up for consideration then?” her father asked several beats later than normal conversation would flow. The surprise in his voice wasexpected, as was her mother’s shaky inhale, but Josephine forced a bright smile in response.
“Why wouldn’t I be?” she responded airily, drawing on every happy memory she could to look anywhere near as excited as she knew she should be. “It is a rare opportunity. I hear Wallburshare is exquisite as well. And their gardens are legendary.”
As was their owner. But his legend was one that she didn’t wish to bring up at that moment.
“Oh, this is wonderful!” Lady St Vincent exclaimed, her face lighting up as she clapped happily.
“Indeed,” her father chuckled. “I was expecting far more of a conversation before you agreed, you know. But … married. I don’t know what we’ll do with such an empty house.”
Josephine bit down hard on the edge of her tongue, the tangy taste of copper filling her mouth as she pushed her trepidation even further down. “You’re getting ahead of yourselves,” she chided teasingly, trying to keep the atmosphere light. “You’ll only be offering me for consideration. I’ve no doubt there will be a line of other ladies as well; there’s no guarantee that he will choose me.”
God willing, he wouldn’t. She had to choke on those words, though.
God willing, he would choose anyone else, any other of the eligible ladies from the area, and this would all just be something to laugh about later with Caroline and all of her romantic musings.
Chapter 3
“Oh, not this one, dear Henry,” Lisbet muttered, plucking one of the letters out of the piles Henry had received in return for his correspondence.
She frowned as her eyes ran down the length of the page, her lips twisting in an expression of rarely seen disgust. “I cannot believe that a man of the ton would lie so easily as this,” she sniffed, shaking the letter. “Surely Lord Brekkenbough ought to have learnt his lesson after that last scandal of his brother’s!”
Henry looked up from the letter he had been reading, putting his cup of coffee down and raising his brows in an understated form of interest. Brekkenbough … the name rang a bell, though he’d be hard-pressed to say which face it would be attached to. “Is his daughter not eligible?” he enquired after a brief pause.
Simon snorted. “She’s eligible,” he answered with a laugh. “In fact–”
“Only in the very most literal sense,” Lisbet argued, cutting her husband off with a glare. “She’s of age and unattached, but her reputation, Henry, along with her recentlybroken-off betrothal with Lord Summerbee’s boy, is enough to disqualify her entirely.”
Simon grinned unapologetically, his lips twitching even further at Henry’s long-suffering sigh.
There were so very few eligible ladies in the area, regardless. He knew he ought to whittle them down to someone at least suitable. It was just at the rate Lisbet was disqualifying even those who had written back with interest that he was starting to fear she had every intention of discrediting every one of them in an attempt to force his eye back on London and her acquaintances there.
“So put Miss Brekkenbough out of the running then,” Henry decided with a shrug, returning to the letter he had been looking at before the interruption with a deep sense of resignation.
Maybe, if that really was Lisbet’s intention, it would free him from having to go through any of it at all.
“Who’s response are you reading now, old friend?” Simon asked as he poured himself another cup of coffee from the tray in front of him. “I hear that the Smith girl is recently widowed. I’m not sure how recently …”
“Miss Irene Haversham,” Henry answered, ignoring the latter half of Simon’s statement in favour of brevity. “Her fatherwrites that her mother is eager to find her a match.” And a great many other more wordy things besides.
Again, Lisbet made a disparaging noise.
And again, Henry raised his eyebrows and waited.
“I’m sure that she is,” Lisbet finally huffed. “That girl has had more potential scandals than the crowned prince has shoes.” She tsked at her husband when he started to chuckle, her eyes flashing. “Not to mention her dreadful patience with children. You know she screeched at Lucy once for touching the hem of her gown? Far be it from me to say who is and isn’t disqualified from your lists, Henry, but you ought to at least know the whole of it.”
Henry’s lips twitched, his eyes connecting with a very faux-sombre-looking Simon’s as he fought the urge to tell Lisbet that was exactly what she had been doing this whole time.
He cleared his throat, fighting to keep his tone even. “Given my goal in securing a wife, I think it is safe to say that she should be moved into the pile that is out of the running as well, Lisbet. Thank you for bringing that to my attention.”
Lisbet nodded happily, quickly discarding that letter with a sniff as he handed it to her.
Henry could almost swear he heard her mutter good riddance as well but neither he nor Simon were brave enough to comment on that.
“Have we exhausted all of our efforts yet here?” Simon asked after a few moments of strained silence. He seemed to be the only one whose mood couldn’t be dampened by the proceedings. “I’m telling you, I know of quite a few ladies we mightn’t have considered eligible before, but who would be so now.”
“Oh, the Smith girl is only two months widowed,” Lisbet sighed, shooing her husband. “That’s far too soon to entertain such a thing.”
