“It’s your chin at best, and if you don’t stop squirming, you’ll strangle yourself upon your own cravat.” Brooks gave the snowy fabric a yank, striving to tug out the wrinkles Chris’ restless struggling had pleated into it. “If you had a valet, he’d tell you the same.”
“Don’t need a damned valet.”
“Every gentleman needs a valet, damned or otherwise. There, at last.” Brooks fluffed the trailing fabric of the cravat and stepped away, gesturing toward the cheval glass in the corner.
Chris turned. Stared. Scowled.Glowered. “I look like a fucking dandy.”
“You’re meant to look like a dandy, you miserable halfwit. And mind your speech, or you’ll not make it through the door.”
“’Course I will. It’s my damned sister’s house.”
“And stop calling everythingdamned. It can’tallbe damned.”
If it required him to dress in frills and lace to rival a ball gown and pretend as though it wasn’t wretchedly uncomfortable to do so? Then yes, it was all damned. “You’re a terrible excuse for a butler,” he said. “I’ve got ‘alf a mind to sack you.”
“You’d certainly have no more than half a mind if you did,” Brooks retorted. “I’m the only one who knows his job in this household. It’s just me standing between you and utter chaos.”
“Is that so?” Chris asked. “Then you can damned well gobuttlesomething.”
Brooks blinked. “You haven’t the faintest idea of what a butler is meant to do, have you?”
Answer doors and such, probably. Though Chris hadn’t nearly enough callers to justify the hiring of a man to do it. He did have the suspicion that there were a fair few other things that fell under the man’s responsibilities, but he’d never given half a damn as to what they were—so long as Brooks came at his call. “I pay you to know these things,” he said, plucking at the uncomfortably tight sleeves of his coat.
“Stop fussing,” Brooks growled. “The carriage is ready. Just—just get yourself into it and damned wellgo.” He reached out to snag the cane from where Chris had cast it haphazardly upon a dresser. Less fine than the one Emma had once purchased for him, and with fewer accoutrements and ornamentations, but it would serve its purpose well enough.
He shouldn’t have bought such a massive bloody house, he reflected, as he began the long journey through the halls and toward the door. Getting anywhere within it was a damned production, one that made his knee ache abominably.
But at least the carriage was, indeed, waiting for him when he slid out into the night, the door left ajar so that he could climb into it. And he did, settling back against the plush seats with a sigh of relief as the pressure on his knee eased. He cast his cane onto the seat across from him, propped his boots upon the same, and now that Brooks was no longer present to chide him for it, he wrenched two fingers into the tight wrap of his cravat to loosen the strangling fabric.
Probably he’d look somewhat less than refined when hearrived, but it didn’t matter.
He was coming home engaged regardless.
∞∞∞
“I thought Helen for Susannah,” Mama said, between sips of champagne.
“Who?” Phoebe asked absently, only half-listening. Every guest had arrived already—every guest, save one. She had been watching from her place against the wall all evening, carefully positioned with a perfect view of the doorway so that she would know immediately when Chris arrived.
Had he shown up an hour ago, he might’ve been pronounced fashionablylate. Now he was simplylateand Phoebe had been left to wonder…had he reconsidered? Or had he only been poking fun at her to begin with?
But he had accepted Emma’s invitation, and that—that had to meansomething, didn’t it?
“The retiring room girl,” Mama said. “She’s a wonder with hair, and such nimble fingers. Susannah is in need of a new lady’s maid. I thought Helen for the position.”
“Oh,” Phoebe said. “Oh, yes. Of course.”
Mama heaved a sigh. “It is a pity,” she said. “Not a bachelor to be seen! And the gentlemen who are present seem to be less interested in dancing than they are in making free with dear Emma’s champagne. Why, your dance card—” Mama paused mid-complaint, her cheeks hollowing. “Dearest, whatever have you done to your dance card?”
Twisted it all up into a crinkled little scrap, apparently. Nerves could do that to a person, she supposed. “Oh, dear,” shesighed. “Well, I suppose it’s no great loss. It’s not as though anyone has asked me to dance, anyway.”
“But someone might,” Mama said. “And you’d be at a loss.”
“Mama, every gentleman in attendance is married.”
“Yes,” Mama allowed begrudgingly. “But they might very well have single friends to whom they might recommend you.”
Phoebe might have found herself offended, if she did not know that all of Mama’s machinations came from such a place of love. Any other mother in her position might have been desperate to rid herself of her last spinster daughter, but not Mama—Mama only wished to have all her children safely, and happily, married. She would be convinced to the last that it was none of Phoebe’s own doing that she had nottaken, but that London society, particularly the male half of it, was simply blind to her charms.
