Belle sat on the small armchair by the window, facing her younger sister-in-law, and sighed. “I’m worried about you, Luce. You seem so determined to wed and yet can’t settle on a match. I don’t want you to feel obliged to accept someone. If no one is to your taste, perhaps we should return home and try again next Season.” She blurted out the words quickly as though they had been bottled up inside just waiting to get out. Her face suffused in surprise when Lucy burst into laughter.
“My dearest Belle, did that pain you?” Lucy asked with another giggle before she sobered. “Tell me truthfully, what is your concern? That I shan’t be happy with whomever I finally choose? Or that I don’t have a good enough selection from which to choose?”
“Well, both, I suppose,” Belle answered with a slight frown marring her forehead. She sighed again. “I really wish you would fall in love, or barring that, a really strong like. And it doesn’t really seem to me as though you like any of your suitors even a little bit.”
Lucy blinked at the other woman in surprise, and a frown formed on her own brow. “Do I really appear as though I don’t like any of them? How very strange, as I actually do find most of them quite tolerable.”
Despite her disquiet, Isabelle laughed over Lucy’s lukewarm words. “Tolerable isn’t the state I was hoping you would find your future mate, Lucy.”
Lucy lifted a shoulder in a dismissive shrug. “I am satisfied with it, and that is what counts. My problem is just picking. I have trouble choosing a gown when I’m shopping, and that’s only for a few occasions of wear. A husband is for life, hopefully a long, long time.” She reached for Isabelle’s hand. “Don’t be troubled, my dearest. I shall make my selection soon and be happy with it, I promise. I don’t want to go home. I do want to be wed sooner than later. You and Robert have always made me feel welcome in your home, but it’syourhome. I want one of my own. And that is about me, not you, so don’t get all weepy on me. I should think you should rather be happy that you’ve made me feel so welcome that I feel comfortable leaving.”
“That is the most backward logic I’ve ever heard, Lucretia Scranton,” Isabelle objected hotly as the threat of her tears quickly subsided, just as Lucy had intended.
Again Lucy shrugged. “Might be backwards, but it’s mine. If I wasn’t so comfortable with you, I’d be afraid to leave. I wouldn’t have a ready sense of security from which to launch myself.”
Isabelle’s face was still a picture of puzzlement but she nodded anyway. “Very well, then we’d best get you ready to receive.”
Despite her reassuring words to Isabelle, though, Lucy wasn’t feeling terribly optimistic about her callers that day. She wished, not for the first time, that she had some female friends she could discuss her options with. Since Isabelle was so happily in love with her husband, she wasn’t the best at keeping an open mind about a marriage that was not a love match. She couldn’t look at Lucy’s suitors in a dispassionate manner. That was what Lucy needed – someone to look at her lists of pros and cons and help her to decide.
Once again Lucy’s mind drifted toward Roderick Northcott. If ever a girl needed someone with a scholarly inclination, it was now, she thought with the inkling of an idea sprouting in her mind. She would ask him. Or maybe one of his friends if they were in Town. But better to ask Roderick. She didn’t know his friends very well, had only barely been introduced to some of them. It would be more than strange of her to ask their advice. She tried to imagine having such a conversation with the nervous and fidgety Sean Smythe she had met the night before and nearly burst into laughter.
But asking Roderick for his help would give her the perfect opening to offer her own to him. Surely he didn’t intend to court that dreadful Miss Bastion. Lucy didn’t like to tell tales, but she would if she had to. She couldn’t let a friend fall into the clutches of such a cold fish.
Lucy didn’t believe in love matches, but she also didn’t think a gentleman ought to align himself with someone with no heart beating in her chest. Lucy couldn’t let a friend enter that situation without a warning. She shuddered to think of Roderick’s family being shared with such a dreadful woman.
All right, perhaps she was exaggerating the matter slightly, but not by much. Lucy had attended classes on occasion at Miss Haversham’s Academy. Miss Bastion was one of the boarding students there. She was a year older than Lucy and an absolute beast. Lucy was willing to acknowledge that little girls could be beastly and there was a possibility she had outgrown whatever had been wrong with her at the time. But from what Lucy had seen of Miss Bastion so far that Season, there was nothing to indicate the woman had changed overmuch since childhood.
Lucy also wasn’t sure about any of the other women she had seen Roderick speaking with the night before. Except Lady Evangeline. There was really nothing Lucy could say against her, much to her chagrin. The woman was far too young to be a widow, and she was a little too quiet and mousy to be great friends with Lucy Scranton, but Lucy couldn’t actually find any fault with her. It was entirely possible she would make Roderick an excellent wife. And whatever Rod’s plans were for the future, it wouldn’t hurt him to marry a well-to-do woman. Lucy didn’t fully understand all the ins and outs of finances, of course, but she was sure it must be difficult for younger sons to make a go of things. As Roderick had complained just last night, he wasn’t cut out for the military or the clergy, which seemed to be the only two acceptable professions for younger sons who didn’t have kind sponsors or benefactors like Lucy’s own brother had benefited from.
With Rod being the fifth son, it was very likely no provisions had been made. Which might explain why he was always at the University. Perhaps his father had promised to keep him until he finished his studies. So Roderick was never going to finish. What a clever man, Lucy marvelled.
But it would seem the clever man didn’t wish to remain in that perpetual state. She could imagine it would be disheartening for a man to be beholden to another. A wife’s wealth becomes her husband’s. It was an almost honourable way of filling his personal coffers.
Lucy wondered what sort of qualms Roderick had about his choices.
If only some of his studies had resulted in a profit of some sort. But as he had pointed out, that wouldn’t have been likely to result in social triumph for him. Not to say that Roderick Northcott was the sort who was looking to be validated socially. Lucy rather suspected that he disdained Society. Not that she could blame him. The social rounds really were rather silly and useless unless you were of a political bent.
She certainly wasn’t. But it was the only life she really knew. And the one her father had approved of for her. Lucy wished she wasn’t feeling so weary of it before it had even begun. Perhaps Isabelle had reason to be concerned for her.
Chapter Eight
He shouldn’t have come. Roderick knew that quite clearly even as his hand lifted to the knocker. He was reasonably certain other ladies on his list were at home to callers that day. He ought to be knocking on their doors, not this one. And yet, here he was.
Roderick hadn’t been able to get Lucy’s watchful gaze out of his mind. All night he had fretted about what she had been thinking as she’d watched him spend time with other women at the rout the night before. Courting other ladies, really, even though he didn’t know how to flirt nor how to court a woman. How hard could it be, he had thought before coming up to Town.
That was why he was here. He told himself the lie with complete equanimity. As a scholar, he had never allowed lies. But they couldn’t be helped that day. There was no logical reason for him to be calling at Scranton House and many good reasons not to be doing so. And yet, here was the butler bowing him into the overcrowded receiving room.
Everyone in the entiretonhad come to call on Miss Scranton, it would seem.
He almost turned on a heel and walked away. But then, across the crowded room, his gaze collided with Lucy’s, and her small smile held him captive in that crowded room.
Roderick overstayed all social bounds, circulating through the room as though it were any other sort of social occasion rather than morning calls. He ought to have left after the first fifteen minutes of his arrival but now, an hour later, the room had thinned, and he could finally have a conversation with her.
“Hullo,” he said, bowing over her hand.
“You don’t really know how to do this, do you?”
Roderick nearly froze. “Do what?”
