“I do wish I had been there to witness it,” Elizabeth said.
“But,” Mildred said, “Mrs. Tavernor refused Harry’s marriage offer just a couple of days ago.”
“But of course she did,” Viola said. “We would all like her considerably less if she had accepted it.”
“You like her too, then, Viola?” Wren asked with a smile.
“Do not we all?” Viola asked.
“I have not met her,” Elizabeth said. “Neither has Mama. Perhaps we will call on her tomorrow.”
“I will come with you if I may,” Mary said. “I have not met her either.”
“She has beenindiscreet,” the dowager countess reminded them. “We ought not to forget that. But she does have backbone. And I never did say I did not like her, Louise, to get back to your original question.”
“We are forgetting something, however,” Louise said. “Three young ladies have come here to Hinsford in the hope that Harry will marry one of them. And we are responsible for bringing them and raising their hopes.”
There was a pained silence for a moment.
“Fanny is both a pretty and a sensible girl,” Mildred said, speaking of the sister of her son’s betrothed. “I thought she might suit Harry admirably. But I did not give that as a specific reason when I invited her and her mother to join us here. I spoke more of celebrating the new betrothal.”
“Besides, Aunt Mildred,” Estelle Lamarr said, “her sister confided to me earlier today that she suspects Fanny of having not only an attachment to a neighbor of theirs but also a secret agreement with him.”
“Gordon warned me,” Edith Monteith said, “that Miranda is not interested in marriage even though she is twenty-two years of age. It is not what her mother told me or what I expected. But I have seen for myself now that she is not as other girls are. If she were a man, it would not surprise me at all if she were to disappear into the bowels of a university somewhere—no doubt in Scotland—and gather dust there as a professor or a don. But she is not, alas, a man.”
“Poor lady,” Wren said. “It is not easy to be an independent woman in a man’s world.”
“And then there is Sally,” Matilda said with a rueful shake of the head. “She is a sweet child, and Charles and Adrian and his sisters all dote on her. Since she is now eighteen and making her come-out this year, it seemed to me that she would be a desirable match for Harry. However, she shows far more interest in Ivan and Gordon, who are closer to her in age. And really, I have found myself ever since we left London thinking of her as achildrather than as a young woman. She will not do, will she?”
“Fortunately, Matilda,” Althea said, “she seems to have not one ounce of interest in Harry. There are, of course, the local girls for us to consider. Miss Hill and her younger sister, for example. Miss Ardreigh, their cousin, who is visiting them. The magistrate’s daughter—Miss Raymore, I believe?”
Everyone gazed at her. No one took her up on her suggestion.
“As I thought,” she said, nodding, and a few of them laughed.
“But she will not have Harry,” Mildred said.
No one asked to whom she was referring.
“What doesthathave to say to anything?” her mother asked.
No one offered an answer.
“Mrs. Tavernor it is, then?” Louise said at last.
“What we need,” Matilda said briskly, “is aplan.”
Twenty-one
They did not have tea. Or go to bed. They were sitting on the sofa in the living room, Harry slouched comfortably but rather inelegantly in its depths, Lydia across his lap, her head on his shoulder, one arm about his waist. Snowball was curled in her usual spot before the fireplace.
Harry kissed Lydia again, their lips lingering together. They smiled lazily into each other’s eyes when he drew back his head.
I adore you. And I trust you.She had said both things out by the fence. Infinitely precious gifts, both of them. But it was the trust he most cherished. After all she had endured, after all her determination to live independently and trust only herself for the rest of her life, she had chosen to trusthim.
He ought to find it terrifying. He did not, for he trusted himself. He would never let her down.
“So,” he said, “sooner than soon. We could announce our betrothal on Friday, Lydia, at this infernal birthday ball. That would make it seem altogether less infernal.”
