“Jenny.” Philippa leaned closer to her friend and touched a hand to her arm. “The Marquess of Roathlovesyou. There can be no doubt whatsoever about that. He will not destroy anything he believes might bring you happiness. He might have doubts. He might give advice. But he will not dismiss Mr.Jamieson singlehandedly or ride roughshod over your feelings. He will allow you to make the final decision, and he will support you in whatever that is. You must surely believe that. I believe it, yet I know him far less than you do.”
“Pippa, Idowish you were my sister,” Jenny said. But she looked instantly contrite. “Oh. I did not mean that the way it sounded. I donotwant to put any pressure on you. I promised Luc I would not, though the promise was not necessary.”
“We are friends,” Philippa said, smiling. “That is as good as sisters. I do believe we are about to have company.”
A group of three ladies and two men, all of them young, all of them acquaintances of both her and Jenny, were coming to join them, bringing chatter and laughter with them.
“Maywe join you?” one of the young ladies asked rhetorically as she sat upon the vacant chair. “This looks like a lovely shady spot. Who would have known it would be so warm today when it is still supposed to be springtime?”
One of the others sat upon the arm of her chair and one came to sit upon the arm of Philippa’s. The two men sat cross-legged on the grass, and soon Jenny and Philippa were chatting and laughing along with them.
—
Both Philippa and her mother were feeling weary as they rode home in the carriage. They were agreed that the garden party had been a delightful event, but both were thankful they had no engagement for the evening. They looked at each other in some dismay, then, when the carriage turned onto Grosvenor Square and they could see a post chaise drawn up outside Stratton House.
“Visitors,” Philippa said, pulling a face and then smiling ruefully. “How very ungracious of me.”
But her mother was looking more intently through the window on her side, and Philippa soon saw why. One of their footmen was climbing the steps to the open door of the house, a bulging valise in each hand. Suddenly her tiredness was forgotten.
“Ben,”her mother said.
“And Joy!”
Oh, how she had missed them, Philippa thought as theircarriage drew to a halt behind the chaise and their coachman came to open the door and set down the steps. And how she would miss them when they moved permanently to Penallen. Thank heaven it was no more than a few hours’ journey from Ravenswood.
She hurried up the steps and into the hall. Devlin and Gwyneth were there, as well as Stephanie. They were back from Kew Gardens, then. Beside Devlin stood a tall, broad-shouldered, muscular, blond-haired man in the somewhat faded uniform of a cavalry officer.
“Nicholas,” the dowager countess murmured before dropping her gloves and reticule to the floor despite the proximity of the butler and hurrying toward her second son with both hands extended.
“Mama.” Major Nicholas Ware was grinning at her and opening his arms to receive her. He ignored her own arms and swept her up and about in a complete circle before setting her back on her feet. “Looking more and more every day as though you must be my sister.”
He was still grinning when he turned to Philippa, and she hurried toward him to be subjected to the same treatment.
“Pippa,” he said. “Almost the first thing Steph said to me when I walked through the door a few minutes ago was that you are taking thetonby storm and that you have already had two proposals of marriage, one from a marquess and one from a baronet. Damn their presumption. They had better be worthy of you. I can only say I am not surprised, though. Justlookat you.”
“Nick,” she said while he made a production of looking her over. “Nick, you are home.”
“For five minutes,” he said, lifting his head to address them all. “Which is not too much of an exaggeration. I have to get back as soon as I can.Yesterday, if possible, and even that might be too slowto satisfy the Duke of Wellington. The cavalry is desperately short of mounts. Horses have been gathered here in large numbers. But the powers that be in their dark, plush offices at the Horse Guards cannot seem to work out how to get them within the next year or five to where they are desperately needed. I have been sent to use my charm on them, and if that does not work, to throw my weight around.” He grinned.
It was sogoodto see him, just when they were most worried about him. Not that that would change. He had come to hurry along the process of transporting more horses across the channel so that the cavalry would be able to ride into battle in larger numbers. Therewould bea battle, and probably fairly soon if the Duke of Wellington wanted those horsesyesterday.But at least Nicholas was here now—and looking impossibly handsome in his uniform. He had been home on leave twice since beginning his military career seven years ago. Both times he had come to Ravenswood but had left his uniform behind. He had been there last Christmas in time to attend Devlin’s wedding, though it had not been planned that way.
“Gwyn wrote to me when she was at Penallen with Dev a few weeks ago,” Nicholas was saying. “She mentioned that Ben was coming to London soon. He is not here yet, though, is he? He had better come during the five minutes I will be here. I want to see that niece of mine. I wrote to Owen when I knew I was coming. I suggested that maybe he could slip away from Oxford for a few days without anyone noticing and getting the idea of sending him down permanently for truancy.”
“We thought youwereBen when we saw the post chaise outside the door,” Philippa said. “We did not dream of seeing you, Nick.”
He walked with a slight limp, she knew, the result of a wound that had almost taken his life in the Peninsula a few years ago. Yet looking at him now, she saw a man of great vitality and power andconfidence. A man whose weathered face radiated good humor and great charm. His fair hair was longer, more tousled than it had been at Christmas. He looked, she thought, very like their father. Yet there was something about the hard line of his jaw that suggested a greater firmness of purpose than Papa had possessed.
“Why are we standing here?” Gwyneth asked, laughing. “We have all had a busy afternoon. Come upstairs, Nick, and Dev will pour you a drink while I have a tea tray brought in, late in the afternoon though it is.”
“Yes,” Nicholas said, grinning at her. “I can see that you in particular ought not to be standing about too much, Gwyn. And Dev hinted at the reason when he wrote to me the day after you arrived in town. I received it just before I left to come here.”
Stephanie slid a hand through his arm, beaming up at him, and Philippa took his other as they all made their way upstairs to the drawing room.
Chapter Seventeen
Lady Abingdon made the mistake of calling upon Her Grace, the Duchess of Wilby, two days after the garden party in Richmond. She came, Lucas heard later when his grandmother was giving an account of the visit upon His Grace’s return from a day at the House of Lords, in order to smile and simper and congratulate the duchess upon the closer ties between their families they could surely expect in the near future. She had hinted that Lord Abingdon was in daily expectation of a certainvisitfrom Her Grace’s grandson—she had apparently looked archly at Grandmama as she said this. Indeed, it seemed to Lady Abingdon that his visit was overdue, that soon thetonwas going to begin to murmur about the dear boy raising expectations he did not mean to fulfill.
“Her very words, Percy,”the duchess said while his bushy eyebrows snapped together above his nose. “But she and I, mothers both—a grandmother too, in my case—know how young men sometimes drag their feet, perhaps because they are simply bashful, perhaps because they fear disappointment.”
