“Only if you will do the same,” she said. “In plain words, my lord, I am a simple country Miss with a practical mindset. I read very much but not so much as of late.”
“And why is that?”
“I suppose I have been caught up in… other things,” Alice said, knowing her tone was vague. She couldn’t dare tell him that she felt too old, too self-sufficient, and too unsophisticated to attracta husband because while she felt so, she knew it was the only way to save her sister.
“When our parents passed—that is to say, myself and my younger sister, Penelope, the young lady with blond hair—my aunt graciously took us in, and she was more than happy to use her position to give her rustic nieces a way to find decent prospects for marriage, and with that, a better life.”
“Sometimes I realize that I am out of touch with the hardships ladies face in our society,” Benedict admitted. “I am still at Oxford, you see, where we men are cloistered in study halls and in the classrooms.”
“In the daytime, I assume, but what happens away from the halls?” she asked, cringing at her failing attempt to sound coy.
His warm laugh made her feel that she was on the right track with him. “Touché, Miss Alice. At night, we are another sort of cloister. The mischievous ones.”
There was no questionmischievouswas a euphemism for something else entirely; something risqué. “I cannot recall a time I have been mischievous,” she murmured.
“You should try it sometime,” Benedict’s grin was nothing less than charming and tempting. “It’s fun.”
Giggling, she asked, “What do you consider fun?”
“Croquet,” Benedict replied dryly.
Again, she knew he did not mean that. “I enjoy our repartee.”
As they rounded a corner, she found themselves surrounded by a gaggle of giggling debutantes. Holding back a grimace, she allowed Benedict to lead them over and they entered the fray.
Razor-sharp smiles greeted Alice as she curtsied to the titled ladies. She could feel their derision; how was it that a second-class girl like her was on the arm of a titled lord, second perhaps to a Dukedom.
“Miss Alice, is it?” Miranda Valentine, the daughter of an Earl—a tall, slender woman long considered firmly on the shelf—stood encircled by her usual companions. “I am surprised to see you here; aren’t Saturdays for restocking days at merchandisers? Not that I should know of course.”
“My uncle is a lawyer,” Alice said evenly. “Mylatefather was with the East Indian Traders.”
“Oh,” Miranda fluttered her fan. “Merchandiser, lawyer, much of the same.”
Flustered, Alice had the suffocating feeling that she should tell them that she only wanted to borrow the Marquess for a few minutes and would send him right back.
“Are you attending this Season?” Petunia, a pug-faced debutante who wore more rouge than the fashionable rule allowed, asked.
“My cousin, my sister, and I will be attending, yes,” she replied.
Lady Tabitha, the third of the threesome blinked her wide vapid blue eyes. “But who will mind the shop with you gone?”
She ground her teeth but forced a smile. “There is no shop, my lady.”
“Lord Brampton,” Miranda simpered, gaze falling back on the Marquess smoothly. “I heard your trip to the Far East changed your life. Could you give listening ears a tidbit of the journey?”
Alice was willing to stay in the company of the ladies as long as the Marquess wanted; she would take the snipes and un-subtle jabs because this was temporary; her and Penelope’s future was on the line.
“I would,” Benedict muttered. His stiff tone made Alice’s chest tighten. “But not now, my ladies. If you will excuse us.”
Without any preamble or by your leave, Benedict steered her away and they walked into silence until they came to the edge of a manmade pond. Alice sighed and gazed at the ducks gliding on the surface with not a care in the world.
“They do not like me that much,” she said quietly.
“I can see that…” he replied in thought. “Aside from the clear biases they have against you, I am not sure I understand why.”
“That is all that’s needed, I’m afraid,” she sighed. “It is a stigma I’ve borne half of my life, from the schoolroom to the ballroom. I’ve heard all the slights they could levy against me. Most of the time I have turned a blind eye and ear to theshe smells like shopwitticism, or the one I hear most;she’s no less common this Season than she was the last.”
He shook his head slowly, left to right. “I am… sorry to hear that.”
