“Do I?” Lavinia was startled. It was the last thing she had expected her sister to say—and it was remarkably similar to what the duke had told her about herself. Apparently they had both noticed a strength in her character, something Lavinia herself would never have been aware of if it hadn’t been pointed out to her.
The fact that both the duke and Edwina had seen it, more than anything else, made her believe what they were telling her. If they had each come independently to the same conclusion, what else could she think but that it must be true?
She looked at the clock. “Oh, dear,” she sighed. “I’m late again. He isn’t going to like that.”
“I’m sorry. It’s my fault for keeping you here talking when I knew you needed to go.”
“No, don’t be sorry. I’m glad we talked,” Lavinia said. “I hope the duke can manage to be understanding about it, but if he can’t, we’ll just have to find a way to move past it. He’s much too strict, much too harsh. He needs to know that while I appreciate his help, I don’t consider him to have any real authority over me. And if he can’t accept that, I don’t suppose this arrangement is going to work out.”
“It’s very brave of you to confront him with that,” Edwina told her. “Still, you’d better go. Be careful tonight. I don’t want you to get caught.”
“I won’t get caught,” Edwina promised.
She left her sister’s bedroom and hurried along the hall, moving a little more quickly than she had on previous nights. She wasn’t worried about getting caught, and she certainly wasn’t allowing herself to worry about her tardiness. But when she got to the library, she would be with the duke, and she was eager for that moment to arrive.
Perhaps they would quarrel—she supposed she’d have to accept it if they did. But even if that were to happen, being with him would be the most exciting thing that had happened all day, and she couldn’t wait.
CHAPTER 19
Lady Lavinia looked at the clock as she walked into the library, and then turned and looked back at Seth. It felt to Seth as if she was daring him to say something about how late she was—only five minutes again, but even so, they had talked about it. He had expected that she would take it more seriously this time.
He decided not to bring it up. Instead, he pointed to the chair by the fire. “We’d better get started,” he said. “There’s a lot for us to go over, and I don’t want to wear you out so that you’re too tired to apply any of these lessons tomorrow. Have a seat. I want to go over with you what a gentleman looks for in a wife.”
“Don’t they just look for the most beautiful young lady they can find?”
“No, it’s much more complex than that,” Seth said. He settled into the seat across from hers. “A gentleman wants someoneretiring—someone obedient. He wants someone he can count on to obey his wishes, and to not make a spectacle of herself.”
“It sounds as if you’re saying gentlemen like wallflowers,” Lady Lavinia said.
“In a lot of ways, I think that’s true,” Seth agreed.
“But it can’t be true,” Lady Lavinia protested. “That exact tendency is what gentlemen haven’t liked about me. You said it yourself. I need to learn how to get their attention, not just wait for them to come to me. I need to find a way to show them the best things about myself, not just hope they see them on their own.”
“That’s right,” Seth said. “Thus far, what you have done is stand on the sidelines and wait to be approached, and that ends poorly for you for a number of reasons. For one, it means that you have no control over who you speak to—you must wait and see which gentlemen take an interest.
“That’s how you end up stuck in conversations like the one you had with that no-good lout at dinner tonight. What you need to learn is how to flirt with gentlemen without being too forward about it. You need to learn how to display your interest, to let them see it—but to also allow them to believe you are still a lady who will submit to their dominance when the time comes.”
“But how can I be both?” Lady Lavinia asked. “It sounds to me like you’re describing two things that are the opposite of one another. You’re saying I should be forward and flirtatious, butyou’re also saying I should be subtle and retiring. If I try to be a flirtatious person, won’t I be like Lady Genevieve?”
“This is the very art I’m going to teach you,” Seth said. “There’s a way to be flirtatious—to express your interest to a gentleman—without being so aggressive that you make a show of yourself and frighten him away altogether, as Lady Genevieve did.
“It’s certainly a mistake to grab a gentleman by the arm and restrain him from walking away from you when he wants to do so. That’s a good way to show gentlemen that they ought to avoid you at all costs. But that doesn’t mean there’s no good way for you to express interest.”
“What should I do, then?” Lady Lavinia asked. “I’ve tried many times to engage gentlemen in conversation, but they never seem interested in the things I have to say. In fact, much of the time they seem to think there’s something strange and even foolish about the topics I bring up.”
“We’ll go into that more later,” Seth said. “Choosing an appropriate topic of conversation and being an engaging conversationalist is another matter altogether. But for today, I want to focus on how you can get a gentleman to approach you for conversation in the first place, not what you’ll say once he does.”
“All right,” Lady Lavinia agreed. “I’m willing to trust you on this. What should I do?”
“The first thing you must do is to practice showing gentlemen that you’re sure of yourself,” Seth said.
“Confidence again?”
“Yes, but perhaps not in the way you think. It doesn’t mean walking up to them and informing them that you know you’re worthy of their time.”
“I wasn’t going to bethatblunt about it.” She couldn’t help laughing. “All right, but what should I do?”
“Let’s imagine you’re in the ballroom and you see a gentleman you find intriguing,” Seth said. “The first thing you ought to do is try to catch his eye. Try it now. Pretend I’m a gentleman you’re interested in and try to get my attention.”
