Still looking annoyed, she dropped her eyes to her lap and went back to fidgeting, this time with the lie of her skirt across her knee. It was a pale pink muslin today, far better than brown, but modest rather than pretty.
“Lord Ashburton said you had known Mr Simmons since Oxford.” Min was studiously offhand, and Jack smiled to himself, wondering where this line of enquiry was leading.
“That’s right.”
“He is…not quite what I had imagined. For a friend of yours, I mean.”
Jack grinned. “Because he does me credit? Don’t worry. I’ve enough dashing blades and outrageous bucks in my circle to make up for the damage noble George does to my poor reputation.”
The silver eyes darted to him, caught somewhere between annoyance and reluctant amusement. She muttered something aboutmore nonsense, and Jack’s grin deepened.
“The truth is, Min, I met George at Oxford when I was nineteen. Which, if you might recall such unimportant details, was the year you left Herefordshire for your aunt’s, never to be seen again. I was bereft, and it was clear I had to replace you. Who is Jack Orton without someone small and odd to command?”
The affronted look she gave him made him laugh out loud.
“Command!” she repeated. “Yes, that is the word. I called you a bully last night, and I shouldn’t have. I’m sorry. But that you like tocommandyour friends, order them about, be the master, yes, at least you admit it.”
“You really think me a tyrant?”
“The only reason we were ever friends is because I’d do as you told me, unlike your sisters.”
“No,” he exclaimed, laughing. “Not at all!”
“And now it is poor Mr Simmons’s turn.”
“Poor? I’ll have you know I take prodigious good care of him.”
Jack sat forward, still smiling. Faux earnest, he half whispered, “And he is a young man who needs a good deal of caretaking. He’s heir to one of the largest fortunes in England. So if George has taken a liking to you, my advice would be to encourage it. Can you flirt, Min?”
“Jack!”
“No matter. I’ll teach you.Andhow to dance. George will stand no chance, and you’ll take the town by storm. Fear not, my little Minnow, I mean to take very good care of you both!”
Nine
Lucy had no ideawhy the tea Miss Sedgewick had promised took so long to appear, but she was very glad when it did, especially as it was followed into the room by Miss Sedgewick herself. Finally she might get some respite from Jack. His presence was like being squeezed in a giant’s hot hand, one of those blundering, stupid ones who didn’t realise its own strength.
“It’s all settled!” Miss Sedgewick said gaily. “You’ll have the cosiest room imaginable, Lucy.”
Then Jack stood to take his leave, and it was as if cool air had come sweeping in through an open door. Lucy, unobserved as Jack addressed himself to Miss Sedgewick, took a few good deep breaths while he told of his plans to visit his sister and arrange for Lucy’s luggage to be brought around. “Because, knowing you, Min, you flew out of there with nothing more than what you’re standing up in and your own cloak of righteous indignation.”
“Unfair!” Miss Sedgewick cried in Lucy’s defence. “I inform you, Lord Orton, that she had at least two bandboxes.”
“Oh,two, was it?” he returned, eyes twinkling at Miss Sedgewick. Lucy reached for the samovar and determinedly filled her cup. “And I suspect at least one of them was full of nothing but sketchbooks and pencils.”
Miss Sedgewick laughed. After all, Jack was entirely correct. So Lucy did nothing but spoon too much sugar into her cup, wishing the spoon wouldn’t clang so against the thin china, and pretending not to notice the familiar leave Jack took of the beautiful, spirited Miss Sedgewick; or the way she put out her hand and he held it, gaze warm on her fair face.
Lucy diligently prepared a cup for her host while Miss Sedgewick showed Jack to the door.
If Jack’s choice of Mr Simmons for a friend had surprised Lucy, she was equally surprised by his romantic choice. It had always seemed obvious to her that Jack’s future wife would be some incomparable beauty, fashionable and lovely, but all sweet, giggling acquiescence and ready admiration, sharing Jack’s own frivolous turn of mind. Miss Sedgewick was nothing of the sort. Beautiful, yes, but not in that soft but stately way Lucy had already seen to be the admired mode during her few days in London. And though Miss Sedgewick had lively manners, a great deal of wit, and seemed to share Jack’s bold sociability, she was older than him, of very strong character, and clearly no girl to be charmingly ordered around. Intellectually she seemed as far above him as, well, as Lucy had often felt herself to be. Grudgingly, she supposed his choice of lover did him as much credit as his choice of friend.
“There!” said Miss Sedgewick, sitting down with a contented sigh once Jack had gone. “Now we can be at peace.”
Lucy could have laughed. Peace was a word very far from her own feelings at that moment. How many years had she spent wandering her aunt’s house like an aimless ghost, doing nothing but capturing fragments of half-formed reality with pencil orbrush while reality itself passed her by? She’d longed so often for something, anything, to happen. And now too much was happening all at once. But it had always been like that with the Ortons. Any time she crept from the dismal silence of her father’s house and across the fields to the great stone building proud in its parkland, she would inevitably find Bedlam within. Nell and Nora shrieking and arguing, and Jack often enough the cause or caught up in some madcap prank of his.
Or else there’d be a game in full swing, everyone scampering to hide somewhere in the endless rooms, holding their breath, giggling, waiting to be found. Or hitting balls on the lawn, or Nell directing servants to set up a Bedouin encampment of tented sheets and pillows for some fantastical picnic in the garden, cake crumbs on the grass, wasps fighting over lemonade. And Jack would be bored by such sedentary pursuits, demanding Lucy go fishing, or that she get up on the fat little pony he’d outgrown years before and jog about after him on his new hunter, half falling but more scared of admitting it than of hitting the ground itself…
Consciously, she relaxed her grip on her teacup. It was only Jack being Jack. He’d always been overwhelming. And Miss Sedgewick’s personality was hardly any less forceful. Was it any wonder she felt rattled? She tried to push all the noise in her mind into a small, tight box and sipped her tea, listening to Miss Sedgewick’s plans for her comfort.
