“Seventeen and ripe for the plucking.”
The earl stared.
“I’m joking. What’s wrong with you?”
“You’d better be.”
“You can’t deny that she’s very beautiful.”
“No, I can’t,” the earl said. A silence followed.
Jane poked her head inside, cheeks pink enough to show she’d heard some, or all, of their conversation. “Excuse me, I’m off to bed.”
The earl nodded, his gaze on her. Lindley kissed her hand. “Good night, Jane. Will we ride tomorrow? At eleven?”
“I hope so,” she said, smiling. But she looked at Nick. “I think I need permission.”
Nick hated the thought of them riding together, but Lindley was his best friend and, despite what he’d said, he trusted him. “You have it.” He drained his glass.
“Thank you,” Jane said, and with another good night, she left.
“You are testy,” Lindley said. “Does this mean I’m intruding?”
“You arenotintruding.”
“No? Good. You know, I thought Amelia would be here. I saw her in London Monday last, at the Crystal Palace. She led me to believe she was coming this way.”
“We’re finished,” the earl said.
Lindley was surprised. Then he laughed softly, looking at the door, where Jane had left. “Are you smitten, old man?”
“Of course not. She’s seventeen!”
“Seventeen and imminently marriagable.”
“Exactly,” the earl said. “And I intend to marry her off immediately. Do you have any suggestions?”
16
The earl pulled out his watch and looked at it for the sixth time.
He was sitting astride his big bay gelding in one of the south fields, where a gang of laborers was mowing hay. It was half-past eleven.
He rode up to the gang’s foreman and told him to give the men a fifteen-minute break. The day was unusually hot, with no clouds or drizzle. After voicing his approval for work well done, he turned his bay away. He decided to go to the north field to check the state of the stone wall begun earlier that week. He would ignore the fact that the stone wall was progressing just fine—he had seen it yesterday. He also ignored the fact that he would have to ride from one end of Drag-more to the other—in all likelihood passing Lindley and Jane on their morning ride.
“Are you smitten?” Lindley had asked.
Am I? he asked himself.
The question was disturbing. The earl had to shove it from his mind. His responsibility was to find Jane a husband. Every passing day made him more aware of this, and how urgent it was. He knew he could not leave her here while he went to London alone, as he had thought to do. No, he must get her married, the sooner the better. And this meant he must take her to London.
The earl hated London. Truthfully, he wasn’t fond of cities in general, for he was a man of the outdoors, a man who preferred physical labor to sitting behind a desk. But he was a strong man, a man of honor and duty. He had never shirked his duty before, he would not now. Most of the nobility had left London for their country estates, but in a month, in September, London would be a whirlwind of parties, balls, masks, and fetes as the Season began. They would have to arrive before then. In order to launch Jane, the earl would have to costume her properly. He would also have to figure out a way to reinstate himself in Society.
And he would not feel dread.
Nick had never been comfortable among the realm’s peers. Not even as a boy, when he had come to visit his grandfather three times and become acquainted with Dragmore and the life he would one day assume. Even then, at twelve, fourteen, and sixteen, he had felt dreadfully out of place, as awkward as a gangling Great Dane puppy in a china shop. The old earl had gently corrected his manners and deportment, but Nick had not been interested in learning. Even as a boy, he had no use for such airs—they seemed silly and a waste of time. He had been enthralled with Dragmore, however. It was a ranch just as his parents’ home was a ranch, only here the cattle were tame, not wild Texas longhorns.
Outdoors, riding across the 25,000-acre estate, inspecting the fields under cultivation, the herds of cattle, the dairy barns, the lambing pens, the blooded Thoroughbreds, here the earl was at home.
