Heat scalded Madelaine’s cheeks. “We are in the manner of a joke then, to you and your friends?”
“A joke? More a lost cause. My friends think they have given me an impossible task. I myself believe nothing is impossible, if I set my mind to it.”
Her aunt was staring at him, mouth slightly open in confusion. “A…a wager?”
“Yes, Lord Cotereigh,” said Madelaine coldly. “Pray do tell us exactly how we feature in your wager.”
Neither her aunt’s shock or her own anger seemed to perturb him. “The stakes are thus,” he said calmly. “I will get for your committee board ten men of power and influence, and I will make your fundraising ball a success, attended by no fewer than a dozen of society’s most respected families.”
“And if you fail?” she asked.
“I owe each of my friends two thousand pounds. But worse, Ifail, Mrs Ardingly. And that is insupportable.”
“To you, I’m sure.”
He merely smiled at her, as though pleased she understood him.
“Two…two thousand pounds,” her aunt repeated. “Each of your friends…”
“Only six of them, never fear.”
“Twelve thousand!”
“The money, you realise, is not the issue.”
“Only your pride?” said Madelaine.
He smiled at her again. “Pride. Status. Yes. Things of real value.”
“Real value,” she muttered. Not children, not preventing cruelty and pain, but only his pride.Thatwas what motivated him.
“As I said, Mrs Ardingly.” He clearly read her thoughts. “I am here for selfish reasons.”
Her aunt spoke in broken, flustered sentences, asking him if he was sure, wasn’t he afraid, wasn’t gambling terribly dangerous? He answered easily, carelessly. When the maid entered with the tea tray, her aunt seemed relieved to occupy herself with something she understood. Tea and sandwiches. They were very sensible, very good things. She offered them profusely. Lord Cotereigh declined.
For her part, Madelaine was studying the wallpaper again, but deep in thought this time. Anger, resentment, humiliation,and even disappointment she pushed aside, however much they bobbed around and bumped against her, like flotsam on the tide. She waded deeper, seeking a clearer view; she went to where the water ran cool and strong and the great blue-white sky was empty of everything but eternity…
Help was help. Ten people on the committee were ten people on the committee. A well-attended ball was a well-attended ball.
What did it matter his reasons? What did it matter that the man himself was awful and cold and insufferable?
Shecould suffer him. For the sake of those children, to endtheirsuffering, she would suffer much.
Her focus returned to the room, to Lord Cotereigh. She looked at him, dimly aware that he’d been studying her in his own inscrutable way.
“Very well,” she said. “We accept your help.”
“Excellent.” He smiled, satisfied, amused, but not warm. Taking the book from his knee, he set it on the low table between them. “And I suggest we start with this.”
Five
Sebastian put the bookon the low table between them, twisting it around so it was the correct way up for Mrs Ardingly and her aunt.
He’d noted the several curious looks Mrs Ardingly had given the book. But whatever her suppositions had been, they were clearly wide of the mark. Her confusion and surprise at being confronted with a book of designs from a very fashionablemodistewas almost comical.
His mouth quirked as she stared at it. Of course she wouldn’t have guessed what it was. Had she ever even seen one? Not in the last decade, at least, he judged from her current outfit.
It wasn’t the deathly burgundy this time, faded to the colour of overcooked beef. Today’s dress had probably once been deep blue.Thatcolour would have suited her. But the dress had been washed and beaten into a spiritless shade of grey. It had obviously been restitched in several places, a bow or ribbon moved, removed, never replaced. A rent near the hem had beenbadly mended with a too pale blue thread, and the cut was ten years out of date, a sad formless sack, plain and unornamented.
