Chapter
Three
BERKELEY SQUARE, LONDON, ONE WEEK LATER
The scent of pineapple ices was making him ill.
“What the devil is wrong with you, Windham?” Hayward turned away from the carriageful of ladies they were waiting on and lowered his voice. “Good Lord, man, but you’re a bit green about the gills. I hope you’re not going to cast up your accounts in front of half theton. It’s not at all the thing.”
“I don’t understand the appeal of pineapple ices.” Cass retrieved his wrinkled handkerchief from the breast pocket of his coat and pressed it to his nose. “The smell is nauseating.”
“Smell? I don’t smell anything. Perhaps a touch of elderflower sugar, but that’s all.”
“The elderflower is fine, but the pineapple smells sour, like vinegar.” Or was that his handkerchief? He raised the limp linen to his nose again, took a cautious sniff, then hastily stuffed it back in his coat pocket.
“Don’t let Gunter hear you say so. Bad for business, you know.”
“Gunter has nothing to worry about.” Cass nodded at the phaetons, gigs and the occasional barouche crowding Berkeley Square, their fashionable passengers all chattering and laughingat once, colorful ices in elegant silver cups clutched in their hands.
The season was upon them, and there was no place in London where that was more evident than outside Gunter’s Tea Shop in the afternoon. Thetonloved nothing more than flaunting their finery on the promenade before flocking to Gunter’s afterwards to indulge in ices and gossip.
“Perhaps it isn’t the ices making you ill, Windham, but the quantity of brandy you drank at Lord Chapman’s soiree last night.”
“It’s not the brandy.”
That is, itwasthe brandy, but notjustthe brandy. It was the cheroots, too, and the hours spent wagering with Chapman, who’d taken no less than four hundred pounds off him. He hadn’t returned to his townhouse until the wee hours of this morning, then he’d slept the entire day and been obliged to rush through his toilette to make it to Hyde Park in time to escort Lady Laetitia down the promenade during the fashionable hour.
Hence the disgraceful state of his linen.
But the pineapple ices didn’t help matters. The bile was gurgling in the back of his throat, threatening at every moment to overflow his lips, and his hands weren’t quite steady.
“The ladies must have their ices, Windham.” Hayward nodded at the carriage where Lady Laetitia, this season’s undisputed belle, was whispering to her two companions. “No proper gentleman would dream of depriving the ladies of their little indulgences.”
No one, neither gentleman nor lady would dream of depriving Lady Laetitia of a single thing she desired. Alas, what Lady Laetitia desired above all else was to be seen outside Gunter’s Tea Shop, holding court over her friends while all the most elegant gentlemen danced in attendance upon her. It wasthe most fashionable place to be on a sunny afternoon in May, and God knew they all must be fashionable, or die.
When had this all become so tedious? He’d enjoyed it at first, hadn’t he? The balls and routs and soirees, his box at the theater and lunches at White’s followed by hours of clandestine wagering at the gaming hells—it had all been entertaining enough when he’d taken his place in society as the Seventh Earl of Windham, hadn’t it?
But that was the trouble with shiny things. They paled quickly, and the blush had most certainly worn off the rose of the Windham peerage. No wonder his father had been such a delinquent. One had to dosomethingto alleviate the boredom of being an earl.
A high-pitched giggle burst upon the air, and he and Hayward turned toward the carriage where Lady Laetitia was enthroned upon pale blue velvet squabs. If the gossips were to be believed, her father Lord Tremblay had chosen that specific shade of blue because it complemented his precious Laetitia’s blue eyes.
Those blue eyes were currently the toast of London, and they were pretty enough, despite being the wrong shade of blue. They were forget-me-not-blue, instead of bluebell blue?—
“All right there, ladies?” Hayward gave the smiling trio a courtly bow, eliciting another shrill giggle from the young ladies that pierced Cass’s feeble defenses, lancing through his eyeballs directly into his skull.
Good Lord, but his head was pounding. This was all Chapman’s fault. A curse upon the man and his free-flowing brandy.
“Come now, Windham.” Hayward nudged him. “You look as grim as an undertaker, and on such a lovely day, and with such a vision of beauty before us, too. The ladies look particularly picturesque in the sunlight, do they not?”
“They’re well enough, I suppose.” But not nearly as picturesque as his darkened bedchamber would have been.
Hayward raised a brow. “Damned with faint praise, indeed. You’ll have to do better than that if you want to secure Lady Laetitia, Windham.”
That was the trouble. He didn’t care one whit whether he secured Lady Laetitia or not, but he fixed a dutiful smile over his clenched teeth, nonetheless. It wouldn’t do to spend all afternoon scowling at the lady he was meant to be courting.
The match with Lady Laetitia had been his father’s idea. In fact, he’d insisted on it, but of course his father was in no position to demand anything now, being dead and comfortably ensconced inside a thick marble slab in the family tomb.
But if Cass must marry—and he must, as he was the Earl of Windham now—then what difference did it make which lady he made his countess? Lady Laetitia would do as well as any of the others.
