To Odette’s horror, she felt emotion building in her throat and behind her eyes. Both her sisters’ wishes had been so easily brushed aside. To have Mrs. Northrop advocating forherwas greater reassurance than Odette had felt in months.
Mother seemed to realize the matchmaker would not be easily swayed to support any particular suitor. She addressed Odette instead. “Mr. Lexington has a tidy income from his father’s estate and will inherit. The two of you get along. He was not put off by the horrid display you’ve been making this Season.” Mother counted off on her fingers the points she was making. “He has asked you to stand up with him at every ball you’ve both attended these past months. He’s taken you for a drive. He has spoken with you at musicales, and he even once visited us in our box at the opera.”
Mrs. Northrophmmed. She assumed an expression of pondering that washed away some of the relief Odette had felt only a moment ago. “I had not realized he was so attentive.”
“He really isn’t,” Odette insisted. “He is a friend of Jack’s, is all. He was, no doubt, wrangled into being kind out of pity for his friend’s childhood acquaintance.”
“Odette.” Mother spoke her name through tight teeth. “You were permitted to call him by his Christian name when you were tiny, but you mustn’t do so now. It is simply not acceptable.”
“It is merely a habit,” she lied.
Another of Mrs. Northrop’shmms. This was devolving quickly.
Odette rose, her chin at a proud and defiant angle. “I will leave the two of you to discuss your fondness for Mr. Lexington. I mean to go for a walk around the back garden.”
She made her dignified exit, Mother’s “I do not know what to make of her any longer” following her into the corridor.
Only upon reaching the quiet, tall-shrubberied garden did Odette let her shoulders sag. She was absolutely certain Terrance had no interest in her. She didn’t know if Jack had ever told him of their situation. Whether he had or not, Odette did not detect in him the signs of affection her mother and Jack’s seemed determined to see.
Yet, she knew her mother would never contradict Mrs. Hewitt. Father would not, either. They practically worshipped them, idolized them. They coveted the standing Jack’s family so easily claimed. If Mrs. Hewitt promoted a match between Odette and Terrance, that match would be pursued with all the tenacity of a terrier hunting a fox, and it would end just as badly for her as it always did for the pitiable prey.
I need to talk with Jack. This is far more tenuous than we realized.But how? Even their long-standing acquaintance was not enough to permit her to visit him or send him a note. There had to be a way.
“This does not appear to be a pleasant walk.” Mrs. Northrop really needed to begin making more noise when she walked about.
“Is Princess Pompous not entitled to be in a sour mood?” She hoped her pretentious tone proved enough to send Mrs. Northrop back inside.
It didn’t.
“Mr. Lexington is an admirable young gentleman,” Mrs. Northrop said.
“He does seem to be.” Odette thought that noncommittal enough.
“And your mother appears eager to pursue that possibility.”
She could not help a tense sigh of frustration. “She is eager for nothing more or less than precisely what Mrs. Hewitt deems worthy of eagerness. Nothing motivates her as thoroughly as the chance to meet with our neighbor’s approval.”
“She would go so far as to agree with or disagree with a match simply because Mrs. Hewitt felt one way or the other about it?”
Odette nodded even as the weight on her heart grew. “They are a family of great influence in our corner of the kingdom, and my parents are—” She did not wish to speak truly ill of her parents, but neither could she think of an innocuous way of phrasing the truth. “They find comfort in the reassurance of a seemingly risk-free path.”
Mrs. Northrop’s gaze narrowed on her. “And bowing to the dictates of the powerful and influential feels less risky than having an opinion of their own?”
“Unfortunately.”
“And none of them realizes you and young Mr. Hewitt are in love with each other?”
Shock. There was no other word to describe the visceral reaction she had to Mrs. Northrop’s unanticipated question.
The matchmaker actually laughed, not a shoulder-shaking guffaw, but a laugh of pure enjoyment. “You didn’t realize I had sorted that out, did you?”
Odette clutched her hands together, nervous, wary. “We thought we hid it very well.”
“Oh, you have hidden it exceptionally well. I am simply very, very familiar with the symptoms of love, especially love unacknowledged.”
Mrs. Northrop did not appear to disapprove. If Odette could convince her to champion their cause, there might be some hope.
“Jack is a wonderful, upstanding, good-hearted gentleman. I have known him all my life, so I know he is not pretending to be good in order to advance his suit. He would simply have approached my father and made his case if not for his parents’ preference for Miss Summerfield and my parents’ inability to contradict anything the Hewitts believe or embrace, coupled with their history of forcing their daughters into marriages they felt most likely to meet with the approval of important people.”
