Page 28 of The Marriage Wager

Constance shook her head. “No. You need not worry that I have been added to your bevy of pursuers. I have no interest in achieving the married state.”

“You prefer not to marry, then?”

“It is not that. But I prefer not to marry where I do not choose. And a woman with little dowry has equally little choice.” She gave a shrug and a smile to take the sting from her words.

“Ah, then we are compatriots, Miss Woodley,” he said with a smile. “Fellow fugitives from the marriage mart.”

“Yes. Though I do not have to hide from my pursuers,” she countered teasingly.

“I can scarce believe that. Are there so few men of discernment among us?”

“Perhaps, like you, they have no interest in marriage,” she pointed out. “And interest of any other kind is dangerous for a woman.”

She was enjoying their repartee, the light feint and thrust of social discourse, but she glanced away at that moment and encountered the icy gaze of Miss Rutherford. The woman’s antagonism deflated some of the buoyant feeling. What was it about her that the woman so disliked? She could not help but think that it had something to do with Lord Leighton, and she wondered if there was some sort of attachment between him and Miss Rutherford.

Constance glanced back up into Leighton’s face. He was watching her, and his face showed nothing but the same lighthearted enjoyment in their conversation that she felt. Surely this was not the look of a man attached to another woman. Nor did his joking comments about escaping from the marriage mart give any indication that he was engaged or even close to that state. She must be wrong about the reason for Muriel Rutherford’s dislike of her, or else Muriel was this disagreeable about possible competition for any man she happened to favor. Whatever the reason, Constance made the firm resolve to ignore the woman in the future.

Leighton started to speak again, but at that moment supper was announced, and he had to excuse himself to escort his mother in to dinner. Lord Selbrooke was leading the way to the double pocket doors at the far end of the room, now slid back into the wall to reveal the large dining room beyond. The Dowager Duchess of Chudleigh tottered along on his arm. After them came Lord Leighton and Lady Selbrooke, and the rest of the company fell in behind them.

Sir Lucien, whom Constance had not seen until this moment, appeared beside her to offer his arm, and she smiled at him gratefully. Without Francesca around, she felt a bit lost among all the strangers. She was seated near the end of the table, at some distance from either Francesca or Lord Leighton, who were seated near the other end. Fortunately, however, she was between Sir Lucien and Cyril Willoughby, a pleasant man in his thirties with intelligent brown eyes. She had been a little worried about making conversation at dinner, but Sir Lucien, she knew, was capable of making enough entertaining conversation for both of them, and she had spoken with Mr. Willoughby before, and found him both well-spoken and kind.

The meal, therefore, a protracted affair with so many courses and choices that it lasted well over an hour, was pleasantly spent. Sir Lucien supplied her with a murmured social history of everyone at the table, and during the gaps when he turned to entertain Miss Norton on his other side, Constance and Mr. Willoughby discussed one of her father’s favorite periods of history, the long and tangled War of the Roses.

Mr. Willoughby, she found, was an admirer of Edward IV and, like her father, an avid student of history. He owned a small manor house in Sussex, he told her, describing with obvious affection the sleepy village of Lower Boxbury near which it was located. Constance enjoyed her talk with him, and she could easily see why Francesca had included him as a potential suitor. Intelligent, well-read and refined, he was a man of substance—the sort, Constance thought, that any woman should be pleased to marry.

The problem, of course, was that she felt not the slightest speck of attraction to him. She could see that his features were without exception, his form and dress just as they should be. His manner was polite and polished, and if he was not possessed of the sort of biting wit that characterized, say, Sir Lucien, he was, at least, not without some sense of humor—and his comments were far kinder than those of Sir Lucien. But the realization of all these attributes did not give rise in her to even a fraction of the sort of sizzle and excitement that pulsed through her whenever Lord Leighton approached.

Of course, she expected nothing of Lord Leighton, and she had no intention of making the mistake of falling in love with him; for she was well aware of how forlorn any hope of marrying him was. But she could not conceive of marrying a man for whom she did not feel any sort of passion. Her friend Jane was fond of saying that love required nurturing and care, but Constance felt that there must be something there in the first place in order to nurture it. Likeable though Mr. Willoughby was, Constance could not see herself spending her life with him.

And though she had not spent much time with any of them, she suspected that the same would prove true of all the men whom Francesca had invited to this house party. Alfred Penrose was another whom she remembered from Lady Simmington’s ball, and though he was an excellent dancer, most of his conversation had been about horses, hounds and hunting. And Lord Dunborough! Well, she had not been able to bear ten minutes in that gentleman’s company, let alone a lifetime. There were three other men, of course, whom she had met tonight; two whose names she could not remember at the moment. Perhaps she would feel a spark of something for one of them if she got to know them better, but knowing herself as well as she did, she had the lowering suspicion that she would not. She sincerely hoped that Francesca would not be too disappointed when Constance did not become engaged.

She had warned her, after all. Constance knew that she was considered to be insufferably particular when it came to men, a quality that was difficult enough in a marriageable woman but almost impossible to overcome when one was a portionless spinster. Her cousins were apt to wax enthusiastic over nearly every man they met, overlooking such trifles as a lack of conversation or a predilection for port. However, what Constance had come to think was not that she was so unreasonable about what she wanted in a man—she would admit, after all, that Mr. Willoughby would make a good husband—but that she simply was not one who fell in love easily. Or, when she was feeling especially low, she thought perhaps that she might not be one who could fall in love at all.

She had been in love once. It had been after her father’s illness had overtaken him, and they had removed to Bath for a few months in the hopes that the waters there might banish, or at least mitigate, his illness. While they were there, she had met Gareth Hamilton. There had been a few bright weeks of happiness as he courted her, and for a time she had been filled with eagerness and hope. But that had foundered upon the shoals of reality. He had asked her to marry him, and she had had to say no, not while her father still lived. Her duty was to him, and she could not leave him while he was so ill. And so they had parted.

Jane liked to say, with a romantic sigh, that Constance had been pining for her lost love ever since. Constance did not really think so. She did not still yearn for Gareth, did not, in fact, ever think of him in the normal course of things. But she did wonder if perhaps the experience had wounded her in some way, cutting her off from the ability to love.

After dinner, while the gentlemen retired to the smoking room for port and cigars, the women moved into the music room. Lady Selbrooke suggested that Miss Rutherford entertain them on the piano, and the dark-haired girl obliged, going to the piano and searching through the sheet music, then sitting down to play.

Muriel Rutherford was an accomplished player, Constance had to acknowledge. But her playing, while technically perfect, was without passion, and the piece she chose was dark and slow. Given the music and the heavy meal they had all just consumed, Constance found herself battling to keep her eyelids open. The Duchess, she saw, had lost the battle already; her eyes were closed and her head nodding. The two dyed plumes the Dowager Duchess wore in her hair bobbed with the motion of her head, and periodically she jerked awake, her head flying up, and stared wildly about her for an instant before closing her eyes again and returning to slumber.

Beside Constance, Francesca sighed, wafting her fan gently. She raised her fan to cover the lower half of her face and murmured, “Mother keeps early hours. I think she likes to encourage her guests to do the same, and so she has Muriel play.”

A smile twitched Constance’s lips, and she quickly bowed her head to hide it. Raising her face, she answered, “You are wicked.”

“But truthful. What I would not give to be a man right now, just to escape this.”

“Will they stay in the smoking room until this is over?” Constance asked, surprised.

“If they know Muriel is playing, they will,” Francesca retorted. “And since Mother always asks her to…” She trailed off, sneezing. She sneezed twice more in quick succession, doing her best to muffle the sounds. “Blast! I keep doing that. I hope I have not come down with a cold.”

Lady Rutherford, who was seated in front of them in a chair close to the piano, turned around, frowning, to see who was interrupting Muriel’s performance with her sneezes. Francesca smiled at her apologetically. A moment later, she straightened suddenly and cast a glance over at Constance, a look of mischief in her eyes.

Raising her fan again, she leaned closer to Constance, whispering, “Follow my lead.”

Constance nodded, mystified. Francesca settled back into her chair, wafting her fan and looking suspiciously angelic. Then she began to cough. First it was one cough, then a series and after that a sneeze, followed by a veritable paroxysm of coughing. It was done so realistically that even Constance felt a stab of worry.

“Are you all right?” Constance asked in a hushed voice, leaning closer to her in concern.