“I shall invite him for dinner,” Sir Clarence announced. “Have a talk with the cook, Martha. Make sure she puts on something special this evening.”
“But what does one serve a blind man?” his wife asked, looking dismayed.
“Papa.” Henrietta’s voice was trembling. “You cannot expect me to marry a blind man with no face. You cannot expect me to marry Vincent Hunt. Not after the way he always played the most atrocious tricks on you.”
“Boyish high spirits,” her father said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Listen to me, Henrietta. You have just been presented with this wonderful opportunity as if on a platter. It is as if we were brought home early from London for just this purpose. We will have him here this evening, and we will look him over. He won’t be able to see us doing it, after all, will he?”
He looked pleased with his little joke, though he did not laugh. Sir Clarence March rarely did. He was too puffed up with his own consequence, Sophia thought with unrepentant malice.
“If he passes muster,” Sir Clarence continued, “then you will have him, Henrietta. This year was your third Season in London, my girl. Your third. And somehow, though not through any fault of your own, it is true, you lost your chance for a baron the first year, an earl the second, and a marquess this year. A Season does not come cheap. And you do not grow younger. And pretty soon, if it has not happened already, you are going to be known as the young lady who cannot keep a suitor when she has one. Well, my girl, we will show them.”
He beamed at his wife and daughter—and ignored the mouse—and seemed totally oblivious to the devastated look on Henrietta’s face and the mortified one on his wife’s.
And off he went to net a viscount for Henrietta.
Sophia felt sorry for Viscount Darleigh, though perhaps, she conceded, he did not deserve her pity. She did not know anything about him, after all, except what she had learned about his alter ego, Vincent Hunt, when he had been just a boy. Though she did know that he was neat and elegant, and independent enough not to have to be led everywhere by his servants.
At least this evening promised to be a little less tedious than life usually was. She would have a viscount to gaze upon, even if seeing his face should make her want to vomit or faint, like Henrietta. And she would be able to observe the early progress of a courtship. It should be mildly entertaining.
She slipped away after Sir Clarence had left and ran upstairs for her sketch pad and charcoal—prized possessions since she was not granted any regular pin money. She had taken them from Henrietta’s long-abandoned schoolroom. She would go out to the woods behind the house, where she could be out of sight, and sketch a large, blustering man with huge chest and biceps and puny head and spindly legs towering over a cowering little man with bandaged eyes and holding a wedding ring aloft in a pudgy hand, while two women, one large and middle-aged, the other young and willowy, stood off to one side, the plump one looking triumphant, the young one looking tragic. As always, she would place a grinning little mouse in the bottom right-hand corner.
3
“I was firm,” Vincent protested, his chin raised as Martin tied his neckcloth in a manner suitable for evening wear. “I refused to go there for dinner. I don’t suppose anyone quite understands how tricky it is chasing food about on one’s plate without knowing quite what food it is one chases while holding a polite conversation at the same time—and wondering if one has dribbled gravy down one’s chin or onto one’s cravat.”
Martin was not to be deterred.
“If you had been firm,” he said, “you would not have gone at all. Old March, for the love of God! And Lady March! And Miss Henrietta March! Need I say more?”
“If you do,” Vincent said, “you may well run out of italics and exclamation points, Martin. Yes, they were a haughty trio and treated the rest of us lowly mortals as if we were worms beneath their feet. But we had a great deal of sport out of them and must not complain.”
“Do you remember the time his nibs set up that stone bust of supposedly ancient Roman origin on a pedestal in his courtyard,” Martin asked, “and invited all the neighborhood to gather around at a respectful distance while it was unveiled with great pomp and ceremony? And then, when old March pulled off the cover with a grand flourish, everyone except the Marches themselves collapsed in a heap of mirth? I’ll never forget that bright blue, winking eyelid with long black eyelashes, or the scarlet up-curling lips. You excelled yourself with that one.”
They snickered and then outright guffawed for a while at the memory of that winking, leering monstrosity of stone.
“Yes, well,” Vincent said, “I almost got caught that time, you know, when I was getting back into the house through the cellar window. The keg beneath it wobbled and would have fallen with a crash if I had not hurled myself beneath it and deadened the sound. I nursed a good few bruised ribs for the following week or so. But the suffering was worth it.”
“Ah, those were the days,” Martin said fondly, indicating with a tap on Vincent’s shoulder that he was ready to go. “And now you are going to pay them an evening call. You are capitulating to the enemy.”
“I was taken aback when March knocked on the door,” Vincent said, “and was not thinking straight. I was still half asleep.”
“You must have been,” Martin said. “There I was at the door, explaining to his nibs that he was mistaken, that I had come alone to Barton Coombs to visit my mam and dad and was staying here with your permission, and there you were walking down the stairs behind me as bold as brass, in full view from the door, to make a liar out of me.”