“It is the mark of a good butler,” Vincent said, “that he can lie with a straight face and perfect conviction.”
“I am not your butler,” Martin reminded him. “And what would you have been even if I were? An optical illusion? You had better come down to the kitchen and have some of the rabbit stew I made and some of Mam’s fresh bread before you go. She loaded me down with enough to feed the five thousand.”
Vincent got to his feet and sighed—and then laughed again. This morning had been like a well-rehearsed farce and had left him wondering if the village was ringed about twenty-four hours a day with lookouts whose sole task was to give instant notice of the approach of any and all comers. Sir Clarence March had come soon after eleven, all puffed up with his own importance and magnanimity—nothing had changed there in six years. He had left, in some haste, only when a seeming army of ladies had arrived to welcome Vincent home. Miss Waddell had been the spokesperson, but she had named each of the other ladies in a slow, distinct voice and repeated the list after he had invited them all to be seated—just before he remembered the holland covers. But they had been removed, he discovered when he sat down himself. Then, before the ladies could settle into any flow of conversation, the vicar had arrived, though his wife, who was a member of Miss Waddell’s committee, had scolded him before everyone with the reminder that he had known the ladies were coming at a quarter past eleven and ought to have waited until at least a quarter to twelve before coming himself.
“Poor, dear Lord Darleigh will be feeling quite overwhelmed, Joseph,” she had told him.
“Not at all,” Vincent had assured them, smelling coffee and hearing the rattle of china as Martin carried in a tray. “How delightful it is to receive such a warm welcome.”
He had been rather glad he had not been able to see the expression on Martin’s face.
Several minutes later, just as the Reverend Parsons was setting the finishing touches to his windy welcome speech, Mr. Kerry had arrived with elderly Mrs. Kerry, his mother, and the volume of conversation had increased considerably, for she was deaf.
At the first slight lull in the chatter, perhaps twenty minutes after that, Miss Waddell had delivered her pièce de résistance. There was to be an assembly tomorrow evening, she had announced, in the assembly rooms above the Foaming Tankard Inn, and dear Viscount Darleigh was to be the guest of honor.
And at last light had dawned in Vincent’s brain. His mother! And his sisters! They had guessed he might come here, and they had probably used a pot of ink apiece writing letters to everyone they knew in Barton Coombs and within a few miles of its outer bounds.
So much for his few days of quiet relaxation.
With a smile on his face and thanks on his lips, he had suffered ladies dashing at him from all directions—to pour his coffee, to position his napkin on his lap, to lift his cup and saucer from the tray and set them on the table beside him where he could easily reach them, to set them in his hand a moment later lest he have difficulty finding them on the side table, to choose the best cake from the plate of Mrs. Fisk’s offerings and set it on his plate, to set his plate in his other hand, to set his cup and saucer back down on the table so that he would have one hand free to eat his cake—there were some amused titterings over that—to … Well, they would have eaten and drunk for him if they could.
He had forced himself to remember that their ministrations were kindly meant.
But an assembly?
A dance?
And right now, this evening, a private evening visit to the Marches at Barton Hall.
Perhaps, he thought in one moment of weakness, he ought to have married Miss Dean a month or so ago and put himself out of his misery.
Lady March had been relieved to learn that Viscount Darleigh was not coming to dinner. Henrietta was disappointed that he was coming at all. But neither lady had been able to get any further information from Sir Clarence when they had asked about his lordship’s appearance and demeanor. He had merely smirked and looked self-important and told them that they would see.
“Which is more than Darleigh is able to do,” he had added, his smirk widening and deepening, making him look like the cartoon Sophia had drawn of him the evening Henrietta had first danced with the Marquess of Wrayburn.
Henrietta picked at her food during dinner. She was dressed for the evening in her silver shot-silk ball gown, an extravagance for an evening in the country, perhaps, but suited to the grandness of the occasion, her mama assured her. For tonight a viscount was coming to call, and such an opportunity might not come again.
Aunt Martha was looking rather formidable in purple satin with matching turban and tall, nodding plumes. Sir Clarence could not turn his head more than an inch in either direction. If he did, he would be in dire danger of piercing an eyeball with a starched shirt point.
How silly they all looked, especially when their expected guest was a blind man.
Oh, how Sophia’s fingers itched for her charcoal.
She herself was wearing one of Henrietta’s cast-off day dresses, which she had cut down to size. In the process, of course, she had completely destroyed any style and flow the dress had once had, for she was very much smaller than Henrietta in every imaginable way. Sophia did not go so far as to tell herself that it was a good thing Lord Darleigh was blind. That would be cruel. And it would presuppose the ludicrous notion that he might notice her if he could see. But truly she looked like someone’s abandoned scarecrow.
At the precise moment the guest was expected, there were the sounds of carriage wheels and horses’ hooves and creaking, jingling harness from the courtyard below the drawing room, and everyone except Sophia leapt to their feet and smoothed out skirts and checked that plumes had not wilted and straightened a cravat and cleared throats and looked nervous and then … smiled with gracious ease as they turned in a body toward the opening door.