He sighed as he sat back in his chair by the fireplace. Dash it, but he was tired. Tired without having even exercised today. That, no doubt, was part of the problem.
And tomorrow evening there was to be an assembly at the Foaming Tankard. Vincent grinned as he remembered the petition Miss Waddell had coaxed eleven people to sign protesting the name of the inn when it changed hands—Vincent must have been about six at the time. The inn had once been the respectably named Rose and Crown.
An assembly.
In his honor.
He tipped back his head and laughed aloud. Who but the citizens of Barton Coombs would put on a dance for a blind man?
He must not relax too much into this unexpectedly pleasant interlude, though, he thought as Martin brought in his milk and cake. For Sir Clarence March had made it perfectly clear that his daughter would welcome a marriage proposal from him, and Lady March had extolled her daughter’s virtues and accomplishments. Miss March herself had simpered. They all meant to have him, and what the Marches wanted, they often got, though they had obviously failed miserably with a few dozen dukes and marquesses and earls—were there that many in existence, even if one included the married ones?
He was going to have to watch himself.
Henrietta March had been exquisitely pretty as a girl and had shown promise of extraordinary beauty when Vincent last saw her. She must have been about fifteen at the time. She was dark-haired, dark-eyed, and shapely, and she had always been fashionably, expensively clad in clothes made by a dressmaker—or modiste in Sir Clarence’s vocabulary—who came down from London twice a year. Miss March had always had a French nurse and a French governess, and had never mingled with the children of the village. The closest she had ever come to conversing with them was at her birthday parties, when she stood in a receiving line with her mama and papa and nodded and murmured graciously in acknowledgment of the birthday greetings of all those who filed respectfully by.
Vincent might have felt sorry for her if she had not embraced haughtiness and an air of superiority quite independently of her parents. And his guess was that she had not changed. Certainly she had shown no sign of it this evening. That music her mother had sent for had arrived, but she had not uttered a word of thanks to the mystery woman who had brought it. Her cousin?
Who was she? She had not even been introduced to him or been included in any of the conversation. Her only spoken words all evening had been yes, aunt. But she must have been there all the time.
He felt rather indignant on her behalf, whoever she was. She was apparently a member of the family, yet she had been ignored except when there was an errand to be run. She had sat all evening as quiet as a mouse.
It ought not to bother him.
He reached for his glass of milk, having finished the cake, and drained it.
Good Lord, it had been a ghastly evening. The conversation had been pompous and insipid, the music less than distinguished. While he might happily have endured both if the Marches had been amiable people whom he had once liked, he felt no guilt about looking back on the evening with a shudder of distaste. If he had returned to the village today as plain Vincent Hunt, they would not have deigned to recognize his existence. Did a title make all the difference?
It was a rhetorical question.
It was time for bed.
He wondered how long it would be before his mother was informed of his whereabouts. He would wager that at least a dozen letters had been written and sent on their way today. Everyone would want the distinction of being the first to tell her.
4
There had been several assemblies since Sophia came to Barton Hall to live, but her uncle and aunt and cousin had not attended any of them. It would have been far beneath their dignity to make an appearance and to dance at the Foaming Tankard Inn even if attendance had been reserved to those with some claim to gentility. But village assemblies would not have been worth holding if they had not been open to anyone who cared to go. The thought of rubbing shoulders with a farm laborer or the butcher or the blacksmith was enough to give Aunt Martha the vapors, she had once declared.
Hence Sophia had never attended any of the assemblies either.
All that was about to change, though. For tonight’s assembly was in honor of Viscount Darleigh, and Sir Clarence and Aunt Martha had decided that somehow, by fair means or foul, Henrietta was going to become Viscountess Darleigh of Middlebury Park in Gloucestershire with twenty thousand pounds or so a year at her disposal. Since last evening Henrietta herself had done a complete about-face and now declared that the viscount was by far the most handsome, most genteel, most charming, most everything else that was wonderful of all the gentlemen she had ever met. He had certainly changed since the days when he had been “that horrid Vincent Hunt.”
“Tonight you must seize your chance in both hands, my love,” Aunt Martha said, “for we do not know how long Viscount Darleigh plans to stay at Covington House. He will not dance, of course. You must refuse to dance too, for of course there will be no one else there worth dancing with, and you must spend the time talking with him. If the weather holds—and it looks as if it is going to be a beautiful day—you must suggest a stroll in the outdoors. The assembly rooms are certain to be stuffy. And you must be sure to keep him outside long enough that people will remark upon it. And remark upon it they will, for as the guest of honor he will have everyone’s attention focused upon him. He will feel obliged to do the decent thing, you may be sure, and call upon Papa tomorrow morning, for everyone will expect it of him, and he surely values the good opinion of his former neighbors.”