“I was.” Dora curtsied. “Good evening, my lord.”
Agnes, beside her, inclined her head.
He smiled and held out his right hand for Dora’s. “I understand you are to b-be our savior tonight, Miss Debbins,” he said. “If you had not c-come to play for us, we would have been d-doomed to listen to Vincent scrape away at his v-violin all evening.”
Dora set her hand in his and smiled back.
“Ah, but you must not forget, my lord,” she said, “that his lordship has learned those scrapings from me. And I may wish to quarrel with your description of his playing.”
His smile deepened, and Agnes felt an inexplicable indignation. He had set out to charm Dora and was succeeding. She looked far more relaxed than she had when they arrived.
“Ho,” Lord Trentham said, “you had better be careful, Flave. There is none so fierce as a mother in defense of her chick or a music teacher in defense of her pupil.”
“You coined that one on the spot, Hugo, admit it,” the Earl of Berwick said. “It was a good one, though. Mrs. Keeping, you are a painter of some talent, or so Lady Darleigh informs us. In watercolors, is that, or in oils?”
Someone brought them drinks, and conversation flowed with surprising ease for the fifteen minutes or so before the butler came to the door to inform Sophia that dinner was served. But of course conversation flowed easily. These people were members of the haute ton. They were at ease in company and were adept at dispensing good manners and conversation. It would have taken them no time at all to sum up the visitors as they arrived, frightened and tongue-tied despite the fact that they were gentlewomen themselves, on the threshold of the drawing room.
Sophia had arranged the seating for dinner. Agnes found herself being led into the dining room on the very solid arm of Lord Trentham. She was seated halfway along the table, and he took his place beside her. Dora, she noticed, had been given the place of honor to the right of Viscount Darleigh at the head of the table. She had the Duke of Stanbrook on her other side. Poor Dora! She would appreciate the honor being paid her, yet it would surely terrify her too. Except that the duke had bent his head to say something to her, and she was smiling with genuine warmth.
Viscount Ponsonby took the place at Agnes’s other side.
What wretched bad luck, she thought. It would have been bad enough to have had him sitting across from her, but at least then she would not have been expected to converse with him. He had Lady Harper on his other side.
“We are not usually quite so formal,” Lord Trentham said, speaking low. “This is all in your honor and that of Miss Debbins.”
“Well,” she said, “it is good to feel important.”
He looked a formidable gentleman. His shoulders were massive, his hair close-cropped, his face severe. As an officer he would have wielded a sword, but he would surely look more at home swinging an ax. But—a smile lurked in his eyes.
“I used to shake with terror,” he told her, still speaking for her ears only. “I was born to a London merchant who just happened to have enough money to purchase a pair of colors for me when I insisted that I wanted to be a soldier.”
“Oh.” She looked at him with interest. “But your title?”
She would swear he almost blushed.
“That was just daft,” he told her. “Three hundred dead men deserved it more than I did, but the Prince of Wales waxed sentimental over me. It sounds impressive, though, wouldn’t you say? Lord Trentham?”
“I do believe,” she said, “there is a story lurking behind that . . . daftness, my lord, but you look as if you would be embarrassed to tell it. Is Lady Trentham also of the merchant class?”
“Gwendoline?” he said. “Good God, no—pardon my language. She was Lady Muir, widow of a viscount, when I met her at Penderris last year. And she is the daughter and sister of Earls of Kilbourne. If you prick her finger, she bleeds blue. Yet she chose me. Silly of her, would you not say?”
Oh, goodness, Agnes liked him. And after a few more minutes she realized what he was up to. He did not, perhaps, have the sort of polished conversation the other gentlemen had to set ladies at their ease, but he had found another way. If she was a bit uncomfortable, despite the fact that she was a lady born, he was saying, in so many words, how did she think he felt in similar situations, when he was a man of the middle classes?
Wise Lady Gwendoline, to have chosen him, Agnes thought. The lady herself, seated opposite and to their left, was absorbed in something Sir Benedict was telling her.
And then Lady Barclay at his other side touched his sleeve, and he turned his attention to her.
“Agnes,” Lord Ponsonby said from her other side.
She turned toward him, startled, but he was not addressing her. He was making an observation.
“A f-formidable name,” he said. “I am almost g-glad I was unable to keep our appointment.”
She hardly knew where to start.
“Formidable? Agnes?” she said. “And did we have an appointment, my lord? If we did, I was unaware of it. I was not there anyway. I had more important things to do this morning.”
“This morning? And where did you not go this m-morning?” he asked.
What an elementary blunder to have made. She attacked her fish with a vengeance.
“Why formidable?” she asked when she became aware that he was still looking at her, his knife and fork suspended above his plate. “Agnes is a perfectly decent name.”