“The offer has not been formally made yet,” her father said more cautiously. He turned his head to smile fondly at his eldest daughter and reached across the seat to squeeze her cold hand. “But there can surely be little doubt that it will.”
Philippa’s two sisters and their governess were coming behind in a second carriage. Philippa felt an overwhelming longing to be with them again, back in the schoolroom, where life was dull but safe. She wondered fleetingly how she would be feeling at this moment if she had never met Julian. Would she be filled with excited anticipation, even if Viscount Darleigh was blind? But it was a question impossible to answer, for she had met Julian, and so her heart was in her shoes and heavy with dread.
The front doors had opened and spilled out ladies by the time the carriages drew to a halt on the terrace. Philippa recognized Mrs. Pearl in their midst, Grandmama’s friend, the viscount’s grandmother. Soon they were engulfed in greetings and introductions, while the girls and their governess were whisked off indoors.
Mrs. Pearl introduced them to Mrs. Hunt, her daughter and the viscount’s mother, and to his three sisters, whose names Philippa forgot the instant she heard them. Philippa had a bright smile on her face, and they all looked back at her with identical smiles and frank curiosity. Mrs. Pearl called upon her daughter to agree that she had not exaggerated Miss Dean’s prettiness, and Mrs. Hunt declared that indeed she had not.
And then they were taken up to the drawing room, a magnificent apartment overlooking the parterre gardens, where they were introduced to the sisters’ husbands, and there were more smiles and handshakes and curtsies and bows.
And then everyone stood back, for there was another gentleman standing farther into the room, close to the windows. Viscount Darleigh. Philippa was painfully conscious of everyone’s attention focusing upon their first meeting.
She curtsied and murmured his name.
He bowed and murmured hers.
He was of slightly above average height, slender and elegant. He had fair, wavy hair and a handsome, good-humored face. His eyes, large and very blue, were—sad irony—his best feature.
Philippa felt her heart sink lower than it already was—if that were possible. She had hoped for an ugly, boorish, ill-bred, unkempt, bad-tempered man, even though Mrs. Pearl had described him quite otherwise. She would have felt pity for such a man, she supposed, for she could not imagine an affliction much worse than blindness. But at least then her mama and papa would have recognized his unsuitability as a husband for her and would have found a way of rescuing her. They loved her, after all. They wanted a happy marriage for her as well as an eligible one.
He was not boorish. He proceeded to converse with her parents, asking them about their journey, hoping it had not been tedious. He apologized for bringing them away from London at a time when they—and Miss Dean—must have been enjoying the social entertainments of the Season. He hoped their stay at Middlebury Park and the company of friends would atone for what they would miss in town.
Viscount Darleigh was charming as well as handsome, and he had the uncanny ability to look in the direction of the person who was speaking almost as if he could see that person. He moved about with the aid of a cane but with surprising confidence. It was clear that he had learned how to cope with his blindness at least within the confines of his own home.
If circumstances had been different, Philippa admitted through the rest of the day, she might well have been happy to fall in love with Vincent Hunt, Viscount Darleigh.
But her heart was already taken.
She noticed a few interesting things about him, perhaps because she was observing him so closely, desperately hoping to find a way out of having to marry him.
He did not like being treated as a blind man. The solicitude with which his mother and sisters treated him annoyed him. She was not quite sure how she knew it, for he was careful to smile at them and thank them each time they did something for him. But she did know it, just as she knew that he was irritated by the way their voices changed when they spoke to him. They spoke gently, as one would speak to a child or an invalid. They tended to use the same phrases rather frequently—I understand and I do not mind—to assure him that tending to him was no trouble at all. But Philippa could see his lips slightly thinning each time. It was bothersome to him, if not to them.
And the suspicion grew upon her as that first day and then the next went by that the idea of finding him a bride, of bringing her here for his approval, had not been his. He had five close female relatives—mother, grandmother, and sisters—all of whom clearly adored him and would give their lives for him if such a sacrifice were ever called for. They were smothering him. And now they wanted a wife for him so that she would smother him with love and care too.
Poor gentleman!
How could she escape becoming that wife?
How could she get back to London before Julian arrived there and left again? Had her letter reached him in time, before he left home? What if it had not? What would he think if he arrived in London and she was not there? They had waited two years. And happiness had been so nearly within their grasp at last. But nearly was not close enough. There is many a slip twixt cup and lip. She wished her grandmother had not always been so ready with those old adages.
The trouble was that the stay at Middlebury Park really was pleasant. It was pleasant to be treated as an adult at last, to be included in conversations, to have her comments and opinions both solicited and listened to.
But all too often she was pushed into Viscount Darleigh’s sole company, even if they were in a room with others, as they almost always were. Mama was always punctilious about her being properly chaperoned. But everyone, Mama included, contrived ways of allowing them to conduct an almost private conversation.