Her brothers had both been verbally introduced to this special part of adult life by her uncles, so she guessed it was only young unmarried women like herself who weren’t supposed to know it even existed.
She had asked her mother about it, and Caroline had, after a lot of blushing and stuttering, told her she had to wait for the night of her wedding.
Her brothers had blushed just as much as their mother, so they were no help at all with enlightening her, and her best friends were just as ignorant as she was.
So she still remained a virgin, body and mind.
Nicholas, damn his politeness, stopped, forcing her to talk to Devlin instead of just whisking past him at another man’s arm. She could have pinched the poor man for being such a ridiculously polite gentleman.
To save her heart from suffering too much, she gave Devlin her most shining, angelic smile.
“It was a pleasure to meet you again, Your Grace.” When he made an oh-really face, she continued, “You don’t have to believe me, but it’s the truth. Now I have to go, as my family awaits me in the hallway, and if I don’t get there soon my brothers will probably kill me for leaving them alone at a gathering with our mother and a lot of unmarried young ladies.”
“Well,” he drawled, as he took a step closer to her, forcing poor Nicholas to step back so she wouldn’t be caught between them. “I do want to meet you again, so you’d better hurry.”
Fanny didn’t know how to respond. She wanted to believe him, to think he actually meant what he said, that he wanted to see her again. But then again, he was used to conversing lightly with ladies of all ages. He could probably flirt in his sleep.
She couldn’t tell by looking at him.
He was a picture of a dandy and a libertine, looking handsome and fashionably bored. The warmth she thought she had seen in his eyes was long gone, and the cold, unreadable wall was back.
He was the duke again.
“Goodbye,” was all she managed to say before she gave him a curtsy and almost ran toward the entrance, dragging poor Nicholas with her.
When she had slipped through the doorway, she quickly looked back—and caught his eye as he watched her leave. He seemed a little confused, as if he wasn’t used to a woman behaving as she did.
Nicholas, the perfect gentleman, fetched her coat and helped her put it on. He gave her a warm smile as he put her hand in the crook of his arm and led her to her family, waiting for her in the large carriage that would take them the short ride to their townhouse at No. 20 Berkeley Square.
His hand held on to hers a little longer than good etiquette might allow, and his beautiful brown eyes looked seriously at her when he lifted her hand to his lips and gave her a slow peck on her hand.
Fanny blushed, as she was feeling awkward and surprisingly unmoved. As gracefully as she could, she removed her hand from his and bade him a polite but deterrent goodbye.
When the carriage drove away, she could still see him standing there, looking a little excited and afraid. She guessed she would have to avoid him as much as possible in the future.
She truly didn’t want him to ask for her hand in marriage, and she was thankful he hadn’t asked her to join him at the Green Park picnic the next day. She didn’t want to hurt him by turning him down.
She sighed and looked out through the window. Love was such a nuisance sometimes.
Chapter 5
Her brothers were as irritated as she had expected.
“I don’t want to go to the picnic.” Sebastian’s surly tone made his unhappiness abundantly clear.
Sin was sitting on the opposite seat, laughing at Sebastian, who made a face at his older brother. Their mother, beside her younger son, patted his knee with so much motherly support Fanny knew her mother was up to something.
She leaned closer to her father and rested her cheek against his warm shoulder while she watched her mother trying not to look too pleased.
“It was you, not I, who invited Miss Archer to the picnic,” she said sternly.
When Sebastian snorted, she frowned at him. “Sebastian Darling, this is not the way to address your mother. I thought I had raised you better than that.”
Sebastian pushed her hand from his knee. “Oh, come on! You more or less forced me into asking Emma to join us tomorrow.”
“I did not,” Caroline said severely, while looking too guilty for anyone to believe her.
“Oh, come on,” Sebastian repeated. “When she said she wasn’t going to the picnic because of her mother’s migraine, you told her I was going there without a companion.”
Sebastian was starting to look so frustrated Fanny wanted to calm him down before the discussion turned from skirmish to war.
“In my opinion, I don’t think Mother did anything wrong. She merely pointed out how you were going to the picnic by yourself. By no means should that have forced you to anything.”
Sebastian was speechless for a second, then threw a pointing finger toward Caroline and accused, “She told Emma—in front of me, mind you—that I am too shy to ask someone to join me, and Emma immediately turned to me and offered me her company, as she didn’t want me to go alone to this special occasion.”
The marquess, Sin, and Fanny all turned their heads toward Caroline, staring at her in disbelief.
“For heaven’s sake, Caroline,” George said under his breath.
Sin laughed and winked toward Sebastian, making his brother even angrier, while Caroline twisted her handkerchief between her fingers, not too pleased with the development of this conversation.
“I just wanted to help him a little on the way.”
“Help him?” Fanny asked without really wanting an answer. “You more or less threw him at her. You told her he was too shy, and that gave Emma the impression he likes her. How could you, Mama? You put Sebastian in an awfully awkward position with this.”
“Do you know what’s even worse?” Sin asked with an evil grin. “Now Miss Archer will tell all her friends about Sebastian and his shyness, and before you know it he will be surrounded by young women, all of them wishing to help poor Sebastian Darling out of his misery.”
Sebastian groaned and gave Caroline a dark look.
As the carriage stopped in front of their townhouse, George pointed at his wife.
“You will talk to Miss Archer tomorrow, and I don’t care what you tell her, but you will make sure she understands that Sebastian isn’t, and has never been, in love with her or even slightly interested in her.”
“I can’t be so harsh,” Caroline cried out. “It will hurt the poor girl’s heart, and she will be devastated. Emma Archer is a gentle young lady, and deserves to be treated better.”
“You should have thought earlier about what she deserves,” George said as he climbed out of the carriage. “Or were you too caught up in playing Lady Easton’s kind of game?”
Caroline gasped with horror over his rude remark before she made a face to her husband’s retiring back.
“I saw that,” he shouted over his shoulder as he walked through the front door of the house, followed closely by his two sons.
Caroline sighed and slumped back against the velvet cushions, looking pathetic and regretful.
Fanny smiled lovingly toward her mother.
It wasn’t easy being such a caring person and trying to embrace everyone without hurting anyone. Emma Archer was a good person too, even though she obviously lacked common sense, as she let Charmaine walk all over her.
It wasn’t a nice thing Caroline had done, giving the poor girl the impression Sebastian had warm feelings for her, as Emma was almost on the shelf and would probably marry the first person who asked her. She was, after all, twenty years old. The clock was ticking.
Fanny put her hand on her mother’s.
“I’ll talk to her, Mama, and try to make her understand there isn’t anything growing between her and Sebastian.”
“I never meant this mess,” Caroline sobbed.
George’s remark had apparently done a good job of instilling a sense of remorse, Fanny thought, as she followed her mother up the steps to the front door. Caroline really didn’t like being compared to Lady Easton.
The butler of the Darling family’s townhouse, aptly named Butler, waited in the hallway, and in a few minutes he had them relieved of their coats and seated in the airy drawing room with hot cups of tea in their hands. Delicious cucumber sandwiches and scones filled with strawberry jam were placed on a silver tray on the small table between the sofas.
“Night food is really the best thing,” Sin said, and stuffed his mouth with a sandwich.
“My regards to Mrs. Lloyd,” Caroline told Butler, who stood at the doorway, prepared to bring his employers anything they wished for.
He had been with the family since Fanny’s grandfather, Hannibal, was young, and had worked his way up through the servant hierarchy until reaching the pinnacle at the job of butler, when old Jenkins passed away twenty years earlier. He, like a few others of the servants who had been with the Darlings for many years, was more of a family member than an employee, and he was like an uncle for the children of the house rather than a servant. The family had tried for years to get him to join them, especially at family occasions as this one, but he always declined.
When the two youngest of George’s brothers joined them, Rake and Jamie, Sebastian immediately snatched the last scone from the tray before either of them had a chance to grab it, and shoved it into his mouth.
“You look like a hamster,” Rake told his obnoxious nephew, as he sat down in an unoccupied armchair. “You’d better be careful no one catches you and puts you in a small cage.”
“That would be a sight.” Sin laughed and poked his brother hard with his elbow.
Sebastian grunted something that sounded like a curse. It was well muffled by his mouthful of scone.
“Did you have a good time?” George asked his younger brothers.
“Indeed we did,” Jamie said jovially as he sat down beside Fanny and grabbed a cup of tea with a lemon twist. “But not as good as Fanny had.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you, Lady Francesca. You met Hereford again. If my memory serves me right, you were head over heels in love with him the last time you saw him.”
Fanny looked at him with scorn.
“I was five years old. I didn’t know better.”
“But still…”
“What? There is nothing to it. We met and agreed it had been a while, we danced, and then we said goodbye.”
“That’s it?” Sin let out, aghast. “You mean we had to live with you all that time while you were moping around, mourning the loss of your Prince Charming, and now, when you finally meet him again as an adult, you think of it as nothing?”
“That’s right.” Fanny met her mother’s probing gaze. “It
was
nice to have some kind of closure in meeting him again, but that’s it.”
“Of course,” Caroline said in a very I-don’t-believe-a-word-but-to-avoid-war-we’ll-let-it-be kind of way. She stood and gave her family a contented smile. “Thank you, my dears, for this evening. It was good of you to accompany us to Fanny’s first outing as a debutante. Now I will retire to my chambers, to get some sleep before the picnic tomorrow.”
George gave Fanny a kiss on the forehead before he followed his wife out of the room.
The remaining five sipped quietly on their tea for a while, enjoying the silence of the night. Jamie put his arm around Fanny, and she gave him a sleepy smile as she laid her head against his shoulder.
The four men sat silently as they watched her fall asleep. No one said anything until they were sure she was sleeping soundly, and then Rake looked gravely at Sin.
“So what do we know happened?”
Sin shrugged. “I’m not sure. When she went to the restroom, I kind of lost her. Mother more or less forced me to ask Penelope to dance with me, so I had to leave my watch.”
When Sebastian gave him an accusing gaze, Sin hissed, “You, better than anyone, should know Mother’s not-so-subtle way of taking care of business.”
Sebastian winced at the truth of his brother’s words, having the Miss Archer situation too fresh in mind, and gave his brother an apologetic shrug.
“Well, I met them just inside the balcony doors,” Rake said slowly, “And I can bet my life I caught them only minutes after they entered the ballroom from the balcony.”
“What?” the three other Darlings exclaimed, making Fanny stir in her sleep, and they had to wait until she was calm again.
They were all too aware of what could happen with a young girl out on the balcony, as they had all been there, and they had all enjoyed the darkness.
A lot.
“When I think about it,” Rake mused. “Fanny was blushing, and Devlin was drooling all over her. I didn’t think so much of it then, as I was happy to meet Devlin again after all this time.”
“Where has he been?” Jamie asked curiously.
“As far as I know, he’s been on the continent for many years now, in the military, and I think it’s high time he did return, as I have missed him profoundly.”
“A couple of years is an extraordinarily long time for a high-born nobleman to remain as a foot soldier on enemy soil. I can’t think the French like our aristocracy more than their own.”
“I don’t know more than you do, as I only met him for a second or two, and then his attention was on Fanny.”
“There is something between them, anyone could tell, and we have to guard Fanny harder, so she won’t slip through our net again. We don’t want her alone with a womanizer like Devlin,” Sin said as he unwrapped his long legs and stood up.
Jamie and Sebastian agreed. Only Rake remained silent, with a strange look on his face.
“You know,” he said slowly, “I think I wouldn’t mind if Fanny ends up marrying him. Devlin is a really good friend, honest and reliable, and he would never disrespect Fanny or us by mistreating her in any way. And isn’t it said a reformed libertine makes the best husband?”
“You might be right about Devlin as a friend,” Jamie said sternly, “But it doesn’t mean he would be a good husband for her.”