Nick wound a tendril of Cara’s hair around his finger and wondered what form that revenge might take. Perhaps she would tie him to the bed and torture him with the fan. She glanced quizzically at him as he groaned.
Poor Aunt Cara! She was smiling at the marquess in a positively addled fashion, although every damsel learned from the cradle the folly of exposing her heart on her sleeve. Aunt Cara had exposed a great deal more than her heart, as anyone with half an eye could see. Clandestine meetings, assignations—but when had there been an opportunity for matters to progress so far?
Oho! All those headaches. Zoe’s eyes narrowed as she filed this information away. “Lord Mannering is your True Love! This changes everything. Poor Aunt Cara. For your True Love to turn out to be such a—a—”
“Slug,” supplied Lord Mannering. “Toad. Maw-worm.”
Cara winced. He had remembered. “What makes you think that Lord Mannering is my True Love?” she inquired, thus distracting the marquess from his musing about which amatory position might be most suitable for a gentleman with a damaged back.
“Why else would you have married Norwood?” Zoe said reasonably. “Unless you were in love with someone else? I’m glad to have the business explained. Although I don’t suppose you would wish me to tell that to the people who keep asking me.”
“I would much prefer that you did not.” Cara refused to look at Nick, who took her hand nonetheless and raised it to his lips.
“I don’t think you should do that,” Zoe said sternly. “It’s me you’re going to marry, if you will recall.”
The marquess frowned at her over Cara’s fingertips. “You really are the most tiresome chit. The truth is, I don’t even like you much.”
“Oh!” Zoe clasped her hands to her breast, not the wisest of reactions, since she was still clutching the scone, and consequently smeared crumbs and butter all over her carriage dress, as well as her white collar. After Daisy leapt up to lend her assistance, not even the pink roses and ribbons on Zoe’s bonnet remained unscathed.
Zoe took off that item and set it on the floor, out of the dog’s sight. “Are you saying that you
didn’t
come to my papa’s house to make me an offer, my lord?”
Nick had certainly tried to say so, several times. “I did not.”
“But you said—”
“I
said
I wished to speak with your father. I didn’t say what about.”
Zoe watched as Lord Mannering pressed his lips to Cara’s fingers, and she raised her other hand to touch his bruised cheek, and leapt to a conclusion that might have smote her sooner, had she not been so self-involved and young: Zoe hadn’t been able to engage the marquess’s heart because it had already been engaged elsewhere. “It was all a sham, wasn’t it? You only pretended to be interested in me, Lord Mannering, so that Beau would bully Aunt Cara into coming to town.”
The marquess glanced at her. “Well, yes.”
A terrible blow to a damsel’s pride to find out in so rude a manner that her fiancé preferred someone else. Zoe snatched up the fan and fluttered it. “You needn’t think that I shall fall into the dumps.”
“Nothing so extreme,” soothed Nick. “You are merely going to decide that we wouldn’t suit, and cry off.”
Wouldn’t suit? The most elusive bachelor in London wouldn’t suit her? A marquess, to boot? No one would believe such a silly thing. Besides, Zoe wasn’t entirely convinced that she wished to cry off, and thereby forfeit her chance of becoming a marchioness.
Lord Mannering and her aunt were still making sheep’s eyes at each other, which was hardly what Zoe had anticipated regarding the Experiencing of Life. She consoled herself that any step along life’s pathway was probably better than none. Even if it meant she had to temporarily give up her dream of being wed in St. George’s, Hanover Square. “I’ve made a muddle, haven’t I?” she sighed.
Zoe was at her most appealing in this rare moment of self-doubt. Cara leaned forward to touch her hand. Even Nick regarded her with slightly less disfavor. “You didn’t make a muddle all by yourself. I
am
guilty of using you in an attempt to lure your aunt to town. Since you’ve made no secret of your opinion that I’m bordering on decrepitude, no one will think it odd of you to cry off.”
Zoe wondered if the marquess
was
in his dotage. It would explain many things. “I can’t cry off now, for the whole world knows we were caught in a compromising situation, and I don’t wish to look like bachelor’s fare, thank you very much! Not that
I
care about such stuff, but you may be sure Beau does. He has become positively prudish of late.” She pushed away Daisy, who wished to lick her face. “I don’t suppose you’d care to shoot each other, or drink poison, or fall upon a sword?”
“Odo, Fenella, and Brasilia,” said Cara, in response to Nick’s puzzled look. “And no, we would not.”
A pity. Zoe had rather fancied such a dramatic end to her proposal. “Then I see nothing else for it. I shall simply tell Beau the truth, and ask him to find a way out of this coil. However, Lord Mannering, you must promise me that you will reform. Beau wouldn’t wish to see Aunt Cara hurl herself off the battlements, or be eaten by a bear, because she found you in the throes of ardor with someone else.” Zoe paused and looked thoughtful. “Well, Beau might not mind so much, but Cousin Ianthe almost certainly would!”
The various members of the Loversall household were gathered in the drawing room, Ianthe in her usual position behind the tea tray, which on this occasion held a coffee urn in Pontypool Japan, decorated with a rustic landscape featuring sheep. Cara perched on the sofa near the fireplace, and Beau lounged in a deep-seated chair, with Daisy leaning against his knee. All were watching Zoe pace the carpet, gesturing and declaiming dramatically. “And so,” she concluded, “you see that it was all a great misunderstanding. It isn’t me who Lord Mannering wants, but Aunt Cara.” She clasped her hands to her bosom. “True Love will have its way!”
Beau eyed his sister. “This exceeds all belief.”
Cara was growing annoyed with so many people—well, actually just two of them, if she didn’t include herself—expressing surprise that the marquess should want her. “What exceeds belief?” she snapped. “That someone should think I wasn’t an antidote?”
Beau recalled that his sister had a temper of her own, though thankfully not equal to his daughter’s. “That’s not what I meant.” He looked at his daughter. “You aren’t going to try and tell me Mannering didn’t make you flattering overtures.”
Zoe noticed a butter stain on her sleeve, and rubbed absently at it. “Well, yes, he did. But that was only because he wished for you to send for Aunt Cara to show me the error of my ways. She is
his
True Love, you see, but then she went and married Norwood.”
Ah. There was one mystery explained. For a woman who loved one man to abruptly marry another made perfect sense for, and to, a Loversall. Beau turned back to Cara. “You and Mannering.”
“He
did
give her the Sophora japonica,” Ianthe pointed out. “A very romantic gesture, don’t you think?” Beau eyed the sapling, drooping in its wooden pot before a tall window. The tree had taken a marked dislike to being dragged all about the town. “‘You’re not planting that thing in
my
garden! It looks like something the dog dragged in,” he said.
Cara thought she might plant itch-weed in her brother’s garden, and train it to climb up the wall at night, and creep into his window, and invade his bed. “I wouldn’t dream of it. I shall take my Sophora japonica home with me to the Cotswolds when I leave, which may be very soon.”
Beau didn’t wish his sister to leave just yet. There was a wedding to plan. “No need to get on your high ropes. I was merely a bit surprised.” He gazed sternly upon his daughter. “I don’t know what rig you think you’re running, miss, but I’m here to tell you that you shan’t.”
Zoe stamped her little foot. “You’re not listening, Beau, and it makes me very cross. Surely you don’t wish Aunt Cara to turn out like Casimir, or Drusilla, or Odo!”
Casimir and Odo, Beau recollected. Both had been sapskulls. “Drusilla?” he inquired.
“The sword,” offered Ianthe. “Such a
final
step, I’ve always thought. After all, one never knows what may happen on the morrow.”
Beau had a notion that the morrow would prove depressingly like today, and the day before it. His little soldier—which hadn’t been so little in its prime, but certainly was a sorry specimen in its current state—would march no more, alas. Yes, and why the devil was Ianthe so cheerful? It was most unlike her.
Beau needed some brandy. Where was the blasted decanter? There it sat, empty, by the coffeepot.
Empty? His good smuggled French brandy all drunk up? Beau realized then that the ladies of his household looked a little odd, and furthermore that all three were sipping coffee instead of tea. He hoped the thieves had appreciated the quality of their tipple, and wondered if they were foxed.
This suspicion was not unfounded. Although Cara’s bodice was no longer buttoned crooked, thanks to Zoe, she still had a rumpled look. Zoe’s carriage dress was speckled with what looked like butter stains. While Ianthe—Difficult to say exactly was different about Ianthe, save that she wasn’t crying. She looked a little fuzzy around the edges somehow.
Beau was disregarding her. It made Zoe cross. She would have to try a little harder to get across her point. Perhaps he would be more understanding if he were brought to understand how shocking it had been for his daughter to find his sister in her own fiancé’s bed. Delicately Zoe hinted, “Aunt Cara is no stranger to the pleasures of the flesh.”
Cara blushed red as a ripe apple. “Zoe!”
Beau didn’t care to know about his sister’s pleasures, especially when he was currently enjoying no pleasures of his own. “I didn’t bring you to town to indulge Zoe in such nonsense, Cara! I am very disappointed in you.”
Dangerously, Cara’s eyes sparkled. “Are you, then?”
Matters would not be advanced were Cara to throw a tantrum. “Mannering is absolutely enraptured,” Ianthe interrupted. “Look at the tree.”
Beau didn’t want to look at the damned tree. “Never have I heard such a bag of moonshine!” he snapped. He waited for Ianthe to burst into a flood of tears, and was startled when she merely gazed at him, and shook her head.
Zoe’s papa was proving to be very stubborn. She sat down on a striped stool at his feet and gazed beseechingly up at him. “I
do
wish you would pay attention, Beau! I’ve had the matter explained to me most clearly—as I’m trying to explain it to you, if only you would listen!—and now that I see how things are, I quite agree that the betrothal must end.”
Beau turned his frown on his daughter. “Can you deny that Mannering was underneath you on the stairway, miss?”
Zoe fluttered her long lashes. “Daisy knocked us over. He just happened to be what I landed on.”
Beau looked at the dog. Daisy wagged her tail. “I suppose you’re going to tell me next that his hand
wasn’t
in the bodice of your dress?”
Zoe squirmed. “Well, yes. But I don’t think he
wanted
it to be there, so that shouldn’t count.”
Beau knew from experience about men’s hands and damsels’ breasts, which there was little sweeter than, unless it was a damsel’s bottom, or perhaps her thigh. A man’s hand didn’t find itself in the vicinity of a damsel’s breast, etcetera, without a certain amount of forethought and planning on its owner’s part. The owner of the hand, that was, not the owner of the breast.
In Zoe’s case, he conceded that she may have had a few forethoughts herself. “I shouldn’t think he really wishes to marry me,” she added. “He called me a limb of Satan, among other things.”
Beau touched one of his daughter’s glowing curls. “You don’t really expect me to believe Mannering wished to speak to me about Cara, puss.”
Zoe rubbed her cheek against his hand. “Queer in him, isn’t it? We can only hope he doesn’t come to repent his choice.”
Beau glanced from his daughter to his sister, who was looking at him as if she wished to give him a good shake. “Whatever Mannering may be he’s not such a mooncalf as all that. I can’t imagine what has possessed your aunt to lend her credence to such a Canterbury tale.”
Cara definitely wanted to shake her brother. First he called her dull and drab, and now he insisted that no man would want her hand. “It’s all true!” she protested. “Every word of it, and more.”
More, was there? Definitely, Beau didn’t want to know. “Then Mannering must be a damned rake-helly fellow, that’s all I can say! You’d do much better to have your squire.”
“Squire Anderley is very knowledgeable,” remarked Ianthe. “He explained to me today that hounds have sterns, not tails, where a fox’s tail is called a brush. Furthermore, hounds do not bark, they speak, and while they are running on the line of a fox they are said to throw tongue. It was all most interesting. I see perfectly why Cara doesn’t want him. Perhaps Zoe would like to marry him instead.”
“No!” said Zoe, and her father, simultaneously. Then Zoe looked thoughtful. “But perhaps
you
—”
“No,” Ianthe said firmly. “I could never marry a man who murders rabbits.” Beau stared at her, astonished by the notion that Ianthe might marry anyone.
“Rabbits?” echoed Cara.
“Rabbits,” insisted Ianthe. “You must know how it is with gentlemen like that. First a rabbit, and then a fox, and the next thing you know they’re being hanged for murdering a magistrate.”
Zoe could have cared less about murdered magistrates. She fixed her papa with a gimlet eye and returned to the attack. “You said Lord Mannering is a rakehell. Surely you wouldn’t wish me to marry a rakehell, Beau!”
Beau regarded his daughter with exasperation. He hadn’t been born yesterday. Thought of how many yesterdays had passed since his birth, and his resultant flagging powers, not to mention his empty brandy decanter, left him further annoyed. His daughter had been compromised, with or without her cooperation, and he meant to see her safely wed, so that his life could then hopefully return to what it once had been. “I didn’t say Mannering was a rakehell. I said he had behaved in a rake-helly manner, which is quite a different thing. We shall go on much better if you cease trying to flimflam me, miss.”