Bexley-Smythe Quintet 02 - Rhyme and Reason (6 page)

Lady Teasdale and Rose both stood to follow him.

“I’ll stay, Mama,” Bea said, moving to sit beside Mattie and squeeze her hand.

Lady Teasdale turned and scowled at her daughter. “Very well.
I’ll send a maid in with tea.” Then she took Rose brusquely by the elbow and hauled her bodily from the drawing room.

Mattie couldn’t help but notice Rose’s desperate attempts to look back over her shoulder at the two of them. Nor could she blame the girl.

“Only a week?” Mattie said to her friend with a painfully hushed whisper. “But what if…?”

The rest of her question trailed off her lips and completely out of her mind
. Mr. Goddard came into the drawing room, filling the doorway with his frame like very few men of her acquaintance could possibly do and very nearly robbing her of her breath with the combined look of determination and mortification upon his face.

He should have brought flowers, like Sir Lester had done yesterday.

It was a little late to think of such a detail, however, as he was currently standing
at the threshold of the very same red drawing room where he’d felt so terribly out of place, once more feeling like he couldn’t possibly belong in such a setting. Now, though, he also felt like a dolt for not having brought Lady Matilda flowers. How was he supposed to woo her if he couldn’t even remember such a simple thing as that? Ladies liked flowers and operas and poetry, things of the sort which he more often than not didn’t even realize existed.

Perhaps he ought to start paying them more attention.

Berating himself over his own ignorance wouldn’t solve anything, though, so he did his best to push those negative thoughts aside.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Goddard,”
the brunette beside Lady Matilda said. She stood and crossed the room to him, smiling all the while. “I’m Beatrice Emery, Lord Teasdale’s eldest daughter and Lady Matilda’s friend. I’m not sure we’ve properly thanked you for all your assistance.”

Miss Emery’s
beauty was the sort that could stagger a man, at least if he was ill-prepared to be struck by it. She stood nearly as tall as Thomas, with arms and legs that stretched for days and a long, swooping neck. She was the very epitome of graceful elegance.

Even still, he found his gaze ret
urning to Lady Matilda already. Her gown today was the color of a ripe peach. It matched the bit of color in her cheeks in the most charming manner. Her hands were folded neatly upon her lap, her hair knotted loosely behind her head with a ribbon the shade of clotted cream twisting through it.

Finally, he remembered that Miss Emery had spoken to him, had thanked him for helping Lady Matilda.
“It was…” It was the only thing he could have done in that instant. Taking her into his arms and carrying her to safety had been as natural to him as breathing, as unconscious and involuntary an action as waking when the sun rose each morning.

“It was heroic,” Miss Emery finished for him. “You were just like a knight on a white charger, coming to rescue her.”

It hadn’t felt heroic in the slightest, especially when he remembered it was his own shout which had startled her so much that she lost her footing. He wanted to say as much, but Miss Emery had taken his arm and was guiding him more fully into the drawing room. He allowed her to lead him to a chintz armchair at an angle from Lady Matilda, and sat when she nudged him to do so.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Goddard,” Lady Matilda said.

“Is your head well today?” he asked while Miss Emery skirted around the room to sit slightly apart from the two of them at the opposite end of a red silk sofa.

“Yes, thank you.”

Then an uncomfortable silence descended upon them. Thomas hadn’t the first clue what sort of things he ought to speak to a lady of her breeding about. Every time he thought of a conversational topic, he had second thoughts and then mentally castigated himself for it.

Lady Matilda stared at her hands where they were resting upon her lap.

This would never work. Yet he
had
to make it work. He couldn’t let her fall into whatever trap Hammond was laying for her.

The
tick-tock, tick-tock
sounds coming from the Bornholm clock on the wall opposite the hearth seemed to grow louder until Thomas could swear it was the echo of his heart beating in anxiety.

Miss Emery delicately cleared her throat, and both Thomas and Lady Matilda turned expectantly to her. “Not long before you arrived, Mr. Goddard, Lady Matilda and I were discussing a letter she’d received in the post this morning. Her brother-in-law, Lord Montague, wrote to inform her of the arrival of his heir.”

Lady Matilda visibly relaxed. Her shoulders dropped, and her lips parted slightly to let a pent-up breath escape.

“Congratulations on the newest member of
your family,” Thomas said. Thank goodness Miss Emery was present to help steer their conversation. He was sure he would stumble and make a fool of himself otherwise. “Is this your first niece or nephew?”

She nodded. “Only my sister Georgie, Lady Montague, has married at this point. Freddie and I are both still unwed, and Edie is not yet out of the schoolroom. Although, I daresay she’ll have beaux beating down Mama’s door once she has her come out.
”

Thomas laughed at the thought, imagining a younger version of Lady Matilda.
“I would imagine your brother Lord Stalbridge must be overwhelmed at the thought of three sisters out at once—and having to decide which suitors he should allow, and which he should not.”
Like Hammond.

“Edie won’t be out for a couple more years. Perhaps by then
Freddie and I will have married and Mama need only worry about Edie.”

Mama
, she’d said, not her brother. That was an interesting turn of the conversation, and not in a direction he was comfortable with. Why had she so quickly deflected their discussion away from her brother?

“And Stalbridge has not married either?” Thomas asked. “Is he not keen to
fill his nursery? He’ll need to provide an heir at some point, especially since it seems he has only sisters and not brothers.”

Lizzie came through the doors carrying a tea tray,
this time successfully delivering the implements without nearly spilling it all, and Lady Matilda instantly set to work pouring three cups. Her lips were set in a straight line, pressed tightly together, and her shoulders drew up again.

So Stalbridge
is not a comfortable topic of discussion
, he thought to himself as the maid left the drawing room as silently as she’d come. A redirection was in order again.

Thomas took the cup she handed him and sipped from it. “My sister Abby only recently informed us all she is with child as well.”

“I’m sure His Grace is well pleased with the news,” Lady Matilda said stiffly.

A strange desire to reveal the blemishes within his family struck him. Would she be more
willing to reveal the less-than-perfect bits of her own life then? “I wouldn’t know,” he said cautiously. “Danby has only known of our existence for a brief time.”

The teacup in her hand clattered down to its saucer. “Oh,” she said, her mouth holding that perfect O shape for a moment. “I didn’t…”

Miss Emery silently took the teacup and saucer away from Lady Matilda and then slipped back to her end of the sofa, not saying a word.

“You didn’t know anything about me or my family,” Thomas finished for her. “As I don’t know anything about you or yours.” He met her eyes and held his gaze there, trapped in the intensity of her stare. “My father was illegitimate.”

She never so much as blinked. “But they told me you… I assumed you were the younger son of a younger son, something of that nature.”

“I’m not.” He sipped again.

She seemed merely curious, not appalled. Better to press on and get it all out than lose his nerve. After all, if they
did
marry as he wished, then she would have to know it all eventually. These weren’t the sorts of secrets a man could keep from his wife.

“My grandmother’s family turned her out when she wouldn’t reveal who had fathered a child on h
er. She found employment as a maid of all work. My father worked his way up to become the butler for Lord Pritchard’s estate, and I worked as a groom there until—well, until Danby changed things.”

Lady Matilda didn’t turn away upon learning just how low his birth had been. She met his gaze fully, unwaveringly, unflinchingly. “He provided you with a living and a boost up in Society,” she mused aloud.

“Yes. Danby gave Abby a dowry so she could marry the Earl of Fordingham’s brother. The Fordingham estate borders the Pritchard estate, and she had been desperately in love with Wesley Cavendish for as long as I can remember. She’d accepted the fact that she could never marry him, however, until Danby came along and changed everything. He gave my brother and me each a settlement, and he purchased the horse breeding business I run.”

“And your brother?” she prodded. “Has he married?”

Thomas couldn’t stop himself from chuckling at that. “Robert has not married, though I’m sure Danby has done everything he possibly could to secure a bride well above his station, just as he’s done with me.”

He shouldn’t have said that last part, but he had.

“Lady Matilda, I know I’m not—”

“You’re a man who would not be bothered by marrying a lady who might be attached to some scandals,”
Miss Emery interrupted him, speaking for the first time in a good while. She gave Lady Matilda a pointed look but kept speaking to him. “So in theory, Mr. Goddard, if your potential bride had a scandalous brother, it wouldn’t matter to you in the least.”

“No,” he said slowly.

What sort of scandals might Lord Stalbridge be embroiled in? But then, while Thomas had never truly been part of the
ton
, he knew enough to be well aware of far more scandals than he ever would have cared to discover. Stalbridge could have well and truly destroyed his family already. This was even more reason Lady Matilda needed a man like Thomas to protect her from the scoundrels of the world like Hammond.

He took a brief sip from his teacup.
“I’ve never really been part of Society, although my grandfather seems to be intent upon changing that. The scandals of the
ton
don’t really affect me one way or another.”

A broad smile overtook Miss Emery’s features. “That’s lovely to hear, Mr. Goddard. Oh!”
She looked out the open door into the corridor. “I do believe I just heard someone call for me. Would you excuse me for a moment?”

Thomas hadn’t heard any such thing.
He stifled a chuckle at Miss Emery’s deviousness. She was trying to give them a bit of privacy, even if only for a moment. And while yesterday he had been loath to find himself alone with Lady Matilda, things had changed rather quickly. Today, it seemed a lovely prospect.

“Of course,
” he murmured. He might rather like this Miss Emery.

“Bea!” Lady Matilda
called after her, but to no avail.

Miss Emery was out of the drawing room so fast one might have thought her skirts had caught fire. She even pulled the door nearly closed.

Lady Matilda looked at him sheepishly and then swallowed so hard it was visible, picking up the teapot once more. “More tea?”

She
mustn’t have been counting on her friend’s desertion.

“I still have plenty of tea,” Mr. Goddard said, smiling at her as though he wanted to laugh.

As well he should. Offering him more tea had been rather silly, when she could clearly see that his cup was almost full. But she’d had to say
something
, and asking if he wanted more tea felt better than discussing her brother and all the troubles he’d brought upon the family of late.

Even if Mr. Goddard wouldn’t be bothered by Percy’s scandalous behavior, that didn’t mean she ought to marry him. And if she wasn’t going to marry him, then what did it matter if he knew about
Percy’s penchant for betting money he no longer had and doing Lord only knew what else? It didn’t.

Yet
, for some reason, she still didn’t want him to know.