Rules for Being a Mistress (9 page)

Ludham was instantly diverted. “Does she really live in a castle?” he cried.

“Castle? A farmhouse with battlements!” Lady Dalrymple squawked. “When I think of how I suffered there—! Such cramped quarters! Such indifferent servants! Such noise from that enormous hell-hound of a dog! And, then, when my ankle healed at last, what should happen, but I should fall on the stairs and hurt myself again! I thought we would never leave!”

“A sentiment shared, no doubt, by the Vaughns,” Benedict murmured.

“What?” Lady Dalrymple snapped.

“It must have cost the Vaughns a great deal of money to entertain you for over two months,” Benedict pointed out.

“That is quite their own fault,” the viscountess returned frostily, “for pretending to be rich! I was never so deceived in my life!”

“What about
me
?” cried Mr. Carteret. “I asked the girl to marry me! I’d be in the basket now if she’d said yes.”

“Good God, so would I!” exclaimed Ludham.

“Depend on it, my lord: Miss Vaughn is a fortune hunter!” cried Lady Dalrymple, abandoning the subtle approach completely.

“How fortunate then that she refused to marry your son, madam,” said Benedict.

“Yes,” Lord Ludham agreed. “If she is a fortune hunter, she ought to marry someone with—well, with a
fortune,
you know. Will you tell her, Miss Carteret—since you are such good friends—that my income is ten thousand a year? Well, strictly speaking—I don’t want to deceive anyone—it is nine thousand, seven hundred-odd, you know.” He shrugged helplessly. “My man can get the exact figure.”

Benedict looked at him incredulously. Serena was right to worry about her cousin, he reflected. The young man seemed to have learned nothing from the fiasco with his opera dancer.

“She has the face of an angel,” Ludham sighed blissfully.

“Yes, indeed,” Lady Dalrymple agreed warmly. “Millicent is admired wherever she goes, and, of course, she has twenty thousand pounds…or so my Lord Dalrymple tells me,” she hastily added. “I never concern myself with money, you understand. Nor does Millie, not like some young ladies who must scrape as they can, and calculate as they go. I am but a bird-witted female, my lord, and I don’t pretend to be otherwise.”

“Excuse me,” said Benedict, abruptly, unable to bear any more machinations that were, at least to him, transparent. “I must pay my respects to Lady Serena.”

“What a rude man he is!” cried Lady Dalrymple as he strode off. “He did not even ask Millicent to dance.”

Lord Ludham mumbled some excuse about paying his respects to Lady Serena as well, and scampered off. Lady Dalrymple sighed. Sometimes, even though one did all one can do, things did not turn out as one had hoped. “It will have to be Fitzwilliam, after all,” she said, raising her lorgnette.

“I do not like the Church,” said Millicent. “And he smells bad. I want to be a countess.”

“If Lord Matlock and his two sons should die, you will be,” said her mama. “One never knows. Ah, Mr. Fitzwilliam! Poor Millicent has been longing to see you this age!”

“I daresay Lady Dalrymple thought I was talking about her daughter,” Ludham said when he had caught up with Benedict. “But, really, I was talking of Miss Vaughn.”

“I had guessed as much,” Benedict said politely. “From what I can tell, your lordship speaks of nothing and no one else.”

Ludham took this for an invitation to expand on his favorite subject. “The first time I ever saw Miss Vaughn was in the rain. Naturally, I offered her my umbrella. I told her she was like Venus washed ashore, but I daresay she did not understand me. She told me to go away.”

As Lady Serena regally inclined her head to him, Benedict could not help but notice how black her hair was, the same improbable black as his own. Her beautiful face was painted, too. Her maid was such an artist that it was only detectable in the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and mouth, but, now that he was looking for it, he noticed it. As ever, she was elegantly and simply dressed, neither addicted to the latest fashions nor aloof to them. While the other unmarried women seemed to be coming out of their clothes, Serena’s neckline showed only a modest hint of bosom.

“I see you have met my foolish cousin, Sir Benedict,” Serena said. “Now, Felix, you must not rattle on about the beautiful Miss Vaughn. You will give the unfortunate young lady a reputation before she ever enters society. Ah, Lady Matlock!”

“Serena!” Lady Matlock sailed through the crowd, which parted around her and her daughter like the Red Sea in deference to her exalted rank. The ladies kissed the air around each other’s faces. “You remember Rose, of course.”

Rose was trying to hide behind her mother, but the countess pushed her forward. Obviously uncomfortable in her low-cut gown of dampened muslin, she tried to cover herself with her lace fan, but her mama snatched it away, and all she could do was toy nervously with the pearls at her throat.

Benedict suppressed his burning desire to take off his coat and wrap the half-naked child up in it. He had once been the guardian of a much younger sister. Not in a hundred years would he have permitted Miss Juliet Wayborn to make such a spectacle of herself. Lady Matlock would be fortunate if her daughter did not contract pneumonia, rather than a husband.

Lady Matlock herself was dressed warmly in a garnet-colored velvet gown and a massive brown wig. Numerous chains of gold hung from the precipice of her bosom, twisted together in a hopeless tangle. “Do you dance, Ludham?” she demanded, attacking that gentleman first, by order of precedence.

“I do dance, Lady Matlock,” he answered. “And if I could ever be introduced to Miss Vaughn, what’s more, I
would
dance!”

“Miss Vaughn?” cried Rose eagerly. “Is she here, my lord? I would so like to meet her! Indeed, I have heard so much about her from Lord Westlands that I feel I know her already.”

“Does this Lord Westlands know Miss Vaughn?” Lord Ludham demanded jealously.

“He is her cousin,” replied Rose. “They have known each other all their lives.”

“Is he here? Can he not introduce me?”

“He is back in London now, I believe,” replied Rose. “But we need not apply to him. Here is
another
of the lady’s cousins. Surely, Sir Benedict can introduce us.”

“I, Lady Rose?” Benedict protested. “I never heard of the Vaughns.”

Rose looked scandalized. “You deny them because they are Irish? That is very bad of you, Sir Benedict! In any case, Lady Agatha Vaughn is not Irish. She is Lord Wayborn’s elder sister, and
your
cousin.”

“I’ve never been introduced to Lady Agatha,” said Benedict. “The Derbyshire Wayborns have little to do with humble Surrey Wayborns like myself. I assure you, I had no idea of these ladies being related to me in any way.”

Serena laughed behind her fan. “I should have thought that
all
the Wayborns, both Derbyshire and Surrey, were in St. George’s Church when Miss Juliet Wayborn married the Duke of Auckland.”

Benedict smiled. “Lord Wayborn even disputed my right to walk my sister down the aisle. He wished to do it himself. There were no Vaughns in evidence, however.”

“There was a rift between brother and sister some years ago,” said Rose. “Westlands did not know all the particulars, but he said that Lady Agatha and her daughters must suffer for it all their lives. His father’s resentment, once aroused, is implacable. It’s up to you to help them, Sir Benedict.”

Benedict lifted his brows. “I?”

“Yes! You are her nearest male relative, so you must help her.
And,
as Lady Agatha is too sick to come to you, you must go to her. It is not fair that Miss Vaughn can never go anywhere simply because her mother is ill.”

“Lady Rose is perfectly right,” said Ludham. “You must bring her to balls, Sir Benedict, so that I can dance with her.”

“They live at Number Nine, Upper Camden Place,” Rose said eagerly. “I wanted to visit them myself, but Mama said I may not.”

“That is right across the park from me,” Benedict remarked in surprise.

“Then you have no excuse not to visit!” said Rose.

Lady Matlock changed the subject abruptly. “It was so very kind of you, Sir Benedict, to rescue my daughter when she was stranded. Sir Benedict happened to be passing by when Rose’s carriage got stuck in the mud,” she explained to Serena, who showed an expression of polite inquiry. “It was fate, I am persuaded. I have been urging Rose to dance. Everyone has asked her, but she says she will only dance with you, Sir Benedict. You are her hero.”

The gentleman did not seize the hint, but Lady Matlock persevered. “It would be very strange indeed if my daughter did not fancy herself in love with you, Sir Benedict. You are her knight in shining armor. Pray, for the sake of my nerves, take her away and dance with her. She will sulk all night if you do not ask her.”

“Thank you, my lady,” he said, “but I have hopes of soliciting Lady Serena for the first cotillion, and I am engaged to Miss Carteret for the second.”

Serena declined to rescue him, however.

“Thank you, Sir Benedict, but I do not mean to dance,” she said firmly. “As you can see, my skirts are too long.”

“I can pin up your demi-train for you, Lady Serena,” Rose said quickly.

Lady Serena demurred. “Pins in my lavender crepe? I think not. No; dancing is an amusement for young ladies, I think.”

“You are still young, my lady,” cried Rose. “Indeed, you look
much
younger than you are! No one would ever guess you were thirty!”

“Thank you, child,” Serena said coldly. “What a pretty compliment.”

“The set is forming, Sir Benedict,” Lady Matlock said threateningly.

“Lady Serena is not dancing,” said Benedict. “I am pledged to keep her company.”

“I will sit with Serena for the first dance,” Ludham said generously. “What’s more, I will dance the second with Lady Rose, if I may.”

“Certainly, my lord!” cried Lady Matlock in triumph. “Hurry! The set is forming.”

“Mother, please!” cried Rose, clearly horrified by the prospect of standing up with the baronet. “He’s old enough to be my father, for heaven’s sake.”

Lady Matlock stabbed her daughter in the back with the sticks of her fan. “Thank the gentleman for asking you,” she insisted, quite forgetting that Benedict had done no such thing.

“I thank you, sir,” said Lady Rose, regarding Benedict with revulsion.

“Indeed, I am in your debt, Lady Rose,” he replied.

“Hurry, my dears. The set is formed! The musicians are tuning up!”

Exhausted, Lady Matlock sat down to fan herself. “Thank heavens there are only two cotillions performed in an evening,” she confided to Serena. “If this new waltzing catches on, there will be
so
many partners to get.”

“I don’t like this Sir Benedict sniffing around you, Serena,” Ludham said darkly.

Serena lit up. “Felix! Are you jealous?”

His face turned red. “Don’t be daft! He’s probably a fortune hunter, that’s all. We’re cousins, and we have to look out for one another.”

“Are you implying that a man can’t find me attractive?” she snapped.

“No, of course not,” he said. “Just be careful, that’s all.”

“I’m not the one who needs to be careful,” she said, still angry.

Rose Fitzwilliam did not believe in mincing her words. “I am not in love with you, sir,” she told Benedict, on the very first occasion when the dance brought them close enough for such an intimate disclosure.

“How very kind of you to put me on my guard,” he answered as they parted.

“If you ask me to marry you, I shall kill myself,” was her next tragic communication.

“You mean to flatter me, I see.”

“You are old enough to be my father!” she snapped, nettled by his cool reply.

“Fortunately, however, I am no such thing,” he said pleasantly.

“I wish you
were
my father! Then you could not ask me to marry you!”

“No,” he agreed, “but I could take away your pin money, and you wouldn’t like that.”

Tears pricked her eyes. “I think you are hateful and odious,” she declared. “I wish you had left me in the mud! I was happier then!”

At the end of this delightful exercise, Benedict conducted his partner back to her mama, and the tea interval was announced. Lady Matlock claimed the right to leave the ballroom first, before the crush of the crowd, but Lady Dalrymple and her daughter were not far behind her to the first table.

Lord Ludham had gone to the card room. Lady Dalrymple took advantage of the earl’s absence to warn Serena that Miss Vaughn had designs on him.

“I do not believe she is a fortune hunter!” Rose hotly declared. “She may be poor, and she may wish to marry, but that does not make her a fortune hunter.”