The Sum of All Kisses (10 page)

Sarah’s eyes darted to Lord Hugh’s, although why she thought he might come to her aid she could not say.

“Our current conversation notwithstanding,” Lady Danbury continued imperiously, “I have observed you to be a young lady of reasonable wit.”

Reasonable? Sarah felt her nose wrinkling as she tried to figure
that
out. “Thank you?”

“It was a compliment,” Lady Danbury confirmed.

“Even the reasonable part?”

Lady Danbury snorted. “I don’t know you
that
well.”

“Well, then, thank you,” Sarah said, deciding this was an excellent time to be gracious, or at the very least, obtuse. She glanced over at Lord Hugh, who looked mildly amused, and then back at Lady Danbury, who was eyeing her as if she expected her to say something more.

Sarah cleared her throat. “Ehrm, was there any reason you wished me to know of your regard?”

“What? Oh, yes.” Lady Danbury thumped her cane on the ground. “Despite my advancing age, I forget nothing.” She paused. “Except occasionally what I’ve just said.”

Sarah kept her face fixed with a blank smile and tried to tamp down a gnawing sense of dread.

Lady Danbury let out a dramatic sigh. “I suppose one can’t reach the age of seventy without making a few concessions to it.”

Sarah suspected that seventy missed the mark by at least a decade, but there was no way she was going to make this opinion public.

“What I was
going
to say,” Lady Danbury continued, her voice dripping with the long-suffering tones of the endlessly interrupted (despite the fact that she was the only one who had been talking), “is that when you expressed surprise at my presence, which we both know was nothing more than a feeble attempt to make conversation, and
I
said, ‘Where else would I be?’
you
should have said, ‘Apparently you don’t find polite conversation very diverting.’ ”

Sarah’s lips parted and hung there in an astonished oval for a full two seconds before she said, “I am afraid I can’t follow you.”

Lady Danbury fixed her with a vaguely aggravated stare before saying, “I had told you that I found awkward conversations to be very diverting, and
you
said that nonsense about being surprised to see me, then
I
quite rightly called you foolish.”

“I don’t believe you called her foolish,” Lord Hugh murmured.

“Didn’t I? Well, I thought it.” Lady Danbury thumped her cane on the carpet and turned back to Sarah. “At any rate, I was only trying to be helpful. There’s never any point spouting useless platitudes. Makes you seem a bit like a wooden post, and you don’t want that, do you?”

“It really depends on the location of the wooden post,” Sarah replied, wondering how many wooden posts one might find in, say, Bombay.

“Well done, Lady Sarah,” Lady Danbury applauded. “Keep sharpening that tongue. I expect you’ll wish to keep your wits about you this evening.”

“I generally wish to keep my wits about myself every evening.”

Lady Danbury gave an approving nod. “And you—” She turned to Lord Hugh, much to Sarah’s delight. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten you.”

“I believe you said you forget nothing,” he said.

“So I did,” Lady Danbury replied. “Rather like your father in that regard, I expect.”

Sarah gasped. Even for Lady Danbury, this was audacious.

But Lord Hugh proved to be more than her match. His expression did not change in the least as he said, “Ah, but that is not the case at all. My father’s memory is relentlessly selective.”

“But tenacious.”

“Also relentlessly.”

“Well,” Lady Danbury declared, thumping her cane on the carpet. “I expect it’s time to call him off.”

“I have very little control over my father, Lady Danbury.”

“No man is without all resources.”

He tipped his head in a tiny salute. “I did not say that I was.”

Sarah’s eyes flicked back and forth so fast she was getting dizzy.

“This nonsense has gone on long enough,” Lady Danbury announced.

“On that point, we are in agreement,” Lord Hugh replied, but to Sarah’s ears, they were still sparring.

“It is good to see you at this wedding,” the elderly countess said. “I hope it portends peaceful times to come.”

“As Lord Chatteris is not my great-grandnephew, I can only assume that I was invited out of friendship.”

“Or to keep an eye on you.”

“Ah,” Lord Hugh said, one corner of his mouth sliding into a wry curve, “but that would be counterproductive. One would assume that the only dastardly deed for which I might need monitoring would involve Lord Winstead, who, as we both know, is here at the wedding.”

His face resumed its normal inscrutable mask, and he regarded Lady Danbury unblinkingly until she said, “I believe that is quite the longest sentence I have ever heard you utter.”

“Have you heard him utter many sentences?” Sarah inquired.

Lady Danbury turned to her with a hawkish expression. “I’d quite forgotten you were there.”

“I have been uncharacteristically quiet.”

“Which brings me to my original point,” Lady Danbury declared.

“That we are awkward?” Lord Hugh murmured.

“Yes!”

This, predictably, was met with an awkward pause.

“You, Lord Hugh,” Lady Danbury declared, “have been abnormally taciturn since the day you were born.”

“You were there?” he queried.

Lady Danbury’s face screwed up, but it was obvious she appreciated an excellent riposte, even when directed at her. “How do you put up with him?” she asked Sarah.

“I rarely have to,” Sarah replied with a shrug.

“Hmmph.”

“She has been assigned to me,” Lord Hugh explained.

Lady Danbury’s eyes narrowed. “For someone so uncommunicative, you’re quite pithy this evening.”

“It must be the company.”

“I do tend to bring out the best in people.” Lady Danbury smiled slyly and swung around to face Sarah. “What do you think?”

“Without a doubt you bring out the best in me,” Sarah proclaimed. She’d always known when to say what someone else wanted to hear.

“I must say,” Lord Hugh said in a dry tone, “I find
this
conversation diverting.”

“Well, you would, wouldn’t you?” Lady Danbury retorted. “It’s not as if you’ve had to tax your brain to keep up with me.”

Sarah felt her lips part again as she tried to sort that one out. Had Lady Danbury just called him clever? Or was she insulting him by saying that he hadn’t added anything of interest to the conversation?

And what did it mean that
Sarah
had to tax her brain to keep up with her?

“You look perplexed, Lady Sarah,” Lady Danbury said.

“I find myself fervently hoping that we will soon be called in to supper,” Sarah admitted.

Lady Danbury snorted with amusement.

Emboldened, Sarah said to Lord Hugh, “I believe I have begun to pray to the butler.”

“If there are to be replies, you’ll certainly hear his before anyone else’s,” he said.

“Now
this
is more like it,” Lady Danbury announced. “Look at the two of you. You’re positively bantering.”

“Bantering,” Lord Hugh repeated, as if he could not quite grasp the word.

“It’s not as entertaining for
me
as an awkward conversation, but I imagine you prefer it.” Lady Danbury pressed her lips together and glanced about the room. “I suppose I shall have to find someone else to entertain me now. It’s quite a delicate balance, you know, finding awkwardness without stupidity.” She thumped her cane on the carpet, hmmphed, and departed.

Sarah turned to Lord Hugh. “She’s mad.”

“I might point out that you recently said the same thing to me.”

Sarah was sure there were a thousand different responses to that, but she managed to think of precisely none of them before Iris suddenly appeared. Sarah clenched her teeth. She was still very annoyed with her.

“I found her,” Iris announced, her face still grim with latent determination. “We are saved.”

Sarah could not find enough charity within herself to say something bright and congratulatory. She did, however, nod.

Iris gave her a queer look, punctuated with a tiny shrug.

“Lord Hugh,” Sarah said, with perhaps a bit more emphasis than was strictly necessary, “may I present my cousin, Miss Smythe-Smith? Formerly Miss Iris Smythe-Smith,” she added, for no reason other than her own sense of annoyance. “Her elder sister was recently wed.”

Iris started, clearly only just realizing that he’d been standing next to her cousin. This did not surprise Sarah; when Iris had her mind set on something she rarely noticed anything she deemed irrelevant.

“Lord Hugh,” Iris said, recovering quickly.

“I am most relieved to hear that you are saved,” Lord Hugh said.

Sarah took some satisfaction in the fact that Iris did not appear to know how to respond.

“From plague?” Lord Hugh inquired. “Pestilence?”

Sarah could only stare.

“Oh, I know,” he said in quite the jolliest tone she’d ever heard from him. “Locusts. There’s nothing like a good infestation of locusts.”

Iris blinked several times, then lifted a finger as if she’d just thought of something. “I’ll leave you, then.”

“Of course you will,” Sarah muttered.

Iris gave her an almost imperceptible smirk, then made her departure, snaking fluidly through the crowd.

“I must confess to curiosity,” Lord Hugh said once Iris had disappeared from view.

Sarah just stared ahead. He wasn’t the sort to let her silence stop him, so there didn’t seem much need to reply.

“From what dreadful fate did your cousin save you?”

“Not you, apparently,” Sarah muttered before she could control her tongue.

He chuckled at that, and Sarah decided there was no reason not to tell him the truth. “My cousin Daisy—that’s Iris’s younger sister—was trying to organize a special performance of the Smythe-Smith Quartet.”

“Why should that be a problem?”

Sarah took a moment to phrase her query. “You have not attended one of our musicales, then?”

“I have not had the pleasure.”

“Pleasure,” Sarah repeated, tucking her chin back toward her neck as she tried to choke down her disbelief.

“Is something wrong?” Lord Hugh asked.

She opened her mouth to explain, but just then the butler came in and called them in for supper.

“Your prayers are answered,” Lord Hugh said wryly.

“Not all of them,” she muttered.

He offered her his arm. “Yes, you’re still stuck with me, aren’t you?”

Indeed.

Chapter Seven

The following afternoon

A
nd so the Earl of Chatteris and Lady Honoria Smythe-Smith were joined in holy matrimony. The sun was shining, the wine was flowing, and judging by the laughter and smiles at the wedding breakfast (which had long since metamorphosed into a wedding luncheon), a good time was being had by all.

Even Lady Sarah Pleinsworth.

From where Hugh was sitting at the head table (rather by himself; everyone else had got up to dance), she was the very embodiment of carefree English womanhood. She spoke easily to the other guests, she laughed often (but never too loudly), and when she danced, she looked so bloody happy it nearly lit the room on fire.

Hugh had once liked to dance.

He’d been good at it, too. Music was not so very different from mathematics. It was all just patterns and sequences. The only difference was that they hung in the air instead of on a piece of paper.

Dancing was a grand equation. One side was sound, the other movement. The dancer’s job was to make them equal.

Hugh might not have
felt
music, the way the choral master at Eton had insisted he must, but he certainly understood it.

“Hullo, Lord Hugh. Would you like some cake?”

Hugh looked up and smiled. It was little Lady Frances Pleinsworth, holding two plates. One had a gigantic slice of cake, the other a merely enormous one. Both had been liberally frosted with lavender-hued icing and tiny candy violets. Hugh had seen the cake in all its glory before it had been cut; he had immediately begun to wonder how many eggs such a gateau might have required. When that had proved an impossible calculation, he’d started thinking about how long it would have taken to make the confection. Then he’d moved on to—

“Lord Hugh?” Lady Frances said, cutting into his thoughts. She lifted one of the plates a few inches higher in the air, reminding him of why she’d come over.

“I do like cake,” he said.

She sat down next to him, setting the plates on the table. “You looked lonely.”

Hugh smiled again. It was the sort of thing an adult would never have said aloud. And precisely the reason he’d rather have been chatting with her than anyone else in the room. “I was alone, not lonely.”

Frances frowned, considering that. Hugh was just about to explain the difference when she cocked her head and asked, “Are you sure?”

“Alone is a state of being,” he explained, “whereas lonely is—”

“I know that,” she cut in.

He regarded her. “Then I’m afraid I do not understand your question.”

She cocked her head to the side. “I was just wondering if a person always knows when he is lonely.”

Budding little philosopher, she was. “How old are you?” he asked, deciding that he would not be surprised if she opened her mouth and said she was actually forty-two.

“Eleven.” She jabbed a fork into her cake, expertly picking the icing from between the layers. “But I’m very precocious.”

“Clearly.”

She didn’t say anything, but he saw her smiling around her fork as she took a bite.

“Do you like cake?” she asked, delicately dabbing the corner of her mouth with a napkin.

“Doesn’t everyone?” he murmured, not pointing out that he’d already said he did.

She glanced down at his untouched plate. “Then why haven’t you eaten any?”

“I’m thinking,” he said, his eyes sweeping across the room and settling on the laughing form of her eldest sister.

“You can’t eat and think at the same time?” Frances asked.

It was a dare if ever he’d heard one, so he hauled his attention back to the slab of cake in front of him, took a huge bite, chewed, swallowed, and said, “541 times 87 is 47,067.”

“You’re making that up,” Frances said instantly.

He shrugged. “Feel free to check the answer yourself.”

“I can’t very well do so
here
.”

“Then you’ll have to take my word for it, won’t you?”

“As long as you realize that I
could
check your answer if I had the proper supplies,” Frances said pertly. Then she frowned. “Did you truly figure that out in your head?”

“I did,” he confirmed. He took another bite of cake. It really was quite tasty. The icing seemed to have been flavored with actual lavender. Marcus had always liked sweets, he recalled.

“That’s
brilliant
. I wish I could do that.”

“It occasionally comes in handy.” He ate more cake. “And sometimes does not.”

“I’m very good at maths,” Frances said in a matter-of-fact voice, “but I can’t do it in my head. I need to write everything down.”

“There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“No, of course not. I’m much better than Elizabeth.” Frances gave a lofty smile. “She hates that I am, but she knows it’s true.”

“Which one is Elizabeth?” Hugh probably should have remembered which sister was which, but the memory that captured every word on a page was not always so dependable with names and faces.

“My next oldest sister. She is occasionally unpleasant, but for the most part we get on well.”

“Everyone is occasionally unpleasant,” he told her.

That stopped her short. “Even you?”

“Oh, especially me.”

She blinked a few times, then must have decided she preferred the earlier strain of conversation, because when she opened her mouth again it was to ask, “Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

“I have one brother.”

“What is his name?”

“Frederick. I call him Freddie.”

“Do you like him?”

Hugh smiled. “Very much so. But I don’t get to see him very often.”

“Why not?”

Hugh didn’t want to think about all the reasons why not, so he settled on the only one that was suitable for her ears. “He doesn’t live in London. And I do.”

“That’s too bad.” Frances poked her fork in her cake, idly smearing the icing. “Perhaps you can see him at Christmas.”

“Perhaps,” Hugh lied.

“Oh, I forgot to ask,” she said. “Are you better at arithmetic than he is?”

“I am,” Hugh confirmed. “But he doesn’t mind.”

“Neither does Harriet. She’s five years older than I am, and I’m still better than she is.”

Hugh gave a nod, having no other reply.

“She likes to write plays,” Frances continued. “She doesn’t care about numbers.”

“She should,” Hugh said, glancing back out at the wedding celebration. Lady Sarah was now dancing with one of the Bridgerton brothers. The angle was such that Hugh could not be sure which one. He recalled that three of the brothers were married, but one was not.

“She’s very good at it,” Frances said.

She is,
Hugh thought, still watching Sarah. She danced beautifully. One could almost forget her waspish mouth when she danced like that.

“She’s even putting a unicorn in the next one.”

A uni— “What?” Hugh turned back to Frances, blinking.

“A unicorn.” She gave him a frighteningly steady look. “You
are
familiar with them?”

Good Lord, was she poking fun at him? He’d have been impressed if it wasn’t so patently ridiculous. “Of course.”

“I’m mad for unicorns,” Frances said with a blissful sigh. “I think they’re brilliant.”

“Nonexistently brilliant.”

“So we
think,
” she replied with suitable drama.

“Lady Frances,” Hugh said in his most didactic voice, “you must be aware that unicorns are creatures of myth.”

“The myths had to come from somewhere.”

“They
came
from the imaginations of bards.”

She shrugged and ate cake.

Hugh was dumbfounded. Was he really debating the existence of unicorns with an eleven-year-old girl?

He tried to drop the matter. And found he could not. Apparently he
was
debating the existence of unicorns with an eleven-year-old girl.

“There has never been a recorded sighting of a unicorn,” he said, and to his great irritation, he realized that he sounded as prim and stiff as Sarah Pleinsworth had when she’d been all snippy about his plans to shoot targets with her cousin.

Frances lifted her chin. “I have never seen a lion, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist.”

“You may have never seen a lion, but hundreds of other people have done.”

“You can’t prove that something
doesn’t
exist,” she countered.

Hugh paused. She had him there.

“Indeed,” she said smugly, recognizing the exact moment he’d been forced to capitulate.

“Very well,” he said, giving her an approving nod. “I cannot prove that unicorns don’t exist, but
you
cannot prove they do.”

“True,” she said graciously. Her mouth pursed and then did an unnerving little twist. “I like you, Lord Hugh.”

For a second she sounded exactly like Lady Danbury. Hugh wondered if he ought to be afraid.

“You don’t speak to me as if I were a child,” she said.

“You
are
a child,” he pointed out. She’d used the subjunctive form of “to be,” which would imply that she
wasn’t
actually a child.

“Well, yes, but you don’t speak to me as if I were an idiot.”

“You’re not an idiot,” he said. And she’d used the subjunctive correctly that time. But he didn’t make mention of that.

“I
know
.” She was starting to sound somewhat exasperated.

He stared at her for a moment. “Then what is your point?”

“Just that— Oh, hullo, Sarah.” Frances smiled over Hugh’s shoulder, presumably at the current bane of his existence.

“Frances,” came the now familiar voice of Lady Sarah Pleinsworth. “Lord Hugh.”

He stood, even though it was awkward, with his leg.

“Oh, you don’t need to—” Sarah began.

“I do,” Hugh cut in sharply. The day he could no longer rise to his feet in the presence of a lady was— Well, quite honestly he did not want to ponder it.

She gave a tight—and possibly embarrassed—smile, then walked around him to sit in the chair on the other side of Frances. “What were the two of you talking about?”

“Unicorns,” Frances answered promptly.

Sarah’s lips came together in what appeared to be an attempt to maintain a straight face. “Really?”

“Really,” Hugh said.

She cleared her throat. “Did you reach any conclusions?”

“Just that we must agree to disagree,” he said. He added a placid smile. “As so often occurs in life.”

Sarah’s eyes narrowed.

“Sarah doesn’t believe in unicorns, either,” Frances said. “None of my sisters do.” She gave a sad little sigh. “I am quite alone in my hopes and dreams.”

Hugh watched Sarah roll her eyes, then said, “I have a feeling, Lady Frances, that the only thing you are alone in is being showered with the love and devotion of your family.”

“Oh, I’m not alone in that,” Frances said brightly, “although as the youngest, I do enjoy certain benefits.”

Sarah made a snorting sound.

“It’s true, then?” Hugh murmured, looking her way.

“She would be quite dreadful if she weren’t so innately marvelous,” Sarah said, smiling at her sister with obvious affection. “My father spoils her abominably.”

“He does,” Frances said happily.

“Is your father here?” Hugh asked curiously. He did not think he’d ever met Lord Pleinsworth.

“No,” Sarah replied. “He deemed it too far a journey from Devon. He rarely leaves home.”

“He doesn’t like to travel,” Frances put in.

Sarah nodded. “He’ll be at Daniel’s wedding, though.”

“Is he bringing the dogs?” Frances asked.

“I don’t know,” Sarah replied.

“Mama will—”

“—kill him, I know, but—”

“Dogs?” Hugh cut in. Because really, it had to be asked.

The two Pleinsworth sisters looked at him as if they’d quite forgotten he was there.

“Dogs?” he repeated.

“My father,” Sarah said, delicately picking her way across her words, “is rather fond of his hounds.”

Hugh glanced over at Frances, who nodded.

“How many dogs?” Hugh asked. It seemed a logical question.

Lady Sarah appeared reluctant to admit to a number, but her younger sister had no such compunctions. “Fifty-three at last count,” Frances said. “But it’s probably more by now. They’re always having puppies.”

Hugh failed to locate an appropriate response.

“Of course he can’t fit them all in one carriage,” Frances added.

“No,” Hugh managed to reply. “I don’t imagine he could.”

“He has often said that he finds animals to be better company than humans,” Sarah said.

“I cannot say that I disagree,” Hugh said. He saw Frances open her mouth to speak and quickly silenced her with a pointed finger. “Unicorns do
not
count.”

“I was
going
to say,” she said with feigned affront, “that I wish he
would
bring the dogs.”

“Are you mad?” Sarah demanded, right as Hugh murmured, “All fifty-three of them?”

“He probably wouldn’t bring them all,” Frances told Hugh before turning to Sarah. “And no, I’m not mad. If he brought the dogs, I’d have someone to play with. There are no other children here.”