The Sum of All Kisses (5 page)

He smiled. Or maybe he didn’t. “No.”

“Then I am certain,” she said.

“Sarah?” Honoria said hesitantly.

Sarah turned to her cousin with a brilliant smile. She’d never forgotten that mad moment the year before when she’d first met Lord Hugh. He had turned from hot to cold in a blink of an eye. And damn it all, if he could do it, so could she. “Your wedding is going to be perfect,” she declared. “Lord Hugh and I will get on famously, I’m sure.”

Honoria didn’t buy Sarah’s act for a second, not that Sarah really thought she would. Her eyes flicked from Sarah to Hugh and back again about six times in the space of a second. “Ahhhhh,” she hedged, clearly confused about the sudden awkwardness. “Well.”

Sarah kept her smile pasted placidly on her face. For Honoria she would attempt civility with Hugh Prentice. For Honoria she would even smile at him, and laugh at his jokes, assuming he made jokes. But still, how was it possible that Honoria didn’t realize how very much Sarah hated Hugh? Oh very well, not hate. Hate she would reserve for the truly evil. Napoleon, for example. Or that flower seller at Covent Garden who’d tried to cheat her the week before.

But Hugh Prentice was beyond vexing, beyond annoying. He was the only person (aside from her sisters) who had managed to infuriate her so much that she’d had to literally hold her hands down to keep from smacking him.

She had never been so angry as she had that night. . . .

Chapter Two

How They Met

(the way
she
remembers it)

A London ballroom, celebrating the engagement of Mr. Charles Dunwoody to Miss Nerissa Berbrooke

Sixteen months earlier

“D
o you think Mr. St. Clair is handsome?”

Sarah didn’t bother to turn toward Honoria as she asked the question. She was too busy watching Mr. St. Clair, trying to decide what she thought of him. She’d always favored men with tawny hair, but she wasn’t so sure she liked the queue he wore in the back. Did it make him look like a pirate, or did it make him look as if he was
trying
to look like a pirate?

There was an enormous difference.

“Gareth
St. Clair?” Honoria queried. “Do you mean Lady Danbury’s grandson?”

That yanked Sarah’s eyes right back to Honoria’s. “He’s not!” she said with a gasp.

“Oh, he is. I’m quite sure of it.”

“Well, that takes him right off my list,” Sarah said with no hesitation whatsoever.

“Do you know, I admire Lady Danbury,” Honoria said. “She says exactly what she means.”

“Which is precisely why no woman in her right mind would want to marry a member of her family. Good heavens, Honoria, what if one had to live with her?”

“You have been known to be somewhat forthright yourself,” Honoria pointed out.

“Be that as it may,” Sarah said, which was as far as she would go toward agreement, “I am no match for Lady Danbury.” She glanced back at Mr. St. Clair. Pirate or aspiring pirate? She supposed it didn’t matter, not if he was related to Lady Danbury.

Honoria patted her arm. “Give yourself time.”

Sarah turned toward her cousin with a flat, sarcastic stare. “How much time? She’s eighty if she’s a day.”

“We all need something to which to aspire,” Honoria demurred.

Sarah could not forestall a roll of her eyes. “Has my life become so pathetic that my aspirations must be measured in decades rather than years?”

“No, of course not, but . . .”

“But what?” Sarah asked suspiciously when Honoria did not complete her thought.

Honoria sighed. “Will we find husbands this year, do you think?”

Sarah couldn’t bring herself to form a verbal answer. A doleful look was all she could manage.

Honoria returned the expression in kind, and in unison, they sighed. Tired, worn-out, when-will-this-be-over sighs.

“We
are
pathetic,” Sarah said.

“We are,” Honoria agreed.

They watched the ballroom for a few more moments, and then Sarah said, “I don’t mind it tonight, though.”

“Being pathetic?”

Sarah glanced over at her cousin with a cheeky smile. “Tonight I have you.”

“Misery loves company?”

“That’s the funny thing,” Sarah said, feeling her brow knit into a quizzical expression. “Tonight I’m not even miserable.”

“Why, Sarah Pleinsworth,” Honoria said with barely suppressed humor, “that might be the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

Sarah chuckled, but still she asked, “Shall we be spinsters together, old and wobbly at the annual musicale?”

Honoria shuddered. “I am fairly certain that is
not
the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me. I do love the musicale, but—”

“You don’t!” Sarah just barely resisted the urge to clap her hands over her ears.
No one
could love that musicale.

“I said I loved the musicale,” Honoria clarified, “not the music.”

“How, pray tell, are they different? I thought I might
perish
—”

“Oh, Sarah,” Honoria scolded. “Don’t exaggerate.”

“I
wish
it were an exaggeration,” Sarah muttered.

“I thought it was great fun practicing with you and Viola and Marigold. And next year will be even better. We shall have Iris with us to play the cello. Aunt Maria told me that Mr. Wedgecombe is mere weeks away from proposing to Marigold.” Honoria furrowed her brow in thought. “Although I’m not quite sure how she knows that.”

“That’s not the point,” Sarah said with great gravity, “and even if it were, it’s not worth the public humiliation. If you want to spend time with your cousins, invite us all out for a picnic. Or a game of Pall Mall.”

“It’s not the same.”

“Thank
God
.” Sarah shuddered, trying to
not
recollect a single moment of her Smythe-Smith Quartet debut. Thus far it was proving a difficult memory to repress. Every awful chord, every pitying stare . . .

It was why she needed to consider
every
gentleman as a possible spouse. If she had to perform with her discordant cousins one more time, she
would
perish.

And that was not an exaggeration.

“Very well,” Sarah said briskly, then straightened her shoulders to punctuate the tone. It was time to get back to business. “Mr. St. Clair is off my list. Who else is here tonight?”

“No one,” Honoria said morosely.

“No one? How is that possible? What about Mr. Travers? I thought you and he— Oh.” Sarah gulped at the pained expression on Honoria’s face. “I’m sorry. What happened?”

“I don’t know. I thought everything was going so well. And then . . . nothing.”

“That’s very odd,” Sarah said. Mr. Travers wouldn’t have been her first choice for a husband, but he seemed steadfast enough. Certainly not the sort to drop a lady with no explanation. “Are you sure?”

“At Mrs. Wemberley’s soirée last week I smiled at him and he ran from the room.”

“Oh, but surely you’re imagining—”

“He tripped on a table on the way out.”

“Oh.” Sarah grimaced. There was no putting a cheerful face on that. “I’m sorry,” she said sympathetically, and she was. As comforting as it was to have Honoria by her side as fellow failure on the marriage mart, she did want her cousin to be happy.

“It’s probably for the best,” Honoria said, ever the optimist. “We share very few interests. He’s actually quite musical, and I don’t know how he would ever— Oh!”

“What is it?” Sarah asked. If they had been closer to the candelabra, Honoria’s gasp would have sucked the flame right out.

“Why is he here?” Honoria whispered.

“Who?” Sarah’s eyes swept across the room. “Mr. Travers?”

“No.
Hugh Prentice
.”

Sarah’s entire body went rigid with rage. “How dare he show his face?” she hissed. “Surely he knew we would be in attendance.”

But Honoria was shaking her head. “He has just as much right to be here—”

“No, he does not,” Sarah cut in. Trust Honoria to be kind and forgiving when neither was deserved. “What Lord Hugh Prentice needs,” Sarah ground out, “is a public flogging.”

“Sarah!”

“There is a time and a place for Christian charity, and Lord Hugh Prentice intersects with neither.” Sarah’s eyes narrowed dangerously as she spied the gentleman she thought was Lord Hugh. They had never been formally introduced; the duel had occurred before Sarah had entered society, and of course no one had dared to make them known to each other after that. But still, she knew what he looked like.

She had made it her business to know what he looked like.

She could only see the gentleman from the back, but the hair was the correct color—light brown. Or maybe dark blond, depending on how charitable one was feeling. She could not see if he held a cane. Had his walking improved? The last time she had spied him, several months earlier, his limp had been quite pronounced.

“He is friends with Mr. Dunwoody,” Honoria said, her voice still small and fragile. “He will have wanted to congratulate his friend.”

“I don’t care if he wanted to give the happy couple their own private Indian island,” Sarah spat. “
You
are also friends with Mr. Dunwoody. You have known him for years. Surely Lord Hugh is aware of this.”

“Yes, but—”

“Don’t make excuses for him. I don’t care what Lord Hugh thinks of Daniel—”

“Well, I do. I care what everyone thinks of Daniel.”

“That’s not the point,” Sarah railed. “
You
are innocent of any wrongdoing, and
you
have been wronged beyond all measure. If Lord Hugh has a decent bone in his body, he would stay away from any gathering at which there is even a chance that you might be present.”

“You’re right.” Honoria closed her eyes for a moment, looking unbearably weary. “But right now I don’t care. I just want to leave. I want to go home.”

Sarah continued to stare at the man in question, or rather at his back. “He should know better,” she said, mostly to herself. And then she felt herself step forward. “I’m going to—”

“Don’t you dare,” Honoria warned, yanking Sarah back with a swift tug at her arm. “If you cause a scene . . .”

“I would never cause a scene.” But of course they both knew she would. For Hugh Prentice, or rather,
because
of Hugh Prentice, Sarah would create a scene that would be the stuff of legend.

Two years ago, Hugh Prentice had ripped her family to shreds. Daniel’s absence was still a gaping hole at family gatherings. One couldn’t even mention his name in front of his mother; Aunt Virginia would simply pretend she hadn’t heard, and then (according to Honoria), she’d lock herself in her room and cry.

The rest of the family had not gone untouched, either. The scandal following the duel had been so great that both Honoria and Sarah had been forced to forgo what would have been their first season in London. It had not escaped Sarah’s notice (nor Honoria’s, once Sarah had pointed it out, repeated it, raged about it, then flopped on her bed with despair), that 1821 had been an uncommonly productive season as judged by the matchmaking mothers of London. Fourteen eligible gentlemen had become engaged to be married that season. Fourteen! And that wasn’t even counting the ones who were too old, too strange, or too fond of their drink.

Who knows what might have happened if Sarah and Honoria had been out and about in town during that matrimonially spectacular season. Call her shallow, but as far as Sarah was concerned, Hugh Prentice was directly responsible for their rapidly approaching spinsterhood.

Sarah had never met the man, but she hated him.

“I’m sorry,” Honoria said abruptly. Her voice caught, and she sounded as if she was fighting a sob. “I must leave. Now. And we must find my mother. If she sees him . . .”

Aunt Virginia
. Sarah’s heart plummeted. She would be a wreck. Honoria’s mother had never recovered from her only son’s disgrace. To come face-to-face with the man who’d caused it all . . .

Sarah grabbed her cousin’s hand. “Come with me,” she urged. “I’ll help you find her.”

Honoria nodded limply, letting Sarah lead the way. They snaked through the crowds, trying to balance speed with discretion. Sarah did not want her cousin to be forced to speak with Hugh Prentice, but she would die before she allowed anyone to think that they were running from his presence.

Which meant that
she
was going to have to stay. Perhaps even speak with him. Sarah would have to save face on behalf of the entire family.

“There she is,” Honoria said as they approached the grand ballroom doors. Lady Winstead was standing in a small clutch of matrons, chatting amiably with Mrs. Dunwoody, their hostess.

“She must not have seen him,” Sarah whispered. She wouldn’t have been smiling otherwise.

“What shall I feign?” Honoria asked.

“Fatigue,” Sarah said immediately. No one would doubt it. Honoria had turned ashen the moment she’d spied Hugh Prentice, setting the grayish smudges under her eyes into stark relief.

Honoria gave a quick nod and dashed off, politely pulling her mother aside before whispering a few words in her ear. Sarah watched as the two of them made their excuses, then slipped out the door to the waiting line of carriages.

Sarah let out a pent-up breath, relieved that her aunt and cousin would not have to come into contact with Lord Hugh. But every rainbow had a black and grimy lining, it seemed, and Honoria’s departure meant that Sarah was stuck here for at least an hour. It would not be long before the gossips realized that Lord Hugh Prentice was in the same room as a Smythe-Smith cousin. First there would be stares, and then whispers, and then everyone would be watching to see if they crossed paths, and did they speak, and even if they didn’t, which one would leave the party first?

Sarah judged that she needed to remain in the Dunwoody ballroom for at least an hour before it no longer mattered who left first. But before any of that, she needed to be seen having a lovely time, which meant she couldn’t stand at the edge of the front hall by herself. She needed to find a friend with whom to chatter, and she needed someone to dance with her, and she needed to laugh and smile as if she hadn’t a care in the world.

And she had to do all of that while making it perfectly plain that she did indeed know that Lord Hugh Prentice had wormed his way into the party and that she found him utterly beneath her notice.

Keeping up appearances could be so exhausting.

Luckily, within seconds of reentering the ballroom, she spied her cousin Arthur. He was dull as a stick, but he was dashingly handsome and always seemed to attract attention. More importantly, if she yanked on his sleeve and told him she needed him to dance with her immediately, he would do it, no questions asked.