The Sum of All Kisses (8 page)

To Marcus’s credit, all he did was roll his eyes.

But Hugh had smiled. And he had realized that he was enjoying himself more than any time in recent memory. If the gentlemen were shooting, he was damn well going to join them.

It took at least five minutes to make his way down to the ground floor, however, and once there, he decided that it would be best to cut through one of Fensmore’s many salons instead of taking the long way round to the south lawn.

Over the past three and a half years, Hugh had become remarkably adept at ferreting out every possible shortcut.

Third door on the right, then in, turn left, cross the room, and exit through the French doors. As an added benefit, he could take a moment to rest on one of the sofas. Most of the ladies had gone off to the village, so it was unlikely that anyone would be there. By his estimation he had a quarter of an hour before the shooting was due to start.

The drawing room wasn’t terribly large, just a few seating arrangements. There was a blue chair facing him that looked comfortable enough. He couldn’t see over the back of the sofa that sat opposite it, but there was probably a low table between them. He could put his leg up for a moment, and no one would be the wiser.

He made his way over, but he must not have been paying proper attention, because his cane clipped the edge of the table, which led directly to his shin clipping the edge of the table, which in turn led to a most creative string of curses clipping out of his mouth as he turned around to sit.

That was when he saw Sarah Pleinsworth, asleep on the sofa.

Oh, bloody hell.

He’d been having a better than average day, the pain in his leg notwithstanding. The last thing he needed was a private audience with the oh-so dramatic Lady Sarah. She’d probably accuse him of something nefarious, follow that with a trite declaration of hatred, then finish up with something about those fourteen men who had become engaged during the season of 1821.

He still didn’t know what that was supposed to be about.

Or why he even recalled it. He’d always had a good memory, but really, couldn’t his brain let go of the truly useless?

He had to get through the room without waking her up. It was not easy to tiptoe with a cane, but by God that was what he would do if that was what it took to make it through the room unnoticed.

Well, there went his hopes of resting his leg. Very carefully, he edged out from behind the low wooden table, careful not to touch anything but carpet and air. But as anyone who had ever stepped outside knew, air could move, and apparently he was breathing too hard, because before he made it past the sofa, Lady Sarah woke from her slumber with a shriek that startled him so much that he fell back against another chair, toppled over the upholstered arm, and landed awkwardly on the seat.

“What? What? What are you doing?” She blinked rapidly before spearing him with a glare. “
You
.”

It was an accusation. It absolutely was.

“Oh, you gave me a fright,” she said, rubbing her eyes.

“Apparently.” He swore under his breath as he tried to swing his legs over to the front of the chair. “Ow!”

“What?” she asked impatiently.

“I kicked the table.”

“Why?”

He scowled. “I didn’t do it on purpose.”

She seemed only then to realize that she was lounging most casually along the length of the sofa and, with a flurry of movement, straightened herself to a more proper upright position. “Excuse me,” she said, still flustered. Her dark hair was falling from its coiffure; he deemed it best not to point this out.

“Please accept my apology,” he said stiffly. “I did not mean to startle you.”

“I was reading. I must have fallen asleep. I . . . ah . . .” She blinked a few more times, then her eyes finally seemed to focus. On him. “Were you sneaking up on me?”

“
No,
” he said, with perhaps more speed and fervor than was polite. He motioned to the door that led outside. “I was just cutting through. Lord Chatteris has made arrangements for target shooting.”

“Oh.” She looked suspicious for about one second more, then this clearly gave way to embarrassment. “Of course. There is no reason you would be sneak— That is to say—” She cleared her throat. “Well.”

“Well.”

She waited for a moment, then asked pointedly, “Don’t you plan to continue to the lawn?”

He stared at her.

“For the shooting,” she clarified.

He shrugged. “I’m early.”

She did not seem to care for that answer. “It’s quite pleasant outside.”

He glanced out the window. “So it is.” She was trying to get rid of him, and he supposed she deserved a certain measure of respect for not even trying to hide it. On the other hand, now that she was awake—and he was seated in a chair, resting his leg—there seemed no reason to hurry onward.

He could endure anything for ten minutes, even Sarah Pleinsworth.

“Do you plan to shoot?” she asked.

“I do.”

“With a gun?”

“That’s how one usually does it.”

Her face tightened. “And you think this is prudent?”

“Do you mean because your cousin will be there? I assure you, he will have a gun as well.” He felt his lips curve into an emotionless smile. “It will be almost like a duel.”

“Why do you joke about such things?” she snapped.

He let his gaze land rather intently on hers. “When the alternative is despair, I generally prefer humor. Even if it is of the gallows variety.”

Something flickered in her eyes. A hint of understanding, perhaps, but it was gone too quickly to be sure he’d seen it. And then she pursed her lips, an expression so prim it was clear he’d imagined that brief moment of sympathy.

“I want it known that I do not approve,” she said.

“Duly noted.”

“And”—she lifted her chin and turned slightly away—“I think it is a very bad idea.”

“How is that different from a lack of approval?”

She just scowled.

He had a thought. “Do you find it bad enough to faint?”

She snapped back to attention. “What?”

“If you swoon on the lawn, Chatteris must give Daniel and me ten pounds each.”

Her lips formed an O and then froze in that position.

He leaned back and smiled lazily. “I could be persuaded to offer you a twenty percent cut.”

Her face moved, but she remained without words. Damn, but it was good fun to bait her.

“Never mind,” he said. “We’d never carry it off.”

Her mouth finally closed. Then opened again. Of course. He should have known her silence could be only fleeting.

“You don’t like me,” she said.

“Not really, no.” He probably should have lied, but somehow it seemed that anything less than the truth would have been even more insulting.

“And I don’t like you.”

“No,” he said mildly, “I didn’t think you did.”

“Then why are you here?”

“At the wedding?”

“In the
room
. Lud, you’re obtuse.” The last bit she said to herself, but his hearing had always been fairly sharp.

He rarely trotted his injury out as a trump card, but it seemed a good time. “My leg,” he said with slow deliberation. “It hurts.”

There was a delicious silence. Delicious for him, that was. For her, he imagined it was awful.

“I’m sorry,” she mumbled, looking down before he could ascertain the extent of her flush. “That was very rude of me.”

“Think nothing of it. You’ve done worse.”

Her eyes flared.

He brought the tips of his fingers together, his hands making a hollow triangle. “I remember our previous encounter with unpleasant accuracy.”

She leaned forward in fury. “You chased my cousin and aunt from a party.”

“They
fled
. There is a difference. And I did not even know they were there.”

“Well, you should have done.”

“Clairvoyance has never been one of my talents.”

He could see her straining to control her temper, and when she spoke, her jaw barely moved. “I know that you and Cousin Daniel have patched things up, but I’m sorry, I cannot forgive you for what you did.”

“Even if he has?” Hugh asked softly.

She shifted uncomfortably, and her mouth pressed into several different expressions before she finally said, “He can afford to be charitable. His life and happiness have been restored.”

“And yours has not.” He did not phrase it as a question. It was a statement, and an unsympathetic one at that.

She clamped her mouth shut.

“Tell me,” he demanded, because bloody hell, it was time they got to the bottom of this. “What, precisely, have I done to you? Not to your cousin, not to your other cousin, but to you, Lady Sarah Whatever your other names are Pleinsworth.”

She glared at him mutinously, then got to her feet. “I’m leaving.”

“Coward,” he murmured, but he stood as well. Even she deserved the respect of a gentleman.

“Very well,” she said, the color in her cheeks rising with barely restrained anger. “I was supposed to make my debut in 1821.”

“The year of the fourteen eligible gentlemen.” It was true. He forgot almost nothing.

She ignored this. “After you chased Daniel out of the country, my family had to go into seclusion.”

“It was my father,” Hugh said sharply.

“What?”

“My father chased Lord Winstead out of the country. I had nothing to do with it.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

His eyes narrowed, and with slow deliberateness he said, “It does to me.”

She swallowed uncomfortably, her entire bearing rigid. “Because of the duel,” she said, rephrasing so that the blame could be put back squarely on him, “we did not return to town for an entire year.”

Hugh choked back a laugh, finally understanding her silly little mind. She was blaming him for the loss of her London season. “And those fourteen eligible gentlemen are now forever lost to you.”

“There is no reason to be so mocking.”

“You have no way of knowing that one would have proposed,” he pointed out. He did like things to be logical, and this was . . . not.

“There is no way of knowing that one wouldn’t have done,” she cried. Her hand flew to her chest, and she took a jerky step back, as if surprised by her own reaction.

But Hugh felt no sympathy. And he could not stave off the unkind chuckle that burst from his throat. “You never cease to astonish me, Lady Sarah. All this time, you’ve been blaming
me
for your unmarried state. Did it ever occur to you to look somewhere closer to home?”

She let out an awful choke and her hand came to her mouth, not so much to cover it as to hold something in.

“Forgive me,” he said, but they both knew that what he’d said was unforgivable.

“I thought I did not like you because of what you did to my family,” she said, holding herself so rigid that she shook, “but that’s not it at all. You are a terrible person.”

He stood very still, the way he’d been taught since birth. A gentleman was always in control of his body. A gentleman didn’t flail his arms or spit or fidget. He did not have much left in his life, but he had this—his pride, his bearing. “I shall endeavor not to press myself into your company,” he said stiffly.

“It’s too late for that,” she bit off.

“I beg your pardon?”

Her eyes bored into his. “My cousin, if you recall, has requested that we sit together at the wedding breakfast.”

Apparently he did forget some things. Bloody hell. He had promised Lady Honoria. There was no getting out of it. “I can be civil if you can,” he said.

She shocked him then, holding out her hand to seal their agreement. He took it, and in that moment when her hand lay in his, he had the most bizarre urge to bring her fingers to his lips.

“Have we a truce, then?” she said.

He looked up.

That was a mistake.

Because Lady Sarah Pleinsworth was gazing up at him with an expression of uncommon and (he was quite sure) uncharacteristic clarity. Her eyes, which had always been hard and brittle when turned in his direction, were softer now. And her lips, he realized now that she wasn’t hurling insults at him, were utter perfection, full and pink, and touched with just the right sort of curve. They seemed to tell a man that she knew things, that she knew how to laugh, and if he only laid down his soul for her, she would light up his world with a single smile.

Sarah Pleinsworth.

Good God, had he lost his mind?

Chapter Five

Later that night

W
hen Sarah came down for supper, she was feeling a bit better about having to spend the evening with Hugh Prentice. The row they’d had that afternoon had been awful, and she could not imagine they would ever choose to be friends, but at least they’d got everything out in the open. If she was to be forced to remain at his side for the duration of the wedding, he would not think she was doing so out of any desire for his company.

And he would behave properly as well. They had struck a bargain, and whatever his faults, he did not seem the type to go back on his word. He would be polite, and he would put on a good show for Honoria and Marcus, and once this ridiculous month of weddings was over, they would never need speak with each other again.

After five minutes in the drawing room, however, it became delightfully clear that Lord Hugh was not yet present. And Sarah had looked. No one was going to accuse her of shirking her duty.

Sarah had never much liked standing alone at gatherings, so she joined her mother and aunts over by the fireplace. As expected, they were nattering on about the wedding. Sarah listened with half an ear; after five days at Fensmore, she could not imagine there was any detail she had not yet heard about the upcoming ceremony.

“It is a pity the hydrangeas aren’t in season,” her aunt Virginia was saying. “The ones we grow at Whipple Hill are just the shade of lavender-blue we need for the chapel.”

“It’s blue-lavender,” Aunt Maria corrected, “and you must see that hydrangeas would have been a terrible mistake.”

“A mistake?”

“The colors are far too variable,” Aunt Maria continued, “even on a cultivated shrub. You would never have been able to guarantee the shade ahead of time, and what if they did not match Honoria’s dress perfectly?”

“Surely no one would expect perfection,” Aunt Virginia replied. “Not with flowers.”

Aunt Maria sniffed. “I always expect perfection.”

“Especially from flowers,” Sarah said with a little chuckle. Aunt Maria had named her daughters Rose, Lavender, Marigold, Iris, and Daisy. Her son, whom Sarah privately thought might be the luckiest child in England, was called John.

But Aunt Maria, though generally kindhearted, had never had much of a sense of humor. She blinked a few times in Sarah’s direction before giving a little smile and saying, “Oh yes, of course.”

Sarah still wasn’t sure if Aunt Maria had got the joke. She decided not to press the matter. “Oh, look! There’s Iris!” she said, relieved to see her cousin enter the room. Sarah had never been as close to Iris as she was to Honoria, but they were all three almost the same age, and Sarah had always enjoyed Iris’s dry wit. She imagined the two of them would be spending more time together now that Honoria was getting married, especially since they shared a profound loathing for the family musicale.

“Go,” her mother said, nodding in Iris’s direction. “You don’t want to stay here with the matrons.”

She really didn’t, so with a grateful smile to her mother, Sarah made her way over to Iris, who was standing near the doorway, quite obviously looking for someone.

“Have you seen Lady Edith?” Iris asked without preamble.

“Who?”

“Lady Edith Gilchrist,” Iris clarified, referring to a young lady neither of them knew very well.

“Wasn’t she recently engaged to the Duke of Kinross?”

Iris waved this off as if the recent loss of an eligible duke was of no consequence. “Is Daisy down?” she asked.

Sarah blinked at the sudden change of subject. “Not that I have seen.”

“Thank
God
.”

Sarah’s eyes widened at Iris’s rather fast use of the Lord’s name, but she would never criticize. Not about Daisy.

Daisy was best in very small doses. There was simply no getting around that.

“If I make it through these weddings without murdering her, it will be a small miracle,” Iris said darkly. “Or a large . . . something.”

“I told Aunt Virginia not to put the two of you in a bedchamber together,” Sarah said.

Iris dismissed this with a flick of her head as she continued to glance about the drawing room. “There was nothing to be done about that. Sisters will be put together. They need to conserve rooms. I’m used to it.”

“Then what is wrong?”

Iris swung around to face her, her pale eyes large and furious in her similarly pale face. Sarah had once heard a gentleman call Iris colorless—she had light blue eyes, pale strawberry blond hair, and skin that was practically translucent. Her brows were pale, her lashes were pale, everything about her was pale—until one got to know her.

Iris was as fierce as they came. “She wants to
play,
” she seethed.

For a moment Sarah did not comprehend. And then—terrifyingly—she did. “No!” she gasped.

“She brought her violin up from London,” Iris confirmed.

“But—”

“And Honoria has already moved
her
violin to Fensmore. And of course every great house has a pianoforte.” Iris clenched her jaw; she was quite obviously repeating Daisy’s words.

“But your cello!” Sarah protested.

“You’d think, wouldn’t you?” Iris fumed. “But no, she’s thought of everything. Lady Edith Gilchrist is here, and she brought
her
cello. Daisy wants me to borrow it.”

Instinctively, Sarah whipped her head around, looking for Lady Edith.

“She’s not here yet,” Iris said, all business, “but I need to find her the moment she gets in.”

“Why would Lady Edith bring a cello?”

“Well, she plays,” Iris said, as if Sarah had not considered that.

Sarah resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Well, almost. “But why would she bring it
here
?”

“Apparently, she’s quite good.”

“What has that got to do with anything?”

Iris shrugged. “I expect she likes to practice every day. Many great musicians do.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Sarah said.

Iris gave her a commiserating look, then said, “I need to find her before Daisy does. Under no circumstances may she permit Daisy to borrow her cello on my behalf.”

“If she’s that good, she probably wouldn’t want to lend it out. At least not to one of us.” Sarah grimaced. Lady Edith was relatively new to London, but surely she knew of the Smythe-Smith musicale.

“I’m apologizing in advance for abandoning you,” Iris said, keeping her eyes on the open doorway. “I shall probably bolt midsentence the moment I see her.”

“I may have to bolt first,” Sarah told her. “I have been assigned duties of my own for the evening.”

Her tone must have belied her distaste, because Iris turned to her with renewed interest.

“I’m to be nanny to Hugh Prentice,” Sarah said, sounding rather burdened as the words clipped out of her mouth. But it was a good kind of burdened. If she was going to have a dreadful evening, at least she could boast about it in advance.

“Nanny to— Oh, my.”

“Don’t laugh,” Sarah warned.

“I wasn’t going to,” Iris clearly lied.

“Honoria insisted. She thinks he won’t feel welcome if one of us doesn’t see to his happiness and inclusion.”

“And she asked you to nanny him?” Iris gave her a dubious stare, always an unsettling expression. There was something about Iris’s eyes, that watery pale blue and the lashes so fine they were almost invisible. She could be rather unnerving.

“Well, no,” Sarah admitted, “not in so many words.” Not in any words, to be truthful, and in fact, Honoria had specifically
denied
those words, but it did make for a better story to call herself a nanny.

At functions such as these, one had to have something good about which to complain. It was rather like those boys at Cambridge she’d met last spring. They only seemed happy when they’d been able to moan about how much work they had to do.

“What does she want you to do?” Iris asked.

“Oh, this and that. I’m to sit with him tomorrow at the wedding breakfast. Rupert’s taken ill,” she added as an aside.

“Well, that’s good, at least,” Iris murmured.

Sarah acknowledged this with a brief nod as she continued. “And she specifically asked me to entertain Lord Hugh before supper.”

Iris glanced over her shoulder. “Is he here yet?”

“No,” Sarah said with a happy sigh.

“Don’t get too complacent,” Iris warned. “He’ll be down. If Honoria asked you to watch out for him, she will have asked him—quite specifically—to come to supper.”

Sarah stared at Iris in horror. Honoria had
said
she wasn’t trying to make a match of the two of them . . . “Surely you don’t think—”

“No, no,” Iris said with a snort, “she wouldn’t dare try to play matchmaker. Not with you.”

Sarah’s lips came together to ask her what she meant by
that,
but before she could make a sound, Iris added, “You know Honoria. She likes everything to be neat and tidy. If she wants you to look after Lord Hugh, she’ll make sure he’s here to need looking after.”

Sarah considered this for a moment, then gave a nod of concurrence. Honoria
was
like that. “Well,” she declared, because she always did like a declarative
well
. “It’s going to make for a miserable two days, but I promised Honoria, and I always keep my obligations.”

If Iris had been sipping a drink, she would have sprayed it across the room. “
You?
”

“What do you mean,
me
?” Sarah demanded. Iris looked as if she was about to chortle with amusement.

“Oh, please,” Iris said, in that scornful way one could adopt only with family and still hope to be on speaking terms the next day, “you are the last person who can claim to keep all of her obligations.”

Sarah drew back, deeply affronted. “I beg your pardon.”

But if Iris saw Sarah’s distress, she did not notice. Or did not care. “Does your memory not stretch back to last April?” Iris prompted. “April the fourteenth, to be precise?”

The musicale. Sarah had backed out the afternoon of the performance. “I was ill,” she protested. “There was no way I could have played.”

Iris did not say a word. She didn’t have to. Sarah was lying, and they both knew it.

“Very well, I wasn’t ill,” Sarah admitted. “At least not very ill.”

“It’s nice of you to finally admit it,” Iris said in an annoyingly superior voice.

Sarah shifted her weight uncomfortably. It had been the two of them that spring, plus Honoria and Daisy. Honoria had been happy to play as long as she was with family, and Daisy was convinced that she was well on her way to becoming a virtuoso. Iris and Sarah, on the other hand, had held many conversations debating the various methods of death by musical instrument. Gallows humor. It had been the only way they’d been able to get through the dread.

“I did it for you,” she finally said to Iris.

“Oh, really.”

“I thought the entire performance would be canceled.”

Iris was clearly unconvinced.

“I did!” Sarah insisted. “Who would have ever thought Mama would drag poor Miss Wynter into the performance? Although it did turn out well for her, didn’t it?”

Miss Wynter—Miss Anne Wynter, who was going to marry Cousin Daniel in two weeks and become the Countess of Winstead—had made the mistake of once telling Sarah’s mother that she could play the pianoforte. Lady Pleinsworth, apparently, had not forgotten this.

“Daniel would have fallen in love with Miss Wynter regardless,” Iris retorted, “so don’t try to soothe your conscience with that.”

“I wasn’t. I was merely pointing out that I never could have foreseen—” She let out an impatient breath. None of this sounded the way it did in her head. “Iris, you must know that I was trying to save you.”

“You were trying to save yourself.”

“I was trying to save both of us. It just— It did not work the way I planned.”

Iris regarded her coolly. Sarah waited for her to respond, but she didn’t. She just stood there, drawing out the moment like soft treacle candy, stretched into a ropy swing. Finally, Sarah could take it no more, and she gave in with, “Just say it.”

Iris raised a brow.

“Whatever it is you’re so keen to tell me. Obviously there is something.”

Iris’s lips parted, then closed, as if she were taking time to choose the correct words. Finally, she said, “You know that I love you.”

It was not what Sarah had expected. Unfortunately, neither was what came next.

“I will always love you,” Iris continued. “In fact, I will probably even always like you, and you know I cannot say that about most of our family. But you can be terribly selfish. And the worst part of it is, you don’t even see it.”

It was the strangest thing, Sarah thought. She wanted to say something. She
needed
to say something, because that’s what she did when faced with something she didn’t like. Iris couldn’t call her selfish and expect Sarah to just stand there and listen.

And yet that was what she seemed to be doing.

She swallowed, and she felt her tongue dart out to moisten her lips, but she could not form words. All she could do was think
No
. It wasn’t true. She loved her family. She would do anything for them. That Iris could stand there and call her selfish . . .