His Lordship's True Lady (True Gentlemen #4)(16)
Lily moved away from the wall. “You are not in search of diversion. I like that about you. I’m prone to the same shortcoming.”
Hessian wanted to wrap his arms around her again. “To regard life as a gift to be cherished rather than an endless, privileged boredom to be endured is a shortcoming?”
Lily twined her arm with his. “I suspect we have more than those two options, and we might be able to cherish the gift while occasionally indulging in a morning on a pirate ship.”
Arousal never did much to improve a man’s intelligence, though it could certainly sharpen his senses. “I beg your pardon?”
“Had you forgotten I’m bringing Bronwyn to play with Daisy tomorrow?”
Holding Lily, Hessian had forgotten where Cumberland was. “I will look forward to your visit.” He’d count the hours. “Shall we return to the garden?”
“Yes, for I must take my leave of our hostess, and you must attach yourself to some old fellow who needs a sympathetic ear regarding his gout. Colonel Dingle is reliably infirm. The widows will avoid his company, and thus you’ll be safe.”
Hessian promenaded along, when he wanted instead to stick his head out the window and shout, I cannot play this role!
Could not dodge widows, dance with debutantes, and deal with society’s expectations for three more months.
Neither, however, could he continue to neglect the earldom’s succession. Worth had put the Kettering finances to rights, more or less, but as Worth had pointed out, even with both brothers applying themselves to the challenge, nothing guaranteed a son would be born.
With only one brother married, the odds of a legitimate heir were halved.
“I must apologize for imposing on your person,” Hessian said as they reached the bottom of the stairs. “Had we been found conversing alone, gossip would have ensued.”
His capacity for mendacity was growing apace, for he was not in the least sorry to have held Lily Ferguson in his arms.
“Lady Humplewit needs a credible reason to be wandering the corridors of the house alone if she’s to spread gossip about you accosting me. I gather the ladies’ retiring room is not on the first floor?”
“The gentlemen’s retiring room is upstairs, suggesting the ladies’ would be on the ground floor. Lady Humplewit was plainly lying in wait to ambush me.”
She’d nearly succeeded. Hessian had asked if he could be of assistance, and she’d latched on to his arm like a rowan tree sinking roots into the face of a precipice. He’d shaken loose and trotted off ostensibly in search of a housemaid.
And his freedom, of course.
“Too bad you haven’t a sister here to guard your back,” Lily said. “You do have a brother in Town, though.”
“We were estranged for many years, but yes, I have a brother. Worth is disgustingly happy with his lady wife, besotted with his daughter, and I suspect more fond of his dog than he is of me. He’s directed me to find a countess so he might repair to his country estate posthaste. I’m whining.”
Also being honest, because Worth’s leap into the joys of holy matrimony had come just as Hessian had made the effort to repair a familial breach of many years’ standing. That breach was healed—or at least repaired—in part because Worth no longer clung to his status as an earl’s disenchanted younger brother.
Worth had become entirely the creature of his womenfolk, and made it appear like a damned happy fate too.
“You look so severe when you’re lost in thought,” Lily said as they approached the door to the garden. “And yet, I’ve seen you smile.”
“I will smile when I recall the moments spent with you and Apollo in that alcove. You are a good friend, Lily Ferguson. I again apologize for embroiling you in my troubles.”
“No apologies necessary. Prepare to weigh anchor and repel boarders tomorrow at two of the clock, my lord.”
She sailed off in the direction of the tent at the foot of the garden, a small craft of a female sturdy enough to navigate any storm, even as the wind whipped at her skirts and a fine mist began to fall from the sky.
*
“Why didn’t I kiss him?” Lily could pose that question because Emmaline was a reliable confidante, and Bronwyn had insisted on riding up on the box. With Rosecroft as her de facto papa, Bronwyn had probably charmed the reins away from John Coachman before the carriage had left the mews.
Emmaline drew the shade down on her side of the bench, even though the sun was on Lily’s side. “Maybe you didn’t kiss the earl because you are a lady?”
“Don’t be obtuse. I am the niece of the Honorable Walter Leggett, a woman of mature years. I am not prone to missishness or dithering.” To be held by Grampion had been so… sweet. And frustrating. “I have a normal complement of curiosity, though, and would prefer not to die without having even once kissed a man whom I esteem.”
And desire, of all the inconvenient realizations.
“You’re prone to common sense, Lily. You can’t go around kissing stray earls and have any sort of reputation left.”
Grampion wasn’t stray, or dashing, or flirtatious. He was the least sentimentally romantic man Lily had encountered in years, and yet, she regretted not sampling his charms.
“The right earls don’t kiss and gossip,” Lily said as the coach rattled around a corner. “I do believe Winnie’s at the ribbons.”