Seven Stones to Stand or Fall (Outlander)(154)
“Then we’ll start again, old man,” he said. “That’s all. Come on; I need a drink, and so do you.”
5
STRATEGY AND TACTICS
IT TOOK LESS THAN five minutes over the cake plate at Rumm’s for Minnie to realize the depths of her father’s treachery.
“Your style is very good, my dear,” said Lady Buford. The chaperone was a thin, gray-haired lady with an aristocratically long nose and sharp gray eyes under heavy lids that had probably been languorously appealing in her youth. She gave a small, approving nod at the delicate white daisies embroidered on Minnie’s pink linen jacket. “I had thought, with your portion, that we might set our sights on a London merchant, but with your personal attractions, it might be possible to aim a little higher.”
“My…portion?”
“Yes, five thousand pounds is quite attractive—we’ll have a good selection, I assure you. You could have your pick of army officers”—she made an elegantly dismissive gesture, then wrapped long, bony fingers around the handle of her teacup—“and there are a few that are quite appealing, I admit. But there’s the perpetual absences to be considered…and postings in insalubrious spots, should your husband wish you to accompany him. Now, if he’s killed, there’s a reasonable pension, but it’s nothing to what a sound merchant might leave—and if he should be wounded to such an extent as to exclude him from service…” She took a long, considering sip, then shook her head.
“No. We can certainly do better than the army. Or the navy, God help us. Sailors tend to be somewhat…un. Couth,” she said, leaning toward Minnie and pursing her wrinkled lips in a whisper.
“God help us,” Minnie repeated in a pious tone, though her fist was knotted in the folds of the tablecloth. You utter weasel! she thought toward her absent father. Establish a social life for me, eh?
Despite her astonished annoyance, though, she had to admit to being somewhat impressed. Five thousand pounds?
If he actually meant it…the cynical part of her mind put in. But he likely did. It would be just like him. He’d see it as killing two birds with one stone: getting her access to likely sources of salable information and simultaneously marrying her off to one of them, with Lady Buford as his unwitting accomplice.
And he had, to be fair, told her that he wanted an Englishman for her. She just hadn’t thought he’d meant now. Really, she had to admire her father’s twisted genius; who but a marriage procuress would know more—and have less hesitation in revealing what she knew—about the intimate familial and financial details of wealthy men?
Taking a deep breath, she let go of the fistful of tablecloth and did her best to look interested, in a demure sort of way.
“We’ll avoid the navy, then,” she said. “Do you think…I hope I am not immodest in suggesting it, but after all, five thousand pounds…What about minor—very minor,” she added hastily, “members of the peerage?”
Lady Buford blinked but not as though taken aback; merely reordering her mental index, Minnie thought.
“Well, there are impoverished knights and baronets by the score,” she said. “And if you are set on a title…But really, my dear, I wouldn’t recommend that avenue unless you will have independent means of your own. Your portion would be instantly swallowed in sustaining some crumbling manor and you yourself would molder inside it, never getting to London or having a new dress from one year’s end to the next.”
“To be sure. I, um, do possess a, er…small competence, shall we say?”
“Indeed.” Lady Buford’s wispy brows rose in interest. “How small?”
“A thousand a year,” Minnie said, wildly exaggerating the income from her small private ventures, which totaled less than a tenth of that sum. Still, it hardly mattered, as she wasn’t actually marrying any of these theoretical impoverished baronets; she only needed to enter the social circles they—they and their more interesting brethren—inhabited.
“Hmm.” Lady Buford assumed an inward look and drank tea. After a few moments’ contemplation, she set down the cup with decision.
“You speak good French, your father says?”
“Mais oui.”
Lady Buford looked at her sharply, but Minnie kept a straight face.
“Well, then. We’ll begin with Lady Jonas’s Thursday salon. It’s literary and intellectual, but she usually has a good mix of available gentlemen, including European—though your father did specify an Englishman….Well, we’ll see. Then perhaps a play on Saturday evening….We’ll have a box; it’s important that you be seen—have you something appropriate to wear?”
“I don’t know,” Minnie said honestly. “I’ve never been to a play; what is appropriate?”
Half an hour, two pots of China tea, and a dozen tea cakes (with cream) later, she made her way out into the street, a scribbled list of engagements in her hand and her head spinning with tippets, panniers, mantuas, swags, fans—she had a nice fan, luckily—and other items necessary to the pursuit and bagging of a wealthy and influential husband.
“A gun would be simpler,” she muttered, thrusting the list into her pocket. “And certainly less expensive.”