And Then She Fell(3)
Mrs. Wentworth, a short, comfortably rotund lady in brown bombazine, sighed. “It’s such a shame—they make such a handsome couple.”
“Now, now.” Mr. Wentworth, a solid, conservatively dressed gentleman, patted his wife’s hand where it rested on his sleeve. “There’ll be other handsome bucks that’ll come sniffing around, and as Mellie’s of a mind to find a gentleman who loves her . . . well, I’m just grateful to Miss Cynster for finding out what she has.”
Henrietta smiled faintly and quashed an impulse to squirm. She didn’t know James well, but he was her brother Simon’s closest friend; James had been Simon’s groomsman when Simon had married two years ago. Consequently, James’s and her paths had crossed at several family functions, but beyond what she’d gathered through his association with Simon, she’d had no reason to look more closely at James.
Until he’d grown so particular in his attentions to Melinda that his intention to offer for her hand could not be doubted. At that point, Melinda, with her parents’ approval, had turned to Henrietta for, as they’d termed it, “clarification of James’s motives.”
From her early twenties, Henrietta had found a calling in assisting her peers, the other young ladies of the haut ton, to discover the answer to the critical question every young lady had of the gentleman who sought her hand: Does he love me, or is there some other reason he wishes to marry me?
It wasn’t always easy to tell, or, sometimes, to discover the true answer. Henrietta, however, born into the powerful Cynster clan, with all the connections and associations that afforded her, had long ago learned the ways of finding out almost anything.
She wasn’t a gossip; she rarely told anyone anything they hadn’t specifically asked to know. But she’d always been observant, and her acuity had only sharpened with the years, with constant application and the resulting experience.
While mamas, matrons, and chaperons guided their charges through the ton’s shoals, acting as matchmakers for those young ladies, Henrietta provided a countering service. Indeed, certain disgruntled gentlemen had labeled her “The Matchbreaker,” but to the female half of the haut ton, she was the person young ladies set on marrying for love turned to for reassurance as to their would-be fiancés’ matrimonial motivations.
With tonnish sentiment over recent years shifting in favor of love-matches, Henrietta’s insights and expertise had been much in demand.
It was entirely possible that her extensive experience was the reason behind the nebulous niggle in her brain, the suspicion that something about James Glossup’s situation didn’t quite fit. But Melinda had asked, and Henrietta now knew, so despite that niggling but irritatingly unspecific reservation, she would oblige and tell her friend the truth.
Watching James turn elegantly with the music, surveying his broad shoulders, his long, lean frame, the ineffable grace with which he moved, his impeccable and stylishly subdued attire and fashionably ruffled brown hair, and the smile of true gentlemanly gentleness he bestowed on Melinda, Henrietta wondered yet again why he’d decided to take the tack he had and marry merely to secure extra funds, rather than searching for some lady to love.
He could, of course, simply be a coward too wary of love to take the risk, yet to Henrietta that explanation didn’t ring true.
As an acknowledged wolf of the ton, James had prowled the salons shoulder-to-shoulder with Simon, but since the summer of Simon’s marriage two years ago, James had drawn back and been little seen in London, not until the beginning of this Season. Regardless, as one of the Dorsetshire Glossups, one of Viscount Netherfield’s grandsons, there were any number of suitable young ladies who would be entirely agreeable to falling in love with him, but instead he’d fixed very quickly on Melinda.
And Melinda was one of Henrietta’s friends.
The measure concluded. James bowed; Melinda curtsied, then rose. Melinda glanced toward her parents, saw that Henrietta had arrived and, albeit with due courtesy and smiles, dismissed James, parting from him to thread her way through the crowd.
As Melinda drew near, Henrietta schooled her features into an expression of uninformative blandness, but after one good look at her face, Melinda glanced at her mother’s—and knew.
Melinda’s face fell. “Oh.” Halting in front of her parents, she took her mother’s hand, then looked at Henrietta. “It’s not good news, is it?”
Henrietta grimaced. “It’s not the news you wanted to hear.”