Scandal in Spring (Wallflowers #4)(23)

Staring into his glinting blue eyes, Daisy chuckled reluctantly, and he gave her another one of those brief, dazzling smiles. Her face turned unaccountably warm.

Swift’s attention remained on her for a moment too long, as if he were fascinated by something he saw in her eyes. Abruptly he tore his gaze from hers and bowed to the table again. “I will leave your to enjoy your tea. A pleasure, ladies.” Glancing at Annabelle, he added gravely, “You have a lovely daughter, madam. I will overlook her lack of appreciation for my business lecture.”

“That is very kind of you, sir,” Annabelle replied, her eyes dancing.

Swift returned to the other side of the room while the young women all busied themselves, stirring unnecessary spoonfuls of sugar into their tea, smoothing their napkins on their laps.

Evie was the first to speak. “You were right,” she said to Lillian. “He’s absolutely horrid.”

“Yes,” Annabelle agreed emphatically. “When one looks at him, the first words that come to mind are ‘wilted spinach.’”

“Shut up, the both of you,” Lillian said in response to their sarcasm, and sank her teeth into a piece of toast.

Lillian insisted on dragging Daisy out to the east lawn in the afternoon, where most of the young people were playing bowls. Ordinarily Daisy wouldn’t have minded, but she had just reached a riveting part in a new novel about a governess named Honoria who had just encountered a ghost in the attic. “Who are you?” Honoria had quavered, staring at the ghost who looked remarkably like her old love, Lord Clayworth. The ghost had been about to answer when Lillian had decisively torn the book from Daisy’s hands and pulled her from the library.

“Blast,” Daisy complained. “Blast, blast…Lillian, I had just gotten to the best part!”

“As we speak there are at least a half-dozen eligible men who are lawn-bowling outside,” her sister said crisply. “And playing games with them is far more productive than reading by yourself.”

“I don’t know anything about bowls.”

“Good. Ask them to teach you. If there’s one thing every man loves to do, it’s telling a woman how to do something.”

They approached the bowling lawn, where chairs and tables had been set out for onlookers. A group of players were busy rolling large round wooden balls along the green, laughing as one player’s ball, or bowl, dropped into the narrow ditch dug at the side of the green.

“Hmm,” Lillian said, observing the gathering. “We have competition.” Daisy recognized the three women her sister was referring to: Miss Cassandra Leighton, Lady Miranda Dowden, and Elspeth Higginson. “I would have preferred not to invite any unmarried women to Hampshire,” Lillian said, “but Westcliff said that would be too obvious. Fortunately you’re prettier than all of them. Even if you are short.”

“I’m not short,” Daisy protested.

“Petite, then.”

“I don’t like that word any better. It makes me sound trivial.”

“It’s better than stunted,” Lillian said, “which is the only other word I can come up with to describe your lack of stature.” She grinned at Daisy’s scowl. “Don’t make faces, dear. I’m taking you to a buffet of bachelors and you can pick any—oh, hell.”

“What? What?”

“He’s playing.”

There was no need to ask who he was…the annoyance in Lillian’s voice made his identity perfectly clear.

Surveying the group, Daisy saw Matthew Swift standing at the end of the lane with a few other young men, watching as the distances between the bowls were being measured. Like the others he was dressed in light-colored trousers, a white shirt, and a sleeveless waistcoat. He was lean and fit, his relaxed posture imbued with physical confidence.

His gaze caught everything. He appeared to be taking the game seriously. Matthew Swift was a man who could never do less than his best, even in a casual lawn game.

Daisy was fairly certain that he competed for something every day of his life. And that didn’t quite fit with her experience of the privileged young men of Old Boston, or Old New York, the pampered scions who were always aware that they didn’t have to work if they didn’t wish to. She wondered if Swift ever did something just for the enjoyment of it.

“They’re trying to determine who’s lying the shot,” Lillian said. “That means who managed to roll their bowls closest to the white ball at the end.”

“How do you know so much about the game?” Daisy asked.

Lillian smiled wryly. “Westcliff taught me to play. He’s so good at bowls that he usually sits out because no one else ever wins when he plays.”

They approached the group of chairs, where Westcliff was sitting with Evie and Lord St. Vincent, and the Craddocks, a retired major general and his wife. Daisy headed toward an extra chair, but Lillian pushed her toward the bowling green.

“Go,” Lillian commanded in the same tone one would have used to send a dog to fetch a stick.

Sighing, Daisy cast a longing thought to her unfinished novel and trudged forward. She had met at least three of the gentlemen on previous occasions. Not bad prospects, actually. There was Mr. Hollingberry, a pleasant-looking man in his thirties, round-cheeked and a bit pudgy but attractive nonetheless. And Mr. Mardling, with his athletic build and thick blond curls and green eyes.