To Desire a Devil (Legend of the Four Soldiers #4)(9)

So when Lottie plopped back down on her exquisite white and rose striped settee and looked at her expectantly, Beatrice smiled and said, “I thought we were to discuss Mr. Graham and the veteran’s bill today. I’ve had word that Mr. Wheaton would like to have another secret meeting before—”

“Oh, pooh on Nate and the veteran’s bill.” Lottie pulled a tasseled gold silk cushion on her lap and hugged it. “I’m sick to death of politics and husbands as well.”

The maid bustled back in with a laden tray at that minute. Beatrice watched her friend as the fresh tea things were arranged. Lottie always spoke carelessly, but Beatrice was beginning to worry that something was really wrong between her and Mr. Graham. They’d had a fashionable marriage, of course. Nathan Graham was the scion of a rather new wealthy family, while Lottie came from an old but impoverished name. Theirs had been an eminently practical union, but Beatrice thought it had been a love match as well—at least on Lottie’s part. Had she been wrong?

The maid bustled out again, and Beatrice said softly, “Lottie . . .”

Her friend was pouring the tea, her gaze resolutely fixed on the teapot in her hand. “Did you hear that Lady Hasselthorpe cut Mrs. Hunt dead at the Fothering’s musicale yesterday? I’ve heard wild speculation that it signals Lord Hasselthorpe’s disapproval of Mr. Hunt, but one can’t help wonder if Lady Hasselthorpe did it entirely accidentally. She is such a ninny.”

Lottie held out a full teacup, and maybe it was her imagination, but Beatrice thought she saw pleading in her friend’s eyes. And what could she do? She was a maiden who’d reached the overripe age of four and twenty without ever receiving an offer. What did she know about matters of the heart anyway?

Beatrice sighed silently and took the teacup. “And how did Mrs. Hunt respond?”

THE PROBLEM WITH marriage, Lottie Graham reflected, was that there was such a difference between what one dreamed the matrimonial state would be like and, well, the reality.

Lottie sat back down on her settee—Wallace and Sons, bought just last year for a truly scandalous sum—and stared at the cooling tea things. She’d seen Beatrice to the door after babbling at her dearest friend in the world for a solid half hour. Poor Beatrice must heartily regret coming over for their weekly tea.

Lottie sighed and plucked the last biscuit from the plate, crumbling it between her fingers. Darling Pan came to sit beside her skirts, his foxy little face grinning up at her.

“It’s not good for you, so many sweets,” Lottie murmured, but she gave a bit of the biscuit to him anyway. He delicately took the treat between his sharp little teeth and retired with his prize beneath the gilded French armchair.

Lottie slumped into the settee, laying her arm wearily along the back. Perhaps she expected too much. Perhaps it was girlish fantasies that she should’ve outgrown long ago. Perhaps all marriages, even the very best like her own mama and papa’s, ultimately settled into dreary indifference, and she was simply being a ninny like Lady Hasselthorpe.

Annie, the head downstairs maid, came in to gather up the tea things. She glanced at Lottie and said hesitantly, “Will there be anything else, ma’am?”

Oh, God, even the servants sensed it.

Lottie straightened a little, trying to look serene. “No, that’ll be all.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Annie curtsied. “Cook was wanting to know if there’ll be one or two for supper tonight?”

“Just one,” Lottie muttered, and turned her face away.

Annie left the room quietly.

She sat there, draped on the settee, for some time, thinking wild thoughts until the door opened again a bit later.

Nate strolled in and then stopped. “Oh, sorry! Didn’t mean to disturb you. I didn’t know anyone was in here.”

At Nate’s voice, Pan emerged from under the armchair and pranced over to be patted. Pan had adored Nate from the very beginning.

Lottie wrinkled her nose at her pet and then said rather carelessly to Nate, “I didn’t know you’d be home for dinner. I just told Cook there’d be only one.”

“That’s all right.” Nate straightened from Pan and gave her one of his wide, easy smiles—the smile that had first made her heart quicken. “I’m dining with Collins and Rupert tonight. I just stopped in to see if I’d left that Whig pamphlet here. Rupert’s interested in seeing it. Ah. There ’tis.”

Nate crossed to a table in the corner, where a messy pile of papers lay, snatching up the pamphlet in evident satisfaction. He returned to the door, engrossed in the pamphlet, and only as an afterthought did he look up as he was about to leave.

He frowned rather vaguely at Lottie. “I say, that’s all right, isn’t it? I mean, me dining out with Collins and Rupert? I thought you were attending some other social event when I made the plan.”

Lottie lifted her brow and said loftily, “Oh, don’t mind me. I’m—”

But she was talking to his back.

“Good, good. Knew you’d understand.” And he was out the door, his nose buried in that wretched pamphlet.

Lottie blew out a breath and threw a small cushion at the door, making Pan start and yip.

“Married two years and he’s more interested in dinner with a couple of boring old men than me!”

Pan jumped onto the settee beside her—which he was strictly forbidden to do—and licked her on the nose.