Just Like Heaven (Smythe-Smith Quartet #1)(9)

Which she would do. He was sure of it.

It wasn’t that she was deliberately willful. She was, for the most part, a perfectly reasonable girl. But even the most reasonable of females took umbrage when they thought they were being bossed about.

So he watched from afar, and he quietly scared off a suitor or two.

Or three.

Or maybe four.

He’d promised Daniel.

And Marcus Holroyd did not break his promises.





Chapter Two



“When will he be here?”

“I don’t know,” Honoria replied, for what must have been the seventh time. She smiled politely at the other young ladies in the Royles’ green and gray drawing room. Marcus’s appearance the day before had been discussed, dissected, analyzed, and—by Lady Sarah Pleinsworth, Honoria’s cousin and one of her closest friends—rendered into poetry.

“He came in the rain,” Sarah intoned. “The day had been plain.”

Honoria nearly spit out her tea.

“It was muddy, this lane—”

Cecily Royle smiled slyly over her teacup. “Have you considered free verse?”

“—our heroine, in pain—”

“I was cold,” Honoria put in.

Iris Smythe-Smith, another of Honoria’s cousins, looked up with her signature dry expression. “I am in pain,” she stated. “Specifically, my ears.”

Honoria shot Iris a look that said clearly, Be polite. Iris just shrugged.

“—her distress, she did feign—”

“Not true!” Honoria protested.

“You can’t interfere with genius,” Iris said sweetly.

“—her schemes, not in vain—”

“This poem is devolving rapidly,” Honoria stated.

“I am beginning to enjoy it,” said Cecily.

“—her existence, a bane . . .”

Honoria let out a snort. “Oh, come now!”

“I think she’s doing an admirable job,” Iris said, “given the limitations of the rhyming structure.” She looked over at Sarah, who had gone quite suddenly silent. Iris cocked her head to the side; so did Honoria and Sarah.

Sarah’s lips were parted, and her left hand was still outstretched with great drama, but she appeared to have run out of words.

“Cane?” Cecily suggested. “Main?”

“Insane?” offered Iris.

“Any moment now,” Honoria said tartly, “if I’m trapped here much longer with you lot.”

Sarah laughed and flopped down on the sofa. “The Earl of Chatteris,” she said with a sigh. “I shall never forgive you for not introducing us last year,” she said to Honoria.

“I did introduce you!”

“Well, then you should have done so twice,” Sarah added impishly, “to make it stick. I don’t think he said more than two words to me the whole season.”

“He barely said more than two words to me,” Honoria replied.

Sarah tilted her head, her brows arching as if to say, Oh, really?

“He’s not terribly social,” Honoria said.

“I think he’s handsome,” Cecily said.

“Do you?” Sarah asked. “I find him rather brooding.”

“Brooding is handsome,” Cecily said firmly, before Honoria could offer an opinion.

“I am trapped in a bad novel,” Iris announced, to no one in particular.

“You didn’t answer my question,” Sarah said to Honoria. “When will he be here?”

“I do not know,” Honoria replied, for what was surely the eighth time. “He did not say.”

“Impolite,” Cecily said, reaching for a biscuit.

“It’s his way,” Honoria said with a light shrug.

“This is what I find so interesting,” Cecily murmured, “that you know ‘his way.’ ”

“They have known each other for decades,” Sarah said. “Centuries.”

“Sarah . . .” Honoria adored her cousin, she really did. Most of the time.

Sarah smiled slyly, her dark eyes alight with mischief. “He used to call her Bug.”

“Sarah!” Honoria glared at her. She did not need it put about that she had once been likened to an insect by an earl of the realm. “It was a long time ago,” she said with all the dignity she could muster. “I was seven.”

“How old was he?” Iris asked.

Honoria thought for a moment. “Thirteen, most likely.”

“Well, that explains it,” Cecily said with a wave of her hand. “Boys are beasts.”

Honoria nodded politely. Cecily had seven younger brothers. She ought to know.

“Still,” Cecily said, all drama, “how coincidental that he should come across you on the street.”

“Fortuitous,” Sarah agreed.

“Almost as if he were following you,” Cecily added, leaning forward with widened eyes.

“Now that is just silly,” Honoria said.

“Well, of course,” Cecily replied, her tone going right back to brisk and businesslike. “That would never happen. I was merely saying that it seemed as if he had.”