The Unexpected Duchess (Playful Brides #1)(32)
“Stop calling me Miss Upton and you didn’t seem so controlled a few moments ago.” She crossed her arms over her chest and tapped her fingers along her elbows.
“I told you, it was a momentary lapse in judgment.”
“And how do I know you won’t have another inconvenient so-called momentary lapse in judgment with the next young miss you find in a library?” she shot back.
He let out a long, deep breath. “You drive me mad, do you know that?”
She snorted. “The feeling is entirely mutual.”
He turned, strode past Lucy, and opened the door to the drawing room. “Enough. Since you refuse to tell me why she didn’t attend tonight, I intend to call upon Lady Cassandra tomorrow and see for myself.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“I’ll make all the arrangements,” Garrett announced the next afternoon at Cass’s parents’ town house. The four friends were enjoying a lavish tea prepared by the Monroes’ cook in an attempt to lure Cass into eating something.
Cass had reluctantly come down to the drawing room to greet her friends, but she seemed entirely uninterested in anything on her plate. Cass’s parents had gone out to make some social calls and so the four of them were alone in the house with the servants.
Cass sighed. “I’m not certain it’s such a good idea.” Resting her chin in her hand, elbow propped upon the table, she pushed her biscuits and teacakes around her plate. She’d been doing so all afternoon and had yet to take a bite.
“Oh, but it is. I think it’s a brilliant idea. Don’t you, Jane?” Lucy kicked Jane, who sat next to her on the settee.
Jane barely glanced up from the newspaper she’d been reading. “Pardon? Yes. Yes. Brilliant!” She pushed up her spectacles on her nose and took a large bite of her own biscuit.
Lucy nodded. “See there, dear, everyone’s in agreement.”
Cass turned soulful blue eyes to Garrett. “It’s ever so nice of you to offer your house in Bath to us for the remainder of the summer, but I just don’t know that I should leave London right now. If Penelope receives another letter from Julian, I want to be here in town so I can learn the news right away. And there’s always the chance that he may write to me himself.”
Lucy patted Cass on the back. “But dear, you said yourself that Penelope and her mother are retiring to their country house for the rest of the summer soon. No one stays in London in August. We must go. The post will make it to Bath just as surely as it will make it to London. It’s even a bit closer to Penelope’s country house, is it not?”
Cass’s eyes brightened a bit. “I suppose that’s true.”
“It’s absolutely true,” Lucy said with a nod. Garrett quickly agreed.
“I, for one, am all for it. Any excuse to get away from my mother’s watchful eye,” Jane said. “I consider this the start to Lucy’s experiment to help me dissuade my parents from forcing me to marry.”
Garrett slapped a palm on the table. “The devil you say. Your parents are forcing you to marry? That’s news.”
“In theory,” Jane replied. “Aren’t all parents forcing their daughters to marry?”
“You make it sound as if you’re off to the gallows,” Garrett replied, rolling his eyes.
“It feels like it.” She smiled at him sweetly.
“In your case, if they’re forcing you, they obviously haven’t done a very good job at it,” Garrett added.
Jane closed her eyes and pushed up her nose. “That is because I have become quite adept at sidestepping their attempts. Well, that and the fact that no one wants to marry a bluestocking. That part is merely luck actually.” Jane laughed at her own joke.
“I’ve never known anyone so proud of being a bluestocking,” Garrett said, snapping his own bit of newspaper open in front of his face.
“And I’ve never known someone so proud of being a dissolute rake. Oh, and profligate gambler. Mustn’t forget that.”
Garrett allowed the edge of the paper to fold down so he could eye Jane over its top. “I gamble only upon occasion, and I’m hardly dissolute.”
“If you say so.” Jane went back to paying more attention to her teacake than to Garrett. “This trip to Bath is just what I need,” she continued. “Besides, I cannot wait to go to the circulating library there. It’s one of the best in the country.”
Garrett leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs at the ankles. He let out a long breath. “Of course you can’t wait. Take you to a holiday town and all you’re interested in is the library.”
Jane tapped the tip of her finger against the paper. “Careful, Upton, or I’ll wonder at your quarrel with libraries. Though I suppose it does help one’s attitude about such things if one is able to read.”
Garrett shook his head slowly in a long-suffering manner. “I’ve been to the circulating library in Bath many times, Miss Lowndes. In fact, I’m one of its most devoted patrons.”
This time Jane didn’t even glance up. “Yes. I’m certain they’re appreciative of your coming in to look up the remedy for a sick head after a night of too many cards and too much drinking.”
Lucy gave them both a warning look. “Would you two stop? We’re doing this for Cass, remember?”