The Lady's Guide to Petticoats and Piracy (Montague Siblings #2)(30)
Be charming, I tell myself. Do not scowl.
But when his eyes meet mine, I’m gut-stuck with the sudden fear that we shall be foiled before we’re even permitted to cross the threshold. I shall never meet Alexander Platt. I shall never escape Edinburgh and Callum and a future filled with bread and buns and babies. I shall always have to push myself aside to make room for others in my own life.
But then I will also never have to face Johanna Hoffman. The scales tip.
“Good day,” I say, right at the same time Sim does. We glare at each other. The butler looks ready to shut the door in our faces due to a lack of communication and decorum, so I say quickly, “My name is Miss Felicity Montague. I’m here for the wedding.”
“I was not told to expect any more guests,” he says.
I swallow—my mouth has gone very dry, as if all the moisture in the body was slowly sucked from me by the long walk—reaffix my best sweet, innocent-slip-of-a-thing face, which uses muscles that have grown stiff from lack of practice, and, Lord help me, the actual phrase What would Monty do? manifests like an unwanted houseguest in my mind. “Did my letter not arrive? Johanna—Miss Hoffman—and I are good friends from childhood. I grew up in Cheshire with her. I’ve been at school not far from here, and I heard she was to be married and I simply had to come. She’s the best friend I’ve ever had, and I couldn’t miss her nuptials.”
Perhaps it was not the wisest play to show all my cards immediately upon arrival—I have just offered up the entirety of the story I am reliant upon to get us a place in this house in a single mouthful, and I’m not certain he’s swallowing it, so I tack on, for good, pathetic measure, “Did the letter truly not arrive?”
Rather than answering, the butler simply repeats, “Miss Hoffman did not inform me to expect any more guests.”
“Oh.” My heart hiccups, but this fight is far from over. I select the next weapon from my feminine arsenal—the damsel in distress. “Well, I suppose I could just . . . go back to the town and wait to see if you receive the letter.” I heave the weariest sigh I can muster. “Zounds, it was such a trip. And my girl has been limping on a twisted ankle since Stuttgart.” I give Sim a nudge, and she obediently begins rubbing her ankle. It’s a far less convincing performance than mine, but I turn back to the butler and attempt to bat my eyelashes.
It must come off rather more as trying to rid my eyes of something irritating for he asks, “Do you require a handkerchief, madam?”
I was hoping to elicit pity, but this ghoul of a man seems to have not a single drop of charity to be wrung from him. Simpering seemed the best method—simpering and simple, my two least favorite things for a woman to be, but the two things men like most—to approach a gentleman such as this fuzzy-eared sod, but he’s so obviously unmoved, and also I think I shall faint from the effort if I’m forced to remain this repressed. So instead, I change course dramatically, and rather than playing my brother, I play myself.
I stand straight with my hands upon my hips, drop my dimpled smile, and adopt the tone I found most effective in ordering Monty about on our Tour when he was dragging his feet and moaning about his poor toes as though we had some other choice of how to travel and were simply holding out on him. “Sir,” I say to the butler, “we have come a great distance, as is obvious if you care to make any observation of our current state. I am exhausted, as is my lady, and here I am telling you my dearest friend in the world”—I am unintentionally escalating the significance of my relationship to Johanna with each retelling, but I press on—“is to be wed and you will not even allow me to cross through your door. I demand first an audience with Miss Hoffman so that she can make judgments for herself to our acquaintance, and, should she decline to allow us to attend her wedding, you can at least have the decency to put us up for the night.”
Which cracks him for the first time—the guardian of the grapefruit house rendered stunned and mute by how firmly and confidently I spoke to him. Sim, in contrast, looks rather impressed.
Then the butler says, “I believe Miss Hoffman is dressing for dinner.”
“Zounds, really?” I say before I can help it. It’s hardly midafternoon.
The butler either chooses not to comment or his ears are so encased in hair he does not hear my aside, for he continues, “I will see if she is available for an audience.”
“Thank you.” I take two fistfuls of my skirts and push past him into the entryway, thinking it will make me seem as impressive and authoritative as my tone led him to believe I am, only to then have to stop dead and wait for him to lead, as I’ve no idea where I’m going. He doesn’t offer to take my winter things. He doesn’t seem to think I’ll be staying long.
Sim appears at my side and makes a big show of leaning over to unfasten my cloak while really using it as an excuse to hiss into my ear, “No snapping her head off, crocodile. You’re friends, remember?”
“I’m not going to be cross with Johanna unless she’s as much of a stooge to me as her butler was,” I reply, then add, against my better judgment but compelled to defend myself, “And I’m not a crocodile. If I am to be an animal, I would like to be a fox.”
“Well then, foxy.” She whips the cloak off from around my shoulders, then smooths the collar of my dress, her hands lingering on my breastbone. “You’ve only got one chance at this, so make it count.”