Page 17 of Bewitching Benedict (The Lovelorn Lads #1)
A n inquisition lay in wait for Benedict at home in the guise of his sister, who seized his arm as he stepped through the front door. "Well? Did you thaw Miss Hurst, Benny? Mother has been speaking to her friends?—"
"To her own friends, or to Miss Hurst's?" Either seemed likely, knowing their mother's skill in extracting Society gossip.
Amelia did not have dimples: her beauty was too refined for that.
Benedict had always thought it a pity, though, because her smile was so warm and infectious it could only be made more so with dimples.
"Mother's friends, silly goose. Come, I have Abigail bringing tea and biscuits to the drawing room, and Mother is having her afternoon lie-down, so I can tell you all her gossip and you can tell me all of yours. "
"Thus making you the foremost expert on all things Hurst," Benedict said, amused, as Amelia dragged him toward the drawing room.
Tea would be welcome, though, and if the price was relating the afternoon's encounters, well, he wanted to tell someone anyway.
The maid was there before them, straightening doilies and tidying curtains as she awaited the young mistress and master of the house.
Once assured that all was well, she was dismissed and Benedict threw himself into a deeply winged chair to take a gulp of too-hot tea.
"Did she learn whether Miss Hurst has ever been engaged? "
"What?" Amelia asked in real astonishment. "No, not a word of it, why?"
"We had a most peculiar interaction with Miss Dalton—Charles's cousin—and her escort for the afternoon, a Mr Jack Graham.
" Benedict told the story of the afternoon's adventures, leaving out his moment of intense attraction to Miss Dalton, and concluded with, "I thought they must know one another, but perhaps it is only that he is choleric and she, phlegmatic. "
"If she was ever engaged to him it was so discreetly that not even Mother could unearth it, so I can't imagine that it's true," Amelia proclaimed. "Now, her grandfather was in trade, so she's not from a long line of money?—"
"Yes, she told me that."
Amelia paused, clearly reassessing the order in which to offer information. "She has a brother inclined to gambling, but Mother is given to understand he was cut off some years ago, forced to make his own way so that the family would not be ruined."
"Cold," Benedict said, and thought of Miss Hurst's pale, icy gaze.
Another image intruded, though: the rich summer green of Miss Dalton's eyes.
He shook his head, trying to clear it away.
She had seemed so kissable, and then so remote and uninterested the moment after.
Women were confounding. Wrenching his mind back to the matter at hand, he concluded: "Cold but practical.
I suppose one does not make a fortune in trade through sentimentality. "
"I suppose not. Now, to the details. Her parents are both still alive and very proper, Mother hears.
She is, of course, arranging an opportunity to meet them by coincidence so she can form her own opinion, but so far, Benny, I think she sees no impediments to your engagement.
And I understand that Miss Hurst is a great beauty. "
"Almost as beautiful as you are," Benedict said in one part perfunctory flattery and in one part utter truth.
If Miss Hurst was ice with her light eyes and strawberry blonde hair and skim milk skin, his sister was fire with auburn locks and flashing brown eyes and the warm coloring suited to exercise that Miss Hurst had freely admitted to not possessing.
"You've been spending too much time with Mr O'Brien," Amy said, clearly pleased. "He flatters as easily as he breathes."
"The thing is, I think he means every word of it," said Benedict absently, then heard himself and smiled at Amy. "As do I, in fact. My expectations of womanly beauty are preposterously high, Amelia, with you and Mother as my standards."
Miss Dalton did not, Benedict reminded himself, compare, although she was much improved by Town.
That was no doubt important to remember, even if her general pleasantry made up for what was not strictly beauty.
She was, he had to admit, a friendly soul.
Or she was, at least, to everyone but himself.
Look how quickly and easily she had forgiven Miss Hurst's astonishing behavior, and how eagerly she had begun a friendship there.
Perhaps she missed her country girlfriends.
Benedict remembered that one or two had visited Claire during the Lads' holiday there.
They had all been introduced, of course, but he hadn't thought of them again during the holiday, much less since.
Beneath those ruminations a thought formed. Benedict said, "Amy," before it was fully considered, and she looked up curiously. "Amy, I believe you should make Miss Dalton's acquaintance. She seems a creature fond of her female friends, and being so new to London she can have very few as of yet."
Amelia gave him a measuring look. "And the fact that she has struck up a friendship with Miss Hurst has no bearing on this suggestion, am I right?"
"Of course not! Only in that it occurs to me that if she can make friends with as aloof and reserved a woman as Miss Hurst that a lady of your own charm and openness would soon become a bosom companion."
"To whom she would spill out all sorts of details about what she's learned from her friendship with Miss Hurst," Amelia said in amusement. "Oh, stop making that sour face, Benny, of course I'll call on her. I love to make new friends and don't care a whit for your ulterior motives."
Under no circumstances was Claire prepared to admit the near-fiasco of her afternoon drive with Mr Graham to her aunt.
Fortunately, Aunt Elizabeth was out calling on friends when Claire and Miss Hurst arrived home, and if Uncle Charles, who was home, even noticed she'd gone out with a gentleman and come back with a lady, he didn't mention it to her and would not, she trusted, mention it to his wife.
Charles Edward, to whom she might have confessed the whole story, appeared in the drawing room door with two of his Lads in tow, thus negating any possibility of sharing gossip.
"Claire, there you are," he said in evident self-satisfaction as his Lads—the youthful noble, Cringlewood, and tremendous Scotsman, Vincent, an odd pairing to Claire's mind—bowed and greeted her curtsies with smiles.
"Cringlewood here has finagled invitations to the Thornbury House party tomorrow night, invitations for all of us Lads and, at my behest, yourself and another.
Do you know the Thornburys, Claire? Well, you shall.
Very much the high set. The house has been in their keeping since the Great Fire, and they're keen on being seen only with the best of the best. No sad crush, this, it will be a much smaller to-do than the ball last night, no more than a few hundred people there, quite exclusive.
The Regent may attend. Send a note to that Graham chap of yours and invite him along.
It'll be a fine opportunity for you to see and be seen.
Now, we're going out, so I beg you to tell Mother that I've come down with the pox so she shan't expect to see me for days. "
“The pox, really," Claire said, mildly horrified. “Do you really think Aunt Elizabeth would not rush to your side, and quarantine the entire household, in such a dreadful case?"
Charles blinked lazily. “How foresightful of you. Something else ludicrous, then, cousin. Surely you can think of something."
“She's your mother, Charles. I implore you to make your own excuses. I have enough on my hands, making my own."
“Have you?" Charles's gaze sharpened with interest. “What have you been up to, Claire?"
“Nothing I wish to discuss," Claire said with the most asperity she could manage. “Charles, Mr Graham is not part of the highest set. Will the Thornburys not be gravely insulted if I should bring him?"
“I think they should hardly even notice him," Nathaniel Cringlewood put in. “I would offer to escort you myself, save that I must squire my sister."
A swirl of dismayed amusement churned Claire's heart.
“The offer is generous, sir, and I thank you.
" She worried her lower lip, thinking of Graham's extraordinary behavior at the park that afternoon, and wondering whom else she might turn to for an escort.
"Are you certain I should not go with you , Charles?
I should not like to be misfit amongst such company. "
Charles gave a dismissive huff. Cringlewood, charmingly, promised, "Not a chance of it, Miss Dalton. Bring Graham along, though I do ask that you save me a dance. I won't be so bold as to ask for the first again, though."
As Cringlewood spoke, Ronald Vincent gave her a careful, questioning look that she was not sure how to answer.
He was so very large, Claire thought, that he could not also be sensitive enough to see through to the heart of her predicament.
His unasked question retreated judiciously when he did not see whatever it was he looked for in her face, though, and he said, "I might beg a dance as well, Miss Dalton, if it's not above my place to do so. "
Cringlewood hit the huge man on the shoulder in fond exasperation, and Claire, too late, understood the question Vincent had not asked aloud: the hint lay in the phrase above my place .
She thought of him as one of Charles's Lads; he clearly thought of himself as a soldier and a blacksmith whose station was not high enough to offer himself as her escort to the Thornbury party.
Cursing her failure to understand and now bound to attend with Graham, Claire smiled at both men.
"I would be delighted to accept both invitations. Thank you, your honor, Mr Vincent."