Page 22 of Lady Ferocity (A Series of Senseless Complications #1)

A s Percy entered the duke’s drawing room, he felt rather like a Roman preparing to face the lions. Still, it was of the utmost importance that he speak directly to Lady Felicity, else she avoided him forever.

He walked in and scanned the faces, this way and that. Where was she? She was not there.

The rest of them were there, including the youngest who hoped he would be drowned by the duke’s hand. They looked at him in curiosity. Except for the duke, who seemed exceedingly amused to see him.

“Well, Stratton, have you brought more pots and pans for our girl?” the duke asked.

“Why did you send the pans, Mr. Stratton?” Lady Patience asked.

“Lady Felicity mentioned that she might, at some point, wish to learn how to bake cakes.”

“Oh, she never said…” Lady Serenity said.

“Do you suppose that would be fun?” Lady Winsome asked. “I hadn’t thought…”

The duke was shaking with laughter. “Never mind the cake pans. What are you doing here, Stratton?”

“Yes, Mr. Stratton,” Lady Valor said. “After the stern scolding from me and Mrs. Wendover, I am surprised to see you here.” Lady Valor paused. “Though, Mrs. Wendover’s feelings might have gone a little soft over the India shawl.”

Percy could see for himself that Mrs. Wendover found favor with the shawl as she was just now wrapped in it. And really, considering the dilapidated shape that stuffed rabbit was in, the shawl did something well for its appearance.

“Yes, Lady Valor,” Percy said, “that was quite the rousing letter from you and your friend. I sent the shawl as I thought Mrs. Wendover might need some soothing after expressing her feelings so violently. I suppose you received the letter I sent back, too?”

Lady Valor nodded. “Yes, but Felicity took it and none of us have seen it. She’s hidden it very well; I looked all over her room.” The little girl paused, and then as if she remembered something, she said, “Snooping was very wrong, I won’t do it again, I feel terrible about it.”

“Don’t make promises you cannot keep,” the duke advised his youngest daughter.

“That’s true, Papa,” Lady Valor said. “I will do it again, but I really will try to feel terrible over it next time, if that helps.”

“What did the letter say?” Lady Grace asked. “Felicity has not breathed a word of it, except for your approbation of Valor’s conversation about the weather.”

Percy had no intention of advertising the details beyond what was known. “That conversation had to be mentioned, it was one of the finest about the weather I have ever taken part in.”

Lady Valor was evidently much struck by this compliment. She blushed, then she whispered furiously to Mrs. Wendover, as if alerting her to this news. Percy hoped she and Mrs. Wendover had finally given up wishing him chained and thrown in a lake.

“Your Grace, I am here to see Lady Felicity. And to ask an important question.”

“I see, so no more gifts, then?”

“Actually, I brought a horse,” Percy said. Now that he’d just said it out loud to the duke, it did not sound as rational as it had initially seemed.

The duke doubled over in laughter. The five sisters raced to the windows and pulled the curtains.

“He has brought a horse,” Lady Grace exclaimed.

“She is no Dales pony, but she looks to be very fine all the same,” Lady Patience said.

“There’s really a horse out there?” the duke said, heaving with laughter. “Oh this is too good.”

“I happened to be nearby Tattersall’s,” Percy said, by way of a ridiculous explanation.

Just then, Percy heard the front doors open. He turned, very much in the hopes that it was Lady Felicity making an appearance.

From the hall, Mrs. Right called, “I know I am late in returning, but the housekeeper was keen to hear about the cyprian party. We laughed and laughed.”

Mrs. Right came into the room, handing her bonnet to a footman. She stopped dead in her tracks when she saw Percy.

“Mrs. Right, you’ll never guess,” the duke said, “Stratton here has brought a horse for Felicity!”

“Why should she need a horse?” Mrs. Right asked. “I took her in one of the carriages.”

“No, no,” the duke said, “it’s not to ride now. He’s brought her a horse to keep for her own.”

“Has he now?” Mrs. Right asked suspiciously.

“That’s right—cake pans and now a horse,” the duke said. “What do young men get up to these days?”

“Took her to where?” Percy asked. “Took Lady Felicity where?”

“Now this is even better, wait until he hears where she’s gone,” the duke said.

“Our Felicity has gone to our aunt’s house for dinner,” Lady Serenity said. “She is to meet eligible gentlemen there.”

“Gentlemen who don’t need to be chained up and thrown in a lake,” Lady Valor said, ominously slipping back into her original opinion.

“Eligible gentlemen?” Percy asked. “Who? What eligible gentlemen?”

“Who knows?” the duke said. “My sister picked them out so all I know is that they will be humorless and grim. She’d get Rustmont if she could, but I heard he left Town.”

“I do not like the sound of this,” Percy muttered.

“I am afraid it is your own fault, Mr. Stratton,” Lady Winsome pointed out.

Percy thought Lady Winsome was not being very winsome at the moment.

“Nobody to blame but himself,” Lady Verity said, shaking her head. “It is an all-too-common tale.”

“Is it?” Lady Winsome asked Lady Verity.

“What will you do now, Mr. Stratton?” Lady Grace asked.

“What will he do?” the duke asked. “He’ll go straight over there, taking that horse with him. I don’t suppose anybody else will have arrived to Lady Misery’s house with an extra horse in tow—it’s bound to give him a leg up on things.”

“Lady Marchfield will not like it at all,” Lady Grace pointed out.

“Yes, I know,” the duke said. “That’s the other half of the fun.”

“Oh I see,” Lady Valor said, “Papa, that is very funny. Our aunt makes me laugh when she’s mad. Now that I’m used to it. Because you’ve made her mad so many times that I got used to it.”

“It’s one of the primary purposes of my life, my girl. Well, I suppose we all ought to go,” the duke said. “Mrs. Right, call the carriages if you will.”

Mrs. Right nodded and hurried from the room.

Things were moving a bit too fast for Percy to keep up. First it was proposed that he ought to go charging over to Lady Marchfield’s house to interrupt her dinner party. Which really, he was not opposed to. What was the lady thinking, inviting eligible gentlemen to a dinner for her niece?

But now they were all going with him? This family was an absolute circus. He was not so certain bringing a circus with him would be at all helpful.

“Charlie, fetch the girls’ coats, we are going out on a nighttime adventure!” the duke said jovially.

The six sisters were all too willing to join in on the idea and leapt up from their seats.

Lady Grace inexplicably seemed to get her feet in a tangle, fell to the ground, rolled, and then hopped upright without anyone taking the smallest notice of it.

Lady Valor clutched Mrs. Wendover and exclaimed that she’d never gone anywhere so late in the nighttime, and it was all very exciting and scary.

The ladies Winsome and Verity took that moment to have a dispute. Lady Verity claimed horses traveled faster at night because of the cool air, Lady Winsome said they probably went slower because they were tired.

Lady Patience pushed past them and grabbed the pile of cloaks and pelisses from the footman’s arms and began throwing them to their owners.

Lady Serenity brushed a tear away on account of, she said, this touching display of family unity.

Percy girded his loins—they were all going. Even Mrs. Wendover.

*

Felicity was relieved to see the dessert course come round. The stages of the dinner marked the time passing by. With any luck, they would soon be in the drawing room. Lord Marchfield was to take her home and she was toying with the idea of claiming a cold coming on to end the evening before she was trapped into a card game with the two awkward boys who were attempting to pass themselves off as men. She might even deliberately sniff at some flowers to frighten them off with sneezing.

The conversation had never got more interesting than discovering that Mr. Armstrong’s father was gassy. Though really, every time Felicity thought of that moment in the conversation, she had to bite her lip not to laugh.

Just now, Mr. Armstrong’s mother was expounding on the charms of the wilds of Cornwall, which apparently involved a lot of opportunities to break one’s neck by way of falling off a cliff. Lord Haraby was attempting to make eyes at her from across the table.

“I always say,” Mr. Armstrong’s mother said, “that there is nothing more steady than a Cornwall man.”

It was an interesting thought that was in direct contradiction to what was in front of them—her son had seemed to perspire out all the liquid in his body and looked anything but steady.

Quite unexpectedly, there was the sound of the door being pounded on. Felicity craned her neck to see the butler dashing through the hall to answer it.

In a moment, the duke appeared, along with all her sisters and Mrs. Right. Goodness, why had they all come? Was somebody taken ill? Had the house caught fire?

Lady Marchfield leapt from her chair. “Roland! What is the meaning—”

“Don’t bother going on a tirade,” the duke said. “Stratton is here to say his piece and he’s brought Felicity a horse.”

Felicity felt as if she could not move. She was bereft of speech. He was here. Was he really here? Or was this some strange joke her father had thought up to drive Lady Marchfield mad?

The duke stepped aside. There he was. He was here. Gloriously here.

Had he really brought a horse? Why? What did bringing a horse say? Was there some meaning in bringing a lady a horse?

“My apologies, Lady Marchfield,” Mr. Stratton said, glaring at Mr. Armstrong and Lord Haraby. “The interruption could not be helped.”

“I dispute that strongly, Mr. Stratton, this is outrageous,” Lady Marchfield said. “Bursting into a private dinner? Bringing one’s housekeeper through the front doors? It is everything inappropriate. You ought not to allow yourself to be influenced by my deranged brother.”

“Don’t worry about her,” the duke said to Mr. Stratton, “she’s a regular polecat, sticking her nose into henhouses that don’t belong to her.”

“You see what he is. I strongly counsel you to avoid his influence,” Lady Marchfield said.

Mr. Stratton nodded. “Yes, well, perhaps too late for that, I’m afraid. Now, Lady Felicity, I’ve come to tell you, with your whole family who it was not my idea to bring, that I did say I would not be chained. But that was only until I realized I wanted to be chained. To you. You see, that was the whole problem—I could not envision marriage because I’d not met the lady I would wish to marry. Now I have. I have acted a disgraceful idiot—”

“He really has,” Valor said.

“But that is the truth. If you do not harbor any feelings for me, you may tell me to be on my way. I will keep sending things to the house in case you change your mind, including the horse I brought with me tonight. I swear I will never marry anyone else. If I cannot wed Lady Felicity, then it’s all up for me. I am undone.”

“Say nothing to this outrage, Felicity,” Lady Marchfield said, rising. “I will shortly have Mr. Stratton, and my brother and his diabolical housekeeper, removed from this house.”

Felicity stared at her aunt as if she spoke in a foreign tongue. Did she say remove him? Was the lady mad? She leapt up and pushed past her aunt.

Felicity grabbed Mr. Stratton by the hand and pulled him into the drawing room, slamming the doors behind her. “You’ve brought me a horse?” she asked.

“Well, yes, I ran out of other ideas, and I was passing by Tattersall’s…”

She threw herself at him and his strong arms caught her effortlessly. Somehow, somewhere very deep in her heart, she’d always known they would.

“I am forgiven, then,” he said quietly.

“I am not sure,” Felicity said. “You’d better kiss me first, and then I will be convinced.”

Mr. Stratton turned out to be very obliging. As Felicity had never been kissed before but had been imagining kissing Mr. Stratton for quite some time, it was marvelous. His lips were soft, but delightfully firm.

He played with her hair, which it turned out he found stupendous, and kissed her eyelids, as it turned out she had the prettiest eyes of any lady living.

Outside the doors, she could hear her father gamely guarding it as Lady Marchfield made attempts to get in. “Step back, Lady Misery, lest you injure yourself! Or I injure you! Doesn’t much matter to me!”

Her poor dear uncle was gamely attempting to calm the situation, but pleas for his wife to stop beating the duke about the head with a napkin seemed to be going nowhere.

“I will always save you from a tiger, that I swear to you.”

“And you won’t mind if I decide to bake cakes or change my name to Tulip?”

“Not a bit.”

“And then, there is one other thing.”

“I am prepared to hear you plan on driving your own team of horses or taking up a sword.”

“It is far worse, I’m afraid,” Felicity said, firm in her mind that there could be no more secrets between them. “I have a bit of a temper. More than a bit, on occasion. My nickname is Ferocity.”

Mr. Stratton laughed surprisingly hard at that revelation. “I am not surprised.”

“You are not put off by it?”

“No. I do not have much of a temper at all, but I am so inured to my father threatening to burn down the world that I suspect I will hardly notice.”

Though Felicity was vastly relieved to hear that Mr. Percy Stratton was not at all put off by the idea that she might have a temper from time to time, she did pause at the mention of his father.

“Gracious, your father,” she said. “How will your father take the news of an engagement? He does not seem too very fond of me. I do not suppose he is at all fond of my father.”

“Do not you worry about my father, and I’ll do my best not to worry about your father.”

“Papa is a darling really, once you get to know him. And I will counsel him sternly about calling your father Sir Pineapple.”

Percy laughed into her hair. “The duke may be a darling to you , but perhaps less of a darling to other people. Though, he has grown on me, I will not deny it.”

They walked, hand in hand, to the very back of the drawing room where Felicity noticed it was delightfully dim. There, very conveniently, Lady Marchfield had what was meant to be a small reading nook. There was just a large and overstuffed chair meant for one person, but they squeezed in together.

Now that her face was so near his it was no trouble at all to kiss it all over, and end on her lips.

Nobody had ever said anything about kissing to her. Of course, nobody had said anything at all about anything of the sort to her. For all that, she was not unaware of how human relations proceeded, she lived on a working estate after all. One could not miss how the animals got on with it.

But the animals did not kiss.

She felt very sorry for them, it was marvelous. Her hair was becoming terribly disheveled, as was her dress. Felicity did not give a toss about it—Mr. Percy Stratton could muss her all he liked.

He kissed the tip of her nose. She said, “Tell me of our future—what will it be like? Where will we live?”

Percy leaned back and Felicity settled comfortably in the crook of his arm. “I will leave it up to you. There are two choices, really. There is the main house, the dower house which is just now occupied by my grandmother, and a hunting lodge about a mile off from the main houses. The main house is plenty large, but it also contains my father. He shouts a lot. The lodge is smaller, but still commodious for a lodge and far enough away that my father’s shouts cannot be heard.”

“We’d best go to the lodge,” Felicity said. “And then of course we will wish to visit Yorkshire for extended periods.”

“Of course,” he said. “I must suppose your father’s various harassments will not extend to a son-in-law?”

“Well, as to that…”

“I see,” Percy said, laughing.

“You will get used to it, though, and then you will find it amusing.”

“My god, I did not even ask him for permission to ask for your hand.”

“Goodness, yes, you ought to have done. I thought you must have before they all set off with you to come here.”

“He understood my intentions,” Percy said. “Though I never came right out and asked.”

They were silent for a moment, the only sounds that of the duke telling Lady Misery she might as well calm down.

“Wait here,” Percy said, disentangling himself.

Felicity was loath to let him go, but confident that he would come back in all haste.

Percy made his way to the door and called, “Your Grace, might I ask permission for Lady Felicity’s hand?”

“That’s rather shutting the stable door after the horse is out! I suppose you’d better get on with it,” the duke called back.

“Mr. Stratton,” Lady Marchfield shouted, “open this door at once!”

Percy did not answer Lady Marchfield. Rather, he said, “Your Grace, if you could guard the door for, let’s say, a half hour?”

“Go on, then,” the duke said.

“Go on, then?” Lady Marchfield cried. “Go on with what?”

Percy Stratton was back by Felicity’s side in a flash. They did stay a further half hour, and then longer. Felicity began to wonder if it were at all ladylike to wish to tear a person’s shirt off. Then she satisfied herself with the only advice Mrs. Right had ever given her—things of this nature naturally take their course.

She supposed they would do, and then there was the further unladylike thought of wishing to hurry things along. Felicity had somehow got the impression, possibly from hints from the vicar, that a lady ought not be interested in such things. If it had been the vicar, then either she was not a proper lady, or the vicar had told a very egregious fib.

By the time they emerged from the room, Felicity was very disheveled and engaged to be married. Mr. Armstrong, his mother, and Lord Haraby had departed, and Mrs. Right was seated on the floor with Valor dead asleep in her arms. Her other sisters had made their way into the dining room to demolish what was left on the table.

Lady Marchfield, like any wise general, had left the field when it became apparent she would lose the battle. Lord Marchfield had fetched a brandy for both himself and the duke and sat bemusedly on the staircase.

What a lovely evening.