‘There is no need to sound so surprised. You were the one who told me, after all, that I was bound to attract more men than just Major Gowan if I was patient.’
‘But, in the space of a week? I mean...’ He checked himself. ‘Of course you have acquired a court. A beautiful girl like you—it was bound to happen.’
Beautiful? He thought she was beautiful? Her cheeks heated and her stomach did a funny little squeeze.
‘N-not a court, exactly,’ she explained. ‘Though there are now two more men who are being rather obvious about their interest in me. According to Stepmama,’ she added, in case he thought she was boasting.
‘Tell me about them,’ he said sternly.
‘Well, my favourite...’ she wrinkled her nose. ‘Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say, my least unfavourite—’
‘Though less grammatical,’ he put in.
‘Yes, well. His name is Mr Armitage.’
‘Armitage?’ He looked at her sharply. ‘Never heard of him.’
‘I don’t suppose you have. He hails from the North Country where he has a lot of mills and such like. He is, according to Stepmama, obscenely wealthy.’
‘And that makes him an acceptable suitor, does it?’
‘I have already told you that is not the case, or I wouldn’t have been seriously considering Major Gowan.’
‘Point taken,’ he said, with a slight nod. ‘Pray, do enlighten me as to what is so tempting about this obscenely wealthy northerner.’
She bit back an objection to the scathing tone of his voice because she had an answer that was an absolute leveller.
‘The thing I like most about him is that he prefers me to Sukey. He has come to Town to find a wife from the Quality, as he calls it, so that he can start a dynasty that nobody will be able to call vulgar. But he dislikes what he calls niminy-piminy females.’
‘Niminy-piminy? He actually used that term? In your hearing?’
‘No. He told Stepmama,’ she said, with a smile at the memory of Stepmama’s outrage at having her darling so described. ‘He then went on,’ she admitted in a voice that shook with suppressed laughter, ‘to say that a strapping great wench like me was a much better bargain, to his way of looking at it.’
‘He thinks he will get more to the pound, is that it? And for this, you will accept his suit?’
‘I did not say I meant to accept his suit,’ she retorted. ‘It is just that I cannot help feeling, well, flattered that he prefers me to Sukey. Without betraying the slightest trace of sentimentality.’ She would definitely not be able to hurt him, even though she was bound to disappoint him.
Edmund looked at her as though she’d lost her mind. ‘Of course he is setting his sights on you, Georgie. You are of much better birth than your stepsister. I dare say he discovered that your mother came from a lesser branch of an aristocratic family, while your father was landed gentry during this interview he seems to have had with your stepmother.’
‘Oh. Well, yes, he did, as it happens.’ She eyed Edmund with resentment. ‘You have just disposed of the one point Mr Armitage had in his favour. I really thought he was taken with me. But he isn’t at all. It is my background he finds so appealing.’
‘Very well, let us forget about Mr Armitage. Tell me of your other suitors.’
‘Well, there is one I am sure you do know. Mr Eastman. Percy Eastman.’
‘Eastman? Good God.’
‘There is no need to say it like that. He is exactly the kind of man Papa always said I should marry, you know. A Corinthian. A connoisseur of horseflesh, with plenty of address. And yet...’
‘Indeed. With Percy Eastman, there is always that qualifying and yet.’
‘I don’t know why that should be. He is always perfectly charming. And he is comfortably off, moves in the best circles and is very handsome.’
‘And yet...’ Edmund quoted her.
She nodded. And Edmund shepherded her to the next display case while she gathered her thoughts about Mr Eastman.
‘It is something about his eyes, I think,’ she said. ‘There is no kindness in them. In fact, he always has this slightly mocking air, as though he regards everyone else as innately inferior and rather amusing. Though, to be fair, he is wealthier, and better connected, and better looking and more intelligent than most people I’ve met in London.’ She sighed. ‘And this is exactly what I mean about your idea of writing a list being so...useless.’
‘In what way?’
‘Well, on paper Mr Eastman would have much to recommend him. Yet whenever he bows over my hand and looks up at me from under those hooded lids...’
‘Yes, quite. In Eastman’s case I think you should definitely trust your instincts.’
‘But then, when Mr Armitage smacks his lips and rubs his hands together as though he’s just spotted a bargain, or Major Gowan spills his drink down his coat because he cannot tear his gaze from my...from the front of my gown, it puts me in mind of what they will expect of me in the marriage bed. And I just...’ She shuddered.
‘There is no need to get into such a taking,’ he said soothingly, patting her hand.
Which incensed her so much she forgot herself.
‘It’s all very well for you to say that. You are not the one who has to smile politely while some horrid man practically thrusts his nose down...’ She glanced down at herself, making an exasperated gesture at the mounds straining at the fabric of her pelisse. And wished, not for the first time, that she’d never grown the beastly objects.
Edmund winced.
She wasn’t surprised. She must have really shocked him, saying that.
And now he was removing his spectacles and polishing them on his handkerchief.
Today, however, the knowledge that she’d shocked him into a spectacle-polishing silence gave her no satisfaction whatever. She’d shocked herself by referring to things that ought never to be spoken of between a man and a woman.
‘You know,’ he said, replacing his spectacles on his nose and hooking the wires over his ears, ‘there are ways of repudiating suitors...’
And, just like that, she was furious with him again.
‘It’s all very well being all calm and rational and supercilious, but you’re not the one that...’
‘That...?’ He stood there regarding her calmly, his face betraying no emotion whatever.
‘Oooh!’
