for all we know, she is the reason Westlands jilted you,” snapped Lady Matlock. “Though, I daresay, if she is poor, Lord Wayborn would never approve the match.”
“Westlands did not jilt me,” Rose protested for the hundredth time. “There was never any understanding between us, Mama. We are friends, that is all.”
“Men and women cannot be friends. For one thing, their parts don’t match. Aye, me!” Exhausted by her exertions, Lady Matlock sank down into a chair.
“Couldn’t I stay here with you, Mama?” Rose begged. “I could help look after you. I could bring you your hartshorn as well as any nurse. I need not go to balls. I need not marry.”
Lady Matlock rallied. “My daughter? A nurse? No, indeed! You are the daughter of an earl. Your duty is to make us all proud, and marry well. Honestly, Rose, with this ungrateful attitude, I am tempted to marry you off to the first gentleman who asks for you!”
Rose suddenly shrieked in alarm. Kneeling up in the window seat, she pressed her nose against the glass. “Oh, no! It is Sir Benedict Wayborn! He is coming here!”
Instantly, Lady Matlock was on her feet, marshaling her forces like a general. “The nice gentleman who found you in the road and brought you home? Yes, I think he will do very nicely. Don’t just sit there, child! Go and wash your face. Put on your blue gown. Hurry!”
“No, Mama, please!” begged Rose. “He’s so old. And I am sure he does not like me.” She looked out the window again. The baronet had stopped at another door. “He has stopped two—no, three—doors down. Who lives there?”
Lady Matlock was furious. “Serena! He ought to have called on me first. She may be the daughter of an earl, but I am a countess. More to the point, he spent four hours in a closed carriage with my daughter—and I am not even acquainted with him! He has a duty to call on me first! But that is how it is.” She sniffed. “No one has any manners anymore.”
“Perhaps he will marry Serena,” Rose suggested happily. “She is quite as old as he is!”
“If not older,” said Lady Matlock, but that was only spite. Anyone who possessed a copy of the Peerage could easily discover that Lady Serena Calverstock was only thirty.
Lady Serena received Benedict graciously in her elegant drawing room. She was just emerging from mourning for her sister, Lady Redfylde, and she looked charming in a lavender gown with a jabot of black lace at her throat. Her black hair was worn in a topknot with a frisette of glossy ringlets on her brow. As a debutante, her ivory pallor, raven tresses, and cool violet eyes had made her portrait one of the most admired in the National Gallery, and she was still considered one of the handsomest women in England.
They exchanged the usual pleasantries over strong black China tea.
“What brings you to Bath, Sir Benedict?” she smiled.
“Duty, I’m afraid,” he admitted ruefully. “My brother has managed to get himself elevated to the peerage, leaving my little baronetcy quite without an heir. Suddenly, I find myself in want of a wife, Lady Serena.”
Serena inclined her head. “I saw your brother’s name in the List of Honors. Tell me, does his lordship mean to build a fort somewhere with archers on the battlements, or will he be content to live in London as a man of fashion?”
Benedict suppressed a shudder of revulsion. “It is a bought title, of course. A wedding gift from his father-in-law. A Glaswegian whiskey merchant, and the girl’s not even pretty.”
“You wrong Lady Kensington,” Serena chided him. “Heiresses are always beautiful, or didn’t you know that?”
He smiled briefly. “I am glad my brother married money, at least. I was terrified he’d make some disastrous love match with an actress, like your poor cousin, Lord Ludham.”
“Lady Ludham was an opera dancer,” she corrected him without rancor. “Pamela was the creature’s name, if you please!” She laughed discreetly.
“How relieved you must have been when the divorce petition sailed through Lords.”
Her violet eyes widened. “I, Sir Benedict? Why should I be relieved?”
“It cannot have been easy watching an opera dancer take your mother’s place,” he said quietly. “Forgive me. It must be a painful subject. I should not have mentioned it.”
“I never met the famous Pamela. I spared myself the degradation of curtseying to her ladyship. As you know, I had no brother, so Felix inherited. I went to live with my sister and her husband immediately after my father’s funeral. Isn’t it curious? When Papa died, I lost my father and my home all in one day. Likewise, when Caroline died, I lost my sister and my home in one fell swoop. It seems to be my lot that, whenever there is a death in the family, I lose…everything.”
“It must be something of an adjustment to live alone,” he hinted blandly.
She replied, “It must be something of an adjustment to find yourself without an heir.”
“I mean to marry as soon as possible,” he said. “I might advise your ladyship to do the same. Then you would not have to adjust to living alone.”
She looked down at her hands. “But I have been single so long that no one thinks of me! I can not compete with these seventeen-and eighteen-year-old debutantes. They seem to be getting younger every year.”
“Quite,” said Benedict.
“I understand you rescued Lady Matlock’s daughter on the road from Chippenham,” she said, smiling. “Naturally, everyone is dying to wish you joy. A very pretty girl, but so young! Too young, I think, to be pitchforked into society. But…very pretty, I grant you.”
“You are wrong when you say that no one thinks of you,” said Benedict.
Serena blushed.
So Fitzwilliam was right, he thought. The lady is on the market.
He stayed with her only twenty minutes, the prescribed time for a social visit. In his view, the call went very smoothly. The ice was broken, at any rate.
Chapter 5
Wednesday passed with nothing more interesting to report than a stroll in the Sydney Gardens, but Benedict began Thursday with a feeling of complacency. If tonight’s ball concluded on a note of accord between himself and Lady Serena, he saw no reason why he could not propose to her on Friday. It was a little soon, perhaps, but not, he thought, too soon for propriety’s sake. After all, he had known Serena before he ever set foot in Bath.
Most of the morning was taken up in grooming. Benedict sat in his black dressing gown wanting a cheroot as his hair was cut and his sideburns were trimmed. His fingernails were trimmed and buffed to a high sheen, and, even though no one but Pickering was going to see them, so were his toenails. Usually Benedict paid little attention to Pickering as he fussed about, but today he watched him like a hawk.
He startled Pickering by suddenly demanding, “What is that foul concoction?”
Pickering had been humming a cheerful little tune as he applied the special nourishing
