“Oh, please, Kate,” Gregory cut in. He turned to Lady Lucinda and added, “She will stand here all night if you keep offering compliments.”
“Pay him no attention,” Kate said with a grin. “He is young and foolish and knows not of what he speaks.”
Gregory was about to make another comment—he couldn’t very well allow Kate to get away with that—but then Lady Lucinda cut in.
“I would happily sing your praises for the rest of the evening, Lady Bridgerton, but I believe that it is time for me to retire. I should like to check on Hermione. She has been under the weather all day, and I wish to assure myself that she is well.”
“Of course,” Kate replied. “Please do give her my regards, and be certain to ring if you need anything. Our housekeeper fancies herself something of an herbalist, and she is always mixing potions. Some of them even work.” She grinned, and the expression was so friendly that Gregory instantly realized that she approved of Lady Lucinda. Which meant something. Kate had never suffered fools, gladly or otherwise.
“I shall walk you to the door,” he said quickly. It was the least he could do to offer her this courtesy, and besides, it would not do to insult Miss Watson’s closest friend.
They said their farewells, and Gregory fit her arm into the crook of his elbow. They walked in silence to the door to the drawing room, and Gregory said, “I trust you can make your way from here?”
“Of course,” she replied. And then she looked up—her eyes were bluish, he noticed almost absently—and asked, “Would you like me to convey a message to Hermione?”
His lips parted with surprise. “Why would you do that?” he asked, before he could think to temper his response.
She just shrugged and said, “You are the lesser of two evils, Mr. Bridgerton.”
He wanted desperately to ask her to clarify that comment, but he could not ask, not on such a flimsy acquaintance, so he instead worked to maintain an even mien as he said, “Give her my regards, that is all.”
“Really?”
Damn, but that look in her eye was annoying. “Really.”
She bobbed the tiniest of curtsies and was off.
Gregory stared at the doorway through which she had disappeared for a moment, then turned back to the party. The guests had begun dancing in greater numbers, and laughter was most certainly filling the air, but somehow the night felt dull and lifeless.
Food, he decided. He’d eat twenty more of those tiny little sandwiches and then he’d retire for the night as well.
All would come clear in the morning.
Lucy knew that Hermione didn’t have a headache, or any sort of ache for that matter, and she was not at all surprised to find her sitting on her bed, poring over what appeared to be a four-page letter.
Written in an extremely compact hand.
“A footman brought it to me,” Hermione said, not even looking up. “He said it arrived in today’s post, but they forgot to bring it earlier.”
Lucy sighed. “From Mr. Edmonds, I presume?”
Hermione nodded.
Lucy crossed the room she and Hermione were currently sharing and sat down in the chair at the vanity table. This wasn’t the first piece of correspondence Hermione had received from Mr. Edmonds, and Lucy knew from experience that Hermione would need to read it twice, then once again for deeper analysis, and then finally one last time, if only to pick apart any hidden meanings in the salutation and closing.
Which meant that Lucy would have nothing to do but examine her fingernails for at least five minutes.
Which she did, not because she was terribly interested in her fingernails, nor because she was a particularly patient person, but rather because she knew a useless situation when she saw one, and she saw little reason in expending the energy to engage Hermione in conversation when Hermione was so patently uninterested in anything she had to say.
Fingernails could only occupy a girl for so long, however, especially when they were already meticulously neat and groomed, so Lucy stood and walked to the wardrobe, peering absently at her belongings.
“Oh, dash,” she muttered, “I hate when she does that.” Her maid had left a pair of shoes the wrong way, with the left on the right and the right on the left, and while Lucy knew there was nothing earth-shatteringly wrong with that, it did offend some strange (and extremely tidy) little corner of her sensibilities, so she righted the slippers, then stood back to inspect her handiwork, then planted her hands on her hips and turned around. “Are you finished yet?” she demanded.
“Almost,” Hermione said, and it sounded as if the word had been resting on the edge of her lips the whole time, as if she’d had it ready so that she could fob off Lucy when she asked.
Lucy sat back down with a huff. It was a scene they had played out countless times before. Or at least four.
Yes, Lucy knew exactly how many letters Hermione had received from the romantic Mr. Edmonds. She would have liked not to have known; in fact, she was more than a little irritated that the item was taking up valuable space in her brain that might have been devoted to something useful, like botany or music, or good heavens, even another page in DeBrett’s, but the unfortunate fact was, Mr. Edmonds’s letters were nothing if not an event, and when Hermione had an event, well, Lucy was forced to have it, too.
They had shared a room for three years at Miss Moss’s, and since Lucy had no close female relative who might help her make her bow into society, Hermione’s mother had agreed to sponsor her, and so here they were, still together.
Which was lovely, really, except for the always-present (in spirit, at least) Mr. Edmonds. Lucy had made his acquaintance only once, but it certainly felt as if he were always there, hovering over them, causing Hermione to sigh at strange moments and gaze wistfully off into the distance as if she were committing a love sonnet to memory so that she might include it in her next reply.
“You are aware,” Lucy said, even though Hermione had not indicated that she was finished reading her missive, “that your parents will never permit you to marry him.”
That was enough to get Hermione to set the letter down, albeit briefly. “Yes,” she said with an irritated expression, “you’ve said as much.”
“He is a secretary,” Lucy said.
“I realize that.”
“A secretary,” Lucy repeated, even though they’d had this conversation countless times before. “Your father’s secretary.”
Hermione had picked the letter back up in an attempt to ignore Lucy, but finally she gave up and set it back down, confirming Lucy’s suspicions that she had long since finished it and was now in the first, or possibly even second, rereading.
“Mr. Edmonds is a good and honorable man,” Hermione said, lips pinched.
“I’m sure he is,” Lucy said, “but you can’t marry him. Your father is a viscount. Do you really think he will allow his only daughter to marry a penniless secretary?”
“My father loves me,” Hermione muttered, but her voice wasn’t exactly replete with conviction.
“I am not trying to dissuade you from making a love match,” Lucy began, “but—”
“That is exactly what you are trying to do,” Hermione cut in.
“Not at all. I just don’t see why you can’t try to fall in love with someone of whom your parents might actually approve.”
Hermione’s lovely mouth twisted into a frustrated line. “You don’t understand.”
“What is there to understand? Don’t you think your life might be just a touch easier if you fell in love with someone suitable?”
“Lucy, we don’t get to choose who we fall in love with.”
Lucy crossed her arms. “I don’t see why not.”
Hermione’s mouth actually fell open. “Lucy Abernathy,” she said, “you understand nothing.”
“Yes,” Lucy said dryly, “you’ve mentioned.”
“How can you possibly think a person can choose who she falls in love with?” Hermione said passionately, although not so passionately that she was forced to rouse herself from her semireclined position on the bed. “One doesn’t choose. It just happens. In an instant.”
“Now that I don’t believe,” Lucy replied, and then added, because she could not resist, “not for an instant.”
“Well, it does,” Hermione insisted. “I know, because it happened to me. I wasn’t looking to fall in love.”
“Weren’t you?”
“No.” Hermione glared at her. “I wasn’t. I fully intended to find a husband in London. Really, who would have expected to meet anyone in Fenchley?”
Said with the sort of disdain found only in a native Fenchleyan.
Lucy rolled her eyes and tilted her head to the side, waiting for Hermione to get on with it.
Which Hermione did not appreciate. “Don’t look at me like that,” she snipped.
“Like what?”
“Like that.”
“I repeat, like what?”
Hermione’s entire face pinched. “You know exactly what I’m talking about.”
Lucy clapped a hand to her face. “Oh my,” she gasped. “You looked exactly like your mother just then.”
Hermione drew back with affront. “That was unkind.”
“Your mother is lovely!”
“Not when her face is all pinchy.”
“Your mother is lovely even with a pinchy face,” Lucy said, trying to put an end to the subject. “Now, do you intend to tell me about Mr. Edmonds or not?”
“Do you plan to mock me?”
“Of course not.”
Hermione lifted her brows.
“Hermione, I promise I will not mock you.”
Hermione still looked dubious, but she said, “Very well. But if you do—”
“Hermione.”
“As I told you,” she said, giving Lucy a warning glance, “I wasn’t expecting to find love. I didn’t even know my father had hired a new secretary. I was just walking in the garden, deciding which of the roses I wished to have cut for the table, and then . . . I saw him.”
Said with enough drama to warrant a role on the stage.
“Oh, Hermione,” Lucy sighed.
“You said you wouldn’t mock me,” Hermione said, and she actually jabbed a finger in Lucy’s direction, which struck Lucy as sufficiently out of character that she quieted down.
“I didn’t even see his face at first,” Hermione continued. “Just the back of his head, the way his hair curled against the collar of his coat.” She sighed then. She actually sighed as she turned to Lucy with the most pathetic expression. “And the color. Truly, Lucy, have you ever seen hair such a spectacular shade of blond?”
Considering the number of times Lucy had been forced to listen to gentlemen make the same statement about Hermione’s hair, she thought it spoke rather well of her that she refrained from comment.
But Hermione was not done. Not nearly. “Then he turned,” she said, “and I saw his profile, and I swear to you I heard music.”
Lucy would have liked to point out that the Watsons’ conservatory was located right next to the rose garden, but she held her tongue.
“And then he turned,” Hermione said, her voice growing soft and her eyes taking on that I’m-memorizing-a-love-sonnet expression, “and all I could think was—I am ruined.”
Lucy gasped. “Don’t say that. Don’t even hint at it.”
Ruin was not the sort of thing any young lady mentioned lightly.
“Not ruined ruined,” Hermione said impatiently. “Good heavens, Lucy, I was in the rose garden, or haven’t you been listening? But I knew—I knew that I was ruined for all other men. There could never be another to compare.”
“And you knew all this from the back of his neck?” Lucy asked.
Hermione shot her an exceedingly irritated expression. “And his profile, but that’s not the point.”
Lucy waited patiently for the point, even though she was quite certain it wouldn’t be one with which she would agree. Or probably even understand.