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“Neither is Miss Hargrove lacking in veracity,” Augustine said sternly. “She would not bring such a complaint to my attention were it not true.” He punctuated that statement by stuffing the rest of his biscuit into his mouth and chewing with enthusiasm as he glared at Honor.
Honor refrained from saying there were many things Monica Hargrove lacked, and Honor should know—she’d been acquainted with the woman since their sixth year on this earth, when their mothers had thought it expedient to employ one dance instructor for the both of them. That instructor—a simpering fool with a sharp nose and long, gangly arms, as Honor recalled him—had taken quite a liking to Monica and had given her the best roles in all their recitals. Moreover, Monica’s costumes always had wings and Honor’s had not, a fact that Honor might have been able to bear had Monica not been so bloody smug about it. “Perhaps your dancing will improve, and next year, you might have this costume,” she’d said as she’d twisted one way, then the other, so that Honor might see the thing in all its glory.
The competition between them had only intensified over the next sixteen years.
“Monica would bring even the slightest misunderstanding to your attention if it would mean you view her favorably and me less so,” Honor said.
“Do you deny that Miss Hargrove commissioned a bonnet from Lock and Company,” Augustine continued, having swallowed his biscuit, “and was dismayed to see it affixed to your head at the musicale? It must have been quite shocking for her, the poor dear.”
Mercy, who was turning the pages of a book without glancing at the words, laughed at that, but was quickly silenced by a dark look from Grace, who said soothingly to Augustine, “It’s surely a slight misunderstanding.”
“No,” Augustine said, shaking his head. “Miss Hargrove told me herself that she confronted Honor at dinner, and naturally, Honor denied it, and when Miss Hargrove mentioned she’d commissioned it for a dear sum, Honor said, ‘It wasn’t that dear.’ There, you see? She all but confessed to Miss Hargrove that she took the bonnet!”
“I meant only that when I purchased the bonnet, I did not find the cost of it so dear,” Honor said sweetly.
Augustine’s cheeks began to mottle as they were wont to do when he was flustered and confused. “Honor, it...” He paused, his chest puffing a little as he attempted to display authority. “It will not do.”
“What won’t do?” Honor asked, holding out her plate to offer him another biscuit. “She admired my bonnet, then claimed it was hers. How could it be hers, I ask you, when the milliner sold it to me and it was on my head? You may inquire of Lock and Company if you please.”
Augustine’s look of confusion went deeper as he clearly tried to sort out the mystery of the bonnet in his mind. “I would not like to disparage your fiancée, Augustine,” Honor continued. “I want us to be friends, I do! But I will privately confess to you that there are times I very much fear her true intentions.”
“Her intentions are pure!” Augustine said. “There is not a kinder, sweeter woman in all of London.” He suddenly reached for Honor’s hand and, finding a plate there, instead took her wrist beseechingly. “I really must insist that you do not take her bonnets, Honor. Or...or buy those that she fancies,” he said uncertainly.
Behind Augustine, Grace rolled her eyes.
“You have my word,” Honor said solemnly. “I will not take Monica’s bonnets.” The snigger she heard was from Prudence, doing her best to keep from laughing outright.
“I cannot have disharmony between you,” Augustine continued. “You are my stepsister and she will be my wife. I don’t care for the talk that goes around town about the two of you, and it’s not good for Papa.”
“No, you’re right, of course you are right,” Honor said, feeling only slightly chastened. “How is the earl this morning?”
“Exhausted,” he said. “I looked in on him after breakfast, and he bid me pull the shades, as he wanted to sleep, having suffered another long night.”
Augustine stood from the table, his belly brushing against it. He tugged down his waistcoat, which had a habit of riding up when he’d been seated, and removed his linen napkin from his collar. “If you will all excuse me?”
“Good morning, Augustine!” Grace said pleasantly.
“Good morning!” Honor called out.
She received a frown from Grace for it, who said, “All right then, Pru, Mercy, go and have your hair dressed, will you? We’ll take Mamma riding in the park after luncheon.”
Mercy hopped up from the table. “May I ride the sorrel?”
“Ask Mr. Buckley,” Grace said to them, wiggling her fingers in the direction of the door, indicating they were to go. As Mercy and Prudence went out, Grace smiled sweetly at the footman attending them this morning. “Thank you, Fitzhugh. My sister and I can manage from here.”
Fitzhugh followed the younger girls out, closing the door behind him.
When they were alone, Grace slowly turned her head and fixed a dark hazel look on Honor, who was eating hungrily from her plate and pretended not to notice.
“What did you do?” Grace asked low.
“Nothing.” But Honor couldn’t help it; a smile began to curve her lips. “All right. I bought a bonnet.” She took a bite of cheese.
“Then why is Monica so vexed?”
“I suppose...because she’d commissioned it for herself.” Honor’s smile widened.
Grace gaped at her for a moment, and then burst out laughing. “Dear God, you’re incorrigible! You will ruin us!”
“That is not true. I am very corrigible.”
“Honor!” Grace said, still laughing. “We agreed that you’d not vex her again.”
“Oh, what is one bonnet?” Honor said, putting aside her plate. “There it was, in the window of Lock and Company, and I admired it. The shop attendant was perfectly happy to tell me that even though Miss Monica Hargrove had commissioned it one month ago, she’d not come round to pay her bill. It was languishing in the window, Grace, a beautiful bonnet, and if I may be frank, the wrong palette for Monica’s pallid complexion. And the expense the poor shop had incurred in making it had gone unpaid! The attendant was quite happy to sell it to me, of course. And really, I don’t care that Monica commissioned it in the least. She is so very disagreeable! Do you know what she said to me last night?” she said, leaning slightly forward. “She said, ‘I know what you are about, Honor Cabot,’” Honor said, her voice mockingly low and menacing, “‘but it won’t do you a bit of good. Augustine and I are going to wed, and there is nothing you can do to stop it. And when we are wed, mark my words, you may find yourself in a cottage in the Cotswolds without need for fine bonnets!’” Honor sat back to let that sink in.
Grace gasped. “The Cotswolds! Why not banish us to the African desert, for it couldn’t possibly be worse! Oh, Honor, that is precisely what we fear, and now look what you’ve done!”
Honor snorted and picked up another piece of cheese. “Do you really think Monica holds so much sway with Augustine? Do you think he hasn’t a care for his sisters?”
“Yes!” Grace said emphatically. “Yes, I think she holds quite a lot of sway with him! And Augustine may care for us all very much, but when the earl dies, do you really, truly believe Monica will share Beckington House, or Longmeadow in the country, or anywhere, for that matter, with all of us?”
Honor sighed. It was a true fact in their society that a new earl and his even newer wife would not welcome his dead father’s third wife and his four stepdaughters into his household. Grace was right, but Monica was so...imperious! And so perfect, so modest, so demure, so pretty!
“Really, you can be so careless,” Grace said. “What of Prudence and Mercy, then? What of Mamma?”
It would be difficult for their mother to find a new husband who would be excited about the prospect of providing for four unmarried daughters, particularly given their rather lofty expectations for a certain way of life, as well as the demands of dowries. The Cabots had come into this marriage with only a little money, certainly not enough to dower four girls. They were entirely dependent on the earl.
Worse, it was almost a certainty that the Cabots would find themselves on the fringe of society altogether if anyone suspected what Grace and Honor knew about their mother: that she was slowly, but demonstrably, losing her mind. It had begun two years ago, after a trip to Longmeadow. Their mother had been involved in an accident when a curricle had overturned, tossing her onto the road. Physically, the countess had recovered, but since then, Honor and Grace had noticed her mind was slipping. Mostly, it was unusual memory lapses. But there were other, less subtle signs. Once, she had blithely talked of seeing her sister at Vauxhall, as if her sister were still alive. Another time, she hadn’t been able to recall the earl’s title.
Recently, however, it seemed as if their mother was getting worse. Most days, she was clearheaded and a constant presence at her husband’s side. Other days, she might ask the same question more than once or remark on the weather three or four times in the space of a few minutes. Once, when Honor had tried to speak to her mother about her increasing forgetfulness, her mother had been surprised by the suggestion and seemingly irked by it. She’d even suggested to Honor that perhaps she was the forgetful one.
“And I don’t think I need to tell you that the earl has not been out of his bed in two days,” Grace added.
“I know, I know,” Honor said sadly. She curled her feet under her on the chair. “Grace...I’ve been thinking,” she said carefully. “What if Monica did not marry Augustine—”
“Of course she will,” Grace said, cutting Honor off. “Augustine is completely besotted with her. He runs after her like a puppy.”
“But what if...what if Monica was lured away by a bigger fortune?”
“What?” Grace eyed Honor warily. “How? Why?”
“Just suppose she was lured away. It would give us a bit of time to settle things. Look here, Grace, if the earl dies, Augustine will take her to the altar as soon as he is able, and then what? But if they don’t marry as soon—”
“Are you forgetting that Augustine loves her?” Grace asked, clearly struggling to remain calm.
“I’ve not forgotten. But he is a man, isn’t he? He will soon forget her and find another.”
“Our Augustine!” Grace cried with disbelief. “Monica Hargrove is the first woman he’s ever so much as looked at, and even so, it took him several years to do it!”
“I know,” Honor said, wincing a little. “I’m only trying to think of a way to put off their marriage for a time.”
“Until what?”
“I haven’t worked that out completely,” Honor admitted.
Grace studied her sister for a moment, then shook her head. “It’s ridiculous. Folly! Monica won’t turn loose a bird in the hand—Augustine could turn mute and blind and she’d not care. And besides, I have a better plan.”
“What?” Honor asked skeptically.
Grace sat up now. “We marry first. Quickly. If we marry, our husbands will have no choice but to take in our sisters and our mother when the earl dies.”
“Now who is being ridiculous?” Honor said. “What do you think, that we may summon up a husband with the snap of our fingers? Who would we marry?”
“Mr. Jett—”
“No!” Honor all but shouted. “That’s a wretched plan, Grace. First, neither of us has an offer. Second, I don’t want to marry now. I don’t want to tend to a man and do his bidding, and be shunted off to the country where there is no society, all because he desires it.”
“What are you talking about? Who do you know that has been shunted to the country?” Grace asked with some surprise. “Really, Honor, don’t you want to marry? To have love and companionship and children?”
“Of course,” Honor said uncertainly. She rather enjoyed her freedom. She didn’t pine for marriage and children the way other women her age seemed to do. “But at present, I don’t love anyone and I don’t want to marry merely because it is expected. It vexes me terribly that we are expected to do as we are told and marry this man, or seek that offer,” she said, gesturing irritably. “Why? We’re free women. We ought to choose and do as we please, just like every man is allowed.”
“But we have others who must rely on us,” Grace said, referring to Prudence and Mercy.
The reminder put a temporary damper on Honor’s enthusiasm for women’s equality.
“And besides, your perception is clouded by Rowley’s rejection—”
“It was not precisely a rejection,” Honor began to argue, but Grace threw up a hand to stop her.
“I didn’t say it to be unkind. But your judgment has been impaired, Honor. You won’t allow anyone to come close.”
Before Honor could argue against such a ridiculous notion, Grace said, “So we are agreed, we must do something.”
“Yes, of course, we are agreed. Which is why I want to seduce Monica away from Augustine. And I know just the man to do it.”
“Who?” Grace asked skeptically.
Honor smiled at her own brilliance. “George Easton!”
Grace’s eyes widened. Her mouth gaped. It took her a few swift moments to find her tongue. “Have you gone completely round the bend?”
“I have not,” Honor said firmly. “He is the perfect man for it.”
“Are we speaking of the same George Easton from whom you managed to divest one hundred pounds in that scandalous little game in Southwark?”
“Yes,” Honor said, shifting a little self-consciously in her seat.
Grace made a sound of despair or shock, Honor wasn’t certain, but her sister suddenly stood and walked in a complete circle behind her chair, one hand on her back, the train of her muslin gown trailing behind her. When she faced Honor again, she folded her arms across her chest and stared down at her. “To be perfectly clear, are you speaking of the self-proclaimed by-blow of the late Duke of Gloucester? The man who loses a fortune as easily as he makes one?”
“Yes,” Honor said, confident in her idea. “He is handsome, he is the nephew of the king and currently, he is quite flush in the pockets, as we know.”
“But he is a man with no real name. Or connections! We may all very well believe he is the true son of the late duke, but the duke never acknowledged it. And I’ve not even mentioned that the current duke—Easton’s half brother, if he is to be believed—utterly detests him and forbids anyone from even mentioning his name! For heaven’s sake, Honor, he does not enjoy the privileges of his supposed paternity! Monica Hargrove will not give up the Beckington title for him, not if all of Hades freezes over.”
“She might,” Honor stubbornly insisted. “If she were properly seduced.”
Grace blinked. She sank down onto her chair, her hands on her knees, gaping at her sister. “What a dangerous, ridiculous idea. You must promise me you won’t do anything so entirely wretched.”
“Wretched!” Honor was miffed that Grace didn’t see the brilliance in her plan. “I mean him only to lure her, not compromise her! He need only make her believe there are other interests in her, and then perhaps she will want to explore an option or two before marrying Augustine. It seems quite simple and brilliant to me. Your idea is superior to that?”
“Much,” Grace said emphatically. “If you won’t marry, then I will.”
“Oh, and have you any offers you’ve not told me about?”
“No,” Grace said with a sniff. “But I have some thoughts on how I might gain one.”
“Such as?”
“Never you mind,” Grace said. “Just promise me you won’t do anything so foolish.”
“Very well, very well,” Honor said with an impatient flick of her hand. “I promise,” she said dramatically, and picked up her plate again. “I’m famished.”
In fairness, Honor had every intention of keeping her promise. In fairness, she always meant to keep her promises.
But then she unexpectedly encountered George Easton that very afternoon.
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_5c9d8ab0-83ad-57ee-aef6-eb64a62efecc)
FINNEGAN, GEORGE EASTON’S butler-cum-footman-cum-valet, had pressed George’s dark brown superfine coat, his gold-and-brown waistcoat and his dark brown neckcloth. He had hung them where George would see them: directly before the basin, blocking his sight of the mirror, of the razors and brushes and cuff links he kept there.
Until Finnegan, George had been perfectly happy to live his life with a pair of footmen, a cook and a housekeeper, but his lover, Lady Dearing, had implored George to take Finnegan after her husband had cast the valet out. Lady Dearing had said his dismissal was an issue of austerity. George was quite familiar with austerity, as he’d been forced to befriend it on more than one occasion in his thirty-one years on this earth.
It hadn’t been until several weeks after he’d taken him on that George learned the real reason for Finnegan’s abrupt departure: he, too, had been invited to share Lady Dearing’s bed. George had known the fair-haired vixen was a wanton, obviously, but the valet? That went beyond the pale. However, by then, George had grown accustomed to Finnegan’s ways. So George had promptly discarded his lover and kept his butler.
He’d finished dressing when Finnegan appeared in the door of his master suite of rooms, a hat in his hand.
“What’s that?”
“Your hat.”
“I can see it is my hat. Why are you bringing it to me?”
“You’ve an appointment with Mr. Sweeney. From there, you will collect Miss Rivers and Miss Rivers at the Cochran stables. You have invited the young ladies to ride.”
George’s eyes narrowed. “I have? And when did I extend this invitation?”
“Last night, apparently. The Riverses’ footman brought round a note with the ladies’ delighted acceptance of the invitation.” He smiled. Or smirked. George was never quite sure.
He didn’t remember any invitation, but then again, he had been having a bit more fun than he should have had at the Coventry House Club last night. That was a club for men like him, frequented by tradesmen and gentlemen of the ton, who, like George, had deep pockets for the gaming tables, a thirst for whiskey and an appreciation of cheroots made with American tobacco. It was the opposite of priggish, which is what he imagined White’s on St. James to be.
