“Your papa’s forgiveness is beside the point. You gave Lord Phillip your word, and you will keep it, but he’s right—you deserve some recompense for your efforts. The Bromptons owe you more than they will ever admit or repay. If you don’t seize a little fun and frolic now, you will find yourself white-haired, slow-moving, and talking to your cat.”
“I’m not… Romping is not for me.” Hecate had learned that much in the only way there was to learn such a lesson.
“So don’t romp, but flirt a bit. Laugh, stroll the garden by moonlight, and let a marquess’s perceptive and interesting heir stroll at your side. He wanted to make a bargain with you, a fair exchange to assuage his dignity, so put him on escort duty. If he shows you some attention, the rest of the family will be a bit more respectful of you. Would that be a bad thing?”
“I’m not a scheming Brompton.” And yet, what had Lord Phillip said about loneliness that became almost comfortable? Nobody else could have made that remark, much less have expected Hecate to grasp its significance.
“Then don’t scheme. Propose an enjoyable bargain.” Miss Blanchard finished her tea and set the cup and saucer aside, the cat having snuggled himself into a feline circle of contentment on her lap. “You see me as an old woman who lived her life on the fringes, a poor relation, a paid companion, never fitting in, no children to comfort my old age. That’s all true enough, but I also had the occasional adventure, and those memories are more comfort now, Hecate dearest, than any pious social halo could ever be.”
To have Hecate’s suspicions confirmed… Miss Blanchard had never lacked for dancing partners. Older fellows mostly, and they had regarded her with genuine respect and affection.
Was there a Brompton on the face of the earth who regarded Hecate with either?
Hecate stashed the guest list back into her reticule. “I’m sick of being the sensible Brompton, the solvent Brompton, the dutiful Brompton. I’ve done all that has been demanded of me, asking for only a certain degree of independence in return, but the importuning never ends.”
Perhaps that had been half the appeal of running off to Canada with Johnny. He’d certainly felt the need to escape. Maybe he’d realized if the family heiress escaped with him, then his reprieve would be temporary.
And he’d been right. Ten years on, and Hecate was still paying for every stupid gambling debt, overdue coal delivery, and house party the Bromptons saw fit to drop in her lap.
“Go to Nunnsuch,” Miss Blanchard said. “For once, enjoy yourself. Ride neck or nothing over the countryside, wade in the fountain, stroll barefoot through the park.”
Wading in the fountain sounded… lovely. “You did all those things, didn’t you?”
“I did, and in the most luscious company.”
“A house party.” Gavin DeWitt imbued three words with a tinker’s barrow full of dubious connotations, but then, DeWitt knew how to make his lines count. He’d spent two years on various provincial stages and had rejoined his family in Berkshire on the recent occasion of his sister Amaryllis’s nuptials.
As brother to Tavistock’s wife, Gavin was thus family to Phillip by the reckoning of Society, as were all the DeWitts. Such were the marvels of matrimony among the Quality.
“A house party,” Phillip said, opening one of three wardrobes gracing his dressing closet, “is a perfectly harmless method of whiling away a few weeks of summer, or so I’m told.” He surveyed his collection of new attire with a sense of bewilderment. So many clothes, all made to fit his exact proportions.
In London, they’d been delivered box by box, and Phillip’s staff had sent the lot on to Lark’s Nest. To see the entire hoard all at once, neatly pressed and ready for duty, put a few things into perspective. Phillip’s old favorites from before, from his Mr. Heyward country squiring days, hung limp and shabby in their corner.
Phillip refused to surrender them to the rag-and-bone man. Not yet.
Nonetheless, he’d eschewed his worn breeches and frayed shirts since returning to Berkshire, and he felt vaguely disloyal to his home for doing so. Disloyal to the hardworking squire he’d been.
The new clothes were a seductive reward for taking on the new name. The handiwork of a Bond Street tailor created a handsome, confident fiction of a man. From broad, symmetrical shoulders to a tapered waist, to muscular legs, and everything in between, the tailor’s customer became more wondrous, more masculine, more attractive for donning his plumage.
His peacock feathers, to use Miss Brompton’s term.
“Why me?” DeWitt asked, fingering a pale gray waistcoat embroidered with bluebells and violets. The lining was satin, and the thing fit Phillip like a favorite glove. Not for church, the tailor had said, doubtless because any angels in attendance would be envious.
“You will accompany me,” Phillip retorted, closing the wardrobe, “for the simple reason that you have a place to take in Society, just as I do. The DeWitts are wealthy, your years of vagabondage are behind you, and you owe me.”
“Where is your lordship’s valet?” DeWitt imbued the honorific with the irony it deserved.
“In the kitchen, flirting with my housekeeper, I suppose. Why?”
“It’s his job to pack up all this finery and get it sent down to Hampshire. You snap your fingers, indicate that packing must commence, and he sees it done. From airing the trunks, to choosing the sachets, to folding each cravat and stocking, the job is his.”
Phillip closed the doors to the wardrobe. “How do you know that?”
“I had a father, a man of means who knew how to prepare for travel.”
Phillip sat on the bed. “I had no father worth the name. My means haven’t a patch on yours, and I know how to get two pea crops in during one growing season. But I also know you owe me.”
DeWitt lounged against the windowsill. He made a lovely picture silhouetted against the afternoon sunshine, and having been an actor, he’d know that.
“I am aware of no debts outstanding between us,” DeWitt said, folding his arms across his chest.
Before DeWitt had literally run off to join a traveling troupe, Phillip could have dismissed him as an insolent puppy. Everybody liked Gavin DeWitt and probably believed that DeWitt liked them too. Maybe he did, or maybe he’d adopted the role of charming bon vivant early in life, because an only son born to wealth could pull that one off fairly easily.
In any case, DeWitt had avoided taking over the family businesses—his womenfolk were appalled to think of their darling fellow dirtying his hands in Grandpapa’s trade—and he’d indulged his own whims for a time.
“If you see no obligations between us,” Phillip said, wondering when his mattress had grown so lumpy, “then frolicking on the stage has turned you into a dolt. Would your family have enjoyed limitless credit at the livery during your absence if I’d not had a quiet word with Dabney three months after your departure? Would Deevers have kept your sisters in new boots without my willingness to pay down his bills by three-quarters before they were presented?”
DeWitt scrubbed his hands across his handsome face, then brushed dark curls back from his forehead. Stage business, no doubt.
“How much?”