The Trouble With Honor (The Cabot Sisters #1)

“You’re not going to receive him,” Grace said, aghast. “Prudence and Mercy are here!”


Prudence took great umbrage to that. “I’m not a child, Grace. I’ll be seventeen in three months’ time.”

“I don’t fancy him, Mercy,” Honor said as she hurried to the sideboard and the mirror hanging over it. She needed a comb! Her hair looked wild.

“Then why are you making those faces?” Mercy demanded as Honor squinted at her hair, quickly twisting it into one long rope.

“I am hardly dressed for callers!” Honor said with great exasperation.

“Then perhaps you shouldn’t take the call,” Prudence said imperiously.

“Perhaps I shouldn’t,” Honor agreed, and whirled around, and held her arms out to her sisters. “How do I look?”

Grace sighed. “Lovely. On my word, there is hardly a thing that could make you less lovely. It’s really very irksome.”

“Thank you, darling. All right, then, now the three of you stay put. Do you understand?”

“Why?” Mercy said. “I want to see him.”

“No, Mercy. It’s none of your affair—”

Mercy suddenly darted for the door, wrenching it open and running down the corridor.

“For heaven’s sake!” Honor cried.

“If she will see him, then so will I,” Prudence said, and swept out of the room very regally, hurrying after Mercy.

Honor looked at Grace.

“Now you’ve gone and done it,” Grace said. “If you think for a moment that those two will keep your secret—”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake! For once I wish you’d tell me something that would surprise me,” Honor said, and grabbed Grace’s hand, pulling her along as she hurried to catch up to her younger sisters.





CHAPTER TEN

GEORGE WAS TAKEN aback by the sudden closing in of so many females, but he quickly regained his composure when the smallest, and presumably the youngest, peered up at him through spectacles that made her blue eyes look quite large and asked, “Are you a suitor?”

“God help me, Mercy, where the devil are your manners?” Miss Cabot said sternly, sailing in behind the girl and firmly planting her hands on her shoulders. “I do beg your pardon, Mr. Easton,” she said as she wheeled the girl about and very nearly gave her the boot. “My sister Mercy’s social graces are shockingly absent. May I introduce you? This is Miss Mercy Cabot, Miss Prudence Cabot and of course, you know my sister, Miss Grace Cabot.”

“Those are quite a lot of virtues gathered in one small room,” George quipped, inclining his head. “My pleasure, ladies.”

“Mmm,” Grace Cabot said, eyeing him suspiciously, as if it wasn’t his pleasure at all, as if he had come all this way in this deluge to fabricate his pleasure at meeting the Cabot girls.

“Have you come for Honor?” the youngest one inquired. “Or Grace? Sometimes callers really don’t care which of them will receive them.”

“Mercy!” Honor Cabot gasped, her face going a bit white. “Please, all of you, return to the salon, and, for heaven’s sake, if Augustine returns, divert him!”

“Why?” Prudence asked. “What are you going to do?”

“She’s not going to do anything,” Grace said with a dark look for one sister as she took the other by the arm. “Come on then, you two—”

“But can’t we invite him in for tea?” Prudence asked as Mercy twisted about in Grace’s grip to peer at George over her shoulder. “We always invite them in for tea.”

“He’s not that sort of caller,” Grace insisted, ushering them along. “Honor, you’ll be along shortly, won’t you?”

Miss Cabot responded with a dismissive little wave of her fingers that made her sister’s expression go even darker. When the girls had disappeared into the corridor, Miss Cabot grabbed George’s elbow and began to propel him along in the opposite direction. “Hardy, this is a private matter—”

“Aye, miss, of course, miss,” the butler said reflexively, making George think that Honor Cabot was frequently engaged in “private matters.”

“One moment, if you please, Miss Cabot,” he said, trying to stop her. “I am not calling—”

“Yes, but I need a moment of your time,” she said, urging him along. Or rather, tugging him.

She herded him into the same small receiving room he’d seen before and shut the door.

“Miss Cabot—”

“Didn’t you speak to her?” she exclaimed, whirling about from the door.

“What the devil do you mean? Of course I spoke to her!” George said, miffed that she would doubt it. “She is undoubtedly whiling away this torrential rain reliving every moment of it,” he added confidently. He knew how young women were—their imaginations were almost as ridiculously grand and expansive as their bonnets.