“No, here,” she said. “Mr. Crutchley, if you please?”
“Follow me, my lord,” the butler said just as Percy heard the rumble of wheels approaching outside. His curricle, he guessed. For a brief moment he considered bolting through the door and down the steps and vaulting aboard with the command on his lips that his groom spring the horses, preferably in the direction of London. But it would be a shame to leave his favorite horse behind.
He turned instead to follow the butler’s retreating back. Watkins and the baggage would be awhile, yet. Lady Barclay and Lady Lavinia Hayes and Mrs. Ferby would have to take him in all his dusty glory for tea.
Three women. Marvelous! A sure cure for boredom and all else that ailed him.
This would teach him to make impulsive decisions while he was three sheets to the wind.
3
“I felt the sheets with my own hands,” Aunt Lavinia said. “I am quite sure they were well aired. I do hope he will not get the ague from sleeping between them.”
“Of course he will not,” Imogen assured her. All the linens at Hardford were well aired, since they were stored in the airing cupboard when not in use.
“Unless he is an elderly man and already has it,” Aunt Lavinia added. “Or the rheumatics. Is he elderly, Imogen?”
“He is not,” Imogen told her.
“And is he married? Are there children? And will they and his wife be following him here? Oh, it is very sad indeed that we know so little about him. I do not hold with family quarrels. I never have. If there cannot be peace and harmony and love within families, then what are families for?”
“Show me a family that claims to live in peace, harmony, and love, Lavinia,” Cousin Adelaide said, “and I will lead the hunt for all the skeletons in the cupboards. Such a fuss over a man.”
“I cannot believe,” Aunt Lavinia said, “that I was so busy seeing that everything was ready for him that I did not hear him arrive. But we could not have known he would come so soon, could we? Whatever will he think of me?”
“You need to be more like me, Lavinia,” Cousin Adelaide said, “and not care what anyone thinks of you. Least of all a man.”
Aunt Lavinia had indeed been horrified to learn that she had missed the arrival of the earl and her duty to make her curtsy to him in the hall. She was seated now in the drawing room, looking a bit like a coiled spring, awaiting the appearance of his lordship for tea.
“I did not think to ask if he is married,” Imogen said. If he was, she pitied the countess from the bottom of her heart. She did not often take people in dislike, at least not on first acquaintance. But the Earl of Hardford was everything she most abhorred in a man. He was rude and arrogant and overbearing. And no doubt there had never been anyone to call him to account. He was the type who would be admired and followed slavishly by men and fawned upon and swooned over by women. She knew the type. The officers’ messes with which she had been acquainted had abounded with such. Fortunately—very fortunately—her husband had not been one of them. But then she would not have married him if he had been.
“You have not seen Prudence, by any chance, Imogen?” Aunt Lavinia asked. “All the others are accounted for and shut safely inside the second housekeeper’s room, even though Bruce did not like it one little bit. But Prudence was nowhere to be found. I do hope she is not hiding somewhere, waiting to put in an appearance at an awkward moment.”
“I have not,” Imogen said. “The Earl of Hardford was unaware of my existence, you know. And of yours. And of Cousin Adelaide’s.”
“Oh, dear,” Aunt Lavinia said. “That is awkward. But he really ought to have made inquiries. Or perhaps we ought to have sent a letter of congratulation when he succeeded to the title and then he would have known. But at the time I was just too upset over poor Brandon’s passing. Dicky’s papa,” she added, lest Imogen or her cousin not understand who Brandon was.