“What?” Lady Dalrymple snapped.
“It must have cost the Vaughns a great deal of money to entertain you for over two months,” Benedict pointed out.
“That is quite their own fault,” the viscountess returned frostily, “for pretending to be rich! I was never so deceived in my life!”
“What about me?” cried Mr. Carteret. “I asked the girl to marry me! I’d be in the basket now if she’d said yes.”
“Good God, so would I!” exclaimed Ludham.
“Depend on it, my lord: Miss Vaughn is a fortune hunter!” cried Lady Dalrymple, abandoning the subtle approach completely.
“How fortunate then that she refused to marry your son, madam,” said Benedict.
“Yes,” Lord Ludham agreed. “If she is a fortune hunter, she ought to marry someone with—well, with a fortune, you know. Will you tell her, Miss Carteret—since you are such good friends—that my income is ten thousand a year? Well, strictly speaking—I don’t want to deceive anyone—it is nine thousand, seven hundred-odd, you know.” He shrugged helplessly. “My man can get the exact figure.”
Benedict looked at him incredulously. Serena was right to worry about her cousin, he reflected. The young man seemed to have learned nothing from the fiasco with his opera dancer.
“She has the face of an angel,” Ludham sighed blissfully.
“Yes, indeed,” Lady Dalrymple agreed warmly. “Millicent is admired wherever she goes, and, of course, she has twenty thousand pounds…or so my Lord Dalrymple tells me,” she hastily added. “I never concern myself with money, you understand. Nor does Millie, not like some young ladies who must scrape as they can, and calculate as they go. I am but a bird-witted female, my lord, and I don’t pretend to be otherwise.”
“Excuse me,” said Benedict, abruptly, unable to bear any more machinations that were, at least to him, transparent. “I must pay my respects to Lady Serena.”
“What a rude man he is!” cried Lady Dalrymple as he strode off. “He did not even ask Millicent to dance.”
Lord Ludham mumbled some excuse about paying his respects to Lady Serena as well, and scampered off. Lady Dalrymple sighed. Sometimes, even though one did all one can do, things did not turn out as one had hoped. “It will have to be Fitzwilliam, after all,” she said, raising her lorgnette.
“I do not like the Church,” said Millicent. “And he smells bad. I want to be a countess.”
“If Lord Matlock and his two sons should die, you will be,” said her mama. “One never knows. Ah, Mr. Fitzwilliam! Poor Millicent has been longing to see you this age!”
“I daresay Lady Dalrymple thought I was talking about her daughter,” Ludham said when he had caught up with Benedict. “But, really, I was talking of Miss Vaughn.”
“I had guessed as much,” Benedict said politely. “From what I can tell, your lordship speaks of nothing and no one else.”
Ludham took this for an invitation to expand on his favorite subject. “The first time I ever saw Miss Vaughn was in the rain. Naturally, I offered her my umbrella. I told her she was like Venus washed ashore, but I daresay she did not understand me. She told me to go away.”
As Lady Serena regally inclined her head to him, Benedict could not help but notice how black her hair was, the same improbable black as his own. Her beautiful face was painted, too. Her maid was such an artist that it was only detectable in the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and mouth, but, now that he was looking for it, he noticed it. As ever, she was elegantly and simply dressed, neither addicted to the latest fashions nor aloof to them. While the other unmarried women seemed to be coming out of their clothes, Serena’s neckline showed only a modest hint of bosom.
“I see you have met my foolish cousin, Sir Benedict,” Serena said. “Now, Felix, you must not rattle on about the beautiful Miss Vaughn. You will give the unfortunate young lady a reputation before she ever enters society. Ah, Lady Matlock!”
“Serena!” Lady Matlock sailed through the crowd, which parted around her and her daughter like the Red Sea in deference to her exalted rank. The ladies kissed the air around each other’s faces. “You remember Rose, of course.”
Rose was trying to hide behind her mother, but the countess pushed her forward. Obviously uncomfortable in her low-cut gown of dampened muslin, she tried to cover herself with her lace fan, but her mama snatched it away, and all she could do was toy nervously with the pearls at her throat.
Benedict suppressed his burning desire to take off his coat and wrap the half-naked child up in it. He had once been the guardian of a much younger sister. Not in a hundred years would he have permitted Miss Juliet Wayborn to make such a spectacle of herself. Lady Matlock would be fortunate if her daughter did not contract pneumonia, rather than a husband.
Lady Matlock herself was dressed warmly in a garnet-colored velvet gown and a massive brown wig. Numerous chains of gold hung from the precipice of her bosom, twisted together in a hopeless tangle. “Do you dance, Ludham?” she demanded, attacking that gentleman first, by order of precedence.
“I do dance, Lady Matlock,” he answered. “And if I could ever be introduced to Miss Vaughn, what’s more, I would dance!”
“Miss Vaughn?” cried Rose eagerly. “Is she here, my lord? I would so like to meet her! Indeed, I have heard so much about her from Lord Westlands that I feel I know her already.”
“Does this Lord Westlands know Miss Vaughn?” Lord Ludham demanded jealously.
“He is her cousin,” replied Rose. “They have known each other all their lives.”
“Is he here? Can he not introduce me?”
“He is back in London now, I believe,” replied Rose. “But we need not apply to him. Here is another of the lady’s cousins. Surely, Sir Benedict can introduce us.”
“I, Lady Rose?” Benedict protested. “I never heard of the Vaughns.”
Rose looked scandalized. “You deny them because they are Irish? That is very bad of you, Sir Benedict! In any case, Lady Agatha Vaughn is not Irish. She is Lord Wayborn’s elder sister, and your cousin.”
“I’ve never been introduced to Lady Agatha,” said Benedict. “The Derbyshire Wayborns have little to do with humble Surrey Wayborns like myself. I assure you, I had no idea of these ladies being related to me in any way.”
Serena laughed behind her fan. “I should have thought that all the Wayborns, both Derbyshire and Surrey, were in St. George’s Church when Miss Juliet Wayborn married the Duke of Auckland.”
Benedict smiled. “Lord Wayborn even disputed my right to walk my sister down the aisle. He wished to do it himself. There were no Vaughns in evidence, however.”
“There was a rift between brother and sister some years ago,” said Rose. “Westlands did not know all the particulars, but he said that Lady Agatha and her daughters must suffer for it all their lives. His father’s resentment, once aroused, is implacable. It’s up to you to help them, Sir Benedict.”
Benedict lifted his brows. “I?”
“Yes! You are her nearest male relative, so you must help her. And, as Lady Agatha is too sick to come to you, you must go to her. It is not fair that Miss Vaughn can never go anywhere simply because her mother is ill.”
“Lady Rose is perfectly right,” said Ludham. “You must bring her to balls, Sir Benedict, so that I can dance with her.”
“They live at Number Nine, Upper Camden Place,” Rose said eagerly. “I wanted to visit them myself, but Mama said I may not.”
“That is right across the park from me,” Benedict remarked in surprise.
“Then