‘Well, it was damn near impossible to pry more than a couple of words out of her at a time.’ To think he’d congratulated himself on so deftly separating her from her more exuberant cousins, only to come unstuck at the dinner table.
‘I made a complete cake of myself.’ He sighed. She wasn’t like the girls he was used to sitting with at such events. Girls who either flirted, or threw out conversational gambits intended to impress and charm. She’d left all the work to him. And he discovered he was a very poor hand at it. In his determination to delve to the heart of her, he’d asked the kind of questions that had both puzzled and alarmed her.
Climbing boys, for God’s sake! Who in their right minds asked a gently reared girl about such a deplorable topic? Over a supper table?
Though in fairness to Miss Carpenter, she’d swiftly rallied and given an answer of which he could heartily approve. And shown her head wasn’t stuffed with goose down. Devices for sweeping chimneys, eh? Where could she have heard about them? If they even existed.
‘You know,’ said Morgan as they turned in the direction of their club, ‘either of her cousins would be only too glad to get an offer from you. Wouldn’t be so much work, either. That’s why I made them known to you. Family not that well off, eager to climb the social ladder. Have known them some time, so I can vouch for them both being good girls, at heart.’
‘No, thank you,’ said Havelock firmly, recalling the way they’d fluttered and preened the moment they heard he had a title. ‘Miss Carpenter is the one for me.’
‘Very well,’ said Morgan with a shrug. ‘Perhaps you will get a chance to discover more about her when we go and visit her tomorrow.’
‘Perhaps,’ he said gloomily. He wished now that he had been more in the petticoat line. Had more experience with plumbing the depths of women’s natures. He’d plumbed other depths, naturally, to the satisfaction of both parties involved, but had always avoided anything that smacked of emotion. The moment a woman started to seem as though she wanted to get ‘close’, he’d dropped her like a hot potato.
He’d thought it was safer.
And it had been. Not one of them had ever managed to get under his skin. The trouble was, keeping himself heart whole had left him woefully unprepared for the most important task of his life.
* * *
‘Good morning, my lord,’ gushed Mrs Pargetter.
Havelock favoured her with his most courtly bow. If he was going to be frequenting these premises, he needed to be on good terms with the hostess.
Miss Carpenter’s cousins, whose names escaped him for the moment, fluttered at him from their strategic locations on two separate sofas, indicating their willingness to have him join them. Or Morgan. The hussies didn’t appear to mind which.
Miss Carpenter, on the other hand, was sitting on a straight-backed chair by the window, looking very much as though she would like to disappear behind the curtains.
Morgan made straight for the younger chit, so he went and sat beside the elder. He’d paid this kind of duty visit to dance partners, the day after a ball, before. But he’d never realised how frustrating they could be if a fellow was serious about pursuing a female. You couldn’t engage in meaningful conversation with teacups and macaroons being thrust under your nose every five minutes. Not that he’d had much success in the field of conversation when he had got her to himself.
‘We hope you will permit us to take your lovely daughters out tomorrow,’ Morgan was saying. Havelock scowled. He didn’t want to take either of them anywhere.
The girls looked at each other. Then their heads swivelled towards the window where Mary was sitting.
‘And you, too, Miss Carpenter, of course,’ said Havelock, taking his cue from them. Morgan had been right. Man-hungry they might be, but they weren’t totally ruthless in their pursuit of prey. They were willing to offer Miss Carpenter a share in their spoils.
‘Oh, no,’ said Miss Carpenter, blushing. ‘Really, I don’t think...’
‘Nonsense, Mary,’ said her aunt briskly. ‘It will do you the world of good to get out in the fresh air.’
Her brows rose in disbelief. Since rain was lashing at the windowpane, he could hardly blame her.
‘It isn’t really the season for driving in the park, now, is it,’ said Morgan with just a hint of a smile. ‘I was thinking more in the lines of visiting somewhere like Westminster Abbey.’
Westminster Abbey? Was the fellow mad? Walking about looking at a bunch of grisly tombs? How was he going to find out anything, except whether the girl knew her kings and queens, by taking her to Westminster Abbey?
‘It is so kind of you,’ said the girl he was sitting next to, with a flutter of eyelashes up at Morgan, ‘to think of taking us all out to see the sights. And Mary would love that, wouldn’t you, Mary? She hasn’t seen anything of London at all.’
Before Miss Carpenter had the chance to voice her horror at the prospect of being dragged out on an expedition to examine a lot of mouldering tombs, the door flew open and a boy, who looked as if he was about eight or nine years old, and was covered in flour, burst in.
‘Mother, Mother, you have to come see...’
‘Will, how many times have I told you,’ shrieked Mrs Pargetter, ‘not to come barging in here when we have callers?’
At the same moment, Miss Carpenter leapt from her chair and cut off his headlong dash into the room by dint of grabbing him about the waist.
She alone of the four women in the room was smiling at him.
‘You’re all over flour, Will,’ she pointed out as he looked up at her in bewilderment. ‘You don’t want to spoil your sisters’ pretty clothes, do you?’
She didn’t seem to care about her own clothes, though. There was a little boy-shaped smudge on her skirts and a white handprint on her sleeve.
‘No, ’spose not,’ he said grudgingly, rubbing his twitching nose with the back of one hand, making him twice as likely to sneeze. ‘But you’ve just got to see...’
‘Come on,’ said Mary, taking his dough-encrusted hand in hers. ‘You can show me whatever it is that’s got you so fired up. And later, when these visitors have gone, I’m sure your mama will want to see, as well.’
The boy glared at him, then at Morgan, then turned his floury little nose up at his sisters, as though roundly condemning them for considering the state of their clothes more important than whatever exciting development had occurred in the kitchens.
‘Oh, thank you, Mary,’ said her aunt.
‘Not at all,’ she replied, with what looked suspiciously like heartfelt relief.
* * *
‘Did you see that?’ he asked Morgan later, as they were going down the front steps. ‘Her reaction to the floury boy?’
‘Indeed I did,’ he replied. ‘Another item on your list ticked off. Or two, perhaps. She’s not totally selfish and appears to be kind to children. Unless...well, I suppose she could have been using the child to make her escape.’
‘Blast.’ He peered out from under the front porch into the teeming rain. ‘She might not have been thinking of the child at all. She might have just wanted an excuse to bolt. And she might well have given him a good scolding for spoiling her gown, once she was safely out of our sight. You see, that’s the trouble with women. They put on a mask in public that makes you think they have the nature of an angel, but it comes straight off when they think nobody’s watching. If only there was some way I could be sure of getting a genuine reaction from her.’
‘Our trip to the Abbey tomorrow would be a perfect opportunity,’ said Morgan as they dashed across