THE PROBLEM WITH marriage, Lottie Graham reflected, was that there was such a difference between what one dreamed the matrimonial state would be like and, well, the reality.
Lottie sat back down on her settee—Wallace and Sons, bought just last year for a truly scandalous sum—and stared at the cooling tea things. She’d seen Beatrice to the door after babbling at her dearest friend in the world for a solid half hour. Poor Beatrice must heartily regret coming over for their weekly tea.
Lottie sighed and plucked the last biscuit from the plate, crumbling it between her fingers. Darling Pan came to sit beside her skirts, his foxy little face grinning up at her.
“It’s not good for you, so many sweets,” Lottie murmured, but she gave a bit of the biscuit to him anyway. He delicately took the treat between his sharp little teeth and retired with his prize beneath the gilded French armchair.
Lottie slumped into the settee, laying her arm wearily along the back. Perhaps she expected too much. Perhaps it was girlish fantasies that she should’ve outgrown long ago. Perhaps all marriages, even the very best like her own mama and papa’s, ultimately settled into dreary indifference, and she was simply being a ninny like Lady Hasselthorpe.
Annie, the head downstairs maid, came in to gather up the tea things. She glanced at Lottie and said hesitantly, “Will there be anything else, ma’am?”
Oh, God, even the servants sensed it.
Lottie straightened a little, trying to look serene. “No, that’ll be all.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Annie curtsied. “Cook was wanting to know if there’ll be one or two for supper tonight?”
“Just one,” Lottie muttered, and turned her face away.
Annie left the room quietly.
She sat there, draped on the settee, for some time, thinking wild thoughts until the door opened again a bit later.
Nate strolled in and then stopped. “Oh, sorry! Didn’t mean to disturb you. I didn’t know anyone was in here.”
At Nate’s voice, Pan emerged from under the armchair and pranced over to be patted. Pan had adored Nate from the very beginning.
Lottie wrinkled her nose at her pet and then said rather carelessly to Nate, “I didn’t know you’d be home for dinner. I just told Cook there’d be only one.”
asped her arm. “What did you say?”
Her pink tongue darted out to lick her lips, and he realized, incongruously, that she smelled of flowers.
“Your father died five years ago,” she said. “You were thought dead, so my uncle claimed the title.”
Not home, then, he thought bitterly. Not home at all.
“WELL, THAT MUST’VE been awkward,” Lottie said with her usual bluntness the next afternoon.
“It was simply terrible.” Beatrice sighed. “He had no idea, of course, that his father was dead, and there he was holding that huge knife. I was quite nervous, half expecting him to do something violent, but instead he became very, very quiet, which was almost worse.”
Beatrice frowned, remembering the pang of sympathy that’d shot through her at Lord Hope’s stillness. She shouldn’t feel sympathy for a man who might strip Uncle Reggie of his title and their home, but there it was. She couldn’t help but ache for his loss.
She took a sip of tea. Lottie always had such good tea—nice and strong—which was perhaps why she’d fallen into the habit of calling round the Graham town house every Tuesday afternoon for tea and gossip. Lottie’s private sitting room was so elegant, decorated in deep rose and a grayish sort of green one might think was dull but was actually the perfect complement for the rose. Lottie was extraordinarily good with colors and always looked so smart that sometimes Beatrice wondered if she’d bought Pan, her little white Pomeranian, just because he looked so smart as well.
Beatrice eyed the little dog, lying like a miniature fur rug at their feet, alert to the possibility of biscuit crumbs.
“The quiet gentlemen are the ones you have to watch out for,” Lottie stated as she judiciously added a small lump of sugar to her tea.
It took a second for Beatrice to remember the thread of their conversation. Then she said, “Well, he wasn’t very quiet when he first appeared.”
“No, indeed,” Lottie said contentedly. “I thought he’d strangle you.”
“You sound rather thrilled by the prospect,” Beatrice said severely.
“It would give me a tale to dine out on for a year or more, you must admit,” Lottie replied with no trace of shame. She sipped her tea, wrinkled her nose, and added another tiny lump of sugar. “No, it’s been three days, and I’ve heard nothing else but the story of the lost earl bursting into your little political tea.”
“Uncle Reggie said we’d be the talk of the town,” Beatrice said dolefully.