Chapter Thirteen
After they arrived, it took some time to get inside. Both the vouchers and the tickets had to be presented at the doors. They’d shown up at the same time as a number of other guests, so entering the rooms meant waiting in long lines.
Once they were in, Geoffrey surveyed the ballroom, trying to figure out why people fought to be here. “So, this is Almack’s. I’m afraid I don’t see the appeal.”
“Nor do I,” Diana said. “But others do, and thus my sisters and I must play the game.” She looked up at him. “I haven’t yet thanked you for gaining the vouchers and tickets. However did you manage it?”
He grinned at her. “You didn’t think me capable of acquiring such a thing?”
“It has naught to do with you or your abilities. I just happen to know that the Lady Patronesses can be haughty to the point of cruelty.”
That took the grin off his face. “I assume you’re speaking from personal experience.”
Diana shrugged. “My parents’ scandalous marriage had a long-reaching effect. When a club like this makes respectability its key virtue, no one who’s had an ounce of scandal in their lives is safe. We haven’t been able to get a voucher for Almack’s in some time.” She eyed him closely. “How did you get those vouchers and tickets anyway? Somehow I can’t see you cozying up to the Lady Patronesses for them.”
“That’s because everyone does that, according to Foxstead, and it rarely works. Perhaps if I’d been someone else . . . but I knew those women would pay me no mind.” He shuddered. “So I figured ‘cozying up to’ the Lady Patronesses’ husbands made more sense. Their husbands—a couple of whom invest in the same projects I do—were a bit keener to help me.”
“Why, you sly dog, you,” she said. “You’re learning to twist the rules so you can get what you want on your own terms.”
“Precisely.”
“And you’re a man, so you’re used to getting around women.”
“Of course.” It dawned on him how his explanation must have sounded. “I mean, I wasn’t . . .”
Diana laughed. “I’m teasing you. At least you’re using your power for the good of your sister, which is admirable.” She stared across the room to where some Lady Patronesses were gathered. “And you couldn’t have picked a more deserving group of women to get around or overlook.”
He relaxed. “I gathered as much from what you said earlier.”
“My father has been trying to get Sarah into Almack’s for the past couple of years and hasn’t managed it yet. He’s . . . er . . . difficult, so I understand why they won’t give him a voucher. But she’s perfectly lovely and about as respectable as a widow can be.”
“Who’s Sarah?” he asked. “Is there a fourth Harper sister who didn’t want to be part of the business?”
“Oh! No. Sorry.” Diana drew him over to the area under the musician’s balcony, which wasn’t as crowded or noisy. “She’s our . . . stepmother, I guess you’d call her. She was a widow with children when Papa married her. But she’s only a bit older than we are, so we tend to call her by her given name. I suppose we should be calling her Lady Holtbury, but that’s confusing to us because then we think one of us is talking about Mama.”
“Your father certainly wasted no time in getting remarried.” If Geoffrey hadn’t already hated what the man’s actions had done to his daughters, this would have convinced him to do so.
She shrugged. “Papa needs an heir. Sometimes I wonder if he’d merely been waiting for an excuse to divorce Mama so he could try again with some other woman because Mama had given him only daughters.”
That sent a chill through Geoffrey. “If you’re right, his behavior is loathsome. There’s more to a marriage than siring an heir, no matter what the aristocracy believes.”
“You really need to stop talking as if you’re not part of the aristocracy,” she said with a shake of her head. “You’re a duke and will be expected to sire an heir.”
“I don’t feel like a duke.”
“But surely you have had time to get used to the possibility.”
“Actually, I have not.” He probably should at least tell her about that, so she could better understand his situation. “Rosy wasn’t lying about Father’s family cutting him off when he married my mother. After that, they were all dead to him—it was a mutual disinheriting, if there’s any such thing. So Father didn’t keep up with the lineages, assuming he was way down on the list to become duke. He died still believing he was sixth in line and I was seventh.”
“But he was wrong.”
“Yes.” Geoffrey blinked at her. “Wait, how did you know?”
Diana gave him a sheepish smile. “I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but after we took you on as a client, we traced the family connections. They’re very twisted.”
“To say the least. My predecessor lived so long, he not only outlasted his three sons, none of whom had possessed male heirs, but also a couple of cousins who’d outlasted their own sons. By the time my predecessor died, the College of Arms had already traced the dukedom, at his request, up through several ancestors to the original title-holder and then come down a completely different branch of the family to find me. Fortunately—or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it—by then my father’s two brothers had died without male issue.”
“If your father had lived, he would have been duke before you.”