Chapter Fourteen
They all left Almack’s at two a.m. As soon as Geoffrey and Rosy picked up their mother at Grosvenor Square and headed for home, he started unknotting the draconian torture device called a fashionable cravat.
“Geoffrey!” Mother said. “You should at least leave it on until we get to Grenwood House. What if we have an accident and someone sees you like that?”
“If we have an accident,” he said, “everyone will be far more concerned about the carriage shaft sticking out of my chest than whether I’m wearing a cravat.”
“Heavens!” his mother said. “How gruesome!”
“Very well. The carriage shaft sticking out of my—”
“That’s enough about carriage shafts sticking out of one’s body,” she said with a roll of her eyes. Then she turned to Rosy. “I want to hear all about the ball.”
Good God, not again. He’d heard more than enough about it on the way from Almack’s to Grosvenor Square. “I can tell it to you in one minute,” Geoffrey said. “Rosy danced nearly every dance. She went in to supper—which, by the way, was as awful as I’d heard—on the arm of an earl. She was the toast of the ball.”
“Not the toast, Geoffrey,” Rosy said. “But I do think I got on pretty well with most people.”
He laughed. “Poppet, that’s the understatement of the century. You got on well with everyone . . . because you were your usual self—kind and considerate, not joining in the nastiness of the gossips.” He looked at his mother. “During the only dance Rosy had no partner, she chatted with a woman who, as chance would have it, was the aging mother of a Lady Patroness, who, of course, took an instant liking to Rosy. Later, my sister put some bashful young fellow at ease enough for him to ask her to dance. It turned out his father was a foreign prince. Both he and his son were most grateful.”
He shook his head. “After that, even the most hardened society dowagers looked on her with approval.” His sister had a habit of wandering where angels feared to tread and coming out on the other side triumphant. He only hoped her luck stood her in good stead if the family scandal ever broke. Once one had been tarred and feathered in the court of public opinion, it was virtually impossible to become completely clean again.
“So far, that all sounds wonderful!” Mother said, then turned back to Rosy. “But I need details. With whom did you dance? How many times? Do I know any of them?”
Geoffrey groaned. Why did women always want details?
Like Diana. She kept pushing him to explain, to do more . . . to take her innocence. And God, how he wanted to. If he could have a wife, she would be his first choice.
But he couldn’t, not yet. Not if he meant to protect his sister and mother from disaster. Perhaps once enough time had lapsed, and the chatter in Newcastle about the manner of Father’s death had settled down, Geoffrey could settle down, too.
He sighed. If anything, that chatter would grow now that he’d inherited the dukedom. No, he couldn’t expose any fine lady to that, especially not Diana, who’d endured plenty of scandal already. Bad enough that his sister and mother might suffer through it, too.
“What has you so quiet, Son?” Mother asked.
He forced a smile. “Nothing, why?”
Rosy nudged their mother. “He went missing for nearly an hour before we went in to supper.”
“Did he, now?” Mother arched one brow.
“Foxstead and I went out to get some food and drink we’d stashed in his carriage,” Geoffrey said.
“That’s ridiculous,” Rosy said. “Foxstead was dancing with Verity. I remember it quite clearly because I was dancing with . . .”
When she paused, he narrowed his gaze on her.
Then she waved her hand dismissively. “Oh, I can’t remember his name. Some lord or other. As you can imagine, I found him quite dull.”
That didn’t sound like his sister, but a bit of society haughtiness might have rubbed off on her. The fellow would have had to be very dull for her to have mentioned it. She tended to be more generous with her descriptions.
“So where were you?” Mother asked Geoffrey.
Damn it. She’d sniffed something suspicious and wouldn’t let go unless he gave her a believable tale.
Or a patently unbelievable one. “I sneaked out to seduce one of the Lady Patronesses,” he said with a straight face.
“Geoffrey Arthur Brookhouse!” his mother exclaimed.
“You did not,” Rosy said with a worldly air. “None of the Lady Patronesses were terribly happy to see you there. And they’re all married anyway.”