Chapter 12
"Thomas, I feel I must apologise," Owen stated in the library where the two of them had retired for a nightcap after the dancing fiasco. Thomas was all too happy to forget the entire thing and merely enjoy a drink with his closest friend.
"What could you possibly have to apologise for?" Thomas asked, taking the crystalline glass his friend handed to him as he sat down. He raised one dark brown and looked over the lip of the glass with a quizzical expression.
"Had I known that Nancy's matchmaking would become quite so ludicrous, I never would have invited you," Owen responded, dropping down with a sigh of relief into the armchair opposite Thomas'. Though the weather outside was fairly warm during the day, the evening had turned bitter, and Thomas gazed into the flames that flickered in the hearth before them.
"You and I both know that young noblemen such as myself are often invited to events merely for matchmaking purposes." Thomas shrugged. It was a fact he had grown accustomed to. Though it bothered him sometimes, it was not worth getting in a twist about. It was the way of society.
"Yes, but that was not my intention for inviting you this week," Owen insisted. "You must believe I did not want you to be a part of this, rather, I wanted you to keep me from it also!"
The terror-filled look on his friend's face suggested to Thomas that Owen was very nearly at his wits end with the entire thing.More fool you for marrying your matchmake wife,Thomas thought though he was not cruel enough to say the words aloud when he could see the stress written plainly upon his friend's face.
"I believe you," Thomas assured him. Leaning forward, allowing himself only a mild look of curiosity, Thomas asked, "Why is all of this even necessary anyway? Is Miss Skeffington flawed in some way?"
He watched his friend closely for a reaction though quickly came to realise that he need not have done because it was immediate and quite obvious. "Oh, heavens no! Miss Skeffington is just as she appears, handsome and kind and sometimes even a little mischievous, but she is also very smart and perhaps a little too much so."
"How so?" Thomas leaned back in his seat and took a sip of his drink, eyebrow still raised.
"Miss Skeffington quite simply does not wish to marry. According to my wife, she has done everything she can to scare off every single suitor who has approached her," Owen explained with a shrug.
"I hear she tailors the excuse to the gentleman since she is so clever. Once she was merely foolish to scare a gentleman off, then she acted mute, and another time she deliberately gave false answers to questions about subjects she knew very well to make herself appear dim. Another time, she made herself look so clumsy while out on a stroll that the poor gentleman feared his children would be forever wobbling about the place!"
The two of them chuckled at the final one and Thomas could not help but feel his spirits lift. Perhaps Miss Skeffington's constantly changing demeanor toward him was her way of trying to scare him off.What if I do not wish to be scared off?The thought popped unbidden into his mind, and he quickly forced it away again.
"She sounds like quite the firecracker," Thomas mused, picturing Alice's beautiful face dancing in the flickering flames before him.
Miss Skeffington. Her name is Miss Skeffington,he quickly scolded himself for thinking of her as anything else. She would be nothing but a viscount's daughter to him.
"That is not the least of it. She even went as far as to encourage some of the men onto other women, playing matchmaker herself whenever she was fearful that she could not scare them off," Owen added looking quite amused at the fact. Thomas laughed though not quite so hard this time.
He was definitely pleased that Miss Skeffington had not tried to set him up with another young lady.How could she? All the ladies here are already attached,Thomas thought grimly, deciding it was best not to think too much into it.
"My wife and Lady Skeffington are most concerned for her future," Owen sighed, his face falling as though they were not the only ones, and it was clear that Owen thought very highly of the young woman himself.
"Should the lady not be allowed to determine her own future?" Thomas asked and Owen's head snapped up so fast that Thomas feared his head might roll right off his shoulders.
"Careful, Thomas, you are beginning to sound like a fool." Owen laughed, shaking his head. "We both know society can be cruel and Miss Skeffington would lose everything if anything were to happen to her father."
Thomas cringed at that, knowing exactly what his friend meant. Though his parents were both dead and buried, he still had his father's sister breathing down his neck about getting married off quickly to secure the family's interests.
She was somewhat of a second mother to him and so he could imagine the kind of pressure that Miss Skeffington was feeling, why she felt the need to play her games because she did not wish to arrange her life on other people's terms. It was an admirable quality, even if it was the reason why he found himself in the situation he was in now.
"I know well the pressure she is under." Thomas sighed though he had not meant for Owen to hear. It seemed that the man had all the same.
"Your aunt still prods at you then?" Owen asked. Thomas could not help but scoff at that.
"Prodding at me is a polite way of putting it," Thomas explained with a frustrated laugh. "Were she a lioness, I'd have lost my throat by now."
The two men chuckled knowing very well how insistent Lady Denby could be, especially now that she found herself a wealthy widow, a woman whose own arranged marriage at an early age had paid off in her favour, so to speak.
There was silence for a moment before it was broken by the sound of Owen's glass clinking against his teeth. Then he looked at Thomas and stated, "I do believe that I like Miss Skeffington very well and I feel you would too if you were to allow yourself."
Thomas groaned deep in his throat and glowered at his friend with a shake of his head. "Do not go there, Owen."
"Would Lady Denby not find her acceptable?" Owen questioned, looking rather amused with himself and Thomas could not quite decide whether the conversation was a serious one or just a way for Owen to jibe him.
"I can guess that she would find her very acceptable," Thomas responded. His aunt would likely accept any young woman he chose to marry at this point. His only saving grace was that she lived at Denby Cottage almost a hundred miles away and did not visit often though her letters were consistent. "My aunt is not the one who would be living with the marriage."