Friends… Jack nibbled the inside of her cheek as she considered this unique path to happy marriages.
Weren’t couples supposed to be passionate? Weren’t they supposed to long for each other, to pine, to write untold pages of flowery prose, determined to win each other over with the depth of their affections?
Not so for Louise and Deptford. Or any other couple the duke had matched, as far as she could tell.
And yet Louise looked more than content. She looked as if she could be herself with her future husband as they circled the room.
It was more than most young ladies of thetoncould claim.
From the books she had consumed, the plays she had seen, and the poetry she had perused, she’d assumed mad passion necessary to achieve such marital bliss.
She wondered if that was what the duke intended for her. A marriage of minds, but not necessarily of passion.
Louise did look truly happy as the music ended and she swept up beside Jack and their mother. Eyes sparkling with excitement, she took Mama’s hand. “What a marvelous crush. Do you not think?”
“Indeed, it is,” their mother agreed, her face brightening at her eldest daughter’s good humor.
Louise gazed at the company and waved her ivory fan before her face. “I have not seen so many people since Lady Mumford’s ball last year.”
“And then there was quite a stampede at the end of the evening,” her brother, Alexander drawled behind her. “After Lady Montclare did a reel into the punch bowl.”
“Yes, thank you, my dear,” her mother said with an air that clearly suggested she loved and simultaneously tolerated her eldest son.
Jack turned to her older brother, who looked quite the worse for wear. “I say,” she said, “did you not sleep at all last night?” And then she narrowed her eyes. “I bet you didn’t. Was it an opera singer? A dancer?”
Her brother merely scowled, clasping his white-gloved hands behind his back. “Neither,” he said.
She pressed her own gloved hand to her bosom and declared with mock alarm, “Oh dear, have you fallen in love?”
Her brother scowled further, looking above her head, an easy thing to do given his height. “Not at all.”
“Have you found the one,” she teased, even though she knew it was badly done. Her brother was in the same state of the marriage game as she—except her brother was a marquess and preposterously handsome. So, she added with glee, “You know, the one you are going to ask to marry?”
Her brother all but threw his hands up and said, “I have found her no more than you have found your one. And apparently I’m so piteous, I’m in need of saving.”
“Saving?” She blinked, wondering what the devil her brother was on about. He had so many gifts to attract a lady, the idea he needed assistance was absurd. “Whatever do you mean?”
“By the Duke of Stone,” intoned her brother with a beleaguered sigh. “I think he has a lifelong dream to put the world in pairs.”
Her brows rose, and she just managed to stifle a cough.
Alexander gave her back a good pound and she nearly tripped into a passing servant carrying a tray of punch.
She swiped a cup from the passing tray and positively guzzled, glad to find there was champagne in it. After all, she didn’t wish her brother, or mother or sister for that matter, to discover the duke planned on saving more than one of them.
Her mother’s eyes widened to the size of twin saucers, and her brows all but leaped to the ceiling. “My dear, how marvelous! For I have not been able to fulfill the occupation that I am supposed to with any particular skill in finding you a wife. Thank goodness someone else is taking up the cause.”
“Are you well, Jacqueline?” Alexander asked, ignoring his mother’s effusive declaration as his gaze narrowed slightly at his younger sister.
Jack nodded enthusiastically and lifted her cup in a salute. “Terribly parched. It’s quite warm in here, don’t you know.”
He gazed to the open windows letting in a delicious, lavender-scented breeze.
“Why do you think he’s so generous in matchmaking?” Louise asked, taking a glass of punch from another passing tray. “He’s already secured one of us a future.”
“A duke can be generous,” her mother declared jovially. “Where others might be parsimonious. After all, he has an abundance of blessings. I’m glad he’s taken our family on. I was beginning to despair.”
Despair was not her mother’s line. She was quite optimistic, which was, in Jack’s estimation, a rather brave choice.