know,” she said as her mare pinned her ears at George’s gelding. “Lady Caldicott didn’t give us even a day.”
George had been reading in the family parlor when Della had returned from last night’s musicale. He’d apparently sensed from her expression that the evening hadn’t gone well, and Della had sketched the general situation for him.
George’s gelding sidled closer to the verge. “Her ladyship likely didn’t give you ten minutes, or Miss Penelope Hammond didn’t. When a woman who has overstepped turns around and oversteps again barely a fortnight later, tongues will wag, Della.”
Wagging tongues were to be expected. What troubled Della more were the men she’d considered cordial acquaintances looking at her as if she’d been put on the kill list for their local hunts. She had become, overnight, not simply soiled goods, but fair game, a creature to be pursued and used.
Her morning hack had been instructive.
“Lady Della.” Sycamore Dorning sat atop a blood bay gelding. In the slanting sunbeams, Cam Dorning was the picture of masculine pulchritude, from his tastefully understated cravat pin to his gleaming field boots. He tipped his hat to her, then nodded to George. “Always a pleasure when the rain moves off and we can start the day with a good gallop, isn’t it?”
He turned his horse to fall in step with Della’s mare.
“Dorning, greetings. How fares the club?” George asked.
“Splendidly. How fares marital bliss?”
“More splendidly than you can imagine, young Sycamore.” George waggled his eyebrows, though he might have been five entire years Cam’s senior. “Might I impose on you to escort Della down the path? I see the Pickering twins, and they will talk the leg off a chair, but they are good fellows, and I ought to acknowledge them while I’m in Town.”
Meaning they would cut Della, but had no reason to cut George on his own.
“I will gladly escort Lady Della,” Sycamore replied, “if she has no objection?”
“None at all,” Della said. “I’ll see you at home, George.”
George trotted off, his gelding whisking his tail at Della’s mare.
“So I ask myself,” Sycamore said, “why a lovely and unattached female would send me a late-night note asking me to meet her for an early hack. But then, my charm is abundant, my good looks are the envy of Bond Street, and among the ladies, my legendary talents as a passionate—”
“Braggart,” Della interjected, “are without peer. Ash didn’t say anything?”
“Ash never says anything,” Sycamore retorted. “He is the soul of self-sufficiency, the pattern card of discretion. Then he nips off to Jackson’s and nearly gets himself killed because he’s seething over some customer’s slight to a dealer.”
“That’s not why he boxes,” Della said, though Sycamore’s perspective was interesting. “Ash didn’t say anything about the musicale?”
“Not a word. The gossip at the club last night was that you were all but tearing Ash’s clothes off, and he was not objecting. Ash neither confirmed nor denied the rumors, but rather, went about his usual late evening duties at the club with his usual pleasant and damnably self-possessed air.”
While Della had tossed and turned all night. “The gossip isn’t wrong.”
“I’d rather hoped that was the case.” Sycamore tipped his hat to a passing matron perched on a sturdy cob. She offered Della no acknowledgment whatsoever.
“You wish to see me ruined?” Della asked.
“No, love. I wish to see you and my brother happy. You are mad for each other, and that you can inspire Ash into making torrid advances suggests you are also made for each other.”
“I don’t want to force Ash into marriage,” Della said, “but if I refuse him, he’ll think it’s because of his blue devils, not because I am trying to put his welfare first.”
“So you care for each other too much to try for shared happiness? Spare me from such backward devotion.”
Sycamore, blast him, had a point. “How bad are Ash’s blue devils?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“So I can be a better wife to him. He will try to protect me from the worst, and that’s pointless chivalry.”
Sycamore held back a branch for her. “To be honest, my lady, Ash’s bad spells are awful. The names we give them—the mulligrubs, blue devils, low spirits, doldrums, dismals—are nearly whimsical compared to the reality. Ash becomes a different person, the antithesis of the urbane, polite fellow who cuts such a fine figure on the dance floor. He becomes a creature of darkness and mourning, though for what I cannot say.”