A Duke by Any Other Name by Grace Burrowes Page 0,100
situation, but you should also know Quinn sent me a note in return. It seems Lady Phoebe Philpot wrote to Jane, suggesting you are in need of your family’s loving guidance, and you should be summoned to London posthaste. How many people are you inviting?”
“Don’t you dare try to distract me, you skulking rodent.” And of course Lady Phoebe would write to Jane. Althea was surprised her ladyship hadn’t taken out an advertisement in the Times notifying the whole world that Althea Wentworth was prone to dancing naked on the village green.
But that Stephen would break sibling ranks now, that he’d tattle to Jane…Althea was as bewildered as she was angry, and she was very angry.
“The invitations haven’t gone out yet,” Stephen observed, starting on a stately Beethoven slow movement. “You could put this little gathering for a hundred of the county’s biggest gossips off until autumn.”
The guest list exceeded a hundred. “Millicent wants the ballroom full, and that means she keeps adding to the tally in the name of balancing the numbers.”
Then too, Althea’s little corner of Yorkshire was close enough to York itself that mustering a few score families with daughters to fire off, bachelor sons, widowed aunties, and well-heeled uncles was no challenge for Millicent at all.
“Millicent has gone daft,” Stephen said, launching into a lyrical melody that involved crossing his hands to add the descant. “This happens in the older female from time to time. Her humors get out of balance and—”
“Millicent is loyal,” Althea said, setting Jane’s letter on the mantel. “Millicent supports me and understands that for me to take this small step, amid a rural society starved for entertainments, with you on hand to be the host, is a prudent means of putting myself above gossip and speculation.”
“Is not.” He played on, sweet, placid notes filling the music room.
“If you think to soothe me with confectionery tunes, Stephen, think again. I am nearing thirty—”
He snorted.
“—and must set aside the fiction that a gaggle of Mayfair matchmakers can define my fate. Viscount Ellenbrook is not the only eligible male in the north, and—”
“And you think to bring Rothhaven up to scratch,” Stephen said, “by luring those other eligibles from their card parties and country dances. You’ll be the gracious aristocrat deigning to open her home to the bumpkins and cits, and your hopeless Duke of Deception will come to his senses and offer for you.”
Stephen spoke calmly, like the music rippling gently from the keyboard, and that made his accusation all the worse.
All the more credible.
“When did you grow so hateful, Stephen?”
“When Jack Wentworth broke parts of me that I had plans for. Did it never occur to you that relying on me to play the part of host is absurd? A man who can barely stand is no asset to a gathering that features hours of dancing. I can hardly manage to wheel myself a short distance without spilling my punch, and I will not sit in my Bath chair while the receiving line files past me. You and Milly simply assumed I could be press-ganged into putting a veneer of familial approval on your mad scheme.”
Althea poured herself a brandy and poured one for Stephen too. The day, though sunny, looked warmer than it was, a common trick of Yorkshire weather. A brandy to settle the nerves or ward off a chill was permitted to even a lady on occasion.
“The scheme started out as Milly’s,” Althea said, “and where’s the harm in it? I have a ballroom that’s never used. I can afford to feed my guests well and people like to dance.”
“But people do not like you,” he said, launching into a pianissimo reprise, “and now they can all take you into dislike together while eating your food and criticizing your string quartet. More significantly, you are besotted with a man you can never have, and the whole point of these inane balls is to pair up the willing female and the adoring male. If you are not willing, what’s the point of assembling two dozen eligibles?”
The brandy was first quality, but it failed to soothe Althea’s temper.
“I want to tell the lot of them to go to hell,” Althea said quietly. “They might tear my hems, spill punch on my bodice, and make faces behind my back, but they will not refuse my invitations. When they admit that I have the power to summon and dismiss them, the torn hems and spilled punch will stop.”