Lord Harry's Folly, Catherine Coulter [paper ebook reader .TXT] 📗

“Both are quite well, sir.” The marquess shook Sir Archibald’s hand. “You recall, of course, that my sister, Alicia, married Henry Warton last summer.”

Sir Archibald had no such memory of either the sister or the marriage, but he nodded in gentle agreement. He asked, “Warton? Is that Sir Waldo Warton’s son? Excellent, just excellent. Good Tory family, the Wartons.”

The marquess wondered with a sinking in his stomach if Sir Archibald would beleaguer the company with Tory tales. He reckoned without Louisa.

Artfully, over the first course at dinner, she maneuvered the conversation to the sights they should visit in Paris and the people that they would be meeting. The Bourbon Louis was discussed at length, but only in terms of the festivities offered by the French court at this time of year. By the main course of flaky fish in a rich wine sauce, the marquess found himself describing the wonders of Italy. In deference to the polite company, he dwelled upon the spectacular ruins, the endless number of paintings of the Virgin Mary and Child, and the warmth of the weather.

Sir John was pleased with his father. His sire asked such sensible questions, with no political overtones, at least to Sir John’s sensitive ears, that by the time Grimpston served apple tartlets topped with rich whipped cream, he was quite in charity with his father.

“I say,” Sir Archibald said suddenly, “I thought something was not quite right. Where is dear Hetty?”

Louisa’s eyes flew to her husband’s face. Seeing no immediate help from that quarter, she said with as much nonchalance as she could muster, “Hetty was otherwise engaged this evening, Sir. She regretted that she couldn’t be here, but she wasn’t able to cancel.”

“But where did she go? I swear she said nothing about an evening out to me.” Sir John could only stare at his father. He would have sworn that Sir Archibald didn’t even know the color of Hetty’s hair.

“Ah, to Covent Garden,” Louisa said, and nearly choked on a bite of the apple tartlet.

At last she could rise and she did so. However, she was stopped by her father-in-law. He rose and smiled in a general sort of way at everyone at the table. “I hope you young people will excuse me. There are pressing matters of economics that the Prime Minister has asked me to look into. I mustn’t shirk my duty no matter how delightful the company I am forced to leave.”

As the door closed behind Sir Archibald, Sir John said, grinning at his wife, “At least Jason understands Father’s preoccupations, Lou. Isn’t your uncle, Lord Melberry, also a rabid Tory?”

“Yes, and it quite drives me to sleep. I hope you’ll agree, Jack, that we don’t need to have our port this evening? I find myself far more animated in Louisa’s company than in yours, old fellow.”

“He’s a damned rake, Lou,” Sir John said. “I should probably keep you hidden in the wilds of Herefordshire while the fellow’s running loose in London.”

Louisa gave her husband a wicked smile. “You’re one to talk, Jack. The stories Jason’s told me about you. My ears turned red and if you’d been married to me at the time I would have boxed your ears.”

“Well, enough of that,” Jack said and sped into the drawing room, leaving his wife and his friend laughing at his retreating back.

Louisa played a Mozart sonata for them. They drank tea and ate Cook’s delicious lemon cakes. The marquess sat back in his chair and said suddenly, “You were always an abominable liar, Louisa. Covent Garden? Had you been in town but several more days, you would have heard that the play there is vulgar in the extreme and not fit for a young lady. I gather that Hetty is a young lady?”

“Oh,” Louisa said.

Sir John tugged at his cravat. “Damnation, I don’t believe this, Jason. If you would know the truth, Lou and I really have no idea where Hetty is this evening.”

A dark brow arched up a good inch. “May I inquire as to the age of your sister, Jack?”

“Dammit, she’s eighteen.”

The black brow remained arched.

“Oh, very well. It seems my sister, for some reason unknown to either Louisa or me, holds you in strong dislike. We don’t understand this at all because we don’t think she even knows you.”

“How very unsettling. It seems my popularity is shrinking by the day.” He thought briefly of young Harry Monteith. At least that young cub sought him out rather than fleeing from him like Henrietta Rolland. He looked meditative for a moment, saying nothing more.

Louisa said suddenly, “Perhaps I understand. Hetty told us she attended a soiree at your aunt Melberry’s last week. Jason, were you there?”

“Yes, but what has that to say to anything, Louisa?”

“You must have offended her in some way, inadvertently, of course. Can you remember meeting her?”

The marquess stroked his chin with long fingers. “What does you sister look like?”

“She’s quite a pretty little thing. Bright, laughing, full of fun. Not one of those damned simpering misses.”

“Oh, Jack, you’re still seeing Hetty when she was five years old. Jason, she’s the beauty in the family. She’s not little at all, rather tall and slender. If you can imagine Jack the giant here as a female, blond hair and all, you’ll have Hetty.”

“Her nose is shorter than mine,” Sir John said. “And she comes only to my chin.”

“A female giant then,” Louisa said.

The marquess remembered his aunt Melberry asking him to speak to a Miss Rolland and pointing toward a very nondescript female seated with a deaf old dowager. Yes, he remembered now stepping toward the young lady, but she had turned her face pointedly away from him. At the time, he had thought her quite rude. He pictured a hideous alexandrine cap of the most putrid shade of green imaginable. Oh yes, and a gown of pea green, equally as revolting as the cap. He remembered wondering if her face were as unfortunate as her wardrobe. No, certainly that