“Lucy, I told you I am not interested.”
“Well, he’s very handsome,” Lucy said, perhaps a bit more emphatically than she’d meant to.
“You pursue him, then,” Hermione retorted.
Lucy stared at her in shock. “You know I cannot. I’m practically engaged to Lord Haselby.”
“Practically,” Hermione reminded her.
“It might as well be official,” Lucy said. And it was true. Her uncle had discussed the matter with the Earl of Davenport, Viscount Haselby’s father, years ago. Haselby was about ten years older than Lucy, and they were all simply waiting for her to grow up.
Which she supposed she’d done. Surely the wedding wouldn’t be too far off now.
And it was a good match. Haselby was a perfectly pleasant fellow. He didn’t speak to her as if she were an idiot, he seemed to be kind to animals, and his looks were pleasing enough, even if his hair was beginning to thin. Of course, Lucy had only actually met her intended husband three times, but everyone knew that first impressions were extremely important and usually spot-on accurate.
Besides, her uncle had been her guardian since her father had died ten years earlier, and if he hadn’t exactly showered her and her brother Richard with love and affection, he had done his duty by them and raised them well, and Lucy knew it was her duty to obey his wishes and honor the betrothal he had arranged.
Or practically arranged.
Really, it didn’t make much difference. She was going to marry Haselby. Everyone knew it.
“I think you use him as an excuse,” Hermione said.
Lucy’s spine stiffened. “I beg your pardon.”
“You use Haselby as an excuse,” Hermione repeated, and her face took on a lofty expression Lucy did not enjoy one bit. “So that you do not allow your heart to become engaged elsewhere.”
“And just where else, precisely, might I have engaged my heart?” Lucy demanded. “The season has not even begun!”
“Perhaps,” Hermione said, “but we have been out and about, getting ‘polished’ as you and my mother like to put it. You have not been living under a rock, Lucy. You have met any number of men.”
There was really no way to point out that none of those men ever even saw her when Hermione was near. Hermione would try to deny it, but they would both know that she was lying in an attempt to spare Lucy’s feelings. So Lucy instead grumbled something under her breath that was meant to be a reply without
actually being a reply.
And then Hermione did not say anything; she just looked at her in that arch manner that she never used with anyone else, and finally Lucy had to defend herself.
“It’s not an excuse,” she said, crossing her arms, then planting her hands on her hips when that didn’t feel right. “Truly, what would be the point of it? You know that I’m to marry Haselby. It’s been planned for ages.”
She crossed her arms again. Then dropped them. Then finally sat down.
“It’s not a bad match,” Lucy said. “Truthfully, after what happened to Georgiana Whiton, I should be getting down on my hands and knees and kissing my uncle’s feet for making such an acceptable alliance.”
There was a moment of horrified, almost reverent silence. If they had been Catholic, they would have surely crossed themselves. “There but for the grace of God,” Hermione finally said.
Lucy nodded slowly. Georgiana had been married off to a wheezy seventy-year-old with gout. And not even a titled seventy-year-old with gout. Good heavens, she ought to have at least earned a “Lady” before her name for her sacrifice.
“So you see,” Lucy finished, “Haselby really isn’t such a bad sort. Better than most, actually.”
Hermione looked at her. Closely. “Well, if it is what you wish, Lucy, you know that I shall support you unreservedly. But as for me…” She sighed, and her green eyes took on that faraway look that made grown men swoon. “I want something else.”
“I know you do,” Lucy said, trying to smile. But she couldn’t even begin to imagine how Hermione would achieve her dreams. In the world they lived in, viscounts’ daughters did not marry viscounts’ secretaries. And it seemed to Lucy that it would make far more sense to adjust Hermione’s dreams than to reshape the social order. Easier, too.
But right now she was tired. And she wanted to go to bed. She would work on Hermione in the morning. Starting with that handsome Mr. Bridgerton. He would be perfect for her friend, and heaven knew he was interested.
Hermione would come around. Lucy would make sure of it.
Three