“A large number of them,” Jason replied, his attention on his horses. Only when he had successfully negotiated the turn and had the leisure to glance again at Lenore did he perceive her worried frown. “You won’t have to converse with them all.”
“But, as your wife, I should at least know their names,” she countered. “And their associations. Great heavens—and you’ve left me only three weeks to learn them all.”
Belatedly perceiving his error, and foreseeing hours spent in recounting his family connections—a topic that had always bored him witless—Jason groaned. “Lenore—believe me. You don’t need to know.”
Fixing him with a steady gaze, Lenore enunciated carefully, “You might be able to wander through a reception ostensibly given by you without a qualm despite not knowing everyone’s name. I cannot.”
Jason glared at her. “Great gods, woman! You’ll never get them all straight.”
“Am I right in supposing you wish us to marry in three weeks?”
Jason scowled. “We are marrying in three weeks.”
“Very well,” Lenore continued, her tone perfectly even. “In that case, I suggest you lend me your assistance in coming to grips with your relatives. And your friends among the ton. Some I know; others I don’t. I’ll need some assistance in defining those you wish me to acknowledge, and those you do not.”
Her careful words reminded Jason that she did, indeed, know some of his “friends” he would not wish her to encourage. And there were yet others who might claim friendship who he would not wish her to countenance.
Considering the task ahead of her, Lenore frowned. “We’ll have to prepare a guest-list. Perhaps I could use that?”
Jason felt a sudden chill. “Actually,” he replied, “the guest-list has already been prepared.”
Silence greeted this pronouncement. While he rehearsed his defence—there was only three weeks, after all—he was well aware that, regardless, she had good cause to feel annoyed. More than annoyed.
“Oh?”
The lack of ire in the query brought his head around. But nothing he could see in her mild green gaze gave any indication of aggravation. Which was impossible. The fact that she was shutting him out, hiding her feelings, and that he could not penetrate her mask if she so wished, rocked him. Abruptly, he focused on his horses. “Your father started the list, Jack and your aunt made some additions and I dictated the whole to my secretary.”
Again, a painful minute passed unbroken. “Perhaps you would be good enough to ask your secretary—Compton, is it not?—to furnish me with a copy of this list?”
“I’ll call to take you for a drive tomorrow afternoon. I’ll bring you a copy and we can discuss it during the drive.” Jason heard his clipped accents, quite different from his habitual drawl, and knew his temper was showing. Not that he had any right to feel angry with her, but she threw him entirely with her cool and utterly assumed calm. She had every right to enact him a scene and demand an apology for what was, he knew, high-handed behaviour of the most arrogant sort. Instead, she was behaving as if his transgression did not matter—why that fact should so shake his equilibrium he was at a loss to understand.
Keeping her gaze on the carriages they passed, a serene smile on her lips, Lenore gave mute thanks for her years of training in the subtle art of polite dissimulation. The Park, she was certain, was not the place to indulge in heated discussions. Not that she had any intention of discussing her fiancé’s error with him later. He would only use logic and reason to make his actions seem perfectly reasonable, a fact she would never concede. Besides, there were other ways of making her point. His irritated tone had already provided a modicum of balm for her abraded pride. Guilt, she recalled, had always turned her brothers into bears. The thought cheered her immensely.
“Perhaps we could make a start with members of the ton. Who is that lady in the green bonnet up ahead?”
Determined not to let another awkward silence develop, Lenore continued to quiz her betrothed on personages sighted until, after half an hour, he turned his horses for Green Street once more.
CHAPTER EIGHT
AS THE Colebatch carriage rumbled down Park Lane, Lenore clutched at the edge of her velvet evening cloak, her expression serene, her stomach a hard knot of apprehension. Her silk gown was entirely concealed by the dark green cloak, one Eversleigh, sitting opposite her, had ordered. Although the evening was fine, there was just enough chill in the air to excuse her need for warmth; she had been cloaked and waiting when he had arrived to escort them to Attlebridge House.
Beside her, Agatha was in high gig, resplendent in midnight-blue bombazine with a peacock feather adorning her black turban. Her patrician features were animated, her black eyes alert. It was plain she expected to enjoy the evening immensely. Lenore swallowed, easing the nervous flutter in her throat, and risked a glance at Eversleigh. Superb in severe black, his ivory cravat a work of art, her fiancé was the epitome of the elegant man about town. His heavy signet glittered on his right hand; a single gold fob hung from the pocket of his embossed silk waistcoat.
His features were in shadow but, when they passed a street-lamp, Lenore found his grey eyes steady on hers. Her breath caught in her throat. He smiled, gently, reassuringly. Lenore returned the smile and, looking away, wondered whether she was that transparent.
In an effort to distract herself from the coming ordeal, she reviewed the list of those Montgomerys she was shortly to meet. Thanks to Agatha, she had the immediate family committed to memory. Given that she was already acquainted with Eversleigh’s aunts, she felt few qualms about the social hurdles facing her tonight. It was an entirely different hurdle, one she had erected herself, that had her nerves in unanticipated disarray.
True to his word, Eversleigh had arrived to drive her in the Park that afternoon armed with a copy of all three hundred names on their guestlist. She had spared a thought for the unfortunate Compton, required to produce the copy in less than twenty-four hours. At Agatha’s suggestion she had restricted her queries to those of his friends included on the list, leaving the family connections to be later clarified by Agatha. Any awkwardness that might have existed had been ameliorated by her shy thanks tendered for the present he had sent her that morning.
That had been extremely disconcerting. She had returned with Agatha from a most successful expedition—bonnets, gloves, slippers and boots had consumed most of their morning, leaving her with little opportunity to dwell on the ini
quitous behaviour of her fiancé—to discover a package addressed to herself, left in Higgson’s care. Removing the wrappings, she had discovered a pair of soft kid half-boots in precisely the same shade of cherry-red as her new pelisse, together with a pair of matching pigskin gloves. Accompanying these had been a chip bonnet with long cherry ribbons. There had been no card.
Agatha had crowed.
Any doubts she had harboured over who had sent her such a gift had been laid to rest when she had tried on the boots in her chamber, exclaiming over their perfect fit. Trencher had giggled, then admitted that a person named Moggs, known to be in Eversleigh’s employ, had materialised in the kitchens the previous afternoon, asking for her shoe size.
The episode had left her shaken. The idea that Eversleigh had turned London upside down—or, more likely, kept some poor cobbler up half the night—just to make this peace with her was distinctly unnerving. His abrupt dismissal of her thanks, as if his effort meant nothing at all, almost as if he did not wish to acknowledge it, had been even more odd.