Lord Perfect (The Dressmakers 3)

“By no means,” he said. He’d hated Geoffrey’s golden curls and golden eyes and angelically sweet countenance. “I should have scalped Alistair, too, if I could have got my hands on him. But he was safe with a nursemaid elsewhere.”

She said nothing. He need say nothing, either, but, “The nurses called my brothers ‘little golden angels,’ ” he went on. “They were not angels by any stretch of the imagination, but they looked the part.”

“You should have scalped the nurses, too,” she said. “For stupidity.”

“I was a child, no more than eight or nine years old,” he said. “Geoffrey and Alistair were fair and I was dark. If they were golden angels, what was I?”

“What else could you think?” she said feelingly. “In your place, I should have done exactly the same.”

He glanced at her. “No, you would not.”

“Because I am a female?” she said, eyebrows aloft.

“Girls do not behave that way.”

“How little you know my sex,” she said. “All children are little savages, even—or perhaps especially—girls.”

“Not all children,” he said. “Not for long, at any rate. Certainly not when one is the eldest. As soon as the next child arrives, we have responsibilities. We are not quite children anymore. ‘You must take care of your brother, Benedict,’ they say. ‘He is smaller than you.’ Or, ‘You ought to know better, Benedict,’ they say. ‘You are the eldest.’ ”

“Is that what your father said?”

“More or less. I remember little of the lecture, except the end. He sighed and said he wished he had daughters.”

“That was nothing more than parental exasperation,” she said. “Few men—and no noblemen—would wish to have daughters instead of sons.”

“He meant it,” Benedict said. “He’s said it countless times since then.”

“Still?”

“Yes.”

“Why? You have all got past the trying stage. You are all grown up.”

“Not to his satisfaction,” Benedict said.

She turned fully in the seat to stare at him. “Even you? Lord Perfect?”

“I am perfect by average standards,” Benedict said. “My father’s standards are not average. Nothing about my father is average. I am not sure anything about him is even human.” He added quickly, “At any rate, he did not tell bedtime stories. I was unaware parents did such a thing.”

“Then it’s unlikely Jack’s parents did,” she said. “The Dreadful DeLuceys must have corrupted him.”

“Not necessarily,” Benedict said. “You said he was rebellious. Maybe, like Peregrine, your husband wanted a different sort of life. Maybe it was in his nature to be unconventional.”

And among the DeLuceys, Jack Wingate must have experienced the kind of freedom he could never have in respectable Society. He’d found a world without rules.

“He had no trouble adapting, admittedly,” she said. “Still, Jack could distinguish between truth and fiction. I am not sure my relatives can. They spin brilliant tales, and perhaps their lies are so convincing because they believe them. I think it is the same for Olivia. That is the only way I can explain this mad quest of hers.”

“She needs a governess,” he said—and cursed himself immediately the words were out. It was an idiotish thing to say. Why not suggest a pack of servants, while he was at it—and a house in the country, away from London and its pernicious influences?

Face hot, he waited for a sarcastic comment from her regarding the obliviousness of the upper orders.

“I could not agree more,” she said, startling him again as she too easily did. “That is next on the list. Miss Smithson runs a fine school but it is not the same. I had a governess. A dragon. Even Papa was afraid of her. But that was the idea. If she could not intimidate my father, she hadn’t a prayer of making an impression on me.”

“Are you saying that you were not a properly behaved child, either?” he said.

“From whom would I have learnt to behave properly?” she said.

“You must have learnt from somebody,” he said. “You are a lady.”

She turned away, facing forward once more, and folded her hands in her lap.

“You are,” he said. “There is no question—and I am an expert on the subject.”

“I had to be a lady,” she said tightly. “My mother had ambitions for me.”

“Thus the dragon governess,” he said.

“I admit I have ambitions for Olivia,” she said.

“You aim to keep her from going to the devil,” he said, dodging a clumsily driven gig. “A noble ambition.”

“You needn’t be tactful,” she said. “I can guess what you’re thinking.”

“I doubt it,” he said. Even he wasn’t sure what he was thinking. He was aware of the busy road and of his impatience at the delay. He was aware of anxiety about Peregrine and Olivia, of time passing and night settling in. He was aware of the woman beside him, of warmth and physical nearness . . . and, perhaps more dangerous yet, of his fascination with her, with what she said and how her mind worked.

Her mind! A woman’s mind!

But there was no getting round it. He was too aware of the growing mental intimacy and too uneasy with it to pretend it wasn’t there. He was too aware of someth

ing in the air—or about the darkness—or about her—that lowered his guard and made him say things he would never dream of saying aloud to anybody, especially a woman.

He was aware at the same time of a distance as vast as if an ocean rolled between them and of a rage almost like despair because he must not bridge the distance. Perhaps the rage worried him most.

In any case, it was all too much. He couldn’t think because he needed order to think, and what he had at present was disorder, chaos.

“My mother was determined to see me married into a noble family,” she said, voice still taut, body still rigid on the seat beside him. “I was to be the key that opened the doors of Society to the Dreadful DeLuceys.”

Her tone and posture told him far more than her words what her mother’s ambition had cost her. She had been hurt—or shamed perhaps—and deeply so, else Bathsheba Wingate would have spoken with her usual droll wit. He wanted to know more . . . but Reason told him it was better not to know. He felt too much for her as it was.

“All mothers want their daughters to marry up,” he said, making his voice light in hopes he could make the conversation become so, too. “They plot and scheme, and they are thoroughly unscrupulous.” He paused. “My father is, too, in that regard.”

She started. “Your father?”

“I know,” Benedict said. “It is shocking. But he does not confine his manipulations to politics. He has determined that all my brothers must marry wealthy wives—and so far, he’s had his way. Even with Rupert, whom he declared a hopeless case.”

“And what about you?” she said.

“Oh, I have always been excused from vulgar financial considerations,” he said. “I shall inherit everything.”

The topic appeared to have diverted her from whatever deep unhappiness it was, for her posture eased a bit.

“All the mothers must have pushed their daughters at you,” she said. “They must still do.”

He shrugged. “I am not sure I was aware then of the mamas and chaperons scheming and plotting. It’s more obvious now, looking on from the outside. I had not thought about it, but it must be hard on the girls—at least those with a modicum of sensitivity or intelligence. Not that I was one to notice such subtleties at the time. I noticed their faces and figures first, then whether their voices were agreeable or not, then their deportment.”