“Six,” Almeria said at the same time.
“It was eight,” Alice repeated.
Almeria sniffed.
“Well, whatever it was, presumably his mama knows him best,” Lucy cooed. “So, Lady Charlton, are you saying Gerald is easily led? A touch unreliable?”
“What do you mean, ‘unreliable’? My son is—”
“The kind of man who gives his word without intending to keep it?”
“How dare you! My son is the soul of honor!” Almeria declared, outraged.
“Oh, good then”—Lucy smiled serenely—“so the betrothal stands.”
Almeria breathed heavily through her nostrils, her eyes bulging with frustration. “I warn you, if you do not release him from this disastrous match, he will be penniless. His father will cut off his allowance.”
“Like a naughty schoolboy?” Lucy said incredulously. “How very poor-spirited of him.”
“Hah! That’s made you think twice, hasn’t it?” Almeria nodded in satisfaction. “Thought you were marrying a fortune, didn’t you?”
“Not in the least. Didn’t you know, we’re marrying for lovvvve.” Lucy batted her lashes and sighed romantically.
“Love? Pah! People of our order do not marry for love.”
“But then, I am not of your order, am I? Isn’t that your objection? In any case,” Lucy continued briskly, “I doubt Gerald will need his father’s financial support once he joins the diplomatic service and is living abroad.”
Almeria stiffened. “The diplomatic service? Gerald? Abroad? What nonsense. He’ll do nothing of the sort. I need him here.”
Lucy raised a brow. “To dance attendance on you? You want to keep a grown man of eight-and-twenty tied to your apron strings? Isn’t it a bit late for that?”
Almeria curled her lip. “Apron strings? Faugh! I’ve never worn an apron in my life.”
“How odd,” Lucy said. “I’ve always found them very useful—though not for tying people up with. Not that I’ve ever tried. But if you don’t have many dresses, an apron is a very useful garment.”
“I’m sure it is,” Almeria said disdainfully.
Lucy added in a reminiscent tone, “In fact I was wearing an apron when Gerald and I first met.”
“You were wearing an apron?” She said apron as if Lucy had confessed to wearing a filthy old sack.
“Yes, perhaps that’s what attracted him—something a little bit different from the usual run of girls he’d been meeting.”
“Why were you wearing an apron?” A filthy, old manure-stained sack.
Lucy smiled sweetly. “To protect my clothes. I was tending geese at the time.”
Almeria’s well-plucked eyebrows almost disappeared. “Tending geese? You were a goose girl?”
“Yes. But they were very well-bred geese.”
A muffled sound came from the sofa. Lucy couldn’t see Alice’s face.
“They were French geese,” Lucy added. “They belonged to a French comtesse—”
“French!” Almeria said with scorn.
“Yes, but German geese are held to be very fine, too, I believe.”
“Young woman! I have no interest in geese, French, German or otherwise.”
Lucy widened her eyes. “But you must. I mean, you surely sleep on a goose-feather mattress—they are the finest. And what about the Christmas goose? Do you refrain from eating that, too? Preferring pork, or perhaps chicken. Or do you eschew meat altogether? Is that how you stay so skinny? I mean, thin. No, slender—is that what you call it?”
“Cease and desist, you impertinent gel!”
“By all means, your ladyship. Just tell me what you wish me to cease and desist from, and I will gladly oblige.”
“My son’s betrothal—”
“Except for that.”
For a long moment Almeria huffed and puffed in silence, then she rose and with freezing dignity said, “I am deeply disappointed in you, Alice, for bringing this atrocious female into our circle. As for you”—she pointed a bony finger at Lucy, who had also risen—“the only way you will marry my son is over my dead body.”
“Oh surely, nothing so drastic,” Lucy said chattily. “We’d have to go into blacks and that’s such a gloomy color for a wedding, don’t you think?”
Almeria’s eyes were chips of ice. She opened her mouth, closed it, glared at Lucy some more and with a final muttered, “Abominable creature,” she swept from the room.
Lucy waited until she heard the front door close behind her, then sank into her chair with a gusty sigh. “Oh, that was fun, wasn’t it?” She glanced across at Alice, who seemed to have collapsed on the sofa. “Are you all right, Alice?”
Alice sat up, clutching a crumpled handkerchief. She regarded Lucy with awe. “ ‘Fun’?” It was . . . You were so . . .”
“Brassy? Bold? Impertinent?”
“All of the above—and utterly brilliant! And so brave.”
“Brave? Oh pooh. What can that woman do to me, after all?”
“She’s going to be your mother-in-law.”
Lucy wrinkled her nose. No danger of that. She really wished she could tell Alice it was a false betrothal, but she’d made a promise.
She almost wished she was going to marry Lord Thornton. It went wholly against the grain to give that woman what she wanted. It would serve Almeria right if Lucy married him after all.
After a moment Alice said, “You and your well-bred French geese. I thought she was going to burst.” She glanced at Lucy and clapped her hand over her mouth. A snort escaped her, their eyes met, and suddenly they were both laughing uncontrollably.
* * *
* * *
It’s not working,” Lucy told Gerald as soon as she could grab a moment alone with him. Lord and Lady Falconer’s rout was already a “sad squeeze,” and more people were arriving every minute.
The news about their betrothal was well and truly out, and many people had come up to congratulate her. Some, of course, were less welcoming of the news, the Countess of Charlton being one of them. Almeria was circulating among her friends, telling people that it was a mistake, that it would be called off as soon as her son came to his senses and that “that Bamber creature,” as she was calling Lucy, had entrapped him.