She sighed, kissed him soundly upon the lips, and left him concocting more farmer’s poetry in the rogues’ gallery.
The food was always better when Hecate was on hand, and Portia resented her for that bitterly. Hecate had never had her own household, and yet, she knew how to run Nunnsuch in the midst of a house party.
What spinster put herself forward like that?
Though, of course, relying on Mama to direct matters was pointless. Portia took a sip of a decent Rhenish vintage—Hecate even dealt with the wine pairings—and knew she was neglecting Mr. DeGrange, her dining companion on the left.
Difficult to listen to what Lord Phillip—on her right—was saying to Flavia and to Mr. DeWitt’s conversation with Eglantine across the table if one also had to chatter to an aging bachelor. Mr. DeGrange was four-and-thirty if he was a day.
“More wine, Miss Brompton?” Lord Phillip asked.
Even though the meal was growing more informal by the moment, he really ought not to pour for her himself.
She gave the standard answer. “Just a drop. It’s quite good.” The idea that he was being gallant rather than flirtatious made her bilious.
“I could use a drop too,” Flavia said.
Across the table, Mr. DeWitt, who was a bit too pretty for Portia’s tastes, smiled at Lord Phillip in that smug way men had. That smile said, Sweet young things ought to imbibe slowly, but what do they know?
Because Flavia had for the moment run out of flattery to pour into Lord Phillip’s ear, Portia launched the expected salvo.
“Does my lord have a favorite dance?” she inquired, batting her lashes at him over her wineglass.
“I do not, as it happens.” He set the wine bottle in the middle of the table. “I have little skill on the dance floor, but I suspect the choice of partners makes a greater difference than the pattern of the steps.”
Lord Phillip had apparently not encountered the waltz, though he had a point. The wrong partner turned even that romantic fancy into a tribulation.
“Cousin Johnny once said something very like that,” Flavia said, nearly gulping her wine. “He was so gallant. I do miss him.”
“He bides in Canada?” Lord Phillip asked, taking no more wine for himself.
“Very successfully,” Flavia said. “Goes adventuring into the wilderness and is making a killing in the fur trade, but you mustn’t tell anybody I was discussing commerce in polite surrounds. Truly, I was discussing dear Cousin Johnny. We miss him so.”
Heaven help her, Flavia was getting tipsy—again.
“I am at a loss to understand why commerce is considered an impolite topic,” Lord Phillip observed. “Commerce affects our situation every bit as much as the weather. What’s a drought, but a celestial boycott from the rain clouds? What’s a deluge, if not a market literally flooded? Please give us your opinion on the suitability of trade as a topic for supper discussion, Miss Portia.”
Mrs. Roberts, whom Portia alternately admired and loathed, laughed at something Charles had said, and that inspired Eglantine into patting Mr. DeWitt’s arm.
“So many worthy topics call for our attention in polite surrounds,” Portia said. “If fashion decrees one or the other is less acceptable, why not choose from those remaining and reduce the possibility of boring or offending one’s companions in conversation?”
That homily had come off splendidly, if she did say so herself. Worthy of Hecate, who was seated next to Vicar and some companion or other.
“Portia is being deep,” Flavia said. “She’ll bore us all to tears before the fruit and cheeses arrive.”
“Miss Portia is being wise,” Lord Phillip said. “Why antagonize the less tolerant when doing so will only annoy them?”
At a signal from Hecate—Mama was in earnest flirtation with some baronet—the footmen stepped forward to remove plates. Dessert came next, raspberry something or other, no doubt, and Portia nearly dashed her wine in Lord Phillip’s face.
She’d waited years for him in the corridor outside the gallery, and still he’d bided with Hecate among the ancestors. Portia hadn’t lurked close enough to actually eavesdrop—what could be more boring than a recitation of the House of Nunn’s past?—but she’d caught the tone.
Conversational, personal, intimate.
Hecate’s presumption, being private for eternities with the ranking male guest, the same eligible fellow she’d allowed unspeakable liberties, was not to be borne. Even now, while Lord Phillip bleated on about deluges and boycotts, he and Hecate shared the occasional glance.
Hecate didn’t smile, but her gaze warmed, then shied off, and then wandered back to Lord Phillip’s end of the table.
Such nonsense. Utter rot. The vilest insult, when Hecate was on the shelf and Lord Phillip needed a lively young wife to accompany him into the highest reaches of polite society—reaches Hecate, given her unfortunate antecedents—ought not to frequent.
“You’ve grown quiet, Miss Portia,” Lord Phillip said. “Is the company less than scintillating?”
“Johnny was scintillating,” Flavia all but brayed. “He could make even Hecate laugh, and that is some feat, my lord. Hecate hasn’t yielded to unladylike merriment since Johnny took ship.”
Lord Phillip’s air of gracious courtesy acquired a hint of patience. “I’m sure you all miss him.”
“Hecate misses him,” Flavia said, nodding vigorously. That made her ringlets bounce, which poor Flave believed gave her a saucy, vivacious air. “She never says, but Johnny left for Canada in summer, and Hecate always goes into a decline in summer.”
Hecate usually bided in Town for the summer, which was not exactly sociable of her, but neither was it a decline.
An individual serving of crème brûlée was placed before Portia, with the inevitable garnish of raspberries. In one of her many pedantic moods, Hecate had explained that the recipe called for a mere four ingredients and was thus exceedingly simple for the kitchen.
Portia longed to pitch her sweet at dear Hecate and pelt Lord Phillip with a few raspberries. He was supposed to flirt, not be so hopelessly correct, and he was not supposed to canoodle with Hecate in the gallery.
He probably felt sorry for her.
“I do miss Johnny,” Flavia said, “and Cousin Em, too, though he was a scamp. I adore a rich crème brûlée, and these are so pretty. What’s your favorite dessert, my lord?”
“I’m fond of cranachan, or raspberry fool made with a dash of raspberry liqueur.”
He would be. “I like apple tarts,” Portia said. “Or pear tarts, or anything but raspberries. I cannot abide raspberries.” She set her dessert dish aside and wanted to kick his lordship.
Flavia reached around Lord Phillip and appropriated Portia’s untouched sweet. Lord Phillip looked amused, and that was… That exceeded all bounds.
Hecate was not to have him. Hecate was on the shelf, and Portia would soon join her unless Lord Phillip saw the good fortune sitting right beside him, which he was apparently too dull-witted to do.
Desperate times called for desperate measures. Vicar burst out laughing, Mrs. Roberts joined in, and Portia came to the only logical conclusion: She’d have to get herself compromised with Lord Phillip, the sooner the better.