The figure was outlandish. It could save her. No sensible person would agree to half so much.
“Very well,” Lady Constance said.
Westmead arched a brow. “Well done, Miss Cavendish. I daresay you’re learning.”
She schooled her face into the expression of a woman who did not need any lessons.
“There is one more thing I will require. A friend of mine is interested in making a proposal to His Grace’s investment concern. You’ll allow me to make an introduction.”
“A friend?” Westmead asked.
“My brother would be delighted to entertain an audience,” Lady Constance said quickly, shooting him a pointed look. “Is that not so, Your Grace?”
“Delighted,” he drawled.
“Perfect.” His sister beamed, once again the picture of sunshine and light now that she had gotten what she wanted. “Miss Cavendish, I will send a carriage to collect you in the morning.”
She extended her gloved hand.
Poppy took the only option she had left herself: she shook it.
Chapter 3
“What an intriguing woman,” Constance said as Archer helped her up onto the seat of his curricle. “Maxwell said to expect a ‘mad spinster harridan,’ but Miss Cavendish can’t be more than five and twenty. And she did not seem even slightly insane.”
He nodded, and did not add that Maxwell had also failed to mention that the nurserywoman was rather winsome. And immensely pleased with herself, judging by the smile that had toyed about her lips after he had, for reasons he could not entirely explain, goaded her into extracting a preposterous sum for a few days of work.
“I’m so glad I was able to prevail on her,” Constance continued as he climbed beside her. “I told you my arguments would persuade her.”
He smiled. “Yes. That and your six hundred pounds.”
“Well, what would be the pleasure of having the richest man in England for a brother if one can’t spend all his money on a ball he won’t enjoy at a house he never visits?”
“Anything to please my ward,” he said, urging the horses forward.
She shot him that same wry look she had been leveling at him since he first sent her to live with their aunt in Paris at the age of eight. As if to say, Yes, let’s pretend that’s how it goes. Let’s indulge in that more pleasant fiction.
He felt a pang. He had done his best as her guardian, but she was effusive and affectionate by nature, and he was ill-suited to respond in kind. Spending a fortune was a meager penance if it helped her believe he was sorry he could not be better. So was accompanying her on foolish errands, as he had agreed to do today.
He reached out and put an awkward hand to her shoulder. “I’m here, aren’t I? Doubters be damned?”
“Oh, indeed. Perfectly against your will, and utterly morose in spirit. But present? You are that.”
He shook his head. “You know, small Constance, I believe I have missed you.”
“Oh?” she said, in that bone-dry style she had learned at French court. “In spite of my provoking nature?”
“Because of it.”
She grinned at him. The air around her gave off the silvery smell of French perfume. It was the scent their mother had worn. He leaned away before she could notice that he shuddered.
They were quiet as he drove over the leafy roads that led back from Bantham Park to his family seat at Westhaven. The estate’s vast, rolling parkland was the same luminous green that he remembered from his boyhood, dotted with bales of hay and roaming sheep. As a younger man, he’d felt it unfair that his native southern England did not receive due appreciation for its bucolic glory—a landscape that rivaled the hills of Italy with its cresting downs and golden light.
He had loved this place.
Until, of course, he hadn’t.
He gazed out at the horizon, taking satisfaction at the cozy cottages and neatly tended grazing land. It was still a shock how the mud-thatched, squalid dwellings that had once blighted the landscape, and the reputation of the house of Westmead had been replaced by this scene of agrarian well-being. Equally striking was the elegant manor that now rose up from the hilltop where his crumbling family seat had moldered. The sloping eaves gave no trace of the fire that had once buckled and pockmarked the upper stories.
He handed the reins to a groom and helped his sister onto the steps, then ceded his hat and gloves to the small militia of footmen whose presence at the door never failed to startle him. In London, he lived simply, without ceremony. Here, one could not so much as scratch one’s chin without six livery-clad servants coming forth to offer up their eager fingers.
Constance perched on a settee in the center of the grand salon, perfectly backlit by sunshine streaming through a wall of windows.
“Well?” she said, gesturing at the massive gilt-spangled room that rose up around them. Light danced in air that smelled like roses. “The footmen finished placing the last of the paintings while we were out. Admit it. It’s stunning.”
He allowed her a forbearing smile. “It is, at the very least, unrecognizable.”
“That, my dear brother, was the point. Don’t you like it?”
He took in filigreed gilt work, gray-veined marble, Savonnerie carpets she’d gotten from God knew where, for God knew how many guineas. He did not like it. In point of fact, he found it rather suffocating.
“You certainly spared no expense,” he said mildly.
“Indeed I did not. If one must find a wife for a man of your disposition, one needs better tools than homespun and tallow at one’s disposal. You certainly will not be winning any woman’s hand on charm alone.”
“Your renovations are impressive. Now I must return to my study to invent ways of paying for them.”
She held up a hand to stop him. “One more thing. I’ve taken the liberty of having reports compiled on the ladies attending the ball. I think you will find them an accomplished lot.”
He sighed. “Accomplished? Constance—we discussed the kind of women you were to invite, did we not? Eager? Mercenary? Easily had?”
She wrinkled her nose in distaste. His desire to find a suitable spouse with the utmost efficiency stood in conflict with her view that matrimony should be the stuff of sentiment and poetry. On this he could not be conciliatory; it was his personal edict to avoid sentiment and poetry with the same care one avoided broken bones and plague.
“Actually,” she mused, rifling through papers on a delicate Sèvres-plaqued bonheur du jour writing desk that would not have been out of place at Versailles, “I wonder if you could look through the candidates now. If any of them are of special interest, I will assign them the best rooms.”
He sighed. “Fine.” He reached for the tea pot.
Constance immediately confiscated it from his hands and replaced it with a stack of papers. “First we have the obligatory crop of gently bred ladies. Many with titles, considerable fortune, and faultless manners. I have also included a few more spirited candidates of my own acquaintance. Beauties all, and a few are rather witty.”
He made a mental note to avoid the women on both these lists. The last thing he wanted was a wife with a fortune. She would need his own too little. Nor was intelligence an attraction. If his bride was clever, he might be tempted to like her. That would merely complicate his purpose.