“What has the Coventry to do with your reasons for marrying me?” Ash asked. “And why are we here?”
“I’ll get to that,” Della said, occupying the middle of the sofa, “but the point of my digression is that you quietly allow your younger brother to strut and carry on, the great entrepreneur, such a keen young business talent—and he desperately needs to be regarded as such—while you are the unacknowledged net that allows him to occupy his trapeze so successfully.
“That is kind, Ash Dorning,” she went on. “Sycamore loves that damned club, but he’d make a hash of it without your hand on the ribbons. You could fritter away your days in the country, but you do what you can for Sycamore, when the rest of your family simply wishes he’d do his impersonation of a cockerel someplace else.”
Ash took the place beside her when she patted the cushion. “You mustn’t call Cam a cockerel to his face, no matter how apt the description. For all his posturing, he’s tenderhearted.”
“And that is precisely what I mean. You could easily characterize your brother as an obnoxious mushroom, yet you defend him. That is the behavior of a wise, kind man.”
Ash was losing the thread of the argument—the discussion. Della had brought him to a secluded location, behind two locked doors, on the gardeners’ half day.
“Della, what are we doing here?”
“I made my lists, but the reason we should marry did not lend itself to a tidy description.” She rose, then settled herself astride Ash’s lap. “I thought to convince you of our compatibility by having my way with you.”
“This is our fault,” George said, gazing down into the back garden, where a moment before, Della had led Ash Dorning down the path.
Literally and perhaps figuratively.
Nick remained behind his desk, an absurdly delicate French piece with exquisite inlay. “How is Della’s tendresse for one of the less prepossessing Dornings our fault? We’ve escorted her through Season after Season, introduced her to everybody from ducal heirs to American explorers. She has been gracious to all and smitten with none. Then he shows up.”
George did not know Nicholas all that well. Nick was the oldest legitimate sibling; George was an “extra spare.” They had different mothers. Their stations were different, and the roads they’d traveled had been very different. Nick had known from a scandalously young age that his intimate interest lay with the female of the species. George had never enjoyed the clarity of an exclusive preference in either direction.
Nick had been the Bellefonte earldom’s heir, his path in life affected at every turn by that reality. George had been far down the birth order in a very large family, an indifferent scholar and somewhat given to reckless associations.
But Della vexed them both equally. Perhaps it was time she vexed a husband instead.
“We should never have referred to Della as our changeling,” George said. “She has darker hair than the rest of us, and she’s not as tall as her sisters. She’s still a perfectly normal exponent of the species.”
Nick rose and picked up the cat who’d been lounging on the windowsill. “Children have nicknames, and as it turns out, she is a changeling.”
“Your nickname was Viscount Reston. Not quite the same thing, Nicholas.”
The cat, a massive orange tom named Inigo, began to purr as Nick scratched his neck. “What are you getting at?”
“Can you imagine being called the family changeling and then learning you are, in fact, a legitimate bastard? We don’t know when Della found those love letters, but she had to conclude we knew her secret before she did. Then every dowager and maiden auntie in Mayfair referred to her as the Haddonfield changeling.”
Nick held the cat away from his chest. “This damned beast is shedding as winter approaches. He’s doing it on purpose.”
The condensation covering the walls of the conservatory ensured the couple within had privacy. Nobody would think to look for Della and her swain there, particularly not on the gardeners’ half day. Della, as always, had pondered details and possibilities, and woven her own path to her own objectives.
While Nick, the head of the family, complained about cat hair.
“Are you aware that Ash Dorning typically leaves Town every winter?” George asked.
“I am. Susannah has confirmed that Dorning becomes melancholic.”
The cat yawned and batted at Nick’s chin.
“Doesn’t that worry you?” George asked. “Della is involving herself with a man of unreliable temperament.”
“Of course it worries me, but every lad who ever went to university, every midshipman in the Royal Navy, is afflicted with melancholia. Poets wear it like a badge of honor, and spinsters turn to it as a fashionable accessory. I told Della I would not object to Dorning as a suitor. Given the current situation…”
“You know she and Dorning were found cavorting at last night’s musicale?”
“Leah had lunch with a gaggle of hens and became apprised of the gossip. That my own brother hasn’t seen fit to share with me news that affects our sister disappoints me.”
Nicholas was a complete failure as an authority figure. His attempts to scold never came off as anything more intimidating than a grumble.
“Leah simply beat me to it,” George said. “The melancholia worries me, Nick. It’s not an affectation that can be put on and taken off like a favorite morning coat.”
Nick turned away from the window and put the cat on the sofa. “What would you know of such a malady? You are my ever-cheerful, gallant Squire Jollychops. Children swarm you in the churchyard and songbirds light on your shoulders.”
“Jealous?”
Nick cuffed him on the arm. “You try being the earl. The House of Lords is a lot of bleating old men squabbling over how to divide the spoils of Britain. If the French hadn’t tossed over their own lot of gilded parasites, my titled colleagues would re-institute forty days’ service and serfdom.”
“While they begrudge the peasants bread. We can discuss politics another day. It’s Dorning I’m concerned about now.”
Nick took a seat on the sofa, and the cat marched into his lap. “So am I. He seems a decent sort, and the Dornings are good folk, but… why him? Why has Della decided she must have him?”
Still, the couple tarried in the conservatory. George wished them the joy of their botanical adventure and joined Nick on the sofa.
“Della not only decided she must have him, when he left Town without a word to her, she did not give up her choice. When he refused to answer her letters, she remained convinced of his value. When she needed a champion following the fiasco with Chastain, she turned to Dorning.”
“Or he to her. What aren’t you telling me, George?” The cat curled up into a marmalade feline comma on Nick’s thighs. “These are my favorite breeches, you wretched pestilence.”
“You call me Squire Jollychops,” George said, “but I wasn’t always such a happy fellow.”
“You have a temper,” Nick said. “You’ve always had a temper, even as a little fellow. You’d come after your elders, fists swinging over some slight, and we’d laugh at you. Then you’d make us wish we hadn’t.”