“But—”
Ash stepped closer. “No. Not if you care for her, which you loudly claim to do. The Haddonfields have substantial consequence. They have weathered other scandals. You can be a friend of the family, a cordial acquaintance, but you cannot involve yourself in any manner that makes the situation worse than it already is.”
Tresham finished his drink and set the glass on the table with a thunk. “I’m supposed to be the sensible one. The role grows tedious. But then, I’m selling most of this club to you two. How sensible was that?”
“Very sensible,” Sycamore said. “We’re making you pots of money to go with the barrels and trout ponds’ worth you already have.”
“Della will be a spinster now,” Tresham said, and Ash sensed they’d reached the heart of the dilemma. “She’s the only Haddonfield yet unmarried. They’ve all been trying to fire her off—my own dear Theodosia has tried to help—but to no avail. Now Chastain has botched an elopement, and Della will suffer the consequences. Nobody will marry her after this.”
“Perhaps she doesn’t want to be married,” Sycamore said.
“Then why elope with William the Witless?” Tresham snapped. “That was a desperate measure indeed, and now she’s to be an old maid.”
Ash picked up the discarded brandy glass and shook the dregs into his mouth. “She will not be an old maid. Della is lovely, charming, smart, kind, funny, and quite well connected. You are making too much of a bad moment.”
Sycamore sent him a curious look. “This is more than a bad moment. She spent most of the evening in the same bedroom with Chastain at the inn in Alconbury. That news was galloping up and down the bridle paths this morning. I discredited the rumor with laughing disbelief, but it’s as Tresh says: Lady Della has had no offers, and Chastain is no sort of prize. The appearances are dire.”
If Ash could have beaten himself soundly at that moment, he would have. Lady Della had quite possibly discouraged many offers while waiting for a proposal from Ash himself.
“The situation is far from dire,” he said. “The necessary steps are simple. The Little Season is under way. We will treat Lady Della to a show of support, mustering a phalanx of eligibles to stand up with her. She will carry on as if the gossip is just that. Chastain will learn discretion in a violent school if need be, and come spring, some other scandal will have everyone’s attention.”
“It’s a plan,” Sycamore said, in tones that suggested it was a hopelessly stupid plan.
“And if this plan doesn’t work?” Tresham asked. “Then may I part Chastain from his tiny cods?”
“If the plan doesn’t work,” Ash said, “then I will marry Della myself.”
Sycamore for once had nothing to say, while Tresham looked mightily relieved. Ash could make this offer because he was sure to a soul-deep certainty that he was the last man Della Haddonfield would ever agree to marry.
“A failed elopement is not the end of the world, Della.” George’s tone held equal parts commiseration and good cheer. The commiseration was genuine, while Della took leave to doubt her brother’s good cheer.
“We’re Haddonfields,” he went on, crossing to the decanters on the sideboard. “We get into scrapes. Have a nip for courage.”
“No, thank you,” Della replied, pacing across the family parlor. “Brandy has quite lost its appeal.” Nothing appealed, except a long-term repairing lease at the family seat in Kent. Was that really too much to ask?
If George thought it odd that his baby sister had learned of brandy’s restorative powers, he was too dear a brother to remark it. He was also too much of a Haddonfield male not to partake himself, despite the early afternoon hour.
“You think this is an insurmountable disaster,” he said, “the scandal to end all scandals. Do you not recall when I was found kissing a certain earl’s son by moonlight in a not-deserted-enough garden?”
“That was passed off as misguided affection, foolishness in the dregs, stupidity and high spirits. Men are allowed to be foolish and regularly are. Ladies are held to a different standard, and by any standard, I have been stupid.” Terribly, horribly, dreadfully stupid.
Also unlucky and desperate, not to mention a tad unbalanced.
George took a sip of his drink, his gaze assessing. The old brotherly charm and cajolery clearly weren’t working their usual magic. If Della’s siblings had paid half a wit of attention, they would have realized charm and cajolery had ceased working on her years ago.
But no, of course not. The older Haddonfield siblings—and they were legion—were all married. The senior Haddonfields were setting up and filling their nurseries at a great rate, wafting about on balmy seas of marital bliss.
And Della was truly, sincerely happy for them.
“Listen to me,” George said. “You are an earl’s daughter, regardless of your connection to Tresham. You simply sail ahead as if nothing’s amiss, give the cut direct to any who intimate otherwise, and in a year or two, this will all be old news.”
Della’s escapade would not be old news twenty years hence. The Haddonfield menfolk got into scrapes, the ladies did not.
“George, why did you come up to Town?” Hotfoot, and without his wife and children, from whom he was seldom parted.
“Because I missed my siblings?”
“You saw me a month ago.” When Nicholas and Leah came up to Town, Della was dragged along with them. When the earl and his countess returned to Kent, to Kent Della did go.
George set his drink on the sideboard and took the place at her elbow. Like every Haddonfield save Della, he was tall and blond, though not as stupendously tall as Nicholas, nor as spectacularly muscular as Beckman. Della had learned to live with being loomed over by her siblings, but today, her patience had run off with her common sense.
“Daniel and Kirsten are preparing to come to Town as well,” George said. “Beckman and Sarah won’t be far behind. Max and Antonia will probably pop back into London now that harvest is under way. Ethan and—”
“I won’t have it.” The sick, roiling feeling in Della’s belly crested higher. “Tell them all to stay away. For my family to flock to my side only confirms that I’ve erred badly. That’s not simply sailing ahead, George, that’s hiding me behind Haddonfield consequence, and it will only make the situation worse.”
“You’re upset,” George said, patting her shoulder, which nearly earned him a demonstration of Della’s accuracy with a right uppercut. “Understandable, but because you’re upset, you are not thinking clearly. By this time tomorrow, you’ll be glad our siblings—”
“Do not tell me what I am feeling, or what I will be feeling.” And do not pat my shoulder as if I were one of Willow and Susannah’s dogs.
The fraternal concern in George’s eyes cooled to frank puzzlement. “Then you weren’t pulling a stunt merely to gain our notice?”
“I eloped with William Chastain, George. I didn’t drop my parasol in the Serpentine to see which bachelor would soak his breeches fishing it out for me.”
George draped an arm around her shoulders, which Della tolerated. Barely.