Beatrice blinked and cocked her head, and Danton knew an opportunity to explain when he saw one. “People are arranging marriages outside of bargaining season. Ha! Chasland’s number one export, since you all have children by the bushel. Most of the best-bred ladies are already bound. Where are you from, that you don’t know this?”
Ladies do not strike people. Even rude, insufferable churls. “Mayhurst.”
His eyebrows went up. “The north country,” he said in titillated horror. “That’s practically the hinterlands. Have you ever been to Gravesford?”
No. Not this man. It didn’t matter that he was heir to a marquis. She would not marry him and travel to distant Valserre, far from her family, to become his wife—indeed, she would not spend an unnecessary minute in his presence. “We traveled there before coming to Bendleton.”
“For your wardrobe, I imagine.” He took in her walking suit and shrugged. “I don’t think you have much need for fine-woven Llanandras cotton when you’re outrunning boars.”
“Oh, we have rifles.” Beatrice realized what she’d said, but too late.
He stared at her, aghast. “You shoot?”
“I am good at it,” Beatrice said, and at last her smile had some real feeling in it.
“I see,” Danton said. “How perfectly ferocious of you. We should have tea. Do you have tea, in the country?”
Beatrice coated her grin with sugar and arsenic. “When it comes to us. By dogsled, one hundred miles in the snow.”
“Really?”
Beatrice’s smile widened. “No. There’s at least six ports up north.”
Now he didn’t like her at all. Perfect.
Beatrice glided beside him as he took her to the tearoom. She smiled prettily at the marquis and took her seat, ignoring the hired musician toiling over a piano sonata to pay attention to the talk of trade and investment Danton had promised would bore her. She asked questions and ruined her genteel display of curiosity with remarks of her own. Father bore it well, but he frowned at her once they bid the Marquis and his son farewell and boarded the landau hired to take them back to Triumph Street.
Father settled on the bench across from her and sighed. Beatrice’s heart sank as Father, handsome in brown cotton, even if the jacket and weskit bore a minimum of adorning needlework, gave her a look that deepened the worry lines across his forehead, his mouth open as if he were about to say something. But he glanced away, shaking his head sadly.
“Father, I’m sorry.”
Beatrice had a decent guess what she was supposed to be sorry for, but Father would fully inform her soon enough. She waited for the inevitable response, and Father gave it with a pained expression. “Beatrice, do you realize how important it is for you to be agreeable to the young men you meet while we’re here?”
“Father, he was awful. Snobbish and arrogant. If I had to marry that man we’d square off from morning ’til night.”
Father ran a hand over his sandy, silver-shot curls, and they tumbled back in place, framing his fine features, lined by experience and too many burdens, including her willful self. “That perfectly awful young man will be a marquis.”
“Marquis de Awful, then. I couldn’t be happy with him, not for a minute.”
“I had hoped you would be less difficult,” Father said. “This meeting was a special arrangement. And you told him you knew how to shoot? What possessed you?”
“It just slipped out. And I apologize. But he laughed at me for being from the country, and assumed me an ignorant fool, as if Chaslanders didn’t have an education of any kind.”
“I probably should have sent you to a ladies’ academy abroad,” Father sighed. “Too late now, though perhaps Harriet could enter a finishing school.”
Paid for with the financial support of Beatrice’s husband. “Harriet would adore that.”
“If we can manage it, she will go. But there are only fourteen of you.” He brightened at the notion of a brides’ market, and the number of young men who would crowd around Beatrice simply because she was one of only a few ingenues left to woo. “But if you’d kept him on your string . . .”
“There are more young men where he came from,” Beatrice said. With luck, she’d alienate them all. And then she needed more luck, to get the grimoire in her hands once more—
The thought clanged in her mind like a bell. She could get the book back. She knew exactly how. Excitement surged in her, filling her with the urge to leap from the landau and run faster than the showy black horses could trot. She clasped her hands and fought to appear attentive as Father chided her.
“It’s not that I want you to marry a man you can’t abide, Beatrice. Just—try, will you? Try not to judge them hastily.”
Beatrice nodded, but her mind was already consumed by her plan. “Yes, Father. I will try harder next time.”
She watched the tree-lined streets of Bendleton, hazed green with new spring buds and heavy with sweet blooming flowers, and couldn’t wait to get home.
CHAPTER II
The air grew sweeter the closer the landau drove to their leased townhouse on Triumph Street, a fashionable address on a gently curving road bordering Lord Harsgrove Park. Cherry petals tumbled through the air, their perfume gently choking Beatrice as her father explained the opportunity he’d lost.
“The marquis’s latest venture plans on revitalizing the most miserable, wretched parts of Masillia into respectable neighborhoods. They mean to build in the Canal District. The shares from such a venture would have kept your mother in comfort.”
Beatrice sobered. Father had the family to worry about, and his plans depended on the support of Beatrice’s new family to shore up his own. “I’m sorry the lead has come to naught, but perhaps that’s not such a disaster.”
“You’re right, my dear. There are still the public shares, after all.”
“Actually, I meant something different,” Beatrice said, and smiled as Father looked curious. “The trouble with the real estate development is that it will take years before the development is finished and your investments will see fruit.”
Father’s expression folded into a downturned mouth. “Beatrice—”
She rushed on. “If the marquis is seeking investors here, he’s probably also looking for supply partnerships. He will need timber and iron, and a little research will tell you who in Bendleton runs a forestry firm or a mine. If you invest with them—”
“It’s a fine idea, my dear, but please don’t trouble yourself trying to decipher the world of finance. I have more meetings besides the marquis planned.”
Why wouldn’t he listen? Valserre wasn’t the only country with an eagerness to build major projects. Investing in timber and iron made sense! Beatrice forced herself to smile. “That’s a relief. Will you be attending tonight’s dance?”
Father’s cheeks quivered as he shook his head. “I regret to say that I will not, but happy to report that I have an invitation to Compton’s. I have received a letter from Sir Gregory Robicheaux asking me to attend a meeting about a trade expedition to Mion. Cotton, I expect, as the Lavans hold the exclusive rights to their cacao.”