“Brilliant,” Annalee whispered, lightly clapping four fingers against her open palm. She reached for another cheroot and lit the scrap with a burning candle. “Hear, hear,” she said, banging the table.
All the women stomped the floor with their feet, sending up a rolling applause.
“You fended him off attempting to see any of you wed, while he took on the sacrificial role. Well done! I would classify this as a triumph.” Valerie looked to Sylvia, who gave the nod for their secretary to make the statement official.
That triumph proved short-lived.
The doors flew open, and the rotund head housekeeper, Mrs. Flyaway, burst into the room. “There is a . . . man!” she announced, out of breath and her cheeks red.
Everyone flew to their feet.
What in blazes?
“My—” Father-in-law. Sylvia attempted to get the rest of that out. And failed.
“Not the duke”—Lila’s husband—“and not your brother, my lady.” Mrs. Flyaway pressed her hands to her cheeks. “And he is . . . inside.”
What?
An unheard-of silence descended upon the room . . . followed by a rapid flurry of staggered whispers.
Mrs. Flyaway hung her head. “I’m ever so sorry, my lady.” Fire sparked in the old woman’s eyes. “I’ll be knocking Mr. Flyaway good upon the head for this.”
Sylvia made a soothing sound, and crossing over to her head housekeeper, she gave her a gentle pat of assurance. “It is not your fault.”
“It’s that horrible man. A right brute, he is.”
A brute?
That managed to stymie the chattering as each lady hung upon the words being spoken by the housekeeper, who in turn grew several inches over the attention now swung her way.
“All men are brutes,” Valerie muttered, earning another concurring stomp from the group.
“But this one,” Mrs. Flyaway went on. “He is the absolute worst. Big.” She flung her arms wide on each side of her. “As tall as my Mr. Flyaway.” She stretched her palms high above her head.
Shock brought Sylvia’s eyebrows shooting up. “As . . . tall as Mr. Flyaway?” She couldn’t stifle the unease that crept into her voice.
Her housekeeper nodded furiously. “Indeed he is, my lady.”
Seven inches past six feet, the head butler was a veritable monster of a man. It had been why, when unwanted visitors, disappointed and angry papas, and husbands had come calling, it had been so very easy to turn them away. Until now. Until it appeared the old fighter had found his match in size. Panic gnawed inside her.
Lord Prendergast. There was no one else as manipulative or as dangerous as to fight his way inside. He had vowed he’d be unrelenting in seeing Sylvia’s son, and that he’d ultimately have his way.
“And an angry beast he be.” Mrs. Flyaway quickly lifted her hands into makeshift claws, wringing gasps from the group. “Has to be to have gained entry past my sweetie.”
Several of the ladies clamored to hide behind one another.
“He is just a man,” Sylvia said to the room at large in a bid to both assure and ease the over-the-top panic.
“And did this gentleman give a name?” she asked quietly, for the other woman’s ears only.
“Not that I’m aware of, my lady,” she returned in an equal quiet . . . that lasted only as long as her next words. “I overheard him talking to my dearie, and he informed Mr. Flyaway that he knew you were not receiving visitors at this time but said he’d not be deterred, and that he would wait”—every emphasized word earning a greater gasp amongst the ladies in the room—“as long as need be for an audience.”
Determined to calm their members, Sylvia held up a hand. “He is not the first gentleman who has shown up these past weeks.” Every last insolent one of them had been run off by their unconventional butler.
Mrs. Flyaway’s eyes bulged, and her voice dipped when she spoke. “But this one, my lady . . . he . . . sat.”
Pandemonium ensued.
“Sat?” Annalee seethed.
Whispers born of horror and outrage all buzzed throughout the room.
While Valerie came to her feet and tried to bring the group together, Sylvia inhaled slowly. Perhaps it wasn’t her father-in-law. Why . . . why . . . it could be anyone. Weren’t unwanted visitors—fathers, guardians, and mothers of existing members showing up to collect their “wayward” child—becoming something of the norm?
The more prominent their group became, the more attention they earned from displeased members of the peerage who insisted on taking their daughters or wives with them. But those men had all been turned away, adhering to the strictures of Polite Society because they were operating under the norms of the life that Sylvia and her friends, and the women they called friends and compatriots, now lashed out at. Yes, it was surely that. It didn’t have to be her late husband’s father . . . this time.
And as the head of both the society and the household, she had a responsibility to assert herself . . . before whichever insolent guest had arrived. If she allowed whoever it was out there entry to this parlor, then this parlor would fall.
And she would be damned ten times to Sunday if she let this new society created by herself, Annalee, and Valerie crumble because some man disapproved of their purpose. Brutish monster be damned.
Setting her jaw, Sylvia lifted her hem slightly and marched for the door.
“Where is she going?” someone called.
Several girls cried out.
From behind her, the commanding voices of Annalee and Valerie rose above the racket as they called for order from the group.
Sylvia didn’t slow her stride. In fact, with every step that brought her closer to the insolent nobleman who’d camped himself in her foyer, her ire grew. This was their world. One where, even after marriage and as a widow, she’d still be expected to answer to displeased gentlemen. Men who wanted her and the women who came here or resided here to be a certain way. To fit a certain bill.
Well, that stopped now.
Sylvia skidded to a stop at the entrance of the foyer.
Mr. Flyaway, her gruff, towering bear of a butler, who inspired fear in all guests . . . was shaking.
Nay, not shaking. He was laughing.
The tirade she’d mentally composed en route to the brutish beast Mrs. Flyaway had described left her. What in the Devil?
Whatever the horrifying monster said just then earned another round of laughter from Mr. Flyaway.
Humph. And here these past two months she’d believed her butler knew only two sentiments: stern-faced or stone-faced.
Sylvia folded her arms at her chest and waited for the pair to notice they were no longer alone.
“Nottingham reel . . . I would have thought it was the only way to go . . . ,” Mr. Flyaway was saying.
“I wouldn’t have disagreed with you, either. It has that wide drum—”
“Aye,” her butler interjected, excitement bringing his tone up an octave from its usual deep baritone. “Spools out freely, it does.”
Just a handful of the gentleman’s response peppered the air and reached her. “. . . geared multiplying reels . . .”
Mr. Flyaway scratched at the small patch of coarse black hair he’d still retained at his advanced years. “You don’t say?”