“What if Lord Phillip declines your invitation?” Hecate asked.
“Then you will beg him to reconsider. You’ve been introduced. You know the marchioness. You can make this happy occasion come true for us, Hecate, and Lord Phillip will be in your debt.”
The sense, not unfamiliar, of an iron door swinging closed on a dank cell of family intrigue and expense rose up in Hecate’s heart.
“Do you expect me to be present at this gathering?” she asked.
Eglantine bit off the corner of a cake. “Of course we do. The guest list will be mostly your doing, after all, and you should be on hand to ensure all goes well.”
That was Brompton family dialect for: You should be on hand to blame if everything goes to blazes. “The first thing you will need, Eglantine, is a budget.”
Eglantine beamed at her tea cake. “Oh splendid! We were hoping you’d help with that too.”
“I am homesick.” Phillip confessed this sorry state of affairs to his horse. Herne was a sturdy lad standing about seventeen hands, blessed with his plow horse dam’s calm mind. He’d grown into his sire’s pale gray coat as the years had passed, which was devilish inconvenient when the horse had a propensity for rolling in mud.
“You are doubtless homesick too,” Phillip went on, because Hyde Park was blessedly deserted now that Town was emptying out. “No decent mud to be had in these surrounds.”
No billing and cooing newlyweds either, but that was London’s only attractive feature, other than Miss Hecate Brompton. The same day Phillip had called upon her, she’d sent him lists in a tidy, elegant hand. “A few suggestions” that rang with the authority of royal decrees. He was to report to this tailor and that bootmaker, then to a jeweler, watchmaker, glovemaker, and a purveyor of gentlemanly sundries.
In the intervening three days, he’d called at perhaps half of the establishments she’d listed, though he’d yet to look in on the purveyor fellow.
“What the devil is a sundry in polite parlance?” he muttered as Herne navigated a bend in the leafy path.
“My lord, good morning.” Hecate Brompton sat upon a gleaming chestnut mare who had probably taken tea in the royal stables as a filly. A groom on an equally elegant bay gelding waited several yards back.
Do not gawp like the bumpkin you are. “Miss Brompton, greetings. A fine morning, is it not?”
“The best part of a summer day for a hack. Shall we?” She nodded in the direction of the bridle path, and Phillip wished himself back in Crosspatch Corners. The paths in Berkshire went on for miles, many of them with a provenance that predated the Romans.
Hyde Park would barely make one decent-sized farm, and the city was encroaching on three and a half of its four sides.
“I got your note,” he said. “Much appreciated. I won’t be hiring a French instructor, though.”
“You really should, my lord. Proper French pronunciation matters almost as much as proper English diction in certain circles.”
Snooty, highfalutin circles the very thought of which gave Phillip dyspepsia.
Miss Brompton, the sight of whom did not give him dyspepsia, wore a riding habit of imperial blue trimmed with black. The cut was severe and devoid of the enormous draping skirts fashionable women seemed to favor for horseback outings in London. Her toque sported two peacock feathers—the barest nod to whimsy—and sat nearly straight on her head.
“I have taken more comprehensive measures to learn my French,” Phillip said. “Tavistock has traveled much on the Continent, and his language skills are impressive, particularly his French. He has often remarked that London’s émigré population numbers in the tens of thousands. I’ve hired French house staff for the summer and instructed them to speak to me in only their native language.”
“You might well starve ere the summer ends.”
“The result has been much hilarity, and that provides sustenance too. Then too, my new staff members know the Continental dances and are willing to walk me through them. I fear the quadrille will be the end of me. Too blasted long and complicated.”
Miss Brompton made such a pretty picture on her mare, but even in the summer glory of Hyde Park, birds creating a racket in the canopy overhead, water fowl honking and quacking over on the Serpentine, she conveyed seriousness of purpose.
“Your approach, while unconventional, is commendable for its expedience. Mind you caution these émigrés to discretion.”
“The person who needs such a scold is the same person who will ignore it. I am brushing up on my dancing and my French pronunciation. What of it? My French staff know how it feels to be parted from all that’s dear and familiar, and they will either guard my dignity or not. They have no loyalty to your certain circles, Miss Brompton, but they might well be loyal to another stranger in a strange land.”
Miss Brompton flicked a glance over him. “An unusual strategy. I wish you luck with it, but one wonders if you are trying to compete with your brother.”
“Compete?” Did a donkey try to compete with bloodstock? “What would be the point? He is the marquess, a lovely fellow, full of charm, Continental élan, blond good looks, and affable bonhomie.”
“You’d be within your rights to hate him.”
The day was so pretty, so peaceful, and Phillip did not want to spend this unlooked-for encounter with Hecate Brompton discussing dear Trevor, much less the temptation to hate him.
“Resent, perhaps,” Phillip said, “but not for the reasons you assume. Tavistock is welcome to the title and the properties and all the lordly whatnot. Before we met, though, I was happy. I had a few frustrations, but many consolations and joys. I was simply Phillip Heyward, a quiet, retiring fellow who immersed himself in yeomanry.”
Herne stopped abruptly at a mud puddle and rooted at the reins.
“Oh, very well,” Phillip said. “Take a moment to play, you great lout. Miss Brompton, you will want to put some distance between my noble steed and your skirts.”
Before Phillip had finished speaking, Herne dabbled a sizable front hoof in the water. Much pawing and splashing followed, though Phillip curtailed the festivities before Herne could develop truly mischievous intent.
“He’s tried to roll in the mud with me on his very back,” Phillip said, urging the horse along the path. “Damned near ruined a good saddle. Town does not agree with him, but he’s bearing up as best he can.”
Damned was profanity, alas.
“You were saying that Tavistock has disrupted your life,” Miss Brompton replied, and Phillip had the sense she was ignoring Phillip’s cursing and Herne’s bad manners all of a piece.
“The marquess has definitely turned my life top hat over teakettle,” Phillip said. “While part of me longs to get to know him better, to ask him all manner of questions and learn his every particular, another part of me is overwhelmed by the whole notion and longing for a quiet stroll along the River Twid. Life was simpler before my brother acknowledged me.”
“Less lonely?”
What an odd question. “I was lonely in a manner so familiar to me as to be almost comfortable. Now Tavistock is in my life, but he’s not part of my days, and yet, I must learn to chassé and glissade through polite society because he is my sibling.”