"I must say," Lord Hugh said in a dry tone, "I find this conversation diverting."
"Well, you would, wouldn"t you?" Lady Danbury retorted. "It"s not as if you"ve had to tax your brain to keep up with me."
Sarah felt her lips part again as she tried to sort that one out. Had Lady Danbury just called him clever? Or was she insulting him by saying that he hadn"t added anything of interest to the conversation?
And what did it mean that Sarah had to tax her brain to keep up with her?
"You look perplexed, Lady Sarah," Lady Danbury said.
"I find myself fervently hoping that we will soon be called in to supper," Sarah admitted.
Lady Danbury snorted with amus.e.m.e.nt.
Emboldened, Sarah said to Lord Hugh, "I believe I have begun to pray to the butler."
"If there are to be replies, you"ll certainly hear his before anyone else"s," he said.
"Now this is more like it," Lady Danbury announced. "Look at the two of you. You"re positively bantering."
"Bantering," Lord Hugh repeated, as if he could not quite grasp the word.
"It"s not as entertaining for me as an awkward conversation, but I imagine you prefer it." Lady Danbury pressed her lips together and glanced about the room. "I suppose I shall have to find someone else to entertain me now. It"s quite a delicate balance, you know, finding awkwardness without stupidity." She thumped her cane on the carpet, hmmphed, and departed.
Sarah turned to Lord Hugh. "She"s mad."
"I might point out that you recently said the same thing to me."
Sarah was sure there were a thousand different responses to that, but she managed to think of precisely none of them before Iris suddenly appeared. Sarah clenched her teeth. She was still very annoyed with her.
"I found her," Iris announced, her face still grim with latent determination. "We are saved."
Sarah could not find enough charity within herself to say something bright and congratulatory. She did, however, nod.
Iris gave her a queer look, punctuated with a tiny shrug.
"Lord Hugh," Sarah said, with perhaps a bit more emphasis than was strictly necessary, "may I present my cousin, Miss Smythe-Smith? Formerly Miss Iris Smythe-Smith," she added, for no reason other than her own sense of annoyance. "Her elder sister was recently wed."
Iris started, clearly only just realizing that he"d been standing next to her cousin. This did not surprise Sarah; when Iris had her mind set on something she rarely noticed anything she deemed irrelevant.
"Lord Hugh," Iris said, recovering quickly.
"I am most relieved to hear that you are saved," Lord Hugh said.
Sarah took some satisfaction in the fact that Iris did not appear to know how to respond.
"From plague?" Lord Hugh inquired. "Pestilence?"
Sarah could only stare.
"Oh, I know," he said in quite the jolliest tone she"d ever heard from him. "Locusts. There"s nothing like a good infestation of locusts."
Iris blinked several times, then lifted a finger as if she"d just thought of something. "I"ll leave you, then."
"Of course you will," Sarah muttered.
Iris gave her an almost imperceptible smirk, then made her departure, snaking fluidly through the crowd.
"I must confess to curiosity," Lord Hugh said once Iris had disappeared from view.
Sarah just stared ahead. He wasn"t the sort to let her silence stop him, so there didn"t seem much need to reply.
"From what dreadful fate did your cousin save you?"
"Not you, apparently," Sarah muttered before she could control her tongue.
He chuckled at that, and Sarah decided there was no reason not to tell him the truth. "My cousin Daisy-that"s Iris"s younger sister-was trying to organize a special performance of the Smythe-Smith Quartet."
"Why should that be a problem?"
Sarah took a moment to phrase her query. "You have not attended one of our musicales, then?"
"I have not had the pleasure."
"Pleasure," Sarah repeated, tucking her chin back toward her neck as she tried to choke down her disbelief.
"Is something wrong?" Lord Hugh asked.
She opened her mouth to explain, but just then the butler came in and called them in for supper.
"Your prayers are answered," Lord Hugh said wryly.
"Not all of them," she muttered.
He offered her his arm. "Yes, you"re still stuck with me, aren"t you?"
Indeed.
Chapter Seven.
The following afternoon And so the Earl of Chatteris and Lady Honoria Smythe-Smith were joined in holy matrimony. The sun was shining, the wine was flowing, and judging by the laughter and smiles at the wedding breakfast (which had long since metamorphosed into a wedding luncheon), a good time was being had by all.
Even Lady Sarah Pleinsworth.
From where Hugh was sitting at the head table (rather by himself; everyone else had got up to dance), she was the very embodiment of carefree English womanhood. She spoke easily to the other guests, she laughed often (but never too loudly), and when she danced, she looked so b.l.o.o.d.y happy it nearly lit the room on fire.
Hugh had once liked to dance.
He"d been good at it, too. Music was not so very different from mathematics. It was all just patterns and sequences. The only difference was that they hung in the air instead of on a piece of paper.
Dancing was a grand equation. One side was sound, the other movement. The dancer"s job was to make them equal.
Hugh might not have felt music, the way the choral master at Eton had insisted he must, but he certainly understood it.
"Hullo, Lord Hugh. Would you like some cake?"
Hugh looked up and smiled. It was little Lady Frances Pleinsworth, holding two plates. One had a gigantic slice of cake, the other a merely enormous one. Both had been liberally frosted with lavender-hued icing and tiny candy violets. Hugh had seen the cake in all its glory before it had been cut; he had immediately begun to wonder how many eggs such a gateau might have required. When that had proved an impossible calculation, he"d started thinking about how long it would have taken to make the confection. Then he"d moved on to- "Lord Hugh?" Lady Frances said, cutting into his thoughts. She lifted one of the plates a few inches higher in the air, reminding him of why she"d come over.
"I do like cake," he said.
She sat down next to him, setting the plates on the table. "You looked lonely."
Hugh smiled again. It was the sort of thing an adult would never have said aloud. And precisely the reason he"d rather have been chatting with her than anyone else in the room. "I was alone, not lonely."
Frances frowned, considering that. Hugh was just about to explain the difference when she c.o.c.ked her head and asked, "Are you sure?"
"Alone is a state of being," he explained, "whereas lonely is-"
"I know that," she cut in.
He regarded her. "Then I"m afraid I do not understand your question."
She c.o.c.ked her head to the side. "I was just wondering if a person always knows when he is lonely."
Budding little philosopher, she was. "How old are you?" he asked, deciding that he would not be surprised if she opened her mouth and said she was actually forty-two.
"Eleven." She jabbed a fork into her cake, expertly picking the icing from between the layers. "But I"m very precocious."
"Clearly."
She didn"t say anything, but he saw her smiling around her fork as she took a bite.
"Do you like cake?" she asked, delicately dabbing the corner of her mouth with a napkin.
"Doesn"t everyone?" he murmured, not pointing out that he"d already said he did.
She glanced down at his untouched plate. "Then why haven"t you eaten any?"
"I"m thinking," he said, his eyes sweeping across the room and settling on the laughing form of her eldest sister.
"You can"t eat and think at the same time?" Frances asked.
It was a dare if ever he"d heard one, so he hauled his attention back to the slab of cake in front of him, took a huge bite, chewed, swallowed, and said, "541 times 87 is 47,067."
"You"re making that up," Frances said instantly.
He shrugged. "Feel free to check the answer yourself."
"I can"t very well do so here."
"Then you"ll have to take my word for it, won"t you?"
"As long as you realize that I could check your answer if I had the proper supplies," Frances said pertly. Then she frowned. "Did you truly figure that out in your head?"
"I did," he confirmed. He took another bite of cake. It really was quite tasty. The icing seemed to have been flavored with actual lavender. Marcus had always liked sweets, he recalled.
"That"s brilliant. I wish I could do that."
"It occasionally comes in handy." He ate more cake. "And sometimes does not."
"I"m very good at maths," Frances said in a matter-of-fact voice, "but I can"t do it in my head. I need to write everything down."
"There"s nothing wrong with that."
"No, of course not. I"m much better than Elizabeth." Frances gave a lofty smile. "She hates that I am, but she knows it"s true."
"Which one is Elizabeth?" Hugh probably should have remembered which sister was which, but the memory that captured every word on a page was not always so dependable with names and faces.
"My next oldest sister. She is occasionally unpleasant, but for the most part we get on well."
"Everyone is occasionally unpleasant," he told her.
That stopped her short. "Even you?"
"Oh, especially me."
She blinked a few times, then must have decided she preferred the earlier strain of conversation, because when she opened her mouth again it was to ask, "Do you have any brothers or sisters?"
"I have one brother."
"What is his name?"
"Frederick. I call him Freddie."
"Do you like him?"
Hugh smiled. "Very much so. But I don"t get to see him very often."
"Why not?"
Hugh didn"t want to think about all the reasons why not, so he settled on the only one that was suitable for her ears. "He doesn"t live in London. And I do."
"That"s too bad." Frances poked her fork in her cake, idly smearing the icing. "Perhaps you can see him at Christmas."