“I’ll stay home,” she said. “I can take a look at your ballgowns and plan embroidery and trim that might freshen them up a bit.”

“You are so clever with a needle,” Holly said. “We’ll bring home some lemon cakes, and you can show us your ideas over tea this afternoon.”

“I’ll look forward to that.”

The earl glowered at her. Iris smiled back, and Lily, Holly, and Hyacinth left the breakfast parlor discussing an itinerary that could bankrupt a nabob.

“You don’t do yourself any favors by antagonizing me, Iris,” the earl said. “It’s not my fault your mother left you only a modest inheritance. I have other children and must look after them as best I can.”

Oh, this again. Iris had arrived in the world thirty-six weeks after her mother had married the earl. He’d never come out and accused Iris of having a different father, but he’d never acted as a father should, either.

Or perhaps, her sin was not being a son. Falmouth had two sons still at public school, else he’d likely have married yet again.

“If the purchases they make are too extravagant, I will send the articles back,” Iris said. “I can find fault with a seam, a shade of silk, something credible, and your exchequer will be unscathed by anything so inconvenient as generosity toward your offspring. They are good girls, my lord, and if you’d host a few entertainments for them, buy them a barouche for parading at the fashionable hour, or even let us attend a few house parties…”

Falmouth put the paper aside and waved a hand at the footman. The servant withdrew, not daring to even flick Iris a glance of sympathy.

“Here is where your importuning would land me, miss: Hosting a few entertainments would require dipping into my investments, or perhaps even the settlements set aside for Lily, Holly, and Hyacinth. What I do for one of them, I must do for all three, lest my peers think one daughter more marriageable than another.

“That’s not one ball,” he went on, “but at least two, possibly three if Holly snares a husband and Hyacinth does not. House parties have been the ruin of many a proper maiden, and if I send the girls to house parties, I will be expected to host a house party. Have you any idea what that would cost?”

Well, yes, Iris had an exact idea. She had become the de facto unpaid housekeeper managing the earl’s various domiciles. She planned his rare dinner parties down to the farthing, knew exactly when the candles in the formal parlor were changed, and watched the coal man unload his goods lest he think to deliver a short weight.

“If you had any sympathy for me at all,” the earl went on, “you’d find some vicar to wed or a younger son with a career in foreign service. For all of society to know that I already have one daughter on the shelf only damages the prospects for the other three.”

This was a new weapon in the earl’s arsenal of insults: According to the earl, Iris was to blame for her silly, shallow, sisters remaining unwed. In fact, if Falmouth had shown his younger daughters any real fatherly regard, if he’d bothered to learn that Lily had nightmares about spilling punch, and Holly and Hyacinth were worried about having to live apart, then perhaps all three might present as other than anxious and vapid.

“If one of my sisters hopes to snabble a duke,” Iris said, rising, “then I’d best make myself useful. I’ll be in the sewing room, should anybody have need of me.”

The earl snorted and went back to his paper. He was no longer young, and he no longer frightened Iris. Mama’s will left Iris’s money to her and to her alone. She’d come into possession of the funds the previous year, and they were accumulating interest at a tidy rate.

“What is that vulgar sound supposed to mean?” Iris asked, taking a currant bun from the sideboard.

“Nobody needs four daughters,” the earl said, “much less three marriageable daughters and a crabby old maid. You will be agreeable to Clonmere, you will praise your sisters to him at every turn, and you will make it very clear to him that you will never be a burden on the ducal purse. You will even go so far as to ingratiate yourself with the duke to learn what his favorite color is and whether he favors emeralds or sapphires. You will share that intelligence with your sisters and ensure one of them marries him, or I will have to find a cottage for you in rural Devonshire.”

All of Devonshire was rural—also beautiful. Iris would never abandon her sisters but the notion of a peaceful life far from London….

“I’m responsible for ensuring a duke I’ve never met falls head over coronet in love with one of my sisters?”

“Of course not. You’re responsible for seeing that he marries one of them. If you have to compromise somebody to see that happen, then do what you must. Once I have a daughter wearing a tiara, the other two will soon find husbands. If you thought for a moment, you’d appreciate the genius of my strategy.”

Or he’d have one daughter married to His Grace of Stick-in-the-Mud and forced to bear his heirs, while the other two spent their lives consumed with jealousy.

Brilliant as usual, Papa. “You have four daughters, my lord. Not ‘the other two,’ but, ‘the other three.’”

He snapped the paper open and raised it before his face. “If you can tear yourself away from your stitching long enough, you might consider writing to Peter. Damned boy is about to get sent down again, and I can assure you there’s no refund of tuition in that case. I can’t afford to purchase yards of lace and also deal with my heir’s various mis-steps.”

Peter was eighteen, too handsome for his own good, and not inclined toward academics.

“I’ll write to Peter, then see about altering some ballgowns.” Iris mentally added a third, more pressing item to her list: She’d make the acquaintance of a certain duke, and decide for herself if he was worthy of any of her sisters.




CHAPTER 2




“THE YOUNGEST HAS BROWN HAIR, that’s Hyacinth,” Annis said. “The other two are blondes.”

“Lilac and Holly,” Clonmere replied, steering his gelding around the evidence of another horse’s passing. “Or is it Lilac and Hellebore? Hibiscus?” Nobody would name their child Hellebore or Hibiscus, would they? Hydrangea? Something with an H.

“Lily and Holly. Clonmere, how can you be contemplating marriage to one of these women if you’re not even interested in their names?”

A gentleman did not explain to his baby sister that women had attributes that could hold his interest far more effectively than a mere name.

“What are they like?”

“Lady Holly and Lady Hyacinth are twins, but they don’t look exactly alike. Lady Lily is the oldest, and she has a lovely soprano voice.”

“I’m tone-deaf, Annis, and I wouldn’t know a Lawrence from a Canaletto. Tell me what they’re like.”

Clonmere’s sister rode a dainty chestnut mare, doubtless chosen to show off Annis’s red hair. Her riding habit was green, her expression pitying.

“They are exactly what you’d expect: Pretty, pleasant, and desperate to marry. You deserve better, Clonmere. If you hadn’t put off marriage for so long, Mama might be willing to see reason.”

He waited, letting Annis ride ahead of him between two closed carriages. “I didn’t put marriage off.”

“You are two-and-thirty and have no duchess. Perhaps a wicked fairy put you to sleep at age twenty-one. Both of our sisters are married, and our brothers are certainly standing up with their share of debutantes.”

To be scolded by a mere child of eighteen…. “How old did you say Falmouth’s daughters are?”

“What difference does it make? They are out, they are eligible, and you need a duchess.”

No, he did not. He needed a wife. The duchess part couldn’t be helped, but the lady would be marrying a flesh and blood man, not a coronet and a set of presentation robes. Clonmere would have to find his bride more than tolerable if she was to be the mother of his children, and she—poor thing—would have to find him much more than tolerable.

“Oh, dear,” Annis said, drawing her mare to a halt. “I believe Teddy Amherst and Patrick Dersham are making a disgraceful spectacle of themselves.”

The two peacocks were on foot, one beside a curricle with a damaged wheel, the other strutting before a high perch phaeton. Both Amherst’s matched blacks and Dersham’s bays were restive, and pedestrians had stopped to gawk at the accident.

“We can ride back the way we came and dodge down the alley.” Clonmere would rather return home and bury his nose in correspondence, but he’d hidden in his study for two days. The weather was glorious, and the sooner he made the acquaintance of Falmouth’s offspring, the sooner he could be done with the whole farce.

“Clonmere, this could get interesting.” With three brothers, Annis had seen any number of fistfights, not that a lady should admit as much.

“Dersham’s bigger, but he’ll be slower too,” Clonmere said. “My money is on Amherst. He’s the wronged party, and they tend to fight harder.”

“I mostly want to see them take off their coats.”

Well, that was honest. Would Clonmere’s duchess want to see him unclothed, or would she cower beneath the sheets, staring at the bed hangings while he struggled to consummate the marriage vows? Ghastly thought.

Dersham was attempting to shrug out of his coat, but Bond Street tailoring did not yield to shrugs. The tiger tried to assist his master while holding onto a bridle, and a ring of spectators assembled right in the street. Money changed hands, as Amherst made loud allusions to calling out the damned fool who couldn’t control his team.

“I should stop this,” Clonmere said, swinging down from the saddle and passing Annis his reins. “They’ll both get bloody noses, traffic will snarl, somebody will say something they regret, those blacks are about to bolt, and—”