Oh, damn. Oh, double drat and perdition. He was wonderful, and he was Clonmere, and he’d make the best brother-in-law ever. He’d be patient with Holly’s shyness, kind about Hyacinth’s insecurities, and tolerant of Lily’s anxieties.

“I am Lady Iris Fallon, and this is my cousin, Miss Harriet Fallon. Thank you for your assistance, Your Grace.”

The smile faded to a look of puzzlement. “You are Falmouth’s daughter? I don’t recall an Iris among the bunch.”

Nobody did. “Perhaps you’d like to return to your horse. I’d rather not draw any more attention.”

“His Grace can escort us,” Hattie said, the traitor. “Lest we come upon any more incompetent whips.”

“I’m nominally escorting my sister, but she is off amid a troupe of her friends, where I dare not venture. I’d be happy to ride along with you.”

Go away, oh, please, go away. Iris needed time—years perhaps—to sort out her feelings. She should be pleased that he was sensible, attractive, healthy, and well-mannered. She was instead unaccountably furious.

She was to take notice of this man the better to marry him to one of her sisters, and the unfairness of that, the sheer injustice, brought her near to tears.

“An escort would be appreciated, Your Grace.”

“Then an escort you shall have.” With that, he strode back in the direction of a big gray. Already Iris was attuned to the pattern of his footfalls, already she was tempted to watch his retreat.

Hattie patted her hand. “It could be worse. He could be a madcap buffoon like that Berringer fellow, flaunting his lightskirts before proper society. He could be cruel, stupid, slovenly, or a drunkard. The earl knew what he was about when he unearthed that letter from the previous duke. At least one of Falmouth’s daughters will end up with a happily ever after.”

Iris gave the reins a shake. That happily ever after won’t be mine, though. Of that much, she could be certain.




CHAPTER 3




ONE THING WAS CERTAIN, Falmouth had a daughter worth further consideration as Clonmere’s duchess. Lady Iris was sensible, brave, self-possessed, and pretty. Not pretty in a loud, look-at-me way, but pretty in a quiet, I-am-a-duchess way.

She, however, had not looked at Clonmere as if he were her duke. This was unusual. Word had gone out among Mama’s cronies and correspondents that Clonmere must find a duchess. He was besieged by sweet young things, by their widowed mothers, by their ambitious chaperones.

While Lady Iris had driven away without sparing him so much as a glance.

Clonmere steered Boru to Lady Iris’s side of the carriage, prepared to earn her notice as something more than an untangler of carriage wheels.

“Were you aware that we might become family?” he asked.

She wrinkled her nose. “One must exercise discretion discussing such a topic in public, Your Grace.”

“No, one must not. If the matchmakers, merry widows, and debutantes were any more determined in their efforts to drag me to the altar, you’d see harpoons protruding from my backside.”

Was that a twitch of the lips? “You poor, beleaguered dear.”

“I’m hounded, I tell you. I’ve been waltzed to exhaustion, partnered at whist until my exchequer is down to two bent farthings, and musicale’d to the point that one more marvelously talented soprano will drive me to Bedlam.”

“Lily is talented soprano,” Lady Iris said, a hint of glower coming into her eyes. “Holly and Hyacinth sing a marvelous duet.”

The companion or cousin was smiling at her reticule. Clonmere took courage from that, for a companion would know Lady Iris well.

Clonmere hoped to know her very well. “Why did Falmouth tell me he had only three daughters?”

Was Lady Iris engaged? The thought was unacceptable, for reasons Clonmere wouldn’t examine until he’d been fortified with solitude and a tot of good French brandy.

“I am the earl’s secret weapon,” Lady Iris said. “I am to spy on you, and learn everything about you.”

“Novel approach to spying, announcing the fact in broad daylight where I’m told one must ever exercise discretion.”

“I thought that business about tangling my carriage with Mr. Unbearable’s was a clever touch,” Lady Iris said. “Creative of me, don’t you think?”

Boru craned his neck to sniff the mare’s rump. The mare batted him in the face with her tail.

“Behave,” Clonmere muttered, shortening the reins. “So what secrets would you like to learn? I wet the bed until I was six. My siblings delight in that fact and announce it to all and sundry as often as possible. Formal dinners, fancy dress balls, the more public the better. I endure this stoically, because I will have my revenge by tattling to their children about all manner of peccadillos. I don’t smoke, I do prefer coffee to tea, particularly coffee with a touch of cinnamon in it.”

He’d never told a woman that last tidbit before, though it was hardly intimate.

“And your favorite color?”

That one was easy. “Green, a soft, leafy-trees-in-April green.” The green of your lovely eyes.

“Who is your favorite composer?”

“Robert Burns. I don’t fancy blaring horns and thumping kettle drums. Give me a pair of fiddles in close harmony and a tune I can recall over breakfast. Tell me about your sisters.”

She turned the mare down a less crowded path. “They are lovely young women. They’ve been raised to be gracious hostesses, conscientious wives, and virtuous women. You should esteem all of them greatly.”

This recitation was not grudging at all. To the contrary, Lady Iris offered her summation sternly, and few people ever spoke to Clonmere sternly.

Lady Iris was protective of her family, a fine quality in a prospective duchess.

“Your sisters are Lily, Holly and Hyacinth. Lily being the eldest, the twins two years her junior. Tell me their favorite colors, how they take their tea, their greatest sources of worry.”

Clonmere told himself he really ought to keep an open mind. Lady Iris was impressive, but her younger sisters might be equally so, or even more so. She described them in glowing and loving terms, right down to their respective fears.

“Lily feels very strongly that she must set an example for the twins and never put a foot wrong,” Lady Iris said. “The earl reinforces that fear by finding fault with Lily rather than praising her many virtues.”

“Praise Lily, appreciate her.” Clonmere said.

“Exactly. Hyacinth is torn, as children in the middle can be, between loyalty to Holly, her younger twin, and a natural yearning to have the status Lily can claim as the eldest.”

Lady Iris was the eldest, though she described her siblings as if she were their doting governess rather than their sister.

“So I should reassure Lady Hyacinth, and encourage her to be herself rather than somebody’s sister.”

That earned him a glance, searching, thoughtful, not particularly happy. “Yes, Your Grace. A good insight. Holly has learned to be observant, because she must fortify herself with information before she attempts to compete with the other two. She’s quiet, easily upset, and often overlooked unless she’s dressed exactly as her sister.”

“I should be attentive to Holly.”

“You are perceptive,” Lady Iris said. “One is relieved to reach that conclusion.”

Appreciative, reassuring, attentive, perceptive… Those qualities struck Clonmere as the role of an older brother, an uncle even. Of course, a husband should also have those traits—as should a wife.

“What of joy, Lady Iris? What of humor, passion, and dreams?” What of children?

The companion studied the trees overhead. Boru was trying to sneak his nose closer to the mare’s quarters. Clonmere shortened the reins again, though only a few inches.

“You asked me about their worries, Your Grace. What else would you like to know?”

Clonmere’s siblings would be surprised to learn that he was perceptive, and yet, he did grasp that he could not ask Lady Iris about her own fears and dreams. Instead, he peppered her with queries about her sisters—their favorite desserts, their preferences in terms of pets, the activities they enjoyed in Town and in the country.

Despite Lady Iris’s loyal efforts, Clonmere’s pictures of Lily, Holly, and Hyacinth became a predictable sketches: Dancing, shopping, needlework, watercolors. Light reading—whatever that meant—pianoforte, shopping, the theater. Italian opera, shopping, ices at Gunter’s, the Royal Academy’s art exhibitions, and for variety, another spate of shopping.

Lady Iris was doing her best to present her sisters as perfect duchesses-in-waiting and failing miserably. He listened to her replies not because of what they revealed about her sisters, but because of what they revealed about her.

She was loyal, honest, kind, observant, a very competent whip, and the only one of Falmouth’s daughters Clonmere would even consider offering for.

“JOHN FALLON, you have lost what few wits the Lord endowed you with.” Hattie marched into Falmouth’s study, angrier than she’d ever been with him, which was very angry indeed. “I did not speak out when you dismissed the French tutor, and made Iris responsible for guiding her sisters in a foreign language, because Iris was flattered to have the responsibility. I did not speak out when you refused to purchase Iris’s frocks, because she can make far better dresses than the modistes would. I did not speak out when you encouraged that awful Mr. Harman to pay Iris his addresses.”