Page 49
Or sink.
A final madness to cap this mad week.
As she started forward, she saw the flash of rich pink silk out of the corner of her eye. Emmeline, crossing to the corner of the room. At first, she didn’t make out her companion, so absorbed was she in the study of her protégée. Emmeline couldn’t dance a jig in that form-fitting dress, but she could promenade like the best of them. Lavinia hadn’t seen finer mincing and slinking in all the beau monde. Her curls framed her face, which was luminous, soft and ravishingly pretty as a petal. She was smiling up at the tall, handsome man on her arm.
She was smiling up at Derwent Druce.
Lavinia’s breath stuttered. Druce had been an assistant in her papa’s architecture firm, a particular favorite, trumpeted for his talent as a draftsman and expected to one day accede to the partnership. He’d come often to the house with his drawings and would pass a mannerly quarter hour with her and her mother in the drawing room before he and her papa closed themselves in his study.
He would recognize her anywhere.
Heart hammering, she slid along the wall, head down, making for the antechamber, where hours ago she’d dusted a wooden table and arranged the bottle of wildflowers, the plates of ginger biscuits, the jugs of beer, the cups. It was a small, stuffy room, used for storage, with crates and barrels lining the walls. Mercifully, it was empty. She stood by the table, staring at the crumbs on a willow-pattern plate, listening to the sounds of fiddle and drum, of stamping feet and pealing voices.
It would all end here, now.
Emmeline’s sweetheart was the London architect. She should have guessed.
Attentive to the vicar. A girl like Emmeline was never attentive to a vicar.
But she couldn’t have guessed that the man tasked with restoring the parish church was Druce. Or could she have? Was that why she’d tried so hard to squelch her misgivings, to put the thought of the architect out of her mind?
Derwent Druce hadn’t been directly implicated in any of her father’s wrongdoing, but he had been tarnished by association.
He was exactly the London architect ready to leap at the chance to linger in a backwater. The fiddling stopped. Mr. Barnett had exhausted himself, perhaps, or taken pity on Emily Polwhele, who began to pound the piano keys, launching into a valse à deux temps.
“Muriel.” Tomas and Neal had appeared in the doorway. Absurdly, she stepped behind the table, as though she’d be less vulnerable—less visible—with the wildflowers and empty jugs between them. Neither man seemed to register the oddness of the motion. Both entered the room, Neal sitting casually on a barrel, Tomas coming right up to the table to address her.
“Has Emmeline confided in you?” he asked, brows knotted. “I have just observed a familiarity between her and a certain gentleman that made me wonder . . .”
“If she had, it would be a confidence.” To her surprise, she formed the words easily. No matter how vanquished she felt, it seemed her instinct for self-preservation would not desert her. “I’d hardly tell you.”
Neal laughed. “What did I say?”
Tomas shot him a look. “She is my youngest sister and charge,” he said, with unnecessary bluster, given the audience. Perhaps he imagined the gentleman in question already before him.
“I should know if she has developed an attachment,” he said. “And to Druce.” He shook his head. “Seems a decent chap, but he’ll go back to London and break her heart.”
Neal lifted a shoulder. “Maybe he’s serious.” He glanced at Lavinia. “She might end up in London with him.”
“And break her sisters’ hearts.” Tomas frowned. The idea of Emmeline taking up permanent residence in London didn’t sit well with him. They were more than close, the Traymaynes. They were downright clannish.
How stifling—and how comforting—it must be.
“You pay his salary.” Tomas tipped a jug of beer, verifying its emptiness. “Maybe you should talk to him seriously about the seriousness of his intentions.”
“What?” Lavinia blinked. Tomas returned to the doorway, poked his head out, then turned back to them.
“Derwent Druce,” he said, “the man who at this moment is hugging my sister and passing it off as a waltz, is an architect come from London to restore the church. The parties most directly concerned refused to contribute the requisite funds in full, and so my dear cousin stepped in with an offer of financial support.”
“An investment in conversation.” Neal kicked one heel against the barrel, two kicks per three-note bar of music. “Once the church is restored, no one will talk about how the church needs restoring. A new topic will have to be discovered.”
“He’d like to pass it off as self-interest.” Tomas grinned. “He’s embarrassed by his own generosity.”
“Stop it.” Neal closed his eyes, rested the back of his head on the wall.
“Embarrassed by his wealth, then.” Tomas watched Neal for a reaction and when none manifested, he sighed. “In any event, he’ll have suasion with young Druce.”
Lavinia studied Neal’s rugged profile, the black satin lashes against his cheeks the only frill. Perhaps plant nurseries could earn a man a better living than she’d imagined.
