Any other young lady of the ton would be thrilled. They pined for his pale yellow hair and pale blue eyes, and his languishing, poetic pronouncements.
Silly things.
Fortunately, Alice had always had an uncanny ability for languages. Along with Latin, Greek, French, and the three other foreign tongues she’d mastered, Alice was fluent in Impoverished Rake.
She knew precisely what White’s words translated to: Miss Tombs, my ancestral coffers are running precariously low. Marry me so I may squander your father’s vast fortune on gold-embroidered waistcoats and costly courtesans.
Gracious, how Alice loathed the idle nobility.
Take away their titles and they’d have not one skill with which to earn a living. And if she were poor they would never pay the slightest attention to her dimples.
“Dimples, Lord White, are naught but muscular deformities,” Alice said briskly. “Occurring in approximately twenty percent of the population, from my observations.”
The earl trailed an elegant, unlined hand through the air. “Pray, do not belittle yourself, Miss Tombs. You are hardly deformed. Your features are fetching beyond compare.”
And will fetch forgiveness of my tailor bills, Alice translated.
Lord White must have outrageous tailor bills.
She stared with morbid fascination at his waistcoat. She’d never seen such a shade of chartreuse. And what was embroidered upon the garment? Could those be hounds and . . . rodents? The plump creatures had red, beady eyes but the ears were rather long . . .
“I see you are admiring my fox and hare waistcoat.” The earl smiled indulgently. “I hope you may have the pleasure of watching me ride to hounds someday at Whitehaven. I’m a crack shot.”
Hares? Alice squinted at the waistcoat. The shapes could be construed as rabbitlike, she supposed. Appropriate, really. She felt rather like a hapless woodland creature trapped in the sight of the earl’s rifle.
Boldly, Lord White stroked her cheek with one knuckle. “Your skin is as soft as these lily petals.” He lifted one of the early-blooming Asiatic lilies he’d plucked from her mother’s flowerbeds.
Hadn’t even brought his own flowers. Wooing her was an afterthought. He’d assumed she would tumble easily into his arms.
I’ll outrun you yet, Alice thought. What she needed to do was turn the tables.
Hunt the hunter.
Her lady’s maid, Hodgins, was reading a book on a nearby bench. She must have been instructed to ignore small improprieties in pursuit of the larger goal.
Mama was counting on the earl’s proposal.
The wedding invitations had already been mentally composed; the trousseau ordered.
All part of her mother’s plans to scale the dizzying heights of London society.
Alice had a plan as well, and it did not include marriage to a vain and vapid nobleman. She would marry someday, but not until after she had at least one grand adventure abroad.
“Do stop waving those flowers about, Lord White.”
“Oh, that my lips were brushing yours.” The earl trailed one of the lilies across his mouth.
“I wouldn’t press my lips to that lily if I were you, Lord White. Lilium asiaticum are highly poisonous. We wouldn’t want you to begin drooling and cast your breakfast all over this blanket, would we?”
He dropped the lily. “I say, you’re not like other girls, are you,” he said peevishly, scooting farther from her on the bench in a sulk.
No, I’m not. Best do your wooing elsewhere, there’s a good earl.
Inconvenient things, suitors.
Stood in the way of one’s plans for adventurous voyages to India.
Her younger brother, Fred, who had reluctantly embarked on a Grand Tour of the Continent one year ago, would be home soon. And after he returned, Fred had promised to bring Alice with him on his upcoming voyage to visit potential sites for tea plantations in India.
Papa was a wealthy shipping merchant and wanted Fred to begin assuming responsibilities in the stewardship of his business concerns.
Alice had other plans for India.
When Papa had unexpectedly inherited the baronetcy after the tragic early deaths of his father and elder brother, the family had moved from the provincial Yorkshire town of Pudsey to her grandfather’s London town house.
There’d been no love lost between Sir Alfred and his father, who’d been a director of the East India Company, and a notorious voluptuary. Alice’s father had immediately discarded or burned most of the late baronet’s possessions.
Alice had rescued an entire box of ancient Indian manuscripts from the fire. Teaching herself to read them by studying A Grammar of the Sanskrita Language, she’d sent several short translations to Mr. Vidyasagar and Mr. Carey, Sanskrit scholars at Fort William College in Calcutta. The learned scholars had replied with great excitement to say that they believed one of the manuscripts she possessed to be the missing fragment of a larger work entitled The Kama Sutra of Vātsyāyana, an ancient Hindu text of great societal significance.