Seven Minutes in Heaven(37)

Mr. Sweeney dropped the fox stole around her neck with such zeal that the fox head flew up, appearing to leap for freedom.

Lady Hyacinth arranged her stole so that it hung over her right breast. “Mrs. Snowe, I am gratified to discover that even though you were taking tea alone with a gentleman, it was for unimpeachable, albeit mercantile, reasons. I promise you that I shall continue to defend your reputation when the question arises. As it inevitably does, unfortunately.”

Eugenia didn’t let on by a quiver of a hair how she felt about that, but Ward had the idea that anger was vibrating in the air. Instead she smiled sweetly and said, “You are just as so many have described you as well, Lady Hyacinth.”

“It is a cross to bear,” the lady answered. “When one has generations of fine breeding behind one, society ogles. But as I tell Petunia and my other girls, it is responsibility that makes us what we are. And our responsibility is to display the best of breeding.”

Eugenia had drawn Miss Petunia aside and was murmuring something to the poor girl. Ward said, “Your daughter is a lovely young woman, Lady Hyacinth. She seems very tactful.”

“Oh, the very essence of tact,” the lady agreed. “We do not have a governess from Snowe’s—they found themselves unaccountably without a woman who could serve a household of our caliber—but true manners must be learned at home. Why, look at you, Mr. Reeve.”

Ward was beginning to enjoy himself. “What about me?”

“With your, ahem, background, one would never dream of meeting you in Gunter’s or elsewhere, but given that you were brought up in the earl’s household, you are . . . more. More,” she repeated firmly. “Breeding tells. Why, you go everywhere, don’t you? I believe I saw you with the Duke of Villiers the other day.”

“His Grace is a good friend of my father’s,” Ward said.

“I believe you went to Eton, and you didn’t learn to bake a cake there, did you? The aristocracy ought not to labor in the kitchen, no matter what Mrs. Snowe’s governesses require!”

Eugenia turned from her conversation and said, “This has been a pleasure, Lady Hyacinth.” She dropped a curtsy.

Lady Hyacinth inclined her chin, and turned back to Ward. “Mr. Reeve, I feel that we have reached a new level of amicability. A friendship, as it were. I shall call on your dear father as soon as his lordship returns from Sweden—hopefully with all the younger family members still in tow. But even if they find themselves in blacks, I shall call upon him.”

Ward couldn’t bring himself to comment on his father’s happiness at that prospect, but an answer was irrelevant.

“I can see that my darling Petunia has formed a true appreciation for you, Mr. Reeve. I hope to see you at an event soon—she dances like a blossom on the wind.”

“Mother!” Petunia said in an anguished voice.

“I must escort my daughter to her next engagement,” Lady Hyacinth said. “The mother of a diamond of the first water like Petunia has no time to dilly-dally over tea.”

Her curtsy was so brisk that her bosom rose in the air and bounced as it settled back into place.

As did the fox, its bright glass eyes fixed on Ward.

“If I heard rightly, you recently acquired Fawkes House, did you not?” Lady Hyacinth said, dilly-dallying. “Perhaps you should rename it, Mr. Reeve. That name was all very well back when Lord Fawkes lived in the manor.”

“I hadn’t considered,” Ward said, taken aback.

“You could hardly call it Reeve House, could you? It sounds like a weevil. Or a German vegetable. Such a complicated language for such simple people. I never did meet one who wasn’t thinking about turnips.”

And with that she sailed away, the fox head flapping and her daughter—red-faced from pure mortification—following.





Chapter Fourteen




Eugenia dropped into her chair, looked at Ward, and burst out laughing. He was apparently a man who would happily fight a legion with one hand tied at his back, but when faced with a bumptious mother, was desperate for rescue.

“If you allow another woman of that sort to join us,” Ward told the headwaiter, “I will never darken the door of this establishment again.”

“I am extremely sorry, sir,” Mr. Sweeney said earnestly. “If another woman like that brings her custom to this establishment, I shall follow you out of the building.”

“Excellent. I think we’d better have more tea and a few pastries. How are the hampers coming along?”

“We are ready whenever you wish, Mr. Reeve,” Sweeney said before slipping away.

“Lady Hyacinth is infamous,” Eugenia told Ward when they were alone again. “She truly is one of a kind.”