Annie did not respond for a moment. “You and I have never spoken on such matters before, but I’ve long known about your Mrs. Pratt.”
His stomach plummeted. He hated like the devil that his sisters knew of his mistress. This was not a matter he wished to discuss with Annie. So he stayed silent.
“Having a mistress would hurt Dorothea Pankhurst. She’s the kind of young lady who, when she consents to marry, will love a man with all her heart and would never understand a husband who wanted to share his bed with another woman. It would destroy her.”
He swallowed again. “But a great many married men keep mistresses.”
“I’m well aware that our father did, but I would never wish to marry a man who behaved as did our father. It’s wrong.”
He bowed his head. “I know.”
“Miss Pankhurst, tender-hearted creature that she is, would never be able to tolerate an unfaithful husband. She’s never known anything but total love. You’ve seen how her father dotes on her. And look at her and those adorable cats! She only understands love. She would know it and be deeply hurt if she discovered you didn’t love her.”
Of course, his sister was right. The last thing he wanted was to hurt Miss Pankhurst. It would be crueler than kicking one of his trusting and loyal hounds. “What if I agreed to dismiss Mrs. Pratt? Then would you look more favorably upon my union with Miss Pankhurst?”
He hadn’t even seen his mistress since before that fateful night he lost his fortune at Mrs. Starr’s. He’d known he was going to have to dismiss her because he simply had no funds to keep her.
Strangely, the prospect of parting ways with her did not disturb him. He only hoped she would quickly find another generous protector to replace him.
“I would.” Annie turned once again to gaze into his eyes, so much like her own. “I don’t fully understand why you’re so compelled to offer for a woman with whom you are clearly not in love, but since you are, you must agree to make every effort to fall in love with the woman you want to make your wife.”
What a foolish thing his sister was trying to mandate! One simply couldn’t will oneself to fall in love. However, he did owe it to Miss Pankhurst, if she did him the goodness of consenting to become his wife, to try to be a loving, faithful husband.
Like Annie, he had not approved of his father’s infidelities. It wasn’t fair to the lovely woman who’d been their mother—and a devoted wife. He vowed to be a better husband.
If he had the opportunity.
His chest tightened. If only he loved Miss Pankhurst at the outset. How much simpler things would be. Simpler and more enjoyable. Far more enjoyable.
* * *
Between the dampness and the unrelenting rain over the next three days, Dot insisted that her father not leave the house. “I don’t need you to take lung fever and die on me,” she told him.
“And whilst you are housebound, my dear daughter, I shall insist that we take this opportunity to bring in a real dancing master. I’ll not have the daughter of Westmoreland Pankhurst being a wallflower at these Bath assemblies.”
She could not refuse. She shared her father’s wish that she be able to move with ease in the same society with Lord Appleton—not that she expected to win his lordship’s affections, of course. But a girl had her pride.
And, besides, she admired Miss Appleton very much and did not want to cause any embarrassment to that lady because of her own deficiencies.
So it was that over the next three days her father was able to obtain the services of one Mr. Gibby, who was said to be the most sought-after dance master in Bath. Owing to the man’s girth, it was difficult for Dot to imagine he could ever have cut a dashing figure on a dance floor, but she had to concede that it had been many years since he had been in the prime of his youth.
When she’d asked her father—who watched each day’s proceedings from the comfort of his chair, brandy glass in hand—how old he thought Mr. Gibby was, he’d thought the man might be older than himself.
To his great credit, Mr. Gibby worked tirelessly. When Dot grew winded and begged to rest, the older man carried on with the stamina of a man half his age.
It soon became apparent why the dance master had come so highly recommended, and why he could demand a higher fee than others. He was not only excellent at executing the steps and imparting them to his pupil in a particularly patient manner, but he was also knowledgeable about dances deemed appropriate for a young lady to learn.
Dot became acquainted with the quadrille and the cotillion, which she tended to get mixed up. They practiced longway dancing, and he taught her the old English favorite Sir Roger de Coverley—of which she had been ignorant.
“I have failed my fatherly duties,” Mr. Pankhurst lamented. “My daughter’s never heard of the Sir Roger. I remember well from the days of my youth when we closed out every assembly with the Sir Roger.”
During those three rainy days, her father would not permit her to gallivant about the city. In addition to her dance lessons, she had two other distractions to prevent her from going mad with boredom: reading speculations in the Bath Chronicle about Ellie Macintosh’s murder and the excitement of daily deliveries of her new wardrobe. One day, two dresses came.
Though the murder continued to occupy the top news spot in each day’s Chronicle, the murderer had not been apprehended, and virtually no new information had been uncovered.
On the third day, when Topham announced that Lord Appleton was calling, she felt like a butterfly released from a jar.
She and her kitties were
