Westray laughed, a little too hard in Charles’s estimation, and the Duchess of Devonshire shook her head.
“Really, that is so like you, Priscilla,” Harry said, beaming. “And very like you, Orrinshire, now I come to think about it. Goodness, you are so alike, are you not?”
Charles felt heat rise to his cheeks as Westray, Harry, and Miss Worsley all turned to look at him.
“Alike?” he said, playing for time.
Priscilla was blushing. “I do not think we are anything alike,” she said. “Though I am not entirely sure who should be most offended by that!”
“Well, then, in that case, I say we are alike,” he said magnanimously. “Though I am not sure how you see it, Harry.”
Harry snorted. “You have never noticed? Goodness gracious, you were practically raised together, Orrinshire, I would be more surprised if you were not alike.”
Westray was looking between them now with narrowed eyes, and Charles shifted on his feet.
“Yes,” said Westray slowly. “Now that I come to look at you both, I do see the resemblance. ’Tis more how you hold yourselves, the way you jest. Practically brother and sister.”
“No,” said Charles quickly. “Not brother and sister.”
There was a moment of silence that continued for an awfully long time. Westray snickered. Charles felt the hackles on the back of his neck rise and forced down the urge to punch his friend in the face.
Where had all this anger and aggression come from?
“Shall we start then?” he asked, desperate to move the conversation on. “If we wait much longer, we will not have the light for the return trip.”
“I am not walking in the dark,” said Miss Worsley, still arm in arm with Priscilla. “You know the land around here, Your Grace, surely you can find a route that does not leave us in the darkening evening?”
Charles smiled at the formal tone.
“Please, call me Orrinshire,” he said gently, and her cheeks pinked. “Now, I suggest we start in this direction, which will bring us through woodland and then a little farmland – one of my tenants, he will not mind – which then circles back here. ’Tis only an hour, more than enough time to be completed in daylight. Before luncheon, even. You will have no need to fret, Miss Worsley.”
They set off, Westray and Harry taking the lead. Charles found himself walking beside Priscilla, with Miss Worsley on her other side.
“And the trouble is of course, that as a Liberal, he does not really understand the challenges that so many face,” Miss Worsley was saying earnestly. “If politics aims to be truly representative, as it should, then…”
Charles allowed the conversation to wash over him as they joined a footpath that meandered into Orrinsbeck Woods. Politics had never interested him; it all seemed to be a lot of shouting with not much action. He had never taken up his seat in the House of Lords for just that reason, something his mother berated him about on almost a weekly basis.
What was the point? A lot of stuffy old men with little understanding of the real world, and him, a gentleman with little understanding of the political world.
It was hardly a recipe for success.
“I believe the next election will change things dramatically,” Priscilla was saying, catching Charles’s attention. “The ongoing disagreements about the Enclosure Act will not continue in the same way, I believe, if the prime minister…”
Charles tried not to stare as she spoke. She was remarkably astute, and about a topic which, traditionally, had been the province of…well. Not ladies.
“I never knew you held such an interest in the political landscape, Priscilla,” he said aloud.
Both she and Miss Worsley looked at him and grinned, making Charles feel a little like he had missed the punchline of a very funny joke.
“Just because women cannot vote nor represent themselves,” Priscilla said with a smile, “that does not mean we have no interest in politics. If anything, the opposite!”
Charles frowned as they turned a corner into deeper woodland. There were few birds singing in the trees this close to autumn, but a woodpecker beat against a tree a little way off.
“The opposite?”
Miss Worsley nodded as Priscilla continued, “Well, consider the situation. We must become more involved than society would deem necessary, precisely because we are unable to interact in any meaningful way. It is only by being vocal in this manner that our representatives actually know what we want!”
“Careful!” Westray shot back over his shoulder, evidently listening to Priscilla. Charles felt a spark of jealousy ignite in his bones. “That sounds like bluestocking talk to me, Miss Seton!”
Instead of taking offense, as something wicked in Charles’s heart wished she would, Priscilla merely smiled. “A little logic never hurts, Lord Westray.”
He grinned and turned back to continue conversing with Harry, and Miss Worsley mentioned something fresh, taking Priscilla into a different topic.
Charles was consumed with pride in Priscilla, pride in her mind, her wit. Had she always been this elegant, this well-spoken, this charming?
Her mind was first-rate, and he had always known that – hadn’t he always been the butt of her jokes as children?
“What do you think, O-Orrinshire?”
But this was different. Something within him reacted when he looked at her.
“I said, what do you think, Orrinshire?”
Charles’s attention snapped back to the present. Miss Worsley looked concerned, and it was only then that he realized she had been asking him a question.
“I beg your pardon?” he said hastily.
Miss Worsley laughed. “My, you must have been hundreds of miles away to mishear me. Perhaps thinking of Frances?”
Her smile was knowing – a little too knowing. They had not been acquainted long, and he could not think of who this Frances was supposed to be.
“Who?” he asked.
Miss Worsley glanced at Priscilla and smiled. “Why, Miss Frances Lloyd, Your Grace. Your betrothed?”
Damn and blast it! Of course she meant Miss Lloyd. But it would not do for that report to get back to his intended. Not that he would suspect Miss Worsley of such base gossip,
