Rosamund shook her head.
“No mind. You are lovely without them. They would be a distraction.” Jenny lifted a wrap and a tiny reticule. “Would you like to go down now?”
“Yes. You don’t need to accompany me. I’ll make me own way.” She took the wrap and reticule while she mentally kicked herself. My own way. She chanted the correction in her mind all the way down the stairs.
Minerva had insisted she and Chase bring her in the carriage with them, and soon it arrived. Chase came to the door, escorted her out, and handed her over to a footman who helped her into the coach.
Another man sat within. A very handsome man who looked much like Chase, but whose features possessed fewer of Chase’s strong bones. Another relative, apparently.
Minerva introduced him. Not just any relative. This was Nicholas, Duke of Hollinburgh.
He smiled amiably while Chase joined them.
“Hollinburgh may save you for another five minutes of battle if you walk in with him,” Minerva said. “So we have fifteen minutes covered now.”
“I should be insulted, only she is correct. My influence in the family is only good for that long, at best,” the duke said.
“I will be grateful for even that much,” Rosamund said carefully. “Although I am hoping that it will not be as bad as I have been warned it will be.”
“I said she should decline to attend,” Minerva said. “I am still of that opinion. We can bring her home right now and announce when we arrive that she is ill.”
“She will have allies there, darling,” Chase said. “The three of us and, hopefully, Kevin.”
“He will be there?” Minerva appeared perplexed. “I thought—”
“He received an invitation yesterday,” Chase said. “He mentioned it in a message I received before you came down. But, being Kevin, he neglected to mention if he had accepted it.”
“Things have been going well between the two of you, Miss Jameson?” the duke asked. “I only ask because the others we can quell easily enough, but Kevin has a way of speaking his mind too frankly at times.”
“He is saying he can be rude,” Minerva said. “But you know that already.”
“I believe we have a friendship of sorts. He has helped me as I settle in here in Town.”
That reassured the duke. “I say, Chase, if Kevin will be there as a friend of Miss Jameson, we might find ourselves protecting the relatives from him, instead of protecting her from the family.”
“It would be like him to draw their fire,” Chase said.
“What an interesting development,” Minerva said. “This may be an almost enjoyable evening instead of the utter disaster I had anticipated.”
* * *
Kevin entered the drawing room. For a moment, the chamber silenced as curious eyes looked to see who had arrived. Then conversation started up again. Two of his cousins’ wives showed disappointment. Oh, it’s just you, their expressions said.
Everyone had come, at least the ones who ever attended any family event. His own father had not bothered, nor his father’s brothers, most of whom lived in the country and rarely came up to Town. But his cousins had graced Aunt Agnes with their attendance, all of them wearing their privilege and position as obviously as ever.
The family members who thought they should have received the money that Miss Jameson inherited were here to take a good look at the thief who had deprived them of their long-awaited expectations.
Aunt Agnes and Aunt Dolores were in an animated tête-à-tête on the divan. Agnes saw him and gestured for him to join them.
“We’ve a disagreement.” She sighed, as if arguing with her sister were something unusual. “When we line up to go below to dinner, we are in conflict over where Miss Jameson should be put.”
“I say she is the guest of honor and receives some precedence for that,” Dolores said. “Agnes insists she be at the end of the line of females.”
“She has no social standing, nor the birth to place her anywhere at all,” Agnes said.
“Did you in any way indicate to her that she was the guest of honor?” Kevin asked. “We all know why you are hosting this dinner, and we all know that she is the victim du jour, but that is not the same thing.”
“I did not write to her that she was the guest of honor.”
“You did to the others,” Dolores said. “You may not have used that phrase, but you made it clear that this dinner was an opportunity to meet this Miss Jameson.”
“Sister, truly, you can be such a trial. I think you disagree because it gives you perverse pleasure. As Kevin says, that is not the same thing. She will be last, as is appropriate.”
Dolores shrugged. “I am sure she won’t know the difference, so I’ll not belabor my view of it. What would such a woman know about order of precedence anyway?”
Nothing, Kevin thought. Not yet. Some day, however, Mrs. Markland would explain all that. Tonight, however, Rosamund would be ignorant of any slights. And he, Kevin, would walk beside her, with Chase and Minerva right ahead. Protection on all sides, then, except behind her, where Cousin Philip would be making a nuisance of himself.
As if called forth by his thoughts, Philip approached. The youngest of the cousins and, everyone agreed, the least promising among them, Philip sported a new waistcoat with gold buttons and bold green and yellow stripes. His frock coat looked new too, and the latest fashion, one which Kevin disliked because the snug sleeves constricted movement too much.
“So where is this Miss Jameson?” Philip asked loudly enough for Walter, the eldest of the cousins, to hear from his nearby perch on a chair. Philip’s soft face arranged itself into a comical pretense of curiosity. “A milliner, I hear. Uncle must have been going mad, after all, to leave all that to a woman who makes hats.”
“How much better to leave it to you, of course. Only it would
