Page 10 of Never a Duke
Well, no matter. George was the Kinwood spare, and a loyal spare at that. “No rush, Lindy. Not as if I have the expenses you do.”
“You don’t have the amusements I do,” Lindhurst said, wiggling his eyebrows. “I’m for Drury Lane tonight. Will you join me?” He selected a cravat pin from the jewelry box his valet, Higgins, held open for him.
A crumb of brotherly recognition was to be the interest paid on George’s loan—on his loans, plural. Except that Drury Lane was silly, and George had seen everything on offer there at present.
“You’ll fill the box without me, I’m sure. You could take Rosalind.”
Lindhurst shuddered delicately on his vanity stool. “Please, George. My nerves. Rosalind expects towatchthe performance. She’s always shushing everybody and muttering the correct line when the actors blunder. The lads complain about her when they aren’t composing odes to her unattractive attributes.”
A spare’s lot was that of peacemaker. Nobody had had to explain that to George, though Rosalind and Lindhurst made the job challenging.
“Perhaps the Cadwallader girl will favor you with a visit to your box.”
“The gent does the visiting, Georgie darling.” Lindhurst held up a gold pin tipped with lapis. “A bit daring for daytime, but it brings out my eyes, don’t you think?”
George thought all of Lindy’s sapphires had been pawned, and those gems truly had done justice to his lordship’s Saxon-blue eyes. The gold would complement Lindy’s beautiful blond curls, the towering maples in Hyde Park would accentuate his height, and the sun itself would attempt to rival his smile.
All the charm and looks in the Kinwood family reposed in the earl and his heir, leaving George to share Rosalind’s dark hair and modest height. George had never stammered, but he’d never memorized entire plays either.
“Shall I fetch the matching sleeve buttons, my lord?” Higgins asked.
Lindhurst turned on his stool, so Higgins could insert the pin into the lacy cascade at Lindy’s throat. Higgins managed this without brushing Lindhurst’s chin, or otherwise presuming on the lordly person. The whole exercise of dressing, a ritual young men of leisure enjoyed performing before their peers, struck George as a reinvention of nursery routines.
Help me, Nurse, for my little thumbs cannot manage my own buttons.
“You should let Higgins dress you,” Lindhurst said, rising. “And yes, Higgy, please do fetch the lapis sleeve buttons. One wants to be properly turned out, eh?”
George made do with the good efforts of Papa’s valet, a venerable soul by the name of Coop. Coop looked after George’s clothes, and George got himself into them on all but the most formal occasions.
“Will you pay a visit to the Cadwallader girl between acts?” George asked.
“I should,” Lindy replied casually, rising as Higgins backed away with the jewelry case. “She’s said to be worth ten thousand a year. No title, but titled families can be inbred.”
The Kinwoods were titled. Had been for centuries. “Miss Cadwallader is pretty,” George observed, which was surely an understatement. Clotilda’s golden beauty outshone even Lindhurst’s.
“They are all pretty, given enough time with the modistes and finishing governesses.” Lindy held out one wrist, then the other, while Higgins substituted gold-and-lapis sleeve buttons for plain gold. “Clotilda could do far worse than to attach an earl’s heir.”
She could do better than to attachthisearl’s heir. Lindy wasn’t a bad sort, but as Rosalind had observed, he was lazy. In her estimation, if a man could not make the effort to manage his own exchequer, how could he be trusted to oversee the management of a household, much less an estate, much less a share of responsibility for governing an entire empire?
Rosalind was afflicted with great stores of logic and exhibited them at the worst possible times, poor dear. She’d further opined that the Crown, perpetually in debt while reigning over the wealthiest nation on the planet, was theapotheosisof irony. Lindy had opined in his turn that women were not to use words of more than three syllables.
To which Rosalind had replied that for Lindy to boast of his ability to count all the way to five was beneath the dignity of a peer’s heir, though she understood why he took pride in his accomplishment.
And that, blessedly, had been enough for Papa to send the combatants to their figurative neutral corners.
“You’re off to lounge at shop windows?” George asked.
“As one does,” Lindy said, slipping a cloisonné snuff box into his pocket, surveying the result in the cheval mirror, then removing the snuff box. “Ruins the line. Why must snuff boxes be so boxy?”
Higgins busied himself collecting the half dozen discarded cravats festooning the dressing closet.
“You don’t even take snuff,” George said.
“I knowhowto take snuff is the point, and one wants to offer same to one’s friends. Lady Walters sent along an invitation to her Venetian breakfast. Do you suppose Roz will inflict herself on that gathering?”
That was a bit harsh. “On Thursday? I expect she’ll go. Papa demands that she show the colors and collect the gossip.” Papa also demanded that Roz serve as his hostess, which wasn’t quite the done thing when Roz was neither a married lady nor old enough to qualify as doddering—yet.
“I can escort her,” Lindhurst said, holding still while Higgins threaded three watch chains across his lordship’s midriff. “Fraternal duty and all that.”
